Treme, Season 3, Episode 5, “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say”
Tonight’s introduction on Treme was heartbreaking. Desiree’s mother’s house was torn down by the city. It was on two lists: one for rehabilitation, one for demolition. Nobody could tell her how it ended up on either. But now it’s gone and all that’s left is the empty lot. Antoine tried to see it as a positive but Desiree knew that the land was now functionally worthless. All that was left was figuring out how to tell her mother that her home was gone. This pain would be revisited throughout this week’s Christmas themed episode.
The Good
-Albert again shined this week. His meeting with other chiefs – including Chief Howard Miller from Creole Wild West and Chief Doucette from the Flaming Arrow Warriors – at the beading/craft store was superlative. There’s no apparent hostility between the groups, save the sort of boasting jocularity that old men share. At other times though, he more serious. He lectures his family about this Christmas not being his last, “This is not my last Christmas dinner. Next year, I’ll cook. Understand?” But the most heartbreaking scene came after being pepper-sprayed, when he seemed like a broken man disinterest in the fight against officials who seems to have rightfully figured out as standing collectively against him and his city.
-Davis McAlary, usually a drag on the show, captures the mood running throughout, “This is New Orleans. We just let it all got to hell. Preservation through neglect.” His fight with his parents was also welcome. Unlike both Sonny and Annie (whom you can predictably find in The Bad), Davis delivers occasionally.
-Delmond’s caught between a rock and a hard-place: he can believe in the developers or believe in his father. His CD is forcing the issue, as he seems like a logical bridge between the city’s traditions and its possible path forward. The developers know that; that’s why they’re so anxious to get him and Albert to sign on as cultural attachees for their Jazz Center. It’s an abyss that multiple characters are staring into.
-LaDonna’s brother-in-law asks them to come for Christmas Dinner. It is a peace offering. LaDonna’s refusal – she invites the entire family to a closed Gigi’s – falls predictably on deaf ears. It is hard to imagine there being any sort of thaw between LaDonna and her sister-in-law, save some sort of unifying tragedy. If that thaw never occurs though, and all we have to show for it is Ladonna’s barely passive aggression toward that side of her family, we as viewers will benefit to a remarkable degree.
-Antoine loves Desiree. Antoine cheats on Desiree. Antoine loves Desiree. I damn the writers for making me forgive him time after time after time. His attempts to make Desiree happy after she’d seen her mother’s home turned down were…cute? Is that the word? Adorable perhaps. So to was his dancing with his classroom kids. Whether or not they were learning anything is probably beside the pointing. Dancing with your teacher is probably education enough.
-The police abuse of Toni and Sofia continues unabated, with continued police intimidation of both, particularly Sofia. The episode’s final shot – in which a policeman comes to the door to tell Toni that somebody (he himself, in fact) had smashed her windshield – was as to-the-point as the show can get. Who else was Toni supposed to believed had committed the crime?
-Finally, there’s Nelson. His ability to smell a rat is astounding; he recognizes that the 7-0 City Council vote to destroy some of the city’s public housing is proof positive of a conspiracy within the city government. His developer friend doesn’t seem interested in letting Nelson back into the fold – he is, after all, an outsider – but it seems easy enough to reason that we haven’t seen the last of Nelson’s scheming, especially given how quickly he got into the New Orleans Affordable Homeownership program.
The Bad
-Remember how Sonny is addicted to something? Remember how his musician friend took him to the Vietnamese to get himself sorted out? Remember how we spent the end of last season and the first four episodes of this season accepting the fact that Sonny might have finally turned a corner? You do? Well that’s impressive. I’m constantly trying to forget the guy. But anyway, all of that progress we hadn’t really invested in because we never really cared much about the character is gone: he’s back on something. Drugs? Gambling? It was hard to tell, but he went off to do something with somebody instead of meeting his girlfriend’s grandmother, a “…real honor!” according to his musician friend. It came completely out of left field without any build-up or preparation; it was just a plot pivot for the sake of a plot pivot.
-Annie’s parents came to town, and wouldn’t you know it, they’re worried about their classically trained daughter, they’re worried about her living arrangements with Davis, they’re worried about everything and yet…and yet…they’re taken with the city and their taken with their daughter’s music and really, everything’s fine, so that’s ten minutes of your live you’ll never get back at the end. Also, her mom was played by Isabella Rossellini so, uhh, yay?
-Cooks! They’re like ronin, traveling the countryside, masterless, just waiting for an opportunity. Everything Bourdain rights is hagiography to the profession; I get that. He was a cook. He loves cooks. He wants them lionized. Fine. But David Simon’s depiction of police will always be more pleasing, but it isn’t about creating the myth; it’s about capturing the profession, its goods, its bads, its more-often-than-not in-betweens. That’s where the juice is.
The Ugly
-How else can you describe the New Orleans Police Department pepper-spraying and tasering a crowd of protestors desperate to see housing projects remain open as a means of bringing lost souls back to the city? It’s bad enough that the scenario Albert envisions (a 4-3 vote, all the whites for the demolition, all the blacks against) doesn’t happen; what’s worse is what does. The City Council, controlled by developers and possessed by the idea that the city itself needs to fundamentally change, decides collectively that public housing is the problem. Albert says of the plan, “They’re trying to wash us away. This is their golden opportunity.” Later, Nelson’s banker friend confirms it with his chilling, “We’ve finally have the Philistines on the run.”
What happened to Desiree’s mother’s house is a smaller domino falling in a much larger operation, one designed to change the city’s face, to monetize it in such a way as that all of the city’s bad goes away and that all of the city’s good emerges. But who defines bad and good? At Davis’s house over Christmas dinner, the family fights over who is and isn’t welcome anymore, fights over crime, fights over politicians. Delmond meet with developers who think that surrounding a museum dedicated to Jazz with fencing makes perfect sense; when Delmond says they’re keeping the “Little Louis Armstrong’s out…” it’s almost as if the thought never even occurred to them. This idea thrived throughout the show, even at Janette’s tasting, in which her partner in the restaurant loved the idea of using local sweeteners, not because cooking local is a good idea, but because the restaurant can sell the dishes using it to tourists who want the city’s genuine flavor.
Thanks
–Dave Walker links to this recap every week. It is greatly appreciated. His own coverage of the show is sublime.
It’s bizarre, watching HBO Treme, having just moved here to NOLA. Fact is, I don’t know anything about this town yet. This much I do know, I work on one side of Canal Street and refuse to go into the French Quarter on the other side. I drive through Seventh Ward and on the edge of Treme along Rampart Street.
Here’s the deal with Treme. For all this weeping and moaning about the destruction of Treme, the important bits are already gone. I-10 took out Claiborne Street, the femoral artery of Treme. The old market’s gone. The old homes along Esplanade are gone.
The saddest line in last night’s show was “preservation by neglect”. The best line was “You hear that a lot in this city…’used to be'” Treme wasn’t destroyed by neglect but with the best of intentions. But it won’t be rescued with the best of intentions, either. Nothing lasts here. This place is wet and hot and what the storms don’t destroy the termites will. It all has to be replaced. Report
BlaiseP,
Is it your position the city has done a reasonable/admirable/effective job of preserving its own heritage sites?Report
Any pat answer to that question would only emerge from monumental hubris. I simply don’t know this city well enough to venture an opinion. I know Baton Rouge well enough, going south from that city and west of I-10 to the Texas line, Cajun country. I know Mamou and those environs as well.
New Orleans, no. The good people of Baton Rouge told me plainly: get to know the rest of the state before approaching New Orleans and they were right. I have only been here a little more than a month, most of that in hotels. I’ve come to know a few refugees from Braithwaite, flooded out by Isaac. I’m probably going to live in Old Metairie if present trends continue.
Since I’ve come here, I’ve seen a good deal of Gentilly and New Orleans East, terribly damaged by Katrina and disgracefully abandoned to their own devices. NO East has become a haven for the Vietnamese community, an enterprising people who make a delicious version of the classic Po’ Boy sandwich called banh my. But there isn’t one regular grocery store in NO East. The hospital which served that side of town has closed and will not reopen.
I’ve driven through Desire and the Lower Ninth Ward quite a few times. The wreckage is gone but the streets are like an old man’s mouth, with weedy gaps where houses once stood. Though everyone hears about the Lower Ninth, Gentilly and Desire are in even worse shape. The do-gooders have come and gone.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides.
Time the destroyer is time the preserver,
Like the river with its cargo of dead negroes, cows and chicken coops,
The bitter apple and the bite in the apple.
Heritage Sites are mostly bullshit in my opinion. Want to save a culture? Save its people. Let them save their heritage sites. It’s their heritage. Salvation from afar, well, too much of that sort of thing and the once-living thing is drowned in amber.Report
I’m anxious for your take; please don’t think I’m quibbling. But what I’m getting from this seems to be a frustration toward the city and perhaps its residents? I thought the show was able trying to tackle that last night, wherein there is a divide between the people in the city and the people who think they know how/what the city should do with itself. It’s that latter group which seems to get all the time and attention (think of the news segments we constantly have to endure about big storms, “It’s their own fault for living there!”) with little concern for what the place’s residents think.Report
This much I can tell you: I work in a faceless office building at the corner of St Charles and Gravier. It could be in any major city, this downtown area. The old Cotton Exchange has been turned into a chi-chi hotel, older buildings are being converted to condos and apartments.
No preservation going on here, nossir. Seventeenth century streets trying to accommodate 21st century commerce. Getting to my parking spot means driving up four stories of corkscrew and five more stories of parking deck.
Went outside for a bit of sunshine: it’s a perfect day here. Met up with an architect friend of mine, well, we know each other from the bar across the street. I approached him, on the strength of your questions, and proposed to interview him on the subject of the forces at work in New Orleans. I will put up the results here in a few days: tonight we’ll set out a series of questions, then work through them. Report
May I add in passing, he’s a man of colour, lived here all his life.Report
more and more, the thing that makes “Treme” work isn’t an episode but the collection of scenes that, through patchwork, deliver something so grand. If the writers are actually plotting this thing out so meticulously as to analogously speak to the state of EVERY American city, then they have to be some of the most intelligent artists we’ve seen in this new century.
For all the ‘flaws’ of “Treme” (just drop in on a nola.com comment section), its documentary/commentary/theatre/historical record has an impact that is going to reverberate decades after the show reaches a conclusion.
There are no easy answers or clear “right” decisions. To see Hildago’s character as some 2 dimensional representation of carpetbagging arrogance misses the mark. The story highlights the importance of being comfortable in your own skin and adapting to the tides. “Culture” preserved is a moving target. The city will ebb and flow with the changing times.
On one hand you have the stalwarts of “the way its always been” and on the other the gentrifying, profit-seeking opportunists. You think Iberville stands a chance of last out another 2 years in the wake of the LSU / Veterans development downtown? Maybe this forces us to appreciate and push to preserve what little we have left outside of the economic thrusts of Canal street. The challenge is….where is the money going to come from, who is going to make a stand to see it through (typically IS an outsider)?
As far as characters go…..Sonny has a huge story to tell with his internal conflict (both addiction and musician acceptance) and drawing in the Vietnamese community. Annie, IMO, is reaching the point of irritation in that her character just cannot pull-off /carry the story of being a musician on the cusp of success. A Meschiya Lake or Aurora Nealand could pull that off…..but not AnnieReport