Snap Judgment: Creighton Bernette
We get it Creigh, you’re upset. New Orleans is worsening and no one seems to care (despite your spirited You Tube manifestos), you can’t quite get the right words on the page and, because of this, it seems your relationship with your wife is slowly deteriorating (I might be a bit a head of myself here, but I think that’s where Simon is taking us). The truth of the matter is this: Creighton has become terribly flat as a character up to this point. This became painstakingly clear in Episode 6. We saw a softer, more caring side of Antoine as he tried to cope with the death of his former music teacher, we saw Janette and Davis growing closer (as friends, “with or without benefits”) as a result of her having to close the restaurant and, to my surprise, we saw Simon close a chapter in LaDonna’s life–we discover Daymo is dead, not locked in prison somewhere. This is particularly interesting to me because, up until this point, LaDonna has been consumed with finding her brother, so it’ll be interesting to watch where her character will go from here. With Creighton, all he does is complain about the same things: the lack of attention to New Orleans, how he’s uninspired to finish his book and why his city is such a great place to live despite the impact of Hurricane Katrina. Yeah, yeah, we get it. There was, a few episodes back, flashes of an overprotective father that highlighted a different side of him but, other than that, I can’t think of many scenarios where we are introduced to a different layer of Creighton Bernette the man. To me, Creighton Bernette the writer is my least favorite, probably because, watching him stare helplessly at the blank page on the computer screen, he reminds me so much of myself and my daily frustrations trying to create original and lasting work. Usually, I’m all for characters I can relate to, but not here.
I agree with you on Creighton. He has become a bit of a one-trick pony — and obviously I really wanted to the writer-character to be a good one, so this is a bummer. This is especially because his writing could be such a good means for us to learn more about the city and the storm and to take us to new places. He could interview people, he could delve into history, politics, etc. Oh well
I do think Episode 6 was the best of the season so far as far as pure drama goes. I really loved the Albert Lambreaux subplot. He might be the most interesting, mysterious character in recent tv history.