Loving Tremé

I first started hearing about this show after reading Dr. Kaila Story (miss you Dr. K) raves about it on her FB thread one day.  I tuned in and fell in love with it since I spent two years of my childhood living on the West Bank, visited the city a lot during the late 80's-early 90's and have a godsister who still lives in the area.


The show I'm talking about is HBO's Tremé (trah-may) that's produced by the same creative team that gave you The Wire.    It's set in post-Katrina New Orleans and it comes on at 10 PM ET on Sundays.    And good news for you Tremé fans, it has been renewed for a third season.

The series takes its name from the Tremé neighborhood, one of the oldest in the city of New Orleans.   It's the neighborhood where free people of color congregated in the city's early history.    It is also the center of African-American culture and Creole culture and where the brass band tradition was born

Season one was set three months after Hurricane Katrina's August 2005 arrival and began with an 80 minute episode.   Season Two picks up 15 months later. 

Interestingly enough, one of the characters, trombonist Antoine Batiste, is played by New Orleans native Wendell Pierce, who is also busy rebuilding low cost housing in his old Ponchartrain Park neighborhood.

The series is also filled with New Orleans references since the writing team likes to be as accurate as possible.  New Orleans Times-Picayune writer Dave Walker also does a Tremé Explained column in which he breaks down all the New Orleans speak, cultural references, and local locations where the series is shot.

So yep, I'm impatiently waiting for tomorrow's episode.  
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All My Children Being Canceled....NOOOOOO!

Damn, another piece of my childhood and my life is going bye bye. 

Heard the shocking news that All My Children, the long running Emmy Award winning ABC soap that has been on the air since January 5, 1970, that I wrapped my college schedule around back in the day, enjoyed watching Angie and Jesse become a supercouple in the early 80's, and introduced me to the denizens of Pine Valley, PA has been canceled by ABC and is going off the air in September.



It's also unique among soaps in that it has an audience that is about 30% male and is partly responsible for why some of you girls are running around on this planet with the name Erica. 

I was a huge AMC fan back when it was battling Y&R for the bragging rights as daytime television's Number One show.  I remember Sliza Colby (oops Liza) was a bad girl tormenting Jenny Gardner, Tad 'the Cad' Martin was bedding 'errbody' and Liza's mama and the feud was blowing up between Palmer (Pete Cooney) Courtlandt and Adam Chandler. 

And like every other AMC fan, cried when Jesse died, and when he and Angie were reunited after 20 years. 

And yes, love me some Erica Kane.   Quick, name every man Erica was married to in Pine Valley.   Bonus points if you can name the guys she dated

Jeff Martin, Phil Brent, Tom Cudahy, Mike Roy, Travis Montgomery, Jackson Montgomery, Adam Chandler, Dimitri Marick.

Shoot, the only man she didn't sleep with or wasn't married to in Pine Valley was Jesse Hubbard.   .

Speaking of marriages, AMC had some groundbreaking television moments on the show.   In addition to Bianca coming out and later getting married,  AMC has a long history of focusing on topical social issues.  It broadcast the first legal abortion on TV (Erica Kane) weeks after the Roe v Wade decision.

It was the first show to mirror the divisive debate in the early 1970's about the Vietnam War.  AMC had the first character with HIV/AIDS.   It had a character undergo a facelift.

And y'all remember the trans character Zoe?

Well, have a few months left before they replace AMC with a fracking talk show about cooking.  If ABC doesn't come to their senses and keep it on, so long All My Children and thanks for 41 years of great groundbreaking storylines and memories.

And one question.  Will Erica finally find one man to make her happy enough to stay married to him?

Battlestar Galactica: Blood And Chrome

Like many Battlestar Galactica fans I was a little pissed about how SyFy handled the BSG prequel Caprica and not pleased that the show was canceled..

I was a huge fan of the show as you probably guessed by my multiple posts about it, and was fascinated by its story arc.     It delved into the how and why the Cylons were created.  It was interesting seeing aspects of Colonial culture, Caprican and Tauron life, and even snapshots of events on Caprica, Gemenon and Tauron.

It gave us BSG fans more insight into the events and backstory that eventually would lead to the start of the First Cylon War and 40 years later the Second Cylon War that covers the events of the BSG series.

It also threw is a few curve balls as well such as the Willie Adama that was in the show wasn't the future Galactica commander. 



While Caprica is gone and the last five episodes of the first season were recently broadcast, the BSG universe lives on.    Production started yesterday in Vancouver on a two hour television pilot movie for SyFy called Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome.

The story takes place during the First Cylon war and will focus on a young cadet fresh out of the Academy by the name of William 'Husker' Adama..   Yep, the future commander of the very battlestar he was ending his career on at the time of the genocidal Cylon sneak attack that jumped off the Second Cylon War.


He will not be played by Nico Cortez, who portrayed him in the webisodes, but by Luke Pasqualino.

So I guess I can put my pissivity about Caprica being canceled on hold long enough to watch this pilot.


In BSG: Blood & Chrome Adama will be a twentysomething Viper pilot assigned to the brand new Galactica during the First Cylon War that is raging across the 12 Colonial worlds
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It will have one other character from the BSG Razor webisode flashbacks and a few new ones.   For you folks who were griping about the lack of space combat in Caprica, hello, it took place during a peacetime era in the colonies.

You space combat junkies will get to OD on it since we are talking about a show that will take place during the First Cylon War.

There's also talk that if it does well, SyFy will pick up BSG: Blood & Chrome as a series.

Let's just hope that if they do, SyFy does a much better job of promoting and broadcasting it than they did with Caprica.