After his very specific headline, I particularly had to cover Treme in bars. Also because we don't have HBO. Gathering with the locals for viewing parties makes sense, it's probably what the vampires do for True Blood.
Treme Brass Band at the Treme Premiere (pictured above). Photo by Jeff Beninato
This week we watched the show from The R Bar in the Marigny. The bar has personable service and a tattered brothel look with dark walls and chandeliers. It's also the epicenter of Mardi Gras morning, so the bar seemed like a good place to kick off season two. The crowd started off at a high volume, but was completely shushed by opening credits. It's always the strongest shusher who gets loud later, but that came up toward the end of the episode.
Everything after this is a spoiler alert.
Treme co-creator Eric Overmyer and chef Anthony Bourdain wrote the story, so food made an early appearance. Sofia and her mother Toni stopped by Angelo Brocato's Italian Ice Cream Parlor. Brocato's return was one of the benchmarks of our old neighborhood in Mid-City's return. Almost 70 acres of Mid-City are now being demolished to make way for a medical center. Historic preservation; series co-creator David Simon, and New Orleans City Hall were at an impasse earlier this month but that's real life in the Big Don't Try This at Home, formerly known as The Big Easy.
Back to Treme, and Sofia missing her father. She vlogs about 100,000 families still not home and the National Guard patrolling the streets. I remember '06 and '07 as the years of the increasingly pissed off missives, others and mine. It's when America seemed to cut the cord on the northernmost tip of the Caribbean.
All Souls, All Saints, all the New Orleans spiritual holidays that wind through our social consciousness are woven together with the characters Antoine and Big Chief Albert tending to their loved ones in the cities of the dead.
Jon Seda plays new character Nelson Hidalgo the crisitunity or disastagrifter newcomer with his king making banker / politician / church / construction connections. Many of that particular type spend their first year in New Orleans optimistic, the second year wondering why These People don't realize when someone's just trying to help; and the third year stymied when their connection gets voted out or imprisoned. I look forward to seeing the character's inevitable spiral, particularly once he stops saying "Cuz" and making google eyes at Ladonna. She already seems to know the Saints are going places. Nelson isn't.
This season follows Janette and Delmond to New York for their food and music careers, respectively. It's a reminder that you didn't just go and you didn't just stay. The boomerang never really stops, and every day is a decision. Janette's experience with a whacked out chef led a woman at the R Bar to begin shouting, "GO BACK HOME...GO BACK HOME" Back to Davis, I assume, which would be a love triangle at this point.
Musician Tommy Malone has moved back home to New Orleans in real life, and he and The Subdudes are featured on the road with Annie T (She got a last name at last) on the show. "Carved in Stone," their eloquent song resonating with All Saints Day, is even more transcendent with Annie T's violin.
Davis, who may be angling for a Fabreeze sponsorship, gets the apartment ready for Annie to come back from the road. He's DJ'ing on WWOZ-FM promoting Sissy Bounce to the chagrin of the program manager. There's a warning to make this set more traditional. It never happened, but that's a spoiler alert. Hopefully the DJ Bob French incident is also planned for down the road.
Once she's back in New Orleans, Annie gigs with John "Theme Song" Boutte, Paul Sanchez and Craig Klein at the Spotted Cat. From the Dirty Dozen Brass Band to Bonerama to Juvenile, it was another episode full of blockbuster performances, many now on iTunes for purchase.
There's a musical closure scene between Annie and Sonny, who is shown earlier in a bar shooting but doesn't get shot. He also doesn't kill and eat Annie, as Lt. Colson makes clear by referencing the real life Zack and Addie carnage that no one wanted to see reenacted. "No, he didn't eat her," got a nervous bar laugh as Colson complained to the New York Times that New Orleans was only being featured for its most grotesque scenarios.
Toni brings her new colleague up to speed on the Danziger Bridge murders. Last year a federal grand jury indicted four police officers in connection with the shooting of unarmed civilians six days after the post-Hurricane Katrina levee breaks.
Meanwhile Desiree and Antoine search through her mother's home anticipating a state Road Home settlement that, for many, took years to come through. He considers finding a home in the Musician's Village, but her suggestion that they may need to get married to help qualify for a mortgage shuts him right up and drew a laugh from the bar.
The bust-out moment was Delmond and the New York jazz set discussing the state of New Orleans music. The phrase "Dixieland shit" started a low rumble, "minstrel show" got it to a boo and when Delmond responded, "Fuck Y'all," the bar not only burst out into applause, there was round of "Who Dat." He then explains to his girlfriend, "I get to say it. They don't."
And that's the wrinkle in critiquing a critique of the city of New Orleans. Every negative review of the food, music, show and overall zeitgeist of New Orleans bothers us because, right or wrong, we get to say it. They don't. And we say it all the time.
A young boy learning to play the trumpet opens the episode, and he closes it walking past a corpse in the street as 17-year-old Glen Hall III and the Baby Boyz Brass Band play in Jackson Square. Lieutenant Colson angrily sends the boy home after curfew.
"Oh fuck, is that..." is the last thing I heard from a fellow Treme viewer as the final credits rolled to applause.
Wendy Byrne, a popular French Quarter bartender, was killed in 2009. Two teenage boys were charged with her murder. It's too early of a season for her story, but thinking about it took me back into real life as the credits rolled.
We walked home with Dr. John's "Accentuate the Positive" playing us out.
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