Monsters of Television

“I just want my city back.”

Wake. Ruined.

Note: This post is for last week’s episode of Treme. The post for “At the Foot of Canal Street” is also available.

It took me a while to get into Mad Men. I was well behind (I’m still not totally current) when I someone finally gave me a copy of season 1 for Christmas. I watched an episode here and there, remarking to my friends that the show is very pretty but I was having a hard time getting into it. But then came “Babylon,” episode 6 of the first season. There is an extreme long shot at the end where Joan and Sterling are standing on the same street, waiting for different cabs, she with bird cage in hand and he with a fedora tipped forward to cover his face. It was that moment that I fell for the show. I’ve been hooked since then, even if I only get to watch it between all the other obligations in my life.

I had a moment like that with the end of this episode of Treme. Maybe not as strong as to convince me as that one moment in Mad Men since I still have trouble seeing how this show will sustain itself for a long period of time. But they do have something in common: character is why the audience keeps coming back. While Treme has storylines that may become repetitive and stale when played by ordinary archetypes, these characters are becoming developed enough to keep a viewer returning, especially if they catch the complexity of the writing.

I don’t want you to think I’m writing a love-letter to a show that’s barely started, one that has already garnered so much praise based on its producers and writers, but I am more impressed with the show, that feeling increasing with every week.

This particular episode dealt with the concept of the Other and the constant dance of repulsion and attraction. It isn’t as obvious at first, but stick with me and maybe I’ll make a convincing case for you.

I like to start off with Davis’s story (even though the episode actually starts off with Antoine in a sex scene the foley artists must have had a field day with) because the writers usually feed him lines that encapsulate the feelings of all the characters. Davis is in jail and Toni is there to bail him out. Davis sits in a room with a lot of prisoners, most of them in orange jumpsuits. He stands out starkly against them, especially when he stands up and tries to explain his indignation for being incarcerated. Apparently, some military police tried to enforce an open-container law and Davis had nothing but dirty words for them. “Davis,” Toni says, “you never mother fuck the National Guard.” Davis quickly realizes his lost temper was stupid but, in frustration, he admits what is really bothering him. In the old days, the police wouldn’t have cared about his open containers. In the old days, he didn’t feel like he was living in military-occupied territory. In the old days, everything was perfect even if it was not a utopia. He knocks his head against a column and mutters, “I just want my city back.”

Of course, that is the theme for all the New Orleans musicians trying to make it again in their hometown. They all just want their city back. It’s why Antoine plays rinky-dink tunes in a strip club on Bourbon Street. It’s why Ladonna’s mother refuses to leave even if hope for her son’s return has all but dried up. It’s why Sonny and Annie try to make ends meet on streets they are constantly being pushed off of. They all want their city back in every sense of the phrase.

No one wants his city back more than Albert, who, we learn, did not kill the kid last week but did put him in critical condition. He is a man on the brink, a man that was part of the fabric of that town only to have it all ripped away from him. He almost puts another kid in the hospital for being in one of the houses he’s trying to renovate until he realizes the kid was just looking for a place to fool around with his girlfriend. The only thing keeping him on this side from going on an adolescent murder spree is getting all the Indians back together. The son of Albert’s “Wild Man Jessie,” a young man by the name of Lorenzo, pays the chief a visit asking for help to keep his family home. Jessie has been missing since the storm so Albert agrees to help Lorenzo take a look at the house where they find out why Jessie has been missing: he’s been trapped under his boat in his tool shed for months.

The decaying body prompts Albert to call his son, despite Delmond being in the recording studio, laying down trumpet on yet another song used to support New Orleans. This show is obviously about the sound of New Orleans and how important their musical tradition is. In a show that is typically very good about getting in and out of scenes in a timely manner, the musical interludes can seem long but it’s only because they are the heart of the show. It’s important that the music is diegetic since it shows there is still life here. They don’t always play a whole song but they will play enough for the viewer to understand this is going on longer than any other scene. This establishment makes what happens during this particular song so interesting. After stating purpose of trying to honor the tradition of New Orleans in the song, it is interrupted not only by Albert leaving a voicemail about Jessie’s death but also by Toni trying to get New Orleans parish to find out who the David Brooks in their custody is (since it’s obviously not Damo). The police give Toni the run-around and finally kick her out the door. The seemingly endless struggle these characters are going through interrupting people still make recordings to support the history and tradition of New Orleans (both diegetically and non-diegetically) establish another major premise of this show: are these constant recordings in support of New Orleans really keeping the integrity of the city or is it on a hopeless slide into irreparable destruction? Can you save the city with a jazz standard or is it beyond salvation?

We see a hint of this in a fight Davis has with his neighbors, a gay couple that moved in next door and went to work on making it their home. Davis argues that they live in one of the most culturally-important music centers in the country to which the couple responds they have knowledge of how important Treme is. We finally learn what Davis’s problem with these people are: they bought “a wreck” and fixed it up to their liking but have problems with people practicing their horn at night or second lines that parade down the street without a permit. The couple insists their fixing up the place is “historical preservation.” Davis contends that it is gentrification. That is an important distinction for this story. Davis feels that the couple, even if they do have knowledge of the musical importance of the Treme, can’t fully appreciate how iconoclastic it is compared to their lifestyle and would rather it conform to them. The couple is attracted to a lifestyle out of something akin to curiosity (though probably more subtle or deep-rooted) but is repulsed by how the Treme operates. “You gotta deal with that shit,” Davis ends. People enjoy the idea of this city being what it is but, even when faced with just the remnants of what it was, the people can’t stand to be around it. For a New Orleans that is desperately trying to flicker, the tourists, those from out of town and those that live in the area, threaten to snuff it out.

Creighton’s perspective on the (non-)situation.

Interestingly, this is also continued with Creighton Bernette. Finally, they give John Goodman some scenes that matter instead of constant exposition. They hit again on the connection between Creighton and his daughter, Sofia, as Creighton discovers YouTube (a relatively new thing within the historical context) and his daughter’s video blog where she curses and says disparaging things about people from Baton Rouge. Like father, like daughter. Toni is left out of that equation as she disapproves of Sofia’s public candor but goes back to work being what seems to be the only working lawyer in New Orleans.

This by itself I would’ve chalked up as a footnote but the father/daughter relationship comes around again. Davis offers to give Toni piano lessons for Sofia in rhythm and blues (her current scope is straight classical) in payment for bailing him out. When Davis arrives with his book by Professor Longhair, Creighton is immediately cold to the scruffy NOLA fanboy. I’m not 100% on how old Davis and Sofia are, but Creighton treats him like Davids is his daughter’s prom date and, when they sit together on the piano bench, he focuses on their proximity. Obviously, as a father, he is protective over her but Davis is a representative of New Orleans, the very town and tradition Creighton’s been hollering about all series. Why would he have such a problem with someone as non-threatening as Davis? Mr Bernette talks a big game but it seems like he likes his New Orleans from afar. Just like the gay couple in the Treme, Creighton seems like a guy that understands the value of New Orleans culture but doesn’t appreciate it in his home, sitting inches from his daughter. He is fascinated by the town but repulsed by its presence when it invades his domestic life.

Though Davis pops up a lot throughout, Antoine is also prominent despite a story that seems lacking in complexity. If it wasn’t apparent before, we know now that the only thing in life he won’t cheat on or neglect is music. But after the city beating down on him (“grinding down” as Delmond points out separately what New Orleans is wont to do), he sings with Sonny and Annie on a street corner in a song I would very much like to see as a purchasable track sometime soon. After, he wanders away, talking behind him when he bumps into a police car with his trombone. Police presence has been a running theme throughout the series but this episode in particular as they are constantly running off musicians and locking people up. Here the tension in New Orleans gets Antoine unnessarily accosted by the cops, his trombone lost. Toni shows up at the jail to get him out (seriously, are there no other lawyers?) in the exact same room as she was in to retrieve Davis. Antoine, however, looks worse for the wear and honestly did nothing wrong whereas Davis could’ve been charged for assault. Even after being beat up by police and possibly facing trumped-up charges, all Antoine wants to know about is his trombone. Without it, his livelihood is gone.

The Storm has ripped away the livlihood of a lot of folks, either directly or in its aftermath. Albert is determined to not let the soul of the city be taken with it. He assembles a wake for his fallen “wild man” and the Indians sing and dance for him in something that is equally lively and somber. This is another one of those musical interludes you feel is going to take you out of the show (similar to the funeral sequence ending the first episode) but it is interrupted. A small tour bus rolls through the Ninth Ward and the driver stops in front of the group. Faceless passengers flash their cameras and gawk from the safety of the bus. The Indians, all looking a combination of hurt, angered, and amazed at what is happening, walk to the side of the bus, questioning why the driver would be doing this. “People want to see what happened,” he replies. Then he points, “is this your house?” There isn’t a moment in this show that feels more dedicated to the fallout of post-Katrina New Orleans. The kids from Wisconsin that came down to help fix houses at least came for a purpose and intention to help out. These tourists, gawkers, treat this tragedy like its a theme park, as if its the Tower of Terror at Disney. Safely tucked away in a bus, the people have the nerve to indulge their media-stirred fascination with the Ninth Ward while keeping enough distance that they don’t have to deal with it. They keep it superficial. But to Albert and his family, blood-related or not, this is not superficial. But no one has to say it. They just glare at the driver and tell the him he had better go. The driver: “Of course.” He is honestly apologetic and pulls out down the road. They watch him go. And that was powerful stuff.

Other things:

• There is also a thread with Sonny and Annie celebrating her birthday and meeting Tom McDermott. Other than demonstrating Sonny as tortured and Annie being immensely-talented, so much so that her station is probably determined by Sonny being a weight on future aspirations, there isn’t much here.
• What I’d considered to be the only thread that seemed like it could continue from the first episode (the storyline with Damo) has quickly become my least favorite to watch. I like Ladonna’s role but usually it feels like we’re wasting time before the next scene with Davis, Antoine, or Albert. That being said, I know a lot of people I could sell the series on with a scene or two featuring her.
• I’ll try not to make the next review over 2000 words.