I'll be honest: after most of the first season of "Treme," I was completely not invested in the show. I watched it because I knew David Simon, the creator of "The Wire," was one of the writers, and that the likes of Wendell Pierce, Clarke Peters, and Khandi Alexander, were actors that worked with David Simon in the past. The first couple of episodes, all I wanted to do was move on and do more important things. If it were created by anyone else, I would have immediately called it quits, and said, "this show absolutely sucks."

But I knew what David Simon did with "The Wire." At some point, even if it was later than the previous two brilliant works of television, I knew it would click.

"Treme" is a show about a scattered group of people in a working-class neighborhood of New Orleans decimated by Hurricane Katrina. It documents the owner of a local bar, LaDonna Williams. It shows the struggles of a chef struggling to keep her restaurant afloat after the storm, Janette Desautel. It depicted the efforts of Mardi Gras Indian Chief, Albert Lambreaux, to help restore his local community.

I thought "Treme" would be prone to the disaster narrative, that maybe the goal of the writers was to depict the characters recovering from the storm as just that: people whose lives were destroyed by the storm and just getting by. Initially, that's what I saw.

But it was one scene late in season 1 that made me realize that the show was about much more than that: it was about the triumph of the human spirit. In this scene, Janette's restaurant in Treme doesn't have money to run anymore. The only way she can keep it afloat is to ask her chefs and waitresses to work a week without pay. As she gathers the staff to tell them the news and ask them if they're willing to stay on and work with pay withheld.

"I need to ask if you all would be willing to go a week..."

"I can't do it."

After this moment, I saw the show about moments just like this. Even in a moment of tragedy and hopelessness, these people are not "just getting by." They do not give up in spite of everything that's gone wrong. Janette, in this scene, gives up her restaurant for the integrity of her workers. It's something, that I hope when I'm a teacher or a parent, that I can be noble enough to put something that important to me for the kids.

It documents owners of bars and restaurants that help the city recover, but also many musicians, Mardi Gras Indians, police officers, lawyers that show that it's not about what happens that's outside our control. It's about how we react to it. It shows that the most endearing parts of people are things they often don't realize they're doing. It shows that in some way, somehow, they are all interconnected.

The greatest strength of any David Simon show is that no matter what's bad about his characters, and no matter what position in society they play they are always human and likeable at the end of the day. That's Annie, Sonny, Antoine, Creighton, Janette, Davis, Chief Lambreaux, Toni, Delmond, Sofia. This is a show that's special in ways that others aren't in its strength and development of character.

"The Wire" is still my favorite and the best show of all time. It had a plot, symbols, and characters that were all profound, real, and something I have never seen before in television. I will always market "The Wire" to others as God's gift to the Earth and the greatest show of all time.

But in "Treme," the camera zooms in on one of those elements that makes art great: the characters. It depicts them so fully that the plot in "Treme" really doesn't matter. It's secondary to developing who these people are, and that's what makes "Treme" reveal the triumph of the human spirit.