HBO *Treme* - season 2, Ep. 2 / 12 "Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky"

I've been re-watching season 1 on dvd, which intersects now with watching season 2, one episode per week.

As we so often do, when speaking of history and New Orleans, we talk of how history and time works there differently than in the 'American' cities further north.  Because New Orleans was founded by European Catholics from France and Spain instead of Protestants from England (and Germany) in New England and the southern lower 13, it is the northernmost outpost in the New World of the feasts and saints cultures.  Time rolls on the wheels of saints days and feasts -- thus Mardi Gras in New Orleans but not Mardi Gras in Boston.  It's cyclic, not arrow time.  What goes around comes around.  What happens in New Orleans keeps happening; past and preset are simultaneous, which is the form of the future -- "Mardi Gras comin' baby!" is shouted out in the New Orleans streets as soon as the present Fat Tuesday rolls away.

I feel this time experience intensely since Season 2 of Treme began because I am having seasons 1 and 2 simultaneously.  I feel Creighton's encroaching depression and despair  -- no, that's Sofia's -- yet its Creighton's too, in his absence.  Sewing the Indian suits, we already had our suits and Mardi Gras ... no, no, no, this is for Mardi Gras when the wheel turns again ... but Big Chief Lambreaux is not sewing so much.  Like Sofia, he is feeling all the weight of what, of who, is not there, of what is by deliberate power-politicing economic policy being kept away from him, from his community, from his city.

"Everything I Do Gonh Be Funky" was Thanksgiving, after Mardi Gras, that first Mardi Gras after the Terror of the Levees' Failur, that Mardi Gras, which was in season 1.  Creighton was still alive then.  It was safer in New Orlkeans than it had ever been in ever so long. Now, the crime is back, but I keep flashing back to when the streets were relatively safe, just as I do now, when in New rleans itself, as I kept flashing to when the streets were not safe, back when they were.  Just like the Terror of the Levees' Failure, every terror keeps carrying on.  Just as the glory of the music in its endless roll of great musicians, known and unknown, keeps going on. 

I dream of of the past and present of our own New Orleans’s experiences, and the past and the present of the New Orleans and people of Simon’s Treme.  This is like nothing that has ever been done on television before.

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Toni and Sofia broke my heart on Thanksgiving, alone, in the nice restaurant.  Toni grew up in New Orleans.  Where is her family?  Davis, who insists he doesn't like his family, he's with them and Annie. Toni is persistant in helping so many resolve their issues of missing family members. My curiosity about Toni’s backstory has become great.

Big Chief’s Thanksgiving though, despite everything — he’s surrounded by family and friends.

Janette, in shivery New York City, robbed right out of her wallet by the man she was sleeping with, while roommates -- at her age! -- are watching the Macy's annual Thanksgiving parade on television, oh baby ....  Maybe she may as well be back in New Orleans.  Recall, back in season 1, last ep, when Davis is persuading Janette not to leave NO, he says something like, "Stupid Macy's Thanksgiving Parade of balloons instead of a spontaneous second line." 
Some suggest that Davis may be one who gets killed during this period when the creeps come back. But Davis is the Trickster. He is likely safe. Still, he’s so in love with Annie — and his mother!!!!!!!! even likes Annie. He’s vulnerable, now he’s got something to lose.

LaDonna though -- is it the actress getting more twitchy in her grimacing and gestures, or is it the character?