Treme

Offering a coda to the occasionally meandering but ultimately enjoyable blues jam that has been its run, HBO’s Treme returns December 1 with a mere five episodes to wrap everything up. Of course, as viewers of the David Simon series and people who can remember things are already aware, there’s no big mystery to be solved here: We already know New Orleans is still a city. But the pleasure of Treme has always been about hanging out with its characters, not necessarily unraveling plots. And so, as the action picks up right around Obama’s 2008 election, we know these final five weeks will be about those characters getting whatever their version of closure is—whether it’s Wendell Pearce’s Antoine fully embracing life as a music teacher, David Morse’s Terry finally stopping all murder in New Orleans, or Steve Zahn’s Davis making the ultimate speech about local music that will save the city forever—all before [spoiler alert] the Saints win the Super Bowl and a sense of pride and optimism is restored. Then presumably the series ends just as a TV producer arrives in town, promising to make them all famous.