The Culture of "K-Ville"

Reprinted with permission from The American Prospect Online. The American Prospect, 2000 L Street NW, Suite 717, Washington, DC 20036. All rights reserved.

"K-Ville," FOX's new police series set in New Orleans, opens with a close-up of a white man in his 30s trying very hard to keep his head above water in a confined space. The date -- Sept. 1, 2005 -- flashes, and the scene abruptly shifts outside, onto flooded roadways with dazed people seeking help, and not enough police to provide it.

"I had to shoot a dog," a New Orleans police officer tells his partner. "It was chewing on one of the bodies."

Moments later, the traumatized cop gets in his car and leaves, deserting his partner and his city.

Flash forward two years and Marlin Boulet (Anthony Anderson), the officer left by the side of the road, is still trying to hold things together in post-Katrina New Orleans. His wife and daughter moved to Atlanta. Most of his neighbors in the upper Ninth Ward have posted "for sale" signs. But Boulet is rooted.

His commitment is stressed early on, in a not-so-subtle scene, when Boulet catches a teenage boy digging up a cypress in his front yard for re-sale. "People gotta' landscape," the boy shrugs.

"A cypress tree, Taxodium distichum, my favorite tree," scolds Boulet, a round man who uses his deep voice for effect. "It used to grow throughout this city until the storm threw salt and chemicals all over it. So if I see you digging up another one I will personally bury you... Now how your mom and them doing?"

Neighborhood scenes like these, hinting at the real ties that hold New Orleans together during its rebuilding, are unfortunately few and far between in "K-Ville" (Mondays, 9 p.m. EST). One of the first pop-culture representations of the new New Orleans, "K-Ville" falls prey to the same impatience that has caused much of American media and culture to move on from the tragedy that consumed the city two years ago.

At best, invoking "Katrina" has become a quick way to allude sympathetically to the unresolved issues surrounding class and race in America. Or, as Chris Malone, an associate political science professor at Pace University, whose family goes back five generations in New Orleans, sees it, Katrina has become domestic shorthand for Social Darwinism, where poverty is blamed on the poor themselves and not on the structures and institutions that create poverty.

"When people saw what was happening in New Orleans," said Malone, "and they saw thousands of people sitting on the rooftops or at the Convention Center or the Superdome, the first question was, 'My god, how did they get there?' and, number two, 'Why didn't they get out?'"

The complexities of New Orleans' history and recovery, however, along with the persisting social fissures across the nation, rarely get the close attention they deserve.

"K-Ville," despite its limited vision, might be at least a starting point.

"What's so interesting about this is how quickly it's been able to be absorbed into American culture," said Syracuse University television and pop culture professor Robert Thompson, before viewing the pilot. "The idea that Katrina takes an American city and totally transforms it is a great idea -- forget just as a TV series -- the great American novel could be about post-Katrina New Orleans."

While "K-Ville" is groundbreaking for its timeliness, its set-up feels dated. Writer and executive producer Jonathan Lisco ("NYPD Blue," "The District") has put together a traditional buddy cop series, but fancier, with slick, 90-mile-per-hour car chases through the French Quarter and creative camera work.

At this early stage, most of the "K-Ville" characters feel like props, which is not uncommon for a pilot trying to introduce a lot upfront. Yet as any viewer who has followed coverage of New Orleans knows, the real stories are in the day-to-day details, and it remains unclear whether "K-Ville" will have the patience to let individual rebuilding stories unfold -- or the willingness to let New Orleans' rich cultural history and characters assume their deserved roles.