Some thoughts on endings

Late last night, Eric posted some thoughts on characters, which I’d encourage you to read. Basically, he didn’t like the ending to Episode 3. He is, of course, entitled to his opinion.

But he is wrong.

So, there we were, 10:58 EST. The music was playing, a funeral dance was happening: yet another ending canonizing the endless quirks of New Orleans life. Then, BOOM! The bus scene was brief, and cutting. I’ll concede that it would have been briefer, and perhaps more cutting, had the bus driver simply stopped, the cameras flashed, and the bus moved on. In fact, yeah, they should have done that. But it was pretty great even with his trite yammering. Was it contrived, or heavy-handed? Well, maybe. But it’s different than the scene with the visiting UW students. There were good intentions mocked in that instance; opportunism and stupidity were mocked here.

Who knows if this was the best possible ending for this episode, out of all possible endings. But I’m a sucker for pure shock value, especially in a weekly show that has to bring me back for more each time. There are only so many times I can end my Sunday with the chief howling into the night.

Obama watches Treme?

The Washington Post reports that President Obama’s deputy press secretary reports that President Obama has been known to “switch on ‘Treme,’ a new HBO show about the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.”

A poll: Who thinks Obama actually spends an hour each week watching our beloved show? I’m calling bullshit, and gonna say this is merely a nice chance for the Prez to show how he’s never gonna forget about NOLA.

But, hey, maybe he does. And if so, who do you think his favorite character is? Albert, right?

Some Thoughts on Characters

I’ll just go ahead and say this: I found the final scene of this week’s show extremely disappointing. A Mardi Gras Indian ceremony in the Ninth Ward gets interrupted by a bus offering a Katrina Tour? Aesop wrote subtler endings.

The heavy-handedness of the moment struck me as completely unnecessary. One hand, I agree with Reeves, who pointed out in an email that the tour bus was a welcome punctuation mark on the end of what appeared to be yet another musical finish. On the other, I wonder what the point was. I wonder why piling on.

These characters just found the remains of their friend/father/relative under a boat in his garage. They are surrounded by devastation. The heaviness of the moment, the failure of their government – our government – to respond, is already tangible. The appearance of the tour bus, complete with bumbling apologetic driver? After the misadventures of the kids from Madison Wisconsin last week, that was just gratuitous.

I understand that the writers need to walk a fine line. After all, they are not just creating drama; they are attempting a kind of history and anthropology. There is no denying, for example, their attention to detail. In the episode’s penultimate scene (at least as far as I can remember), John Goodman’s Creighton is holding a book called Rising Tide. That book’s subtitle is, of course, “The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America.”

More on that scene: I loved it. I loved the fact that it was purely dramatic: a suspicious father and a stoner piano teacher facing off. The best moments in Treme so far have been moments in which I felt like I was watching a show about people, about lives, not about a city or a historical event. This third episode was full of them: The bullshitting session between Delmond and other members of Dr. John’s band after they recorded, the Davis stripper song, the discovery of that body, pretty much every scene featuring Antoine Batiste.

I hope that as the show unfolds, Messrs Simon and Overmyer let the characters – already so great in quantity and quality – bloom. I hope that their primary duty is to those characters, not the nooks and crannies of the city and its culture, not the need to demonstrate the disaster of our politics at every turn, and not the need to share their love of New Orleans music. Those things are all important. We may have come to New Orleans for the scenery or the history or the music, but we’d like to stay for the people.

An Oral History of Bounce Music

“Listen, time to get buck wild / here we go with a brand new style.” – Gregory D

Aubrey Edwards and Alison Fensterstock recently unveiled their online archive of New Orleans hip-hop and bounce music. Mainly comprised of portraits and oral histories of artists who created the music sub-genre, it is perhaps the most comprehensive and physical documentation about the Crescent City’s unique sound (aside from the insightful documentary Ya Heard Me).

I’m well aware that we are only three episodes into the season, but this seems to be a particular history that Simon has either overlooked or decided not to address (hopefully he’ll touch on it as the season continues to unfold). His love affair with jazz has been well documented, and how could he not examine jazz culture and tradition with such care; New Orleans, after all, is the birthplace of jazz. But what of bounce music, what of New Orleans hip-hop? The stylized sub-genre is as much a part of the city as jazz and Hubig’s.

In a recent interview with Filter magazine, Alison detailed the sub-genre’s conflicted beginning:

“This is a long, sort of complicated story. The first truly NOLA-flavored rap song was ‘Buck Jump Time,’ released in 1987 by Gregory D and Mannie Fresh. It was the first recording of what they call ‘project rap,’ which you hear in tons of bounce songs (shouting out different wards, projects and hoods) and used a tuba for the bass line. Juvenile was performing his ‘Bounce for the Juvenile’ in clubs in the late ’80s as well. But the first real bounce record that most folks accept as such is DJ Irv and TT Tucker’s ‘Wha Dey At.’ Another DJ, DJ Jimi, recorded it later that year (’92) as ‘Where They At.’ There’s a point of contention about who was actually performing it first in the clubs; Jimi was at Big Man’s Lounge on Louisiana and Claiborne and Irv was at Ghost Town off Earhart Boulevard. But Jimi wound up getting more juice with his record because it was put out on Avenue Records—a label run by Isaac Bolden, an old-school ’60s A&R dude who had also worked with people like Jean Knight and knew the business. Jimi’s version wound up charting in ’92 on the hip-hop and R&B charts.”

For more on New Orleans hip-hop and bounce, visit the online archive Where They At.

Ambition

Apologies in advance to Jason, our lone Wire holdout, but I must post one early bit of comparison between the two shows before the latter fades from our memories. One shorthand reviewers have used to contrast the series is to say that The Wire was pessimistic where Treme is the hopeful.

I’m not sure this is quite right, based on a thorough viewing of 1/3 of this first season. One key difference between the shows’ respective outlooks on life seems, to me, to hinge on differing levels of ambition.

After the scene in the first episode where the now-slightly-less-grating-after-that-kinda-funny-stipper-song Davis plays awkward fanboy to Elvis Costello, we see Davis (soon, I will learn the character’s names) trying to convince Kermit to talk to Costello.

“Don’t you wanna get famous. You deserve to be famous…You just stand there tellin’ me that all you wanna do is get high, play some trumpet, and barbecue in New Orleans you’re whole damn life?”

And, Kermit: “That’ll work.”

This moment was cited in a heap of reviews, and highlighted in the show’s trailer. It’s clearly important, or, at least, a pithy way to summarize some of the show’s driving themes. In The Wire, everybody was hungry – for money, power, sex, drugs, a better life. Stringer and Ralls and Sobotka were all trying to get a piece of theirs, and the next guy’s. In Treme, so far, everyone just wants to get back to what they once had. The once status quo.

Ladonna wants her brother back. Davis wants to jam. Janette wants her restaurant back up and running. Creighton’s daughter wants to go back to her old school. Albert wants his chiefdom back. It’s not quite clear what Antoine wants.

Whether this is a good thing, narratively, I don’t know. A tenet of script writing is that your protagonist has to want something, and exert great effort to go after it. I do know I’m most curious about Delmond’s arc right now, and he’s full of ambition. Here’s hoping the status quo is enough of a goal.

On a broader note, whether living without ambition is a better way of life, I also don’t know. Amibition may be something you’re born with, and in my case, watching people with a lack of it is always frustrating. But those sausages Kermit had on the grill were a good argument in his favor.

“Right Place, Wrong Time”

By no means is the meaning of this week’s title hyperbole. In fact, it comes from the classic 1973 Dr. John cut of the same name. It’s also pretty evident that the title carries multiple tenors, and not just for this particular episode either. The phrase could easily be applied to any one of the characters in Simon’s turbulent New Orleans, but I’m guessing the obvious nod is toward the final scene in Episode 3 when the unwitting bus driver interrupts the tribute to one of Albert Lambreaux’s tribemen. And you thought the opening scene was heavy.

Words of Wisdom

Treme’s been chock full of pithy one liners of advice. Some have been overwrought, some I’ve rather liked. Here’s my favorite from this week:

“People do a lot of dumb shit cause it’s easier.” – Albert Lambreaux

In what ways has this deep wisdom impacted your life this week? I fried up some eggs this morning for breakfast, rather than eating another bowl of cold cereal.

Can we talk about how Lester Freamon killed a guy?

We have our first on-screen death (maybe), and there’s been an odd silence here about it. Thoughts?

I imagine it was more shocking for those familiar with Clarke Peters’ catatonically-pensive Wire character, and I’m sure the writers knew that. It’s sort of like watching Macaulay Culkin follow Richie Rich with a turn as a drug-using murderer.

(Related: Clarke Peters played Nelson Mandela?)

Jason: I sat spellbound, somewhat in disbelief but mostly because it was the high point of an otherwise dry episode, watching Albert Lambreaux wash blood off his hands. I first thought, Wow, I wonder who else the chief has killed; what other dark secret is he hiding? Something in my gut tells me this isn’t the first time he’s gone to extreme measure for himself or his tribe–hopefully Simon will continue to unravel this particular plot point. Then I thought, It’s funny how Albert can’t get water turned on where he “lives” but it’s fully functioning at the house where he just murdered(?) some capricious teenager. And FYI: Water doesn’t always wash away your sins, Chief.

There’s Pride in Times Square

Eric touched on something I wanted to mention:

I think a great deal of the show will be about a city’s pride and the unpleasant process of occasionally swallowing it.

OK, his point is actually much more important, but it’s related. I work in Times Square, here in New York, a fact that elicits a soft coo from anyone who’s never spent more than a few hours there. No true New Yorker spends more time than he must in Times Square, just as, apparently, no true New Orleanian waltzes through the French Quarter to hear some jazz.

Every major city has one: a district so fraught with out-of-towners that “true” locals avoid it like Antoine avoids responsibility and conjugal duty.  Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Georgetown in Washington D.C. Faneuil Hall in Boston. The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town.  I don’t know, but assume, that Hollywood is like this in LA (perhaps WAT’s West Coast bureau can enlighten us?). A couple friends recently returned from a weekend in New Orleans, and told me the local they were staying with scoffed at their insistence to visit the French Quarter. I suppose I’d hold my nose up if a visitor wanted to see Times Square, but I’d certainly take them there, and if I’m being honest with myself, I’d admit that Times Square at night is one of mankind’s most awesome creations.

I hope we don’t spend the show beating up on the French Quarter and Bourbon Street. Steve Zahn’s clever joke (Yes, he was better in this episode!) to the maurauding cowboys was enough.

Anybody been to the French Quarter? Fun? See many NOLA natives?

Who is Davis McAlary?

“Cloying” is not an option, but go ahead and take the Davis poll anyway. We’ve had our say.

(Update: Irritating but harmless.)