Treme 2.9: Pied Pipers

Well, my favorite sequence in the brutally ending Treme 2.9 features Antoine and trumpet player Kermit Ruffins (playing himself, of course).  Antoine's audience is a little low - in numbers - in the club his band is playing.  He soon learns why: Kermit is knocking 'em dead a few feet down the street.

But Antoine has an idea.  He walks over to Kermit's club.  Kermit sees him and invites him on the stage, where Antoine beguiles the crowd with his music.  He leaves and tells everyone where they can hear more of it.  The crowd follows him back to his club.

But wily Kermit is not be outdone.  He soon shows at Antoine's club, and plays the best trumpet you and I ever heard - had I been able to go through the screen, I'd have have joined the crowd that followed Kermit back to his club.  Even without me, the crowd was bigger than the one Antoine wooed away.

A great sequence.

But this is New Orleans more than a year after Katrina, and crime is viciously on the rise, as we've seen all season.   And before the night is over, Harley Watt - played by Steve Earle - will be shot dead in front of Annie's horrified eyes.  His mistake?  He gave a little advice to a mugger, after giving him his money.  Muggers don't like being lectured in New Orleans.

The pace has now picked up.  With Colson now on the murder squad, he'll be directly involved in Watt's murder case.  Just two more episodes left to see how this all plays out.

And here, in honor of Harley Watt, is a taste of Steve Earle's great song This City, from the first season of Treme ...

See also Treme Is Back! ... Treme 2.2: Bounce and Jazz ... Treme 2.3: Crime and Music ... Treme 2.4: Angry Albert ... Treme 2.5: "Today I'm Gonna Write a Song" ... Treme 2.6: "Phil Ochs Said" ... Treme 2.7: "One-Murder Mardis Gras" ... Treme 2.8: Antoine's Music

And also Treme! ... Treme 1.2: "If you ain't been to heaven" ... Treme 1.3: Fine Sweet and Sour ... Treme 1.4: New Orleans, New York, Nashville ... Treme 1.5: Delicious! ... Treme 1.8: Passions and Dreams ... Treme 1.9: Creighton ... Treme Season One Finale: Happy Sad Life

And: My Favorite Moment in Treme (Season One)

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The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book

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Enjoy listening to audio books? Get a free audio book copy of The Plot to Save Socrates - or any one of 85,000 other titles - with a 14-day trial membership at Audible.com ...

Treme!

Seeing as how The Wire was one of the best shows ever on television, I figured I'd give Treme a chance.  It's another creation of David Simon, who did The Wire.   It has even has Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters from The Wire (Bunk and Freamon), and lot of other incandescent talent (Melissa Leo, John Goodman, Khandi Alexander, more) and New Orleans music.   It debuted on HBO tonight.  I loved it.

The story starts in New Orleans, three months after Katrina.   What The Wire did for Baltimore, Treme does for New Orleans, more specifically, one particular part of it, Treme.  The details, the colors, and, most of all, the musical performances, are true and stunning.

Pierce plays Antoine Batiste, a trombone player.   He's constantly short-changing cabbies - promising to pay them someday, in one case, leaving his "bone" as collateral (in that case, he gets a gig from Kermit Ruffins, playing himself, the real musician, and pays the cabbie back right away).   The music he's part of, ranging from clubs to funeral processions, is just the thing.

Treme is as much about the music as New Orleans, which is only right, since New Orleans is so much about the music.   One of the best scenes, near the close of the first day, has dj Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn) playing Louis Prima's "Buona Sera" under all kinds of action.   The song plays pretty much in its entirety - the kind of thing you might see and hear in a movie, not usually on television.  Prima was born and lived the first part of his career in the 1930s in New Orleans, so his music was especially apt.

McAlary is a wannabe musician as well as a disc jockey.  He breaks into Tower Records, which is pulling out of New Orleans, to get copies of his band's CD, which he left there on consignment.  While he's there, he helps himself to a CD in which he was playing guitar, as well as a CD he says was stolen from his car  (so he's "karmicly" entitled to it).   He's sleeping with restaurant owner Janette Desautel - played by Kim Dickens - seen in Lost, FlashForward, and, most memorably so far as Matt's mother in Friday Night Lights.    But she could be even more memorable in Treme.

Even Elvis Costello's in Treme.   Kermit seems not to know of him, but McAlary certainly does, and is determined to get to better know Costello -  certainly can't hurt McAlary's musical  aspirations.

Goodman's a college prof, married to Melissa Leo, a civil rights attorney.   Each in their own way is fighting for New Orleans - against the media's misreporting, and various official misconduct in the wake of Katrina.

The Wire's realism had strong rays of optimism, but was mostly about the soul-lacerating, dead-end life of Baltimore's drug culture.   Treme's realism is about a city determined to survive what Goodman aptly insists is a "man-made disaster" - a levee system not up to the task.   The people and the music will make this story one of triumph.

And I'll be back here next week with my review of the next episode.


8-min podcast review of Treme