My Treme Viewing Partner (MTVP) groaned when the credits for "That's What Lovers Do," ep 10, rolled up the screen. "Dayem! I start thinking I'm in New Orleans when I watch. I wish I was in New Orleans. I wish I was going to New Orleans!"
I share in this. I already miss the show, meaning I miss all these people we get to know through their ten episode season. I miss New Orleans. It's particularly frustrating because we were supposed to have been in NO once already, since getting back from the Eastern Shore, and to go again in July. But the funding for the events got pulled, or never materialized, so, no. Dayem!
August we teach the course in West African geography and history, so no go then. If one isn't being threatened by a hurricane, New Orleans in August is very pleasant. At least so I've found it to be. We moved to NO in August. We've been in NO in August for large chunks of the month most years. We were there just days before the Katrina criminal catastrophe. Hot as hell, yes, but the nights are magic (and the beer is very cold). Because it is so hot, and so many people are gone, it feels more than at other times of the year, that supposedly leisurely city that so many fantasize is New Orleans, but is anything but for those who are living and trying to make a living there.
The opening sequence was just right, and brilliantly edited, not too long, but unrushed -- it was soul satisfying. Harley was surely pleased.
Setsuma Cafe and Sandwich Shop PLUS FREE WIFI, plus Piety Street Studios just around the corner. That was fun. I have put in a lot of hours at Setsuma, where Sofia is working the paid job her lawyer ordered her to get for herself -- and she likes it.
Transplanted Dutch Sonny's arc this season was my personal favorite. This episode contained a Wire kind of mirroring -- after Annie tells Sonny she saw a photo of him hung in the Ogdon, pulling people from the Katrina flood waters, i.e. he is who she thought he was -- she learns Harley was not who he represented himself to be: Harley was from Washington, not from Texas. It's as though Sonny getting himself back on track brings back the Sonny that perhaps Annie fell in love with, and she can see him again, though she has moved on -- and so has he.
Both Sonny and Annie have become a part of New Orleans with the help of people for whom NO is their soul and in their dna: Sonny, with the help of bass player, Cornell Williams, and Annie from Davis. Harley, with his song-writing, made himself a part of New Orleans as well. That's how it works.
New Orleans is old and deep and rooted, filled with insiders, but it is open to new people, as is anyplace must be that stays vital instead of becoming a museum. Irish and Italians came in large numbers in the 19th century. That the show is willing go out of New Orleans, to the boat and the fish market, the Vietnamese community, is another way Treme is a different kind of show all together from The Wire.
Young, creative and passionate people come from all over now to New Orleans. It is a dangerous place, yes, but it is vitally alive-O! and very exciting these days. The worlds of Treme are not closed, claustrophobic communities as in The Wire. Many of these Treme characters are not trapped by the corner, by jail, deadends, as were so many of the inhabitants of The Wire. That included the cops too. (Attorney Toni may have to let go to a degree or she will get stuck like McNulty did, in The Wire.)
That's the tragedy of the 'knuckleheads.' They don't feel a part of this place and they are trapped in their violent pathology. Their pathology even pushes out of New Orleans those who are most deeply rooted in the city, like LaDonna, perhaps.
That final vignette was sad. Yet, Larry's hand touches LaDonna, even as she'd turned over and away from him, almost spitting, "We're just out of practice, that's all." Last week he didn't dare touch her.
I wonder what will happen next year. Hopefully Janette is going to come home, we'll finally learn about Toni's backstory and why she and Sofia are so isolated, and everyone else is going to keep on keeping on. And there will be someone to be a new friend. I miss the old friends of Treme already.
Showing posts with label HBO Treme Season 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HBO Treme Season 2. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Treme (2011) second season, ep 5 / 15. “Slip Away.”
It will be interesting when Toni’s backstory is revealed, as perhaps that will illuminate some of the reasons she seems so isolated in a city where she was born and grew up, a city where families are in such close touch. Even Davis, for all his ranting about his bigoted and dysfunctional family, is close to his family. Is it possible that Toni grew up in bad old days of the Irish Channel?
I am starting to be in love with Janette this season. She’s such a plain, straight-ahead person, no pretense, no fronting with Janette. But there that buoyancy in her too, such as the fairy costume with cowboy boots on the first Mardi Gras after the Flood — which probably started this crush — everything looks better with cowboy boots — throwing the Sazerac into Richman’s face and, in this episode dancing a cocktail napkin to do her solitary second line in the Blue Note. Then, there is her chef’s passion for great food.
As for Sonny: No dialog, no transition, other than everybody subbing, like they do. Sonny’s moved up from busking to cover band Soul Apostles. Yes, a cover band, but it's not playing on the street. Sonny seems to be admitting his limitations, as maybe Davis is starting to see his. But Sonny hasn’t given up wanting to play, and playing music, despite his self-destructive steps, so easy to make in New Orleans now or any time. He's a foreigner in a city of great musicians, whose musical relationships and relationship with the city go back generations. You gotta respect that.
Why are the so-called critics blathering about the short beats and cuts of these scenes? By their own admission, they don’t have a musical sensibility, so they are missing all the compositional connections between the cuts. Going between the Blue Note in NYC to the poetry slam in New Orleans? Perfect (not to mention its an amigo’s kid who is the first one we see on stage). It's not choppy, jumpy or skittery. It's like a well-rehearsed band: time for this instrument, the horns lay out, but then they come back, everyone cools down for the vocalist to do a solo, and so on. This maybe was my favorite of all the scenes in this episode. But then, I have had many a fine time in the Blue Note. What I want to know though, is: who did Janette know that she could get a seat at the bar? It's always so crowded at the bar I've never gotten to sit there, no matter whose guest list I was on! Yes, I know it’s cheaper at the bar, but still, I never get a seat there.
This was a wonderful episode, written by a woman, who is, it turns out, on da List.
I am starting to be in love with Janette this season. She’s such a plain, straight-ahead person, no pretense, no fronting with Janette. But there that buoyancy in her too, such as the fairy costume with cowboy boots on the first Mardi Gras after the Flood — which probably started this crush — everything looks better with cowboy boots — throwing the Sazerac into Richman’s face and, in this episode dancing a cocktail napkin to do her solitary second line in the Blue Note. Then, there is her chef’s passion for great food.
As for Sonny: No dialog, no transition, other than everybody subbing, like they do. Sonny’s moved up from busking to cover band Soul Apostles. Yes, a cover band, but it's not playing on the street. Sonny seems to be admitting his limitations, as maybe Davis is starting to see his. But Sonny hasn’t given up wanting to play, and playing music, despite his self-destructive steps, so easy to make in New Orleans now or any time. He's a foreigner in a city of great musicians, whose musical relationships and relationship with the city go back generations. You gotta respect that.
Why are the so-called critics blathering about the short beats and cuts of these scenes? By their own admission, they don’t have a musical sensibility, so they are missing all the compositional connections between the cuts. Going between the Blue Note in NYC to the poetry slam in New Orleans? Perfect (not to mention its an amigo’s kid who is the first one we see on stage). It's not choppy, jumpy or skittery. It's like a well-rehearsed band: time for this instrument, the horns lay out, but then they come back, everyone cools down for the vocalist to do a solo, and so on. This maybe was my favorite of all the scenes in this episode. But then, I have had many a fine time in the Blue Note. What I want to know though, is: who did Janette know that she could get a seat at the bar? It's always so crowded at the bar I've never gotten to sit there, no matter whose guest list I was on! Yes, I know it’s cheaper at the bar, but still, I never get a seat there.
This was a wonderful episode, written by a woman, who is, it turns out, on da List.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
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.
___________________
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?
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 New Orleans
___________________
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?
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