There’s a scene in the second season of 30 Rock where Frank explains a concept called the uncanny valley (for the benefit of Tracy, who would like to make a porn video game). The concept is one first associated with robotics, but has become useful in other contexts like computer animation, and it describes a problem we have with representations and reality. “As artificial representations of humans become more and more realistic,” Frank explains, “they reach a point where the stop being endearing, and become creepy.”

The graph Frank uses, which I stole from the uncanny valley wikipedia page, and the accompanying Star Wars explanation Frank provides illustrates the problem quite nicely – on the far left side, you have R2-D2 and C3PO. On the far right side, Han Solo. The uncanny valley is, of course, Jar-Jar Binks. As a representation draws closer to reality, we are less inclined to accept the representation as a fictional construct that stands-in for real life, and we become more and more distracted by everything that looks wrong about it. The result is a strange but undeniable phenomenon where Mr. Incredible appears more persuasively realistic than the computer generated image of a young Jeff Bridges in Tron Legacy.

I love this idea, and I think it’s applicable for representations of reality outside of the visual. In particular, I find it a useful explanation for a problem of plausibility in narrative, especially as it relates to coincidence and character networks. In my proposed Uncanny Valley of Narrative Plausibility, a movement toward reality maps onto the increasing role of chance in narrative, and the closer one moves toward the valley, the higher the likelihood that meetings between characters or important turning points in the plot appear to happen by accident. The idea is the same as that of the visual uncanny valley: there comes a point where we find plausibility in narrative less persuasive (and maybe just less interesting) than circumstances more patently contrived. Let’s look at some examples.

On the far right side of the graph, of course, we have reality, where chance meet-ups in a bar generally lead to nothing, and that one, totally unlikely time I ran into my college roommate in a New York State rest stop even though neither of us lives in New York is just that: totally unlikely. The role of randomness in our lives is so prevalent that we try desperately to pretend it doesn’t exist by believing in fate, and we so love coincidences that we see them all the time. Most of the time, though, the guy standing in front of you in the line for curly fries will not turn out to be your brother.

On the far left side of the graph are television shows like police procedurals and some soap operas. Coincidence is so prevalent and unavoidable on these shows that it doesn’t even register as coincidence – every character is someone else’s former lover, and every scrap of paper is a relevant credit card receipt for a rare color of automotive paint that just happens to be the exact same paint found at the crime scene. Everything is a clue, every pregnancy test comes back positive, and we hardly even notice how bizarrely significant everything is, because it’s a story. We want there to be clues everywhere! Clues are far more interesting than boring crumpled scraps of paper that mean nothing, and we watch shows like this because we like it when interesting, unrealistic things happen all the time.

In the middle area, things get more complicated, and we come to the reason I stumbled onto this idea in the first place. My two examples here are Game of Thrones and Treme, in part because they both air on HBO Sunday nights, and their proximity invites comparison. Mostly, though, I’m drawing on Treme because I think it’s actually fairly unusual to fall into the Narrative Plausibility version of the uncanny valley, and trying to figure out what’s weird about Treme is what first led me merrily skipping down this path.

Poor Tyrion, victim of narrative happenstance

So first, the not weird – as you move away from the police procedural end of the spectrum, things get bigger, and messier, and often darker. Game of Thrones is a good example, though you could just as easily use any number of critically-acclaimed hourlong dramas (certainly The Wire, but also Friday Night Lights, or The Good Wife, or Justified), and this point about coincidence is easiest to see in shows that have big, intersecting character networks. Game of Thrones, like the novel it’s based on, follows many different character groups (several feuding families, the Night’s Watch, the Dothraki horse people), and as events force groups to split apart and characters to splinter away from their families, the narrative increasingly resembles a map full of potential plot connections passing each other in the night. Inevitably, though, encounters happen, creating a cascade of new narrative possibilities. In one early example, Catelyn Stark is traveling across the country on her way home from a trip to the capitol, and happens to stop for a meal at the same inn where Tyrion Lannister, the man she suspects of attempting to murder her son, has also stopped for the day. When he recognizes her, she rallies support from the tavern full of people and carries him off to be tried in her sister’s court.

From one perspective, this whole plot seems to result from one chance meeting. It feels plausible because these things happen in real life (I, after all, ran into my college roommate in a rest stop in New York), and with so many significant characters all running around Westeros, it feels entirely appropriate that they should happen to show up at the same inn one night. On the other hand, of course, this whole plot is the epitome of narrative contrivance, every bit as unlikely as the tell-tale credit card receipt. One episode after Catelyn finds evidence to suspect Tyrion, they show up at the same tavern, at the same time, miles away from anywhere? What’s more, the tavern is full of men who just happen to be wearing the sigils of several houses that owe allegiance to Catelyn’s family? And then this incredibly unlikely encounter leads to a fight to the death in a terrifying mountain court and Tyrion gaining the support of a band of wildings? The event itself, and then just as important, the impressive chain of subsequent events caused by the meeting, is unbelievably unlikely, but it hits such an ideal narrative sweet spot. It feels random and plausible, but it’s also meaningful and significant, and we buy it right away because it’s fiction, and it’s doing exactly what we like fiction to do. Causes have powerful, immediate, interesting effects, and we can assume that boring stuff happens in the background while also only paying attention to the interesting stuff.

Janette and Delmond

There’s an episode in this season of Treme with a scene not unlike the Catelyn/Tyrion tavern showdown. Two former New Orleans residents meet up in a bar in NYC to watch a Saints game, and Treme‘s audience already knows both of them. Janette used to own a restaurant in New Orleans and has moved to NYC to restart her career, is a former lover of Davis the DJ, and has run into several other characters while out and about during parades or in clubs. Delmond is an accomplished jazz trumpeter who has similarly moved to New York for his career, and whose father is one of the New Orleans Indian chiefs. In the bar, they meet and realize they vaguely recognize each other, and chat for a little while. Janette goes to one of Delmond’s gigs. A few episodes later, they have dinner. And then… nothing. They make no useful career connections. They like each other, but do not become best friends. They do not sleep together. The season isn’t over yet, but somehow I doubt they’ll convince each other to move back to their homelands. The best I’m hoping for right now is a slightly more fully-fleshed metaphor about how Janette’s new discovery of soulful yet refined food is similar to Delmond’s New Orleans jazz fusion.

No question, this scene from Treme is farther to the right of the reality spectrum than the one from Game of Thrones. As the episode makes clear, this is a bar full of New Orleans ex-pats who are all there for a Saints game, so the same time/same place thing actually makes a fair amount of sense. And really, the likelihood that these two would meet again without building a relationship that has a significant impact on either of their lives is also completely within the boundaries of normal life. It is… real. Weirdly real. Uncomfortably, oddly real. And instead of thinking, wow, Treme is truly dedicated to its verisimilitude, all you think is, “why should I care about this scene? What is its purpose?” Down there, deep in the uncanny valley of narrative plausibility, all you can see is artifice and missed opportunities, and you lose track of how good the acting can be, or the show’s political message, or the fact that you actually do like watching it.

So this is my proposed Uncanny Valley of Narrative Plausibility – a piece of storytelling so actually possible, it draws more attention to its flaws than its good attributes. I’m not sure how many other examples I could come up with, largely because there aren’t that many shows which try to move farther to the right side of the graph. In spite of all of this, I do like Treme. It worked its way into this unpleasant place by trying to do something experimental with television storytelling, by de-emphasizing plot and pushing against the ways we usually depict community.

I just wish it looked a little more like a story, and less like real life.

Part of the trouble with introducing the wider world to New Orleans in general and Treme in particular is that is that the show insists on its audience viewing the city from a specific viewpoint, and it’s almost certainly not the perspective that would be most comfortable for everyone involved. Last week’s solemn, joyous funeral procession left the show on a positive note, but this second episode offered an important corrective to that insider’s view of the city.

Shows often provide a figure inside the fiction to represent the viewer’s perspective, especially at the beginnings of complex shows like Treme that can prove daunting to navigate. Last week’s episode gave us just an inkling of that structure with Albert’s son Delmond, but “Meet De Boys on the Battlefront” threw in three wholesome tourists from Wisconsin to help cover what for Treme is clearly some difficult terrain. In their first scene, the three cheerful tourists explain that they’re visiting with their church group to help rebuild houses in the Ninth Ward and get rebuffed by a street musician named Sonny, who clearly resents what he perceives to be ignorant condescension. The tourists are then caught up in an odd, unexpected discussion about “When the Saints Come Marching In” after requesting that the next song be “authentic,” they end up at an out-of-the-way dive bar called Bullets at Davis’ recommendation, and are last seen wandering the streets in search of good hangover food.

Sonny the street musician and some tourists from Wisconsin

Their journey through the city looks pretty straightforward – even a little cliché – on the surface. They show up with no prior knowledge of New Orleans, ready to pity the poor people whose homes were destroyed, and then end after being indoctrinated into the city’s party scene, complete with a guy with a ruby embedded on his gold tooth acting as their guide. They do what we do as an audience, beginning with our preconceived and probably pitying notions of the loss and devastation in New Orleans, and journeying through experiences of the real city until we too emerge intoxicated and overcome. But a lot of their little parable signals that things are much more complicated than a simple voyage from innocence to experience.

When Davis offers them a place off the beaten track, we know this will spell doom for someone involved, but the implication is that these teenagers will be unable to handle themselves in an unsafe neighborhood and get into some serious trouble. Instead, the tourists emerge from their trip to the real New Orleans thrilled by their new familiarity, and it’s Davis, the consummate New Orleans insider, who gets screwed by this little adventure. By sending these unwitting church group members somewhere other than touristy Bourbon Street, Davis violates the barrier between Bourbon Street and the rest of the city (which Antoine also struggles to navigate), and gets fired from his hotel job. Still, the loss isn’t that great – it was obvious from the beginning that Davis’ position at the hotel would never work in the long term, and he’s mostly annoyed that he has to find a different place to eat breakfast (after offering his preferred destination to the hungover teens).

Looking for somewhere off the beaten path

That complicated little discussion about “When the Saints Come Marching In” proves more problematic. The tourists request an “authentic” song, and, disgusted at their ignorance, Sonny offers up “Saints.” They agree, but he quickly amends that “Saints” costs $20 extra, and they begin to haggle about whether they have to pay for a song they didn’t actually request. The debate is resolved as the Sonny’s partner promises they won’t have to pay if they don’t like it, and they launch into a hip-hop, mainstreamed, beat-boxed version of the song. There are so many tricky nuances going on here that it’s not at all easy to pick out the irony from the sincerity. Yes, the tourists are ignorant and overly condescending, which Sonny resents, but they’re also volunteers who are ultimately well intentioned. In his desire to rip off these well-meaning teenagers, Sonny deliberately twists their request for authenticity into something heavily ironic, laughing at their ignorance and at ours as well. Just to be sure we understand, Treme then shifts to a scene with Davis at the radio station, and a lovely, full brass version of “When the Saints Come Marching In” plays in the background, completely unmarked. “Did you catch that?” asks Treme. “This is the real version, and you need to be able to tell the difference.”

Post-New Orleans revelry

But however important our knowledge and powers of discernment may be for the show, its gaze does not excuse Sonny’s response. As becomes clear later in the episode, these kids are capable of learning the real city, and to brush off their requests for honesty devalues a real desire for truth and undercuts their sincere attempts to help.

Treme’s going to refuse to let us be the tourists who don’t know anything other than Bourbon Street, but it’s also going to turn a careful eye back onto the city it lovingly depicts. Albert Lambreaux’s startling violence, the police department’s incompetence, and Creighton Bernette’s description of the city as a zero-sum game are all a part of this careful balancing act. Treme will not let us off the hook as viewers, but it won’t be letting New Orleans off the hook either.

Last night was the premiere of David Simon’s new show Treme, a show I’ve been looking forward to since its production was first announced, and a series that has some enormous, possibly unrealistic expectations. After making The Wire, a show that critics refer to as “the greatest television ever made” with the same assurance they have when calling Meryl Streep the greatest actress of her generation, Simon has made himself an almost impossibly high standard to top. It’s true that on the surface, the two shows have some marked similarities – they share two lead actors, they are both set in troubled American cities, and they employ the same basic formal structure of a large system of loosely connected characters who represent from different areas of the city. Here the similarities cease, and I think that bodes well for Treme’s future.

Simon’s new show is set in New Orleans, which instantly differentiates Treme’s opening from the experience of beginning The Wire. In both instances, the cities are struggling, and the shows seek to uncover something totally hidden from casual observers or tourists. For The Wire’s Baltimore, though, the process of discovery and realization happens continually throughout the series, both for viewers and the characters. It’s a safe assumption that The Wire’s audience goes into the show with almost no knowledge about the Baltimore drug trade, but oddly, the same can be said for the show’s cops and lawyers. In the first few episodes, Jimmy McNulty bothers his bosses just enough to open an investigation on Avon Barksdale, the leader of an immense criminal organization in the city. Immediately, that investigation is hampered by the fact that no one knows who Barksdale is, where to find him, how his organization works, or even what he looks like. The process of information gathering, of moving from ignorance to knowledge (and, as a corollary, from idealism to deep cynicism), is at the center of every season, and happens in every new area of the city. Tommy Carcetti gradually comes to understand the inner workings of Baltimore’s political machine, Roland Pryzbylewski learns how to function in the deeply damaged school system, Frank Sobotka uncovers the deeper system of criminal enterprise at the docks, etc. etc. The show is called The Wire – you get stuck inside an unfamiliar system, you listen in, you figure out how it works, you become disgusted by the futility of individual human endeavor.

Clarke Peters as Albert Lambreaux, a Mardi Gras Indian chief

No one who watches Treme will come to it with the same blank slate that audiences had for The Wire. The show grapples with the inner life of a city that already calls to mind associations, stereotypes, and tragedies, so introducing New Orleans isn’t the show’s concern. Treme’s New Orleans knows itself in a way that The Wire’s Baltimore never does – you, outsider, may have no idea who the Mardi Gras Indians are or what a Hubigs is, but everyone in Treme does. The difference is palpable in the show’s pilot. In the opening of The Wire, almost no one knows each other; everyone knows everyone else in Treme. The pilot takes place three months after Katrina, and it would make sense for the overwhelming tone of the show to be doubt, loss, and the reality of a familiar world suddenly rendered strange. Those qualities are certainly there, and it’s plain that Treme’s characters are still coping with grief for their lost jobs, friends and homes. For the most part, though, that loss is a shared loss, and the pilot sometimes takes on the qualities of an enormous, tentative, city-wide reunion. The episode opens with early hints of recovery – it’s the moment of the first second-line parade since the hurricane – and throughout the next 90 minutes, Treme collects characters who are rebuilding, returning to the city, and greeting each other after an absence.

I have no idea what will happen of the course of the show’s (hopefully many) future seasons, but it makes sense at this early moment to imagine Treme as cautiously optimistic view of American urban life. However subtle the differences may be between the opening themes of this show and Simon’s previous work, the biggest difference is immediately, intensely palpable. Treme is a show about New Orleans’ musicians, and the pilot episode is bursting with musical numbers that would almost overwhelm the show’s careful character development if the two weren’t so thoughtfully interwoven.

You could pick almost any scene of the pilot, point to it, and say “There. That’s what this show is going to be about,” but my favorite moment is the one that ends the episode. Antoine Batiste, a trombone player and one of the show’s central characters, shows up for a gig that he desperately needs for the money to support his family. The gig is a funeral, and Batiste discovers that he knew the deceased man while he prepares to join the band’s processional to the cemetery. A show about New Orleans, three months after Katrina – this should be a somber, mournful, reflective processional, and it is all of those things. But it’s not unfamiliar or new. The band all knows the right steps and the right chords, because this is the way funerals happen in Treme, and this is a part of New Orleans returning to itself. The music is perfect, of course; it’s contemplative, but it has a swagger and self-awareness that seems to imply full comprehension. Terrible things have happened, but these people are still here, and although the outside world may not know them, they know themselves, and they know how to move forward.