Treme, "At the Foot of Canal Street": The out-of-towners

A review of tonight's "Treme" coming up just as soon as my coffee drink is comped on behalf of my overwhelming righteousness...

"But New Orleans is still my home!" -Antoine

On "The Wire," David Simon was fond of illustrating a thematic point by having characters in very different social circles experience the same kind of event: McNulty and D'Angelo getting chewed out by middle management in the series pilot, or Namond and Clay Davis espousing the same philosophy about free money. With "At the Foot of Canal Street," Simon and company - here with "Wire" alum George Pelecanos scripting a story he wrote with Eric Overmyer - are doing parallel play again, as we see Antoine, Sonny and Delmond all traveling out of town for different reasons.

Antoine is a son of New Orleans, through and through. Born there, raised there, with no interest in going anywhere else (though perhaps he'd feel differently had his musical career gone differently), he has to be goaded repeatedly by Ladonna just to take the bus to Baton Rouge to see their sons, and even then he mainly goes for the promise of free dentistry from Larry.

Delmond is a son of the city, too, but a prodigal one. Never invested in his father's Indian traditions, or the city's music, he got out as quick as he could, and as he tells his manager, while he's from New Orleans, he doesn't play New Orleans. He has a girlfriend in New York (one of several, it would appear), and would be happy to never go back were it not for family or professional obligations.

Sonny's no son of New Orleans, but he wishes he was. He tells everyone, including Annie, that he dreamed his whole life of living there and playing that music. But a year and a half into living his dream, he's still basically on the outside looking in: a street musician always playing in the shadow of his more talented partner. So he journeys to Houston, hoping to be more accepted in the world of New Orleans expatriates than he's been in the city itself.

Ultimately, each man's trip away from New Orleans is only so satisfying. Antoine's time in Baton Rouge prepares him for a permanent solution to his embouchure problem, but the bridge he builds with his sons is only temporary at best; even he can recognize how guarded they are around him after so many years of disappointment. Sonny's fantasy of acceptance only lasts as long as it takes the band leader to spot another, more accomplished keyboard player in the crowd. And while Delmond has access to the finest in New York culture, he finds that professionally, he has to tie himself back to his home city to succeed.

Antoine happily returns to New Orleans. Sonny's trip back is more mixed - Houston didn't quite work out, and he returns to see Annie thriving without him - but at least he takes pleasure in bringing the Houston bouncer along with him, and introducing another outsider to the city he loves. And Delmond isn't going back yet, nor does he seem particularly eager to go.

In the wake of the storm, many natives had to leave the city, and many of them never returned. "Treme" is focusing on either the ones who never left or the ones who found a way back, but "At the Foot of Canal Street" provides a brief glimpse of three worlds that many New Orleanians found themselves in after Katrina.

Speaking of leaving town, Delmond's scenes in New York had to be filmed out of production order, which means I got this episode very late in the process. In the interest of getting the review done in time for posting after it airs, let's deal with everything else bullet point-style:

• I'm sure Baton Rouge has many fine independent restaurants, but of course Antoine's kids would have fallen in love with Friday's and The Olive Garden, wouldn't they?

• Ladonna does Antoine a good turn, largely for the sake of those boys, but you see in the trip back to the jail to confront her brother's impersonator that she is not to be messed with. Khandi Alexander beautifully portrays the character's soft and harsh sides, doesn't she?

• Once again, please go read Dave Walker at the Times-Picayune for his weekly explanations of all things New Orleans on "Treme." I'm sure he will have much to say on the notion of the lagniappe.

• As Dave has written about in the past, many of the characters on "Treme" are based on real-life New Orleanians. Much of Creighton's character in general and his YouTube rant in particular come from the late blogger Ashley Morris, for instance. Delmond, meanwhile, owes quite a bit to Donald Harrison Jr., who was also the son of a Mardi Gras Indian chief and left the city to play jazz from a different school. What's interesting, though, is that it appears Delmond will be touring with Harrison (who already played alongside Delmond in the pilot episode); I'll be curious to see if the two characters bond over their shared past, or if Harrison will mainly be there to play music while Delmond lives out a fictionalized version of his story.

• Anwan Glover returns as the fake Daymo, and we get two other "Wire" alums in small guest roles: Jim True-Frost (aka Prez) as Delmond's manager, and Steve Earle (aka Bubbs' sponsor Walon, and also the singer of the season 5 theme song) as one of Annie's musician friends (the other was played by Earle's son, Justin Townes Earle). And unlike most of the other famous musicians who wander through this show, Earle isn't playing himself.

• Darius and his aunt Lula return, and things seem to be setting up nicely for Albert to take the kid under his wing to teach him some combination about life, contracting work, and Indian tribes. With Lorenzo leaving town and Delmond never showing an interest, Albert's got to have someone to pass this stuff on to - just as the writers need a novice character for him to explain the culture to, the way Lester had Prez on "The Wire." (Also nice to see that Albert is just as gracious with the ladies as Cool Lester Smooth.)

• I thought it was a nice touch that the insurance salesman understood what a horrible thing he was doing to Albert and so many customers like him, and that he acknowledged it a bit by explaining that he sleeps at night by drinking.

• I was waiting to see if or when the show would address Michiel Husiman's slight Dutch accent, and here Sonny talks about growing up in Amsterdam. (And his friends, in turn, allow Pelecanos to throw in a joking nod to the Hamsterdam story from "Wire" season 3.)

• Though Creighton has plenty of venom for the rest of America, he seems to be softening just a bit towards Davis, doesn't he? He gives him a ride back to his busted car, empathizes with him about the stolen instruments - and the diminished nature of lagniappe - and looks like he can relate as Davis goes to town on the inflatable lawn display.

• Janette, on the other hand, has far less patience for Davis as things go from bad to worse at the restaurant, and then as he turns his attention from her troubles to appearing to flirt with Annie at the bar. And as with McNulty poring over tidal charts on "The Wire," this show isn't afraid to spend long portions of episodes just watching characters work in (near) silence, here with Davis composing his political "pot for potholes" song.

• Very funny reaction from Rob Brown after Delmond's girlfriend pretends to spot Janet at the party.

Finally, in case you've missed the news, this is the last "Treme" review I'll be doing before I relocate to HitFix.com. I'll still be reviewing every episode there the exact way I did here, so just change your bookmarks accordingly.

What did everybody else think?

Treme, "Right Place, Wrong Time": Are you in, or are you out?

A review of tonight's "Treme" coming up just as soon as I have a rhythm and blues intervention...

"People want to see what happened." -The bus driver

James Poniewozik and I both cited the scene at the end of this episode in our initial reviews of "Treme." I said that Albert's dismissal of the tourists, safe behind their tinted glass, was reflective of David Simon's full-immersion approach to portraying cities, where Poniewozik found it a bit on the nose and said, "It also raises a question: why are we watching, and why did HBO pick up the show, if not to 'see what happened'?"

Jim has a point (and later got Simon to expand on the purpose of that scene), in that no matter how deeply "Treme" goes into showing us New Orleans and its people, viewers like me who've never been there will remain tourists, watching through our own kind of glass. But I guess there are varying levels of tourism, and varying levels of authenticity, and "Right Place, Wrong Time"(*) is all about characters coming into conflict over who is and isn't a true son or daughter of New Orleans, with the rights and privileges some believe that allows.

(*) With a teleplay by the late David Mills.

Davis confronts his neighbors about trying to gentrify the neighborhood and is stunned to discover that they're natives who know almost as much about Treme and its music as he does. Ladonna gets frustrated in dealing with her Creole in-laws because she thinks they find her beneath them. Dr. John leads Delmond and the other session musicians in a performance of the Mardi Gras Indian anthem "Indian Red," with Dr. John saying he intends to do the song with love and respect for the traditions, even as Delmond acknowledges that men like his father - who himself sings "Indian Red" at the memorial for Wild Man Jesse - wouldn't see it that way.

And Davis and Creighton - two men who would seem to be kindred spirits in many ways, including how each views himself as a guardian of the city and its culture - meet and fall into instant loathing, though that has more to do with Creighton's dislike of having this doofus around his teenage daughter than Creighton finding Davis to be pretentious.

So the question, I guess, is what level of authenticity should be considered acceptable? Or, rather, is it stupid and self-defeating to devote time and energy trying to stratify this - to suggest that I'm somehow superior to a passenger on a "Katrina tour" bus, or that Dr. John (himself a native of the city) doesn't have the right to sing "Indian Red"? Or are these distinctions important? Albert seems to think that if the city is rebuilt without Mardi Gras Indians, or with the Lower Ninth given over to developers, then there isn't much point to it, where Delmond finds the insularity of the city so frustrating that he understands why so many of its musicians have to leave to succeed. Maybe both father and son have a point; maybe neither of them do. Maybe Simon, Overmyer and the rest of the writers expect us to find Davis's self-righteousness charming, or maybe they intend for him to be insufferable.

Only way to find out for sure, I suppose, is to spend a lot more time pressed up against the looking glass.

Beyond that issue of authenticity, "Right Place, Right Time" brings more characters together, deepens our understanding of them, and moves stories together a bit, before climaxing with that beautiful, haunting memorial for Wild Man Jesse.

Toni winds up getting both Davis and Antoine out of jail for running afoul of the cops (though Davis' arrest was more deserving, whereas Antoine was just drunk and clumsy), and Davis in turn becomes Sofia's piano teacher. Antoine, who's been trying to be more faithful to Desiree, gets into his scrape with the law(*) in part because he stopped for an impromptu jam with Sonny and Annie, and as we follow those two on their own, we learn that there's an unspoken tension in Sonny and Annie's relationship because Sonny resents Annie's superior talent. Ladonna again gets screwed over by her roof contractor and also strikes out in her attempt to get her stuck-up in-laws to help search for Daymo. And with the state of the restaurant growing more dire, Janette even consents to let Davis take her out for an expensive meal to repay her for the wine he drank in the pilot, and then goes to bed with him(**).

(*) And the idea that the cops may have either broken or lost his trombone is no small plot point on a show about broke-ass musicians. Without that horn, Antoine is in big trouble.

(**) The cast is wall-to-wall terrific, but my favorite acting moment here was Kim Dickens showing us the long moment of thought required by Janette before she decided that, yes, she was going to have sex with Davis again.

And, of course, Albert's search for Wild Man Jesse ends in tragedy, as he and Jesse's son Lorenzo make the unfortunate discovery of his body, trapped under the canoe he was presumably going to use to ride out the storm. And where Delmond has no use for the Indian tradition, Lorenzo is right there to chant and sing as Albert and his fellow chiefs gather to say goodbye to Jesse, only to have the beautiful ritual interrupted by the tour bus.

Those tourists are sent away by Albert, Robinette and the others, but we tourists at home are invited to witness the whole thing.

Some other thoughts:

• As always, be sure to check out Dave Walker's "Treme" blog for the Times-Picayune for explanations of all the local color. Dave pointed me to this site for some more background on chiefs, wild men and "Indian Red."

• It's not TV, it's HBO, which means we get to open with Antoine having his way with one of the strippers (going on, of course, about how his instrument is called a 'bone), and then get another priceless look on Wendell Pierce's face when Desiree resolves to remind him what good loving he gets right at home.

• Though "Treme" takes place several years back, the first time it really felt like a period piece was the brief scene where Creighton and Toni watch Sofia's YouTube video, and Creighton has to explain the concept of YouTube (then relatively new) to Toni.

• The real Davis, by the way, has taught piano (including "Tipitina") to David Simon's son.

• In last week's episode, Davis mentioned that all crime had left the city after the storm, and here Sonny tells his friend that all drugs are gone, too - and we learn that Sonny was forced by the storm to clean up his own habit.

One word of caution: as of now, this was the last episode I received in advance. I'm hopeful that I'll get more soon, but sometimes the production schedule doesn't allow for that. So there's a chance these reviews might relocate to Mondays in the future unless more screeners turn up.

What did everybody else think?

Treme, "Meet De Boys on the Battlefront": Pride on Bourbon St.

A review of the second "Treme" coming up just as soon as my position is untenable...

"People do a lot of dumb s--t 'cause it's easier." -Albert

What Albert tells his buddy with the damaged plaster sounds like a sentiment that could have come from the mouth of Clarke Peters' "Wire" character, Lester Freamon, and it's been a kind of guiding principal of David Simon and company on both series. Lots of TV shows go for the quick fix (telegraphed plots, shorthand characterization) because that's easy to do (and, to be fair, because they can't afford the kind of patience that HBO allows Simon), but a Simon show doesn't. It doesn't do the equivalent of slapping sheet rock over plaster, or closing college departments with practical applications in a town that could use plenty of practical knowledge, or trying to tear down a largely-undamaged housing project at a time when intact low-cost housing is hard to come by. It takes its time, figures out the best way to do the job, and gets it done right.

So episode 2 of "Treme" is still very carefully setting things up, introducing new characters, and showing us different facets to many of the people from last week - and giving us even more music in a standard-length episode than we got in the 80-minute pilot.

We meet Sonny and Annie (played by Michael Huisman and professional violinist Lucia Micarelli), busking away and getting the approval not only of the naive but well-meaning white Wisconsin kids, but some of the black natives. At first they seem mismatched - Sonny is dark and defensive, and pretty contemptuous of the church kids, while Annie is bright and open and tries to cover for Sonny's hostility - but we also see that she plays along with his game (she's the one who says that "'Saints' is extra"), and later that she has both eyes open in their relationship. When a friend asks about Sonny's tales of rescuing people during and after the storm, Annie says in a sad, knowing tone, "He says he did... I wasn't on the boat."

We learned last week from his big chief dance that Albert is a man who is not moved easily off a plan, and we see here that he's also not a man to be trifled with, as he savagely beats on the thief who stole his extensive and expensive tool collection(*). Delmond looks at his father like a crazy man half the time, and that's without knowing Albert's capable of putting a much younger man in the hospital.

(*) As Fienberg watched this scene, he sent me an IM that said, simply, "Do not steal Lester's tools," followed by another one suggesting that Albert hide the body inside a vacant house.

Meanwhile, we get to see a different side of Davis. In the pilot, he came across as fairly insufferable, where here he's... well, he's a guy who means well, even if he has serious blinders on half the time. He doesn't think the on-air voodoo sacrifice will get him fired, and is just trying to share some local culture with his audience. He takes the hotel job his parents insist he try in exchange for a loan, and makes an effort to be polite and not lecture all the tourists on how obnoxious and backwards he finds them. And where at first I worried he was deliberately sending the Wisconsin kids to a trouble spot, it turns out that Bullets was a place where they had a great time, met Antoine(**) and heard some fine music before ultimately doing a few things the church group won't approve of.

(**) "The Wire" was also very good about having random characters cross paths, and because the barriers between this show's different worlds aren't nearly as strong as on "The Wire," there's a lot more of of that fluidity. Frankly, it would have been a disappointment if Davis had sent them to a place where they didn't run into another main character.

Though the full ensemble is now on stage, the world of "Treme" is still being built, piece by piece. Toni and LaDonna appear to finally find Daymo, only for him to turn out to be another man entirely, as part of the ongoing post-Katrina bureaucratic nightmare. Antoine keeps hustling for work, but the best he can find is playing at a Bourbon Street strip club (which won't help Desiree's fears that he's stepping out on her). Janette fails to get the needed loan from her parents, as we get a better sense of how badly her house is wrecked and how much trouble the restaurant is in. (She's in such a slump she even burns an omelet.) Delmond jams with Elvis Costello, but then gets popped for smoking a joint in front of some patrol cops. And Creighton starts preparing Sofia to return to school in town, but at the expense of some other kids displaced by the storm.

And in the end, Albert not only gets his tools back, but finally connects with another member of his Indian tribe. Their two-man rehearsal doesn't look like much now, but as with the rest of "Treme," it's a very promising start.

Some other thoughts:

• First, some very good news: HBO has already ordered a second season of "Treme," after only a single episode aired. (The previous HBO regime gave "The Wire" a fifth season renewal after the season four premiere; maybe this is their way of making it up to David Simon after letting "The Wire" dangle so long after season three.)

• And speaking of "The Wire," yup, that was Anwan Glover, better known to many of you as Slim Charles from "The Wire," as the inmate mistakenly incarcerated as Daymo.

• Some more real-life New Orleans musicians in this one, with Coco Robicheaux hilariously ending Davis's radio career by sacrificing a live chicken on air (and leaving some blood spatter behind in the studio), and the great Allen Toussaint producing Elvis Costello (and Delmond and the rest of the session musicians) for "The River in Reverse" recording sessions.

• Albert's right: Delmond's been gone from the city and its music for a really long time, and you can see the strain in his face as he tries to play it, particularly in the impromptu bar gig. The music sounds great, but it's a lot more effort to do this than to play the New York jazz we heard him perform at the Blue Note last week.

• Not a lot of John Goodman as Creighton in this one, but he does get a lovely David Simon rant on when he discusses all the impractical departments that Tulane chose to keep (including his own): "It's all about identity. Let's not learn how to do anything. Let's just sit and contemplate the glory of me, in all my complexities. Who am I? I am black Jewish woman, hear me roar." Not too far removed from Frank Sobotka's speech about how we used to build things in this country, is it?

• Loved the first meeting of Antoine's ex-wife and his current baby mama, who wasn't at all pleased to hear either that Antoine and Ladonna have been talking lately, or that Antoine has other kids from other women floating around the city.

• And is it a surprise Antoine has kids all over town? Wendell Pierce is one charming SOB, isn't he? I've watched this episode several times now, and the look on his face as he plays his 'bone while flirting with the Bourbon St. stripper is 10 different kinds of slick and/or priceless.

• Interesting contrast between Sofia, who's desperate to get out of Baton Rouge for good, and Ladonna's husband, whose mind seems clearly made up on never going back to New Orleans. Though he's clearly much more stable a partner than Antoine, I wouldn't be surprised if this marriage of Ladonna's ends just as badly as the last one.

• Last week, I endorsed checking out all of Dave Walker's great coverage of "Treme," and he took things to another level immediately after the premiere ended with his exhaustive annotations for the pilot episode, which he intends to continue for ensuing episodes (at least for as long as we get them in advance). If you want to know anything about the local details on the show, keep Dave bookmarked.

What did everybody else think?

Treme, "Do You Know What It Means": The 'n' is for 'nuance'

I reviewed "Treme" overall in Friday's column. Some thoughts on the pilot episode coming up just as soon as I teach you everything I know about Keynesian economics...

"All you want to do is get high, play some trumpet and barbecue in New Orleans your whole damn life?" -Davis
"That'll work." -Kermit

Just as he did with the pilot for "The Wire," David Simon (there with Ed Burns, here with Eric Overmyer) has no problem plunking his audience down into the middle of what's a foreign country to many of us and assuming we'll pick up the language as we go. So we open with two men (who turn out not to be significant characters) haggling over the fee for the second line parade, and our first familiar face in Wendell Pierce doesn't even turn up for several minutes. We don't get an explanation for what a Mardi Gras Indian is, but instead just see Clarke Peters strutting down an empty street in that amazing yellow feathered costume, looking like a cross between an Indian, an alien and a crazy person. You just go with the music, or you don't.

As I watched the "Treme" pilot, I had enough faith in Simon and company to know that I'd figure things out eventually, and now having seen three episodes, my faith has been rewarded. And because "Treme" is, so far, much more driven by character than plot than "The Wire" was, I had a much stronger sense of the main characters by the end of the pilot than I did about anyone but McNulty by the end of the first "Wire."

It helps that we start off with a somewhat more famous cast this time around. You see, for instance, John Goodman's Creighton going all Walter Sobchek on the British camera crew and you have many of the fine points of that character. (Ultimately, Creighton turns out to be much more refined and sane than Walter; he's just excitable.) And if chatty, hipper-than-thou Davis isn't exactly like other roles Steve Zahn has played, it's in the ballpark enough that all Simon and Overmyer have to do is establish the degree of his quirks. (For instance, that he'll rail against the Tower Records employees about the definition of "consignment," but will largely wimp out on trying to engage Elvis Costello in conversation.)

Clarke Peters played my favorite character on "The Wire," and he quickly establishes Albert as one of the ones to watch closely here. There's that great moment where Albert enters his ruined home and with a few small gestures (a catch of the breath, a change in his eyes), Peters shows you just how much it wrecks him to see that. But then he steps outside, his jaw sets, and he becomes this immovable object - a big chief who isn't going to let his daughter, his son or anyone else stand in the way of his plan to clean out the bar, reassemble his old tribe, and start rehearsing for Carnival. It's a calling he takes so seriously that he won't even let himself break character when his neighbor agrees to haul the junk away from the bar, only allowing himself a little goofy victory dance after the street is completely empty.

We spend a lot of time in the pilot just watching musicians performing their craft. In the same way that "The Wire" would occasionally step back and just let us witness the cops perform their jobs at a high level, the long musical interludes are already revealing things about the characters: that Antoine, for instance, is so desperate for money that he'll perform in a parade he's clearly not in shape for.

We get to meet couples in varying states of their relationship: Creighton and Melissa Leo's Toni as a contented veteran pair who turn out to be a better match than they first seem (as Toni's just as capable of blowing up as her husband), Antoine and Khandi Alexander's Ladonna as exes who haven't lost their old chemistry, and Davis and Kim Dickens' Janette as two people going through the motions because she hasn't found a good enough excuse to kick him to the curb. (And by the end of the pilot, he provides her with one by opening that expensive bottle of wine at a restaurant that can't afford that kind of financial waste.)

And through it all, we see both the heartache and joy of post-Katrina New Orleans. Homes are destroyed, lives are lost or uncertain (like Ladonna's missing brother Daymo), yet there's great music and food and companionship and local pride. There are gigs to hustle for, consignment CDs to be reclaimed, victory dances to do, and money to be played for. It's a place where even the funerals eventually turn into celebrations with dancing and music, and one I look forward to spending a lot of time visiting this season.

Some other thoughts:

• As a lot of you know, a week and a half before the premiere, "Treme" co-executive producer David Mills died unexpectedly after suffering a brain aneurysm on the set. Give his love of music in general and funk in particular, I'm pleased that Davis's old band, whose CDs were being held on consignment by Tower, was named Uncut Funk, which was a fanzine David and his friends used to publish about George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. (You can hear the music of the real Davis here, by the way.)

• Elvis Costello (who generated my biggest laugh of the pilot with his reaction to Davis's attempt to claim that he taught Kermit Ruffins anything) was one of the first famous musicians to come back to the city after the storm, where he began work on his "River in Reverse" album with Allen Toussaint. And Kermit himself is a local fixture whom Mills once described as "the de facto goodwill ambassador of New Orleans... except he rarely travels to ambassadorize."

• When Creighton declines the lemon ice (out of loyalty to another restaurant that has yet to re-open), the desert that Janette offers to fix for him is a Hubig's fried pie. In his open letter to the city of New Orleans in today's Times-Picayune, Simon cops to the fact that the Hubig's factory didn't reopen for several months after the time period depicted in this episode.

• And speaking of the Times-Picayune, if you like this show, you really owe it to yourself to check out some or all of Dave Walker's exhaustive coverage of the show.

• We don't get an explanation here for Davis's issues with his gay neighbors, but note that he assaults them with the music of New Orleans native Mystikal.

• I found it a nice touch that Toni carries around three giant purses all the time, which is a reminder not only that she has no office to go to because of the flood, but also suggests a character who's always over-extending herself.

• I know it's been 10 years and many films since Rob Brown made his movie debut in "Finding Forrester," but when I saw him as Delmond tearing it up at the Blue Note, I was overcome with the urge to yell out, "You're the man now, dawg!" in a Scottish accent.

What did everybody else think?

'Treme' review: Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review "Treme," the new series about life in post-Katrina New Orleans from David Simon and "The Wire" gang. It's really, really good, but don't go in expecting "The Wire 2: The Squeakquel."