New Orleans is Thinking; Treme's Season 2 Brings More Surprises

TREME
HBO
The National Post

If Treme were any other TV series, its first season would have consisted of a web of interrelated narratives, all forcibly resolved when Katrina struck in the season finale. Sort of like The Last Days of Pompeii.

In fact, of course, Treme began post-hurricane, to show the people of New Orleans trying to get their lives together in the aftermath. There was an unexpected flashback to the disaster, and it did come in the first season's last episode, to answer some questions that we'd had no particular interest in asking. The show had a rhythm all its own. Composed of short scenes, rapidly intercut, it yet managed to feel laid-back. Credit the setting, the wit and style and underlying passion of the writing, and above all the music.

The second season looks like being the same mixture as before. We pick up eight months after we left off, and - with one obvious exception - all the previous regulars are still in place, though not all of them are still in town. The absentee is of course John Goodman's university teacher, who last year threw himself off the ferry for reasons that never became very clear; it was not as if he was any more depressed at the end of the season than he'd been throughout. His onscreen family miss him in their different ways; his teenage daughter, never the most engaging cast member, is now in a state of permanent mope, while his charmingly frazzled lawyer wife Toni (Melissa Leo) is throwing herself still more into her work. Once again she's called upon to discover the truth about a Katrina death, in the face of bureaucratic obstacles ranging from intransigence to inertia.

There's one major new arrival: a go-getter all set to cash in on the reconstruction projects; his ears prick up at mention of Bobby Jindal. He also gives rise to some unwontedly explanatory writing. In his favour, he does want to explore the city's music, which bulks even larger and less classifiable than it did before. "Gumbo ya ya - it means everyone talks at once," says DJ Davis (Steve Zahn), introducing his girlfriend to a rap act with a traditional jazz backing.

His lady, a virtuoso of versatility herself, is the beauteous Annie, played by Lucia Micarelli, who must surely be the most bewitching actress-singer-violinist ever and, with Goodman gone, the show's true star.

"Her chops just get better and better," says Sonny (Michiel Huisman), her former partner now reduced to playing street-piano as a solo act, and he's right. She and Zahn are quite a couple. Her appearance at his rich family's Thanksgiving dinner is a comic highlight, playing out in a way that stupefies Davis and satisfies us. Davis's playlists are still getting him in trouble with his station manager, but he's trying hard at home. "You've cleaned up for me, Davis" says Annie, returning wide-eyed from a tour. Davis's idea of cleaning up is to throw a sinkfull of dirty dishes straight into the garbage, but it obviously works short-term.

The season's second episode finds no less than three of the characters trying to form their own bands, while LaDonna (Khandi Alexander) is thinking of having live music in her bar. Even her ex, Antoine (the wonderful Wendell Pierce, underused these first two weeks), has grown tired of being a sideman. Albert (Clarke Peters) is devoting himself, for the second season running, to renovating a former dwelling, and seems suspiciously uninterested in reuniting his Mardi Gras Indian band. His son Delmond (Rob Brown) is apparently commuting between New Orleans and New York where he's making a living, or what passes for one in modern jazz circles, as a trumpeter. It's typical of the show that it trusts us to know what city we're in without benefit of captions.

Also in the Big Apple is Janette (Kim Dickens) who, after the failure of her own restaurant back home, is working in the kitchen of a sadistic prima donna of a chef. "Slow down" he tells her, when dissatisfied with her salmon "listen to your fish." Her N.Y. colleagues seems as dismissive of N.O. cuisine as Delmond's are of its music, and she's bound to be on the plane back soon. Again, in any other show, it would have happened by the end of the first episode. This one takes its time.

There is a slight change in overall tempo. The initial sense of crisis has dulled; survival is less of a battle, more of a grind. As befits a show from David Simon, creator of The Wire, this season is widening its lens, to take a closer look at the devastated schools and at the overstretched police. "Let Bourbon Street be Bourbon Street," says Toni's favourite officer, advising his detectives on not running people in for indecent exposure unless they're actually having sex on the street. Tolerance, he tells them, is "one thing we're famous for - I mean famous, not infamous." Nice to find that someone still knows the difference.

Treme's mental habitat is more whirlpool than river, and the lack of obvious forward motion can be disconcerting. But the rewards are rich. The premiere title is "Accentuate the Positive." That song is sung, beautifully, during the action and it's hopeful; and again over the closing credits, where it feels ironic but still uplifting. There's no other current TV drama of this distinction, and the music always intoxicates.