Treme Character Works for The Village Voice, Is Accurate, Awesome

The Wire creator David Simon’s new show Treme has been called both “TV that viewers ask for but rarely get” and by another: “Boring.” Most of us here, however, think it’s pretty wonderful. Especially since the show now features a character who works at the Village Voice on it!

True story. From HBO’s recap of the show, on their site:

Delmond Lambreaux plays the game “Monogamy with Exceptions,” with Jill, the journalist he’s seeing, as they wander through Battery Park.

A journalist, you say? From staff editor Rachel Brown’s Treme recap at The Atlantic:

Delmond’s Village Voice reporter girlfriend…

Oh yes. Not that this has to do anything with the cover story we wrote on how the show could get New Orleans right or the blog posting that followed it. Not that we’re aware of, anyway. Never underestimate the power of the HBO-Media-Industrial Complex. Unless you work on How to Make It In America.

Anyway! We’d hope for an honest portrayal of what it’s like to work at the Village Voice, and we got one. The character Jill — played by the beautiful Danai Gurira, because we are all beautiful — is first greeted at an awesome, hopping party (which we all go to, nightly) by legendary Jazz critic (and Voice alum) Stanley Crouch, and told how great a piece she wrote was. It happens. She’s then greeted by another legendary cultural critic, Nelson George, and asked how the Village Voice is treating her. She replies in the ambivalent-affirmative (“Ehh. Good enough.“) thus accurately conforming to Page 121, Paragraph 3, Section A of the Village Voice Media Holdings, LLC employee handbook.

Accuracy is nice enough, sure. But what do the critics think of her? Back to The Atlantic’s recap:

Delmond’s Village Voice reporter girlfriend seems smart and awesome — hope we see more of her, and not just as a device to distinguish Delmond’s city persona from his country one.

“Smart and awesome?” Sounds about right.

Well done, Ms. Gurira. We salute you, and like everyone else on the planet, hope to see more of your character on this show. If you want to come in and see just how exciting The Real McCoy is, you have an open invitation. We’ll even bust out the DeskBooze for you. Way to go. Good shit.