We just watched last night’s episode of Treme, featuring Mardi Gras. And it was one of the most engrossing things I’ve ever seen, even though very little actually happened.
The show continues to move at its own pace and strike its own balance, and it’s absolutely fascinating, even for someone with no interest in jazz music or cajun cooking.
I loved how they intertwined the scenes from the city and country celebrations.
This season has mostly gone nowhere, with the focus having been on the characters’ lives instead of the city and how they interact with it - and the characters are mostly not that interesting by themselves.
But yes, this was a great episode - it showed what makes NO a special place and Mardi Gras a special time.
We thought it was excellent. Wendell Pierce just gets better and better. Anybody else want to just slap the shit out of the daughter?
I’d rather slap Annie into growing a spine first. Then deport Dutchy the junky guitarist.
You’re right, Pierce truly *becomes *Antoine, in the way a great actor can. The others all look paler next to him.
Nah - She’s a kid who’s father died less than a year before and her mom lied to her about the circumstances of his death, which she had to deduce on her own. I forgive her for the angst, it’s well-earned.
Season two ended satisfactorily, and I was sorry to see it end. On the bright side, it’s been renewed for a third season. I’ve been waiting since the beginning of this season for Jacques to bed Janette. He’s had that squinty hounddog look on his face since the beginning.
This is only airing on Sky Atlantic in the UK and Ireland right now so I’m way behind. Episode 3 was on earlier. I thought the bit where the young jazzman didn’t know about promoting his band on facebook/myspace etc. just unbelievable.
I have never seen even a single moment of Treme, but I have spent a LOT of time in New Orleans (I fly down 3 or 4 times a year for visits) and I have many friends who live there.
I know several lifelong NO locals who absolutely swear by the show, praising it’s realism and attention to detail. Many of these same people can’t stand most of the various films set in New Orleans, saying that they never capture the true essence of the city and only focus on the most cartoonish stereotypical aspects (Bourbon St., St. Louis Cemetery, Voodoo Priestesses who moonlight as Vampires, etc.) of the unique, utterly enchanting Crescent City.
Treme must be doing something very right.
The only thing that seems inauthentic is the Dutch guy’s accent. 
Yeah, I’m watching it on Sky Atlantic too, so I just caught episode three last night. LaDonna getting assaulted was the most powerful element for me. That character just seems to embody pride and self-reliance, so seeing her so defeated in the hospital afterwards was heart-breaking.
Are you sure that’s right about a Third Season being commissioned? I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that HBO had pulled the plug after Season Two.
Seems they have renewed it: http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/05/13/hbo-renews-treme-for-third-season/
Not so sure they should have made the second season. The producers made a mistake in shifting the focus from the city and its culture to the individual characters and their lives. But they mostly just aren’t that interesting to me outside of their roles in the city’s life and rebuilding. I’ll still watch just to enjoy the extraordinary acting ability of Wendell Pierce and Clarke Peters (and I have to go watch “The Wire” now too, don’t I?). The others? Meh. Cut them back and put in more music.
It was either shift the focus or have a one-season show, which makes zero money for all the people involved in the production. If you’re not invested in the characters, you’re probably not going to watch. Season one had plenty of character development, IMO. The Wire is well worth watching. It’s one of the best series to hit television.
If anything I feel the second season was dramatically stronger than the first, precisely because it shifted away a bit from the city as organism and just concentrated on ordinary lives.
One vague irritation was they had a tin whistle player, and he was shit, awful. I mean I suppose that was part of the script. However, if you’re unfamiliar with the instrument, as the characters as in the show, it comes across as a horrible sounding instrument. It can sound horrible but anyone who can play well can make it sound wonderful.
A broader criticism I have of it, approaching it as a fan of the Wire, is the overreliance on actors who previously had roles in that show. I think Wendell Pierce is great in it, but relying on so many actors familiar from the previous show, it’s sorta too much baggage. Most of them are fine actors, but it is a tad disconcerting.
The 2nd season took place starting in late 2006 when social media was still a fairly new front for successfully promoting artists.
That was Elvis Fuckin’ Costello, me boyo. Maybe he was just *acting *? 
The John Goodman character figured it out, though. “Fuck you, you fucking fucks!”
No, it wasn’t. It was Spider Stacy who actually plays the instrument in real life. Elvis appeared in a couple of episodes of Season 1. Stacy appeared as a friend of Harley’s in a couple of episodes of Season 2 and doesn’t play the tin whistle very well. I suppose it was just written into the script, but there are only a few instances in either season where an instrument is actually played badly.
Fairly new, I suppose, but at that stage, any artist I knew worth their salt was on myspace. It’s the guy’s reaction, not like “Yeah I really should get up on that”, it was almost as if he’d never heard of the internet that strikes me as unrealistic. Good point about the date. With regard to music the guy would probably not yet have mentioned facebook. Myspace was da bomb for musicians still at that point.