Katrina: Come Hell and High Water

While good and informative for E1 & 2, E3 dragged. I learned more from watching the National Geographic doc, "Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time." Some crossover with interviews of same people. Still, being a fan of NOLA and visited many times, I learned a lot. I found it especially interesting about the "recovery" of the area. And Commander Honore' is my new favorite person. He was a bad@$$.

This three-part documentary goes beyond the story of Hurricane Katrina itself, examining how systemic racism shaped both the scale of the tragedy and its aftermath for New Orleans' predominantly Black population.

Episodes 1 and 2 cover the period immediately before, during, and after the storm. Government failure is a recurring theme: officials delayed evacuation orders until the last moment, leaving tens of thousands behind as Katrina made landfall. The initial relief that the city had survived the storm quickly gave way to horror when the levees collapsed, flooding entire neighbourhoods. With residents stranded, drowning, and dying, state and federal authorities were slow to launch meaningful rescue efforts. Much like National Geographic's Katrina: Race Against Time, these episodes highlight how systemic racism underpinned every failure - from inadequate evacuation plans, to neglected infrastructure, to the lethargic post-flood response.

Episode 3, however, feels like a different film altogether, more of Spike Lee's love letter to New Orleans and its people. It traces the 20 years since the disaster, showing how survivors continue to face the long shadow of racism. Many have been priced out of their own city through gentrification; others endure poorly built homes in developments pushed by "well-meaning" progressives and celebrities. Black culture, once the heartbeat of New Orleans, is steadily eroded and displaced. This final episode is provocative, perhaps deliberately so. If it makes viewers uncomfortable, it's worth asking: why does confronting the realities of Black suffering in America provoke such resistance? Perhaps this is why the episode wasn't released as a stand-alone piece - it challenges too directly, and some audiences would simply turn away.

I think this series is worth watching but as a whole it comes off very disjointed. The first two episodes feel like they came from a different series altogether from the third.

The first two episodes are telling the historical story of hurricane Katrina and the failures afterwards. The points made by the third episode revolve around the systemic cultural failures that occurred during the rebuilding process are very valid. But it comes off as almost a PowerPoint presentation in parts. The editing style and approach are very different from the other two episodes. It comes across as a series a jumbled narrative of interviews that kind of tell a story, but one that could have been handled better stylistically. Also felt like the dead of Katrina get left behind in the series. The identification and stories of them get ignored for the most part.

Like others have said, episodes 1&2 are the actual documentary. Episode 3 feels like they handed it off to a new director, and he said "I'm just redoing this my way". We followed people's stories through episodes 1&2 only to never hear about them again. We never checked back in on the people at the hospital, for example.

I was really wanting some actual explanations on what happened, and we didn't get that. "Here's how the levees broke" or "here's how they weren't built right". Both of which were addressed by Hulu's

I don't disagree with the arguments made by the series, but it's evident what the angle of the show was from episode 1. For me, that lowers its value as an actual documentary. I like being presented with the evidence and what happened and being left to make my own decisions.

Watching the Hulu documentary right after Netflix's is jarring. It really makes it feel like Netflix left out the stories of many people, such as first responders. For example the Chief of Police. His story is extremely impactful to the events overall, and is never even mentioned on the Netflix show....

Episodes 1 & 2 paint a vivid picture of the hurricane's prelude, impact and immediate catastrophic aftermath, largely through survivors' own eyes via camcorder footage.

Episode 3 feels like Spike Lee watched those episodes and decided he had to do it all himself. Thus, interviewees are reintroduced and events recapped like the previous two hours never happened.

Like, weren't they blunt enough for him? For me, they did an exemplary job of showing systemic racism permeated every aspect of this disaster without needing to put the words 'systemic racism' onscreen, as if anyone watching might've missed that point somewhere along the way.