This second episode seemed to be an episode about dreams thwarted, or at least tainted. We have Davis losing his job (a job which almost seemed to define him in the first episode, gone just a few minutes into the second), Janette having to beg her parents for a loan and still not getting enough to keep her restaurant or her ruined house together, Delmond having a great time in the city he abandoned only to get arrested for smoking weed, Sofie getting to come back to school in New Orleans at the expense of poorer kids, Albert getting a member of his tribe back but not before committing a shocking act of violence and most poignantly, LaDonna believing that her brother has been found, only to come face to face with the wrong David Brooks.
LaDonna's plight is one of the toughest to watch, because in her we see a strong woman trying so hard to hold so much together. The well being of her mother, her brother, her bar, her marriage and her kids are all on her shoulders, and in Khandi Alexander's performance you can see a woman who is bending but not about to break. In the scene where her husband suggests that she sell the bar and move to Baton Rouge it takes just a few facial expressions for the audience to see that this will not end well. She is not willing to give up her past or her home, no matter that right now her city is in ruins. Like many of our main characters, she is left, but not leaving.
We meet some new characters this week (Simon and Overmeyer LOVE their sprawling casts) in Sonny and Annie, street musician and possible con artists who seem to be getting a little sick of tourists and well wishers in their town. We also see some new sides to the characters we met last week, including a sweetness previously undetected in Davis (he really seemed to want to send those kids somewhere where they would have a good time!) and an intense anger and brutality in Albert. Dave Walker of NOLA.com is doing some very interesting annotations of each episode, and I really liked his explanation of Albert's actions. He mentions that depression and a kind of temporary insanity were rampant in the city after Katrina, and people often did things that they would not have done in normal circumstances. Something about reading his ideas on Albert's brutal beating of the thief made me feel a little better about it, and not so bad about how much I enjoyed his final scene, practicing with his lone tribe member. I am definitely a huge fan of Clark Peters, and I want Albert to be a man I can root for, despite this act of violence. I am sure it will not go entirely unpunished though. If I learned anything from The Wire it's that Simon and co. rarely let a bad or a good deed go unpunished.
This was a darker episode, but I must mention how much I am enjoying Wendall Pierce as Antoine. He's got this whole charming rogue thing down pat. Is it any surprise that a man who can flirt like that with his trombone has more than a few illegitimate children running around town? His odyssey to Bourbon Street and beyond for a paying gig added a nice touch of levity to the episode (loved his conversation with those Wisconsin kids!) as well as giving it that nice kick of music that is becoming this show's trademark.
But where is it all going? I am not sure yet, but I think I can see the hints of larger storylines on the horizon. We have Toni and Ladonna on a search for Daymo, about to embark on a mission through some kind of bureaucratic hell that may not have any kind of happy ending for them. Many of the characters, Janette, Davis, Antoine, Albert, and seemingly Sonny and Annie are just trying to find a way to get through the day and keep their lives, which are all in differing states of disrepair, together. Creighton is trying to tell his story, his city's story, without exploiting the less privileged people around him (which of course he can't.) At this point I'm not sure if there will be an overarching plot of any sort, or if this is just a story about rebuilding homes and lives and all the pain and messiness and beauty that comes with that. Either way, I am looking forward to what's coming next.
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