Set between George Bush's reëlection and the coming of Barack Obama, it charts that period's waves of despair and hope, but the characters too often come off as overeager and almost adolescent.
In the more than four months since the storm submerged much of this coastal neighborhood under surging water and waves of despair, residents and business owners have trekked an often-tortuous path of recovery, seeded with second-guessing, wild hope and fear.
The realness and authenticity of Josh's waves of despair and healing and joy and guilt mix together to create something beautiful and memorable.
The release to the streets of mentally ill people, with no support or therapeutic care, created a wave of despair.
After a happy evening with his parents, the e-mail said, "in a momentary wave of despair at his home, he took his life".
I wondered how many of those standing in the cold night air had experienced the God-awful wave of despair that envelopes you in the most mundane of situations.
"We had two drivers of white vans come forward who were at shooting scenes to say, 'I was there, but it wasn't me.' " Ms. Franklin's shooting brought a fresh wave of despair.
And combined with the internet, media saturated world of our own making, a wave of despair has been generated unlike any I have seen in my lifetime of half a century.
The roots of this overwhelming wave of despair is both simple and insidious - it lies in this country's deeply ingrained fear of gay people and rampant unchecked homophobia leveraged for political, religious and financial gain.
Where Tony Soprano had panic attacks, murderous outbursts and waves of oceanic despair, Bill Henrickson tends to heave sighs and say things like, "I'm having one of those days".
He also claimed that Poe had said, quite poetically, as he prepared to draw his last breath: "The arched heavens encompass me, and God has his decree legibly written upon the frontlets of every created human being, and demons incarnate, their goal will be the seething waves of blank despair".
