Going down a K-hole....the worst New Orleans media of all time?
K-Ville: The Pilot (Part 2)
A deep dive by Paul Oswell
The cop show K-Ville ran for one (1) season in 2007. It's widely regarded as the worst portrayal of New Orleans in modern media. Having never seen it, I decided to find out why. It's not available to stream, or buy anywhere, which isn't a great sign, but luckily (?), the entire season is watchable (in very low quality) on YouTube (please excuse the blurred screen grabs). Here's a deep dive into the pilot. Please join me on this odyssey - if you haven't read part 1, you can read it here (sorry, it was hard to make it through an entire episode in one sitting).
After that needlessly aggressive dockside dunking, the chief says NOPD has “sent some guys to the fish market”, which sounds like a reasonable use of resources. Cobb and Boulet are assigned to the re-do of the 9th Ward music benefit TAKING PLACE THAT NIGHT backed up by “a bunch of harbor cops”, the fresh blood presumably having been wiped off the stage for the shindig.
Chaaaarrrrllllliiiiieeeeeee the unwilling dog assassin just kind of turns up in the background skulking around in a suit, saying he kept his police radio and he’s been “listening in like an addict”. A…police radio addict? Also he's just been listening in for two whole years? Weirdo. Charlie wants back into the force. Marlin is not keen to help. They argue through a chain-link fence, which makes for very weird framing. Sad music. Whispered regrets. Charlie wore his best suit for nothing.
Marlin sees his displaced wife Anaya and his young daughter, just back from Atlanta to collect some things. He tells his kid she’ll “shoot up like a cypress”. This guy has a tree metaphor for every occasion.
A deep dive by Paul Oswell
The cop show K-Ville ran for one (1) season in 2007. It's widely regarded as the worst portrayal of New Orleans in modern media. Having never seen it, I decided to find out why. It's not available to stream, or buy anywhere, which isn't a great sign, but luckily (?), the entire season is watchable (in very low quality) on YouTube (please excuse the blurred screen grabs). Here's a deep dive into the pilot. Please join me on this odyssey - if you haven't read part 1, you can read it here (sorry, it was hard to make it through an entire episode in one sitting).
After that needlessly aggressive dockside dunking, the chief says NOPD has “sent some guys to the fish market”, which sounds like a reasonable use of resources. Cobb and Boulet are assigned to the re-do of the 9th Ward music benefit TAKING PLACE THAT NIGHT backed up by “a bunch of harbor cops”, the fresh blood presumably having been wiped off the stage for the shindig.
Chaaaarrrrllllliiiiieeeeeee the unwilling dog assassin just kind of turns up in the background skulking around in a suit, saying he kept his police radio and he’s been “listening in like an addict”. A…police radio addict? Also he's just been listening in for two whole years? Weirdo. Charlie wants back into the force. Marlin is not keen to help. They argue through a chain-link fence, which makes for very weird framing. Sad music. Whispered regrets. Charlie wore his best suit for nothing.
Marlin sees his displaced wife Anaya and his young daughter, just back from Atlanta to collect some things. He tells his kid she’ll “shoot up like a cypress”. This guy has a tree metaphor for every occasion.
Don't fence me in
CUT TO: Dixieland jazz at Benefit 2: Gangster Bait Boogaloo. Blondie is telling a reporter that it’s what the dead singer “would have wanted”, which seems like a big leap given that it's less than 24 hours after her being murdered. We learn that Blondie’s brother was also mysteriously murdered some years ago and then Boulet gets a text to say that Tommy Corville WAS out shrimping after all, so all of that illegal waterboarding was unnecessary. Oh well. He shrugs and orders his usual shift bourbon.
You’ll never guess what happens next. The event is sprayed with automatic gun fire, explosions everywhere. These benefits are a war zone, please stop having them! The Harbor Cops are nowhere to be seen, but despite hundreds of bullets and a car going up in flames, nobody was hurt. Thank the jazz gods. The cop hive mind thinks that the ‘Bring Back the Ninth’ folks could be dodgy and the casino is hiding something. The game’s afoot!
Chaaarrrrllliiiieee turns up on the street again like a spurned lover, but he’s got a huge file for Marlin with information on the casino security guards. It’s very unclear how he got this. Just some casual copping in his spare time for free, I guess.
You’ll never guess what happens next. The event is sprayed with automatic gun fire, explosions everywhere. These benefits are a war zone, please stop having them! The Harbor Cops are nowhere to be seen, but despite hundreds of bullets and a car going up in flames, nobody was hurt. Thank the jazz gods. The cop hive mind thinks that the ‘Bring Back the Ninth’ folks could be dodgy and the casino is hiding something. The game’s afoot!
Chaaarrrrllliiiieee turns up on the street again like a spurned lover, but he’s got a huge file for Marlin with information on the casino security guards. It’s very unclear how he got this. Just some casual copping in his spare time for free, I guess.
The benefit was LIT
CUT TO: Blondie and her dad’s mansion. The dad wants all the benefits to stop and really who can blame him? So far they’ve resulted in one death and one Michael Bay-level festival of street carnage. Maybe do a GoFundMe?
Back at Chez Boulet, Marlin and Anaya getting romantic by the fireplace BUT WAIT, a biblically huge torrent of water gushes down the stairs and Marlin has to grab his terrified kid from a deluge. Someone set up a fire hose directed into his attic, apparently very easy to do on an open street without making a noise. It’s a warning, Marlin! Like an aquatic Godfather!
CobBoulet crack some heads down at the casino and drag in the manager. The Chief is not impressed, he needs more proof. “There’s more loose ends than a whorehouse here!” he says, bafflingly. CobBoulet get into in uniform for no apparent reason and hit the streets. Marlin yells that he needs gumbo. “Gumbo! It’s what I do when I need to think! Drive to Ziggy’s, they have the best sauces (?) there!” Big Gumbo is all over this show, honestly.
We never get to the gumbo and instead Marlin takes Trevor to a bridge and beats him up. In a bout of unhinged paranoia, he wants to know AT GUNPOINT how Cobb knows the city so well, HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ZIGGY’S? The gumbo was a trap! Cobb just says he’s been here a lot, and that clears that up. Presumably it’s a pretty tense rest of the work day, but they go about their shift.
Back at Chez Boulet, Marlin and Anaya getting romantic by the fireplace BUT WAIT, a biblically huge torrent of water gushes down the stairs and Marlin has to grab his terrified kid from a deluge. Someone set up a fire hose directed into his attic, apparently very easy to do on an open street without making a noise. It’s a warning, Marlin! Like an aquatic Godfather!
CobBoulet crack some heads down at the casino and drag in the manager. The Chief is not impressed, he needs more proof. “There’s more loose ends than a whorehouse here!” he says, bafflingly. CobBoulet get into in uniform for no apparent reason and hit the streets. Marlin yells that he needs gumbo. “Gumbo! It’s what I do when I need to think! Drive to Ziggy’s, they have the best sauces (?) there!” Big Gumbo is all over this show, honestly.
We never get to the gumbo and instead Marlin takes Trevor to a bridge and beats him up. In a bout of unhinged paranoia, he wants to know AT GUNPOINT how Cobb knows the city so well, HOW DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ZIGGY’S? The gumbo was a trap! Cobb just says he’s been here a lot, and that clears that up. Presumably it’s a pretty tense rest of the work day, but they go about their shift.
Hose me closer
Boulet, driven by his belief in a conspiracy, does some Zillow research on who’s buying property and visits a woman (it’s implied they’re former lovers?) who used to be a realtor, but who now works in a Voodoo shop. “You know you’re white, right?” says Cobb. While she thinks on that, they have a whiskey and she tells him it’s the Dubois casino dynasty purchasing all the land, so she obviously keeps her hand in the housing business in between tarot readings.
Boulet and Cobb confront Blondie and her dad, saying they sabotage their own jazz benefits in order to stall renovations and keep 9th Ward property prices low so that they can snap it all up. Marlin slaps down a raft of paper evidence and Blondie cracks, saying she was doing it for her murdered brother.
Turns out she’s a huge racist! Her brother died in a mugging and so now all of Black New Orleans must suffer. They’re cuffing her when bullets fly through the window. It’s the casino manager! What follows is like a whole Die Hard movie in two minutes, with more incomprehensible car chases, Chaaaarrrllliiieee turning up (guess they never got that radio back), and a waiting escape helicopter that they stop by attaching a random chain to. The cavalry arrive, Cobb saves Charlie from a sinking car, it’s a whirlwind of nonsense.
The baddies are all caught, and our cops make friends again. Cobb admits he was raised in New Orleans East and that he was a former prisoner in OPP. Seems like that would have come up before but “the computer records were lost”, so all good I guess. Marlin asks Cobb, “Want to go and get that gumbo?” AAAAAND SCENE.
And that, my friends, is all the story of the pilot of K-Ville. Justice, cancellations after one season and new beginnings for everyone! I hope to see you all very soon, down at the gumbo party, like we do.
Boulet and Cobb confront Blondie and her dad, saying they sabotage their own jazz benefits in order to stall renovations and keep 9th Ward property prices low so that they can snap it all up. Marlin slaps down a raft of paper evidence and Blondie cracks, saying she was doing it for her murdered brother.
Turns out she’s a huge racist! Her brother died in a mugging and so now all of Black New Orleans must suffer. They’re cuffing her when bullets fly through the window. It’s the casino manager! What follows is like a whole Die Hard movie in two minutes, with more incomprehensible car chases, Chaaaarrrllliiieee turning up (guess they never got that radio back), and a waiting escape helicopter that they stop by attaching a random chain to. The cavalry arrive, Cobb saves Charlie from a sinking car, it’s a whirlwind of nonsense.
The baddies are all caught, and our cops make friends again. Cobb admits he was raised in New Orleans East and that he was a former prisoner in OPP. Seems like that would have come up before but “the computer records were lost”, so all good I guess. Marlin asks Cobb, “Want to go and get that gumbo?” AAAAAND SCENE.
And that, my friends, is all the story of the pilot of K-Ville. Justice, cancellations after one season and new beginnings for everyone! I hope to see you all very soon, down at the gumbo party, like we do.
Gumbo heals all wounds
