Treme | Season One

Antoine Batiste wanders around New Orleans cheating on his girlfriend and asking people where he can play jazz. A Japanese man gives him money so he can play jazz. He gets beat up by the cops. Then he plays more jazz. He loses all his money he made playing jazz in a poker game. Then, jazz.

Annie plays the fiddle with her scraggly boyfriend on the streets. She is super cute and cool and talented. Her boyfriend is also talented- at doing drugs. Also, jazz. Keyboards on Bourbon Street, plink plink plonk. Lady you can play the fiddle better than a cartoon cow in a barnyard jamboree. What are you hanging around with that doofus for? Is it because of jazz?

Creighton Bernette is a professor who is mad because of Hurricane Katrina. He goes to Mardi Gras but he’s not feeling it. So he makes a Youtube video saying fuck you you fucking fucks. It goes super viral and people give him free po’ boy sandwiches. He’s got writer’s block so he sleeps on the porch with only jazz to use as a pillow.

Janette Desautel is a really good cook. She has a restaurant that everyone loves. But it fails, for some reason? She looks like Larry David’s wife on Curb Your Enthusiasm. I’ll tell you why her restaurant didn’t do so good— there wasn’t any jazz in the food. Waiter- why isn’t my oyster playing a tiny trombone? And why do I not hear a miniature piano emitting from my beignets? How will I know who wants to be in that number in the event that saints come marching in?

Davis McAlary is a radio DJ who gets fired because a musician kills a chicken in the studio on the air for voodoo’s sake. Davis smokes weed and runs for mayor with a (you guessed it) jazz political album. He spends Mardi Gras hanging out with that hot fiddle player and they almost hook up and that was the best episode of the whole season just watching those two hang out.

Albert “Big Chief” Lambreaux wants to get the housing projects reopened so people can come back to New Orleans so he trespasses until cops hit him and put him in jail. Also, he’s a Mardi Gras Indian chief. There are a lot of scenes of him and his friends getting Indian costumes ready.  Sewing! Beading! Feather gluing! Idle chatter! I saw so much costume making I felt like I should have a big flamboyant Indian outfit by the end of the show.

I’m not sure why I felt like a show set in New Orleans had too much jazz in it. I guess that’s like being mad that a show set in Santa’s workshop has too many elves and toys and snow and beards. There’s a black and white photo of a naked lady reclining on a couch in the opening credits, by the way. Just like on the wall of Santa’s workshop.

Come to think of it, the first time I ever saw a picture of naked breasts as a kid was on the wall of a mechanic’s shop. It was a calender with a photo of a topless lady on the beach. Couldn’t you have waited till you got home, mechanics? I guess looking at engines and mufflers all day is pretty boring and figuring out what day it is is even more tedious. By that logic, a calender factory must be filled with softcore porn.

I liked Treme enough to watch the second season when it comes out and not delete it off my DVR, but not enough to go running all over town trying to make people watch it, like with Breaking Bad. Oh yeah, and I didn’t like the opening theme song about jumping around and having fun down in the Treme. Just personally didn’t care for the tune. Doesn’t that make me sound like a grouchy old man? Stop all that singing about whooping it up! Cut out all that jazz! In my day we listened to President Eisenhower talk about war bonds on the radio and filed it under ‘Erotica’. Then we hung a photo of Richard Nixon in a wifebeater next to the auto parts and called it a day.

Tagged television, Treme