Treme season 1
Jul. 9th, 2010 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nigeltdeBack when I said Justified and Archer were the two best new shows of the season (is it even meaningful to talk about seasons in this sense any more?) I don't know how or why I forgot about Treme.
Maybe because it doesn't feel like a season of tv, so unhurried, so willing to linger on moments that aren't big emotionally or narratively: someone walks to their next gig; someone cooks a meal; someone sews a line of beads into a costume. Hours and hours of life. Treme asks, what is the difference between a city and a person? How does damage work? What does recovery look like?
The central characters are pulled from the New Orleans tourist brochure: NO is apparently a city made entirely out of music, food, passion, history, pageantry, colour. There are no accountants in this show. There is only one lawyer and her hair is not Pantene-glossy. And so it's not balance or shaky-cam documentary-veracity the show's aiming for and that's how it gets away with its claim to authenticity. Because what does it feel like to a great trombone player in a city of amazing trombone players? It feels slumming at an airport gig, your heart sinking at the sight of a trombone-case coming down the luggage carousel. How do you deal with just not being able to afford keeping open the restaurant in which you invested your entire soul? By getting drunk and singing Iko Iko to a parked car. Maybe you figure your fairy wings and wand are enough to turn it into a taxi.
There were some extraordinary moments in the finale. Two were so visually startling I hope they go down in TV history. Big Chief Lambreaux's meeting with the other tribe when they stepped out on St Joseph's Day was simultaneously tense and lyric; the grace and vibrancy of the tribes' costumes as they negotiated each others' space and rights was a great callback to the end of episode one, when the final shot was of Lambreaux in his sun-bright yellow costume fading into the night.
Clarke Peters is so magisterial as Lambreaux, so deeply rooted it seems like he pulls his chiefly authority straight out of the ground. He is a hard man with little flex -- which means he's due a fall in season two, because this is a David Simon show - and danger is present when the tribes meet; but Lambreaux and Big Chief Donald Harrison meet each other with respect and a bow. Somehow the tonnes of gravitas and history that swell the chests of these men don't weigh the scene down; it floats on the swish of their feathers. It is astoundingly gorgeous. I wish this cap could do it justice but I have a shitty copy and sound and movement are just as important as composition and colour. I cannot wait for the DVDs.
In a flashback to the moments before Katrina we finally meet LaDonna 's brother Daymo. Daymo has previously been only talked about. In what ended up being the strongest traditional narrative arc of the season, we followed LaDonna and Toni in tracking down what happened to Daymo before and during the floods. Is he alive? Is he still in jail? What name does he go by? These questions are eventually answered; Daymo is buried. The flashback gives us no new information and the scenes play out unremarkably. Daymo takes a call from a friend, heads out to run an errand, gets stopped by police. The sun is still shining.
Because shit is fucked, Daymo does end up in jail, and the last we see of him is when he reclines under his bunk and levels a direct, half-shadowed glare at the camera, ten challenging seconds of it, the only time in the whole series someone breaks the fourth wall. Daymo is SOMEONE, and he is fucking DEAD. Thank god Treme thinks Daymo, his anger, his powerlessness, his doom, is important enough and moving enough for us to see.
And in the end it turns out recovery looks like LaDonna in Daymo's funeral line, transported. She bows under the weight of her grief and responsibility and stands and dances smiling. Kandhi Alexander was just amazing the whole season.
And guys, the music is SO AWESOMELY AWESOME.
Maybe because it doesn't feel like a season of tv, so unhurried, so willing to linger on moments that aren't big emotionally or narratively: someone walks to their next gig; someone cooks a meal; someone sews a line of beads into a costume. Hours and hours of life. Treme asks, what is the difference between a city and a person? How does damage work? What does recovery look like?
The central characters are pulled from the New Orleans tourist brochure: NO is apparently a city made entirely out of music, food, passion, history, pageantry, colour. There are no accountants in this show. There is only one lawyer and her hair is not Pantene-glossy. And so it's not balance or shaky-cam documentary-veracity the show's aiming for and that's how it gets away with its claim to authenticity. Because what does it feel like to a great trombone player in a city of amazing trombone players? It feels slumming at an airport gig, your heart sinking at the sight of a trombone-case coming down the luggage carousel. How do you deal with just not being able to afford keeping open the restaurant in which you invested your entire soul? By getting drunk and singing Iko Iko to a parked car. Maybe you figure your fairy wings and wand are enough to turn it into a taxi.
There were some extraordinary moments in the finale. Two were so visually startling I hope they go down in TV history. Big Chief Lambreaux's meeting with the other tribe when they stepped out on St Joseph's Day was simultaneously tense and lyric; the grace and vibrancy of the tribes' costumes as they negotiated each others' space and rights was a great callback to the end of episode one, when the final shot was of Lambreaux in his sun-bright yellow costume fading into the night.
Clarke Peters is so magisterial as Lambreaux, so deeply rooted it seems like he pulls his chiefly authority straight out of the ground. He is a hard man with little flex -- which means he's due a fall in season two, because this is a David Simon show - and danger is present when the tribes meet; but Lambreaux and Big Chief Donald Harrison meet each other with respect and a bow. Somehow the tonnes of gravitas and history that swell the chests of these men don't weigh the scene down; it floats on the swish of their feathers. It is astoundingly gorgeous. I wish this cap could do it justice but I have a shitty copy and sound and movement are just as important as composition and colour. I cannot wait for the DVDs.
In a flashback to the moments before Katrina we finally meet LaDonna 's brother Daymo. Daymo has previously been only talked about. In what ended up being the strongest traditional narrative arc of the season, we followed LaDonna and Toni in tracking down what happened to Daymo before and during the floods. Is he alive? Is he still in jail? What name does he go by? These questions are eventually answered; Daymo is buried. The flashback gives us no new information and the scenes play out unremarkably. Daymo takes a call from a friend, heads out to run an errand, gets stopped by police. The sun is still shining.
Because shit is fucked, Daymo does end up in jail, and the last we see of him is when he reclines under his bunk and levels a direct, half-shadowed glare at the camera, ten challenging seconds of it, the only time in the whole series someone breaks the fourth wall. Daymo is SOMEONE, and he is fucking DEAD. Thank god Treme thinks Daymo, his anger, his powerlessness, his doom, is important enough and moving enough for us to see.
And in the end it turns out recovery looks like LaDonna in Daymo's funeral line, transported. She bows under the weight of her grief and responsibility and stands and dances smiling. Kandhi Alexander was just amazing the whole season.
And guys, the music is SO AWESOMELY AWESOME.
