Despite the bumper crop of Katrina docs, most viewers will be stunned by the meticulous indictment assembled by Shearer, the Simpsons voice-over artist and part-time Crescent City resident. To start with, most of the worst flooding was caused by under-seepage rather than over-topping of the levees. This is obviously implies some rather profound design flaws in the levee system.
Calling on expert testimony from several academics who investigated the levee breaches on behalf of the State of Louisiana and a Corps of Engineers whistleblower, Shearer establishes a pattern of pervasive negligence at the agency. Essentially, the New Orleans levees were built to unrealistically low specifications, on dangerously porous ground, incorporating a network of substandard pumps. To make matters unnecessarily worse, they created a flooding “funnel effect,” with “MR. GO,” an acronym for a little used but highly expensive commercial waterway. That’s hundreds of millions of your tax dollars at work.
Indeed, in many ways Uneasy is a chronicle of wasteful, counterproductive government spending run amok. Frankly, term “incompetence” is too generous for the systemic failures of the Corps. Yet, the agency has been largely spared the public recriminations leveled at FEMA. As Shearer points out, congressional reps love to put big conspicuous waterworks projects in their districts, which, of course, are duly constructed by the Corps.
As narrator, writer, executive producer, and director, Shearer maintains the right tone throughout, keeping the proceedings largely dispassionate and authoritative. He is definitely looking to assign responsibility, but he does not engage in the sort of finger-pointing that so many previous Katrina docs indulged in. Legitimately non-partisan, Shearer even presents a Republican politician in a favorable light, including footage of Sen. David Vitter effectively cutting through the dissembling of a senior Corps officer testifying before the Senate.
To his further credit, Shearer is not interested in creating more victimization narratives. Though he largely focuses on muckraking the Corps, he occasionally interjects a brief “Ask a New Orleanian” vignette. Hosted by actor John Goodman, these segments contradict most of the helpless NOLA victim stereotypes, offering a portrait of a revitalized city, with a unique and ever evolving culture. Wisely, Uneasy also features a legit NOLA style soundtrack by funky jazz pianist David Torkanowsky to remind so many of us how we came to love the city in the first place.
