Treme - Thoughts on Episode 2

George W. Bush, 28-August-2005

(post on the pilot is here)

Episode 2 of "Treme" solidified my hope and desire that the show will go beyond just scoring quick points and establish itself as a series with multiple seasons of staying power.  Character development began in earnest this week, and the all-too-human strong and weak sides of the people of "Treme" started coming out.

(click "Read More" below to continue - spoilers abound!)

The setting was established firmly in the pilot, and the cast introduced.  Episode 2 begins opening up the lives of the characters to us.  A couple of things hit home:

The Bernettes:  As much as these writers are doing so very well writing for their colleagues from "The Wire," they're really not doing so well with John Goodman's family.  He's going off on a rant about how Tulane dropped so much of their engineering curricula, keeping so much arts and social sciences.  I'm not privy to a lot of the internal workings of TU, but the announcement didn't surprise me at the time.  Math/Science/Engineering professionals are in demand everywhere; if you're not a native, bailing for cities that aren't as screwed up as NOLA was in the fall of 2005 made good career sense.  Creighton Bernette's tirade in his office didn't add up, other than as an excuse to quit the university.  His wife, Toni, is developing to your basic wonder-bread, activist, do-gooder lawyer.   The daughter's character is where I had the most quibbles, since I lived through the NOLA-BR shuffle with my then-HS-senior firstborn.  The whole description of her school situation just doesn't add up, but you had to have lived the high school situation that fall to get that.  in any case, here's to hoping the white folks get fleshed out a bit more as time goes on.

Antoine Baptiste:  is Antoine a "typical" musician?  He's got no steady "day" job, is scrapping for gigs, has an ex-wife who has two kids from him and two other baby-mommas, and he stays out all night.  Yup, sounds like a lot of musicians I know.  Antoine is a great representation of the journeyman musician in NOLA.  His interaction with the masters, Kermit Ruffins, Mr. DeJean, Troy Andrews, all shows the HUGE gap between them.  In December, 2005, Shorty had a guest star spot on NBC's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" while Antoine is bemoaning having to play a gig at a strip club on Rue Bourbon.

Lambreaux Family:  Delmond's definitely molded to be a sort-of Wynton Marsalis, right down to an allusion to Lincoln Center.  Playing for Toussaint and Elvis Costello in the studio session is another revealing look into the strata of the music business.  His brush with NOPD in this ep is significant as well, since it sets the stage to increase the profile of NOPD-as-antagonist in the future. 

Big Chief Albert Lambreaux was the star of the ep for my money.  Here's a guy who's done well, by both NOLA and national standards.  The theft of Lambreaux's tools by a Central City dirtbag fit--they called the guy a "copper miner," a thief stripped unoccupied houses of the copper plumbing inside.  When Lambreaux catches up with the guy, he beats the ever-loving crap out of him.  The thief would need hospitalization after that beating.  Lambreaux closes out the episode doing Indian chants with the only other member of his tribe to show up to practice.  Like many a South Boston Irishmen who "got out" to the 'burbs, Lambreaux can't shake his roots.  This is why the cops literally fly en masse when there's a report of a fight among Indians and themselves or others.  The Indians are glamorized by many, but there's still a very dark side to the culture.

Davis McAlary is going to be the court jester of the show.  He gets fired from WWOZ because he lets Coco Robicheaux kill a chicken as part of a voodoo ceremony in the 'OZ studio, then we meet his parents and learn that he does have a bit of means behind him.  Sending those yankees to Bullets was priceless.  Of course it got him fired from the hotel gig.  That's important, since the jester can't be tied down in one place too long.

Janette Desautel's mini-breakdown was typical of all too many of us that fall.  Her Mid City house is the typical living environment of folks who had 2-story homes in areas that got 6' or less of water. Cut out the walls downstairs, spend most of your time upstairs.  When we were re-building, some friends who have a son the same age as my kiddo offered to take him in for a few weeks.  They only got a few inches of water in their house and cut out their walls to about a foot.  Their upstairs was just fine, so they kept kiddo and I would do the drop-off and pick-up duties for school.  Kiddo's grammar school got water, but they were able to use space at another Catholic school in Metairie to re-open in October, 2005.  Janette's business problems are presented well.  I remember the signs in December-05/January-06 at Starbucks on Vets--help wanted, $8/hour and health insurance.  That's how tight the labor situation was.  Those of us in town wanted goods and services, but the pool of workers to provide those services was so tight that even Starbucks had to pay a living wage and offer benefits.  Janette's bare-bones, so she can't open every day, full hours.  That happened to restaurants from Antoine's all the way to Bud's Broiler.

NOPD/cops/courts: Cops-as-antagonists had to come up fast in the series.  Look at all the shit hitting the fan with NOPD currently.  Delmond's bust for pot possession is interesting.  Kiddo asked me this morning, isn't a simple pot bust a bit extreme when so much is going on?  I explained a lot depends on the cop's state of mind.  Did the cop pop him because he doesn't like black folks, or did he do it to kill half his shift on something trivial?  There are still a lot of NOPD cops to this day who got really messed up psychologically by the storm.  I can easily see an older cop like the one who popped Delmond wanting to waste a couple of hours of the evening slowly writing a report at Central Lockup so he didn't have to be on the dark streets.  Of course, the racial aspect shouldn't be ignored, and the previews for ep 3 indicate the cops will be back.

Toni Bernette's work to find LaDonna's brother is a good window into how dysfunctional government was at this point.  Other parishes were willing to keep New Orleanians locked up to get FEMA money.  Forget due process and habeas corpus, they were mostly all black anyway.  They've alluded to her filing brutality lawsuits against NOPD cops in the past, so no doubt she'll continue to be an active part of this plot line.

To sum up ep 2, the city is no longer the only antagonist.  Thieves, unscrupulous contractors, and cops join the city and the storm.  I want to see what happens next, and that's what a TV writer wants to hear.

HBO's Recap of Episode 2 (video)