Treme: Right Place, Wrong Time

A toast: "To doing what we love."

Sunday's episode of Treme had an especially poignant significance: it was written by the late David Mills who died of a brain aneurysm on a location shoot in March. The episode on its surface bristles with a theme of the quasi-military occupation of New Orleans after Katrina. Under the dark surface is an unintended homage to David Mills, a story of love — a love for city, a love of culture, a love for music, a love for another. "I need your love so badly/I love you oh so madly," sings Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce) to the young street violinist, Annie.

"Right Place, Wrong Time," named for a Dr. John song from the '70s that even I, clueless New Yorker, am familiar with, takes place four months after Katrina, and crime and tempers begin to flare. The heavy-handed police and National Guard presence frustrates city residents: "Cops are wound tight. Guard is on edge." Characters Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn) and Antoine both have physical run-ins with authority, Batiste getting the worst of it. You have to worry about how he's going to play his "bone" with a mouth as pummeled as it is. In the first of many references to the title, the military presence is in the right place but at the wrong time - the guard would have been much more useful four months prior - during "the greatest engineering failure in the history of the country," as co-creator David Simon calls it.

In other plotlines, Big Chief Lambreaux continues to gather up his tribe, and big prof Creighton Bernette discovers the joy of YouTube.

The women in Treme continue to have the most interesting stories. If David Simon took to heart that The Wire lacked compelling women characters, Treme would be evidence for his conversion. LaDonna (Khandi Alexander) cares for her grandmother, searches for her missing brother and runs after errant contractors. Her marriage, revealed to be across class lines in the episode, appears strong - a glimmer of hope among some dark stories that cross Treme. A seemingly sturdy marriage is something LaDonna has in common with another character: Toni Bernette (Melissa Leo) - married to Creighton and the hardest working woman in law business.

Poor Toni. She runs here and there through Treme. Rescuing people from jail, searching for lost sons, arguing with idiotic authority figures, and pouring love and understanding onto her husband and daughter. So far, she is the manifestation of pure goodness. It may make her one-dimensional, pretty thankless too, but I, for one, am enjoying her character, especially after the shock of the Chief finding his Wild Man.

Another strong female character, Janette has her loves too. In one of the most compelling narratives, Janette struggles to hold on to her number one love — her restaurant. She tolerates her other love, one of convenience to be sure, Davis."Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Davis McAlary has to open up the expensive wine and piss away all my money," but we all know the real ending of that song.

Davis takes her out on a date from the windfall of his one day of work at the Bourbon Street hotel. The lovely scene when Davis pours her the last glass of wine from their bottle, upon seeing Janette's pain at the thought of losing her place of business, is one of pure tenderness and subtlety. It almost makes up for the awful song he composes.

There are fleeting sexual assignations: Antoine and the stripper from the bar, the boy and his girl in Big Chief's place, Annie? But the heart of "Right Place, Wrong Time" is in the marriages of LaDonna, Toni, the connection between Chief's tribe, Sonny's love for Annie, and Davis coming out of his egoism and thinking for a moment of someone else - Janette.

"This city loves its music. It don't love its musicians." This is a reiteration of last week's "Everyone loves New Orleans, [but] New Orleans people?" from Big Chief Lambeaux. Treme loves its people. It loves its musicians too. As to be expected, Dr. John figures prominently in the episode. "Right Place, Wrong Time" plays when Sonny is shopping for that perfect bottle of Beaujolais for his Annie. Dr. John himself sings his famous "My Indian Red," apologizing to the gangs and hoping the song is performed with the "most love and respect" for the tradition. Jazz pianist Tom McDermott appears as himself - a musician who is appreciated in the city because he is playing the right places. Trombone Shorty - James Andrews - also plays himself. And that brings me to one of my favorite scenes.

The argument on gentrification.

It's not a matter of black and white. Nothing is in David Simon's world. Davis' neighbors confront him on his un-neighborly ways. They turn out not be outsiders and are pretty knowledgeable on things Treme. Davis, in his most sanctimonious manner, refuses to listen. And he stumbles in trying to retrieve the name of Trombone Shorty's cousin (Glen David): "all those damned Andrews." It signifies that he may be right about the gay couple's taste in decorating - fairy lights and overly large glass ornaments in the courtyard - but he's not right in his assumptions about his community.

Another scene full of gray shades — the final scene. I would argue that no one was in the right place at any time throughout the entire episode until the very end when the Katrina tour bus pulls up in front of Chief Albert and his tribe, mourning their Wild Man. The bus bears witness to the devastation and loss, and in a remarkable moment of being in the right place at the wrong time because there is no right time, the bus driver apologizes and pulls away. But snapshots are taken before he does. We can’t criticize this because we, the audience, are an extension of that bus. The situation is unwinnable. It is a more important dichotomy than the foreshadowing argument between Davis and his gentrifying neighbors. The devastation and loss must be looked at but must not be at the same time. We are "trespassing through the narrative" as David Simon says in his open letter to New Orleans found here.

I've got a Big Chief, Big Chief, Big Chief of the Nation
Wild, wild creation
He won't bow down, down on the ground
Oh how I love to hear him call Indian Red

When I throw my net in the river
I will take only what I need
Just enough for me and my lover
I will take only what I need

— "My Indian Red" lyrics

Up for discussion:

It's a redeeming moment when Albert hires the young boy he earlier found hiding in his bar. Does this make up for the beating he gave the young thief — the one he was searching for in the obits?

How funny is the conversation between Davis and Creighton who is hovering over his little girl during her piano lesson: "Don't let your mind get ahead of you Davis. Piano lessons. Don't think about what she will or won't do. That has nothing to do with you." There is a lot of humor in Treme. Enough maybe to bring it the awards that The Wire should have received. And speaking of The Wire...

HBO is using actors from The Wire in their trailers to entice Wire fans into the Treme neighborhood (e.g. Anwan Glover), but I find Wire actors disconcerting during the show itself and have to work hard to distance Chief Albert from Lester Freamon and Antoine from Bunk. A few more episodes and more pouring over the Times-Picayune, and I know I shall be successful. That said, the appearance of Jim True-Frost in the trailers for next week is welcome news! Fresh from Fringe, True-Frost is a member of Chicago's famous Steppenwolf Theatre Company and best known for his role in The Wire as Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski, a great math teacher, not so great police officer.

This article was first published at Blogcritics

Treme: The City That Care Forget but David Simon Hasn't

Welcome. A first post here on a new blog. And what better a way to start a new blog than with Treme. I have lots of blogs now but this one is dedicated to the articles I've written that "sound the death knell to serious criticism" as one commenter put it.

At first I was dismayed at the strength of that reaction, but later I grew vaguely flattered. First of all, sounding a death knell requires a great deal of upper body strength. Secondly, the fact that I could sound such a knell assumes that I have a great deal of responsibility toward pop culture. A responsibility I gladly accept. So here goes. My first knell (notice that knell is one of those words that the more you say it the stranger it sounds):

"That sounds like rebirth."

There are many familiar faces in Eric Overmyer and David Simon's Treme, which premiered last night on HBO — familiar to those who are in the David Simon business, as one HBO executive describes herself. There is Khandi Alexander (LaDonna) and Clarke Peters (Albert) from the miniseries The Corner, and there is Oscar nominee Melissa Leo (Toni) from Homicide, and of course, there is Wendell Pierce as Bunk… I mean Antoine Baptiste. Mr. Pierce and Mr. Peters (formerly Lester Freamon) were from The Wire, television's greatest drama as sobbed by critics everywhere.

The Wire looms large over Treme, but Treme isn't The Wire, nor do we want it to be. Who can live through that again? The Wire, David Simon and Ed Burns' heartbreaking HBO series about the failing institutions of the American city in general and Baltimore in particular, was bleak — addicting and affecting, but bleak. Bleak, bleak, bleak! Treme is something different, with that same, familiar Simonian complexity, but still different.

Tremeopens, three months after the Katrina, in the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans, to a riot of color and in full sunlight, no less, at a spontaneous second line parade, so named because it doesn't have the necessary parade permits, an under-the-counter Mardi Gras procession, so to speak. The second line parade is "a New Orleans funeral with no body," and the spectacle sets the tone immediately for the series: swagger and joy — the two things necessary for continued existence.

Treme is the intersecting stories of those who stuck around after Katrina. The series is about the hurricane but more importantly also about the survival - what happens after.

One of the most striking examples of this is Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, also a familiar face, this time from Spike Lee's documentary When the Levees Broke. Ms. LeBlanc's first-hand report on the rising waters, her desperation and fear for her life and the lives of her family, was central to Lee's tremendous contribution to the real history of one of America's nightmares. Here, in Treme, she plays the girlfriend of Antoine Baptiste and mother to his baby, a rebirth, and an instance of Simon's insistent use of local to resonate universal. In The Wire he used a young Baltimore woman, Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, with no acting experience to portray Felicia "Snoop" Pearson: "perhaps the most terrifying female villain to ever appear in a television series" according to Stephen King who knows his "terrifyings

Some of the stories we are introduced to in this pilot are conventional television ones: a missing person, bruised and broken relationships, rebuilding houses and lives, but they are all unique in where they take place — one of the world's singular cities. Restaurant owner Janette Desautel's (Kim Dickens) attempts to soldier on with a quality menu seems a small anecdote in the larger swirl of narrative, but it makes for fascinating television and not just because I'm hooked on Top Chef. Good restaurants are the perfect storm of art, commerce, and cuisine, and as microcosms of larger society, I've often wondered why they don't make appearances in television fiction more often. Artie's restaurants in The Sopranos were always welcome respite from the horrors of Tony's home and business.

A warning: as in The Wire, the viewer must bring patience and fortitude. As foreign a subculture as the drug wars of urban Baltimore might have been to the audience, so are cultural aspects of the Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. Much of the dialogue is realistic, meaning undecipherable, and the cultural references can fly by unnoticed.

Perseverance will be eventually rewarded no doubt, and besides, I got a big kick out of seeing Sean Gormley (at right), the Dublin actor, portray the "f***in', Limey vulture" BBC interviewer who gets the worst of John Goodman. Imagine how many other inside jokes I'll get upon subsequent viewings.

Mr. Goodman as Creighton Bernette, the college professor who goes ballistic on an NPR reporter as well, not playing favorites, and Steve Zahn as a local musician and DJ based upon real life New Orleans institution Davis Rogan, round out the cast with added color as if more color is needed. A cameo by an inaudible Declan McManus (aka Elvis Costello) at one of Kermit Ruffins' gigs makes for sublime television, but the moment of being, as Virginia Woolf would say, in the episode was Clarke Peters in his Mardi Gras Indian costume. The dignified Mr. Peters in a substantial yellow outfit that would make Big Bird pause personifies the aforementioned swagger and joy; it is a musical note in a song that I hope plays for a long time.

Director Agnieszka Holland might have been known more for her Oscar-nominated films (Europa, Europa) than her television work until she signed on to direct The Wire's "Moral Midgetry" and "Corner Boys." It was a long way from Ms. Holland's direction of the children's classic The Secret Garden to the secret world of Baltimore's Stringer Bell. Now, with David Simon, she's in "the city that care forgot," behind the cameras in Treme'sfirst episode "Do You Know What It Means." It means that David Simon and Eric Overmyer have given us the beginnings of another brilliant television series.

Appropriately for a death knell, I unfortunately got Eric Overmyer's name wrong in the first appearance of this article on blogcritics.org Apologies to Mr. Overmyer who I called Rick out there in cyberworld!