Like his critically acclaimed “The Wire” (The best show that ever existed. Watch it!), David Simon’s “Treme” is not interested in holding your hand. The first episode had no “here are the characters, this is the plot” presentation, it plunks you down in the middle of these lives and asks you to make some deductions and figure things out. That’s right. It’s TV that asks something of you, of your brain and of your heart. Because the place it puts you is New Orleans, 3 months after Katrina. In scene after scene the questions “How’s your house?” and “How much water you get?” are asked and answered, with only a hint of the destruction of houses and people that went on. But even if life goes on for some, and the questions are casual, “Treme” shows us the pain and devastation of a city that was almost destroyed. When Albert Lamoreaux (Clark Peters) sees his house for the first time since fleeing the storm, it’s not just the water damage or the mud floor that grabs you, it’s the way you can look at his face and see that he is absolutely gutted. And then, in moments, his jaw is set in steely resolve, and it is clear, he’s not leaving.
Why? There are a lot of questions that we don’t get an exact answer to yet in this episode. We know that Albert is staying for practice, and that he is some kind of ‘chief’, but without doing the extra research on Mardi Gras Indians the exact ‘why’ still remains a bit of a mystery. Other questions? What does John Goodman’s character do exactly? Why does Davis (Steve Zahn) hate his neighbors? How are all these people intertwined?
Simon uses quick beats to define his large cast of characters. You see all of Antoine Baptist’s (Wendall Pierce) charm and hard luck the very first time he tries to hustle a cab driver out of a fare. He lives out of the city now, but he needs to get back in to play music, to make money, to see people. He is a man battling to get back to his old life, even if his old life means no more than not having to take a cab into town to scramble for gigs.
And it takes only three scenes, two of anger and one of love, to show the viewer that Creighton (John Goodman) and Toni (Melissa Leo) are pretty perfectly matched. A couple passionately devoted to the city and its people, and determined to use the little power they have through influence and money to affect some positive change. We also see that even in their privileged position, roadblocks are constantly thrown in their way.
We are given a few intriguing narrative threads to look forward to. One is LaDonna (Khandi Alexander) and Toni’s search for LaDonna’s brother Daymo, who has been missing since the storm. By episode’s end, we know that Daymo was in jail when the storm hit, and was moved by the sheriff’s department. We have a maybe love story between Davis and Jeanette (Kim Hickerson), the owner of a local restaurant. Another is Albert’s quest to get his tribe ready for Carnival, as well as an already intriguing father-son dynamic between him and his son. Clark Peters as Lester Freamon is one of my favorite characters on “The Wire”, so I for one am really looking forward to this story. With a cast this stellar, there is a lot to look forward to this season.
Though “Treme” is in some ways a story of Katrina, it is also a story of after. Of how people find joy and music and beauty in the bleakest of places. Of how home is still home, even if it’s nothing but the dirty remnant of the life you once had. It’s a story of rebuilding a place, and the rebuilding of people.
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