There was also a wonderful thread running through the whole episode that dealt with the intent behind creating art, and the effect it has on the art itself and on audience response. (It wasn't dismissive, but complimentary he was just making an observation.) Antoine decided to hire somebody else to handle the unpleasant administrative grunt work of his band after firing the perpetually tardy Sonny and getting cursed out by him in Dutch the scene was staged in a way that made us aware that Antoine was hiring a right hand man, or a "straw boss," and this in turn connected that scene with the subplot about Janette returning to New Orleans from New York to help her longtime sous chef, who'd ended up in jail for lack of papers. The Dallas developer Nelson Hildalgo had lunch with one of his main connections in town while Annie performed with a trio onstage, and Hildalgo's contact, who's New Orleans to the bone, singled out the clarinet player and said that he reminded him of another clarinet player. "Treme" always insists on this, of course, but "Feels Like Rain" (written by Tom Piazza and series co-creator Eric Ovrermyer, and directed by Roxann Dawson) put a spotlight on it.Ī stray voice overheard during a school marching band rehearsal warned, "We cannot be as good as.You must be better than." Davis McAlary sounded almost like a restaurant critic reviewing a dish when he said his new band was "Brass funk hip-hop with a bounce twist, heavy on the bass." There was a wonderful bit with Janette very carefully arranging capers on a very thin salmon fillet - the capers faintly reminding us of the beads that Delmond needed but could not get for his sewing - and saying, "I think I finally, I don't know, hit my groove with this one." Janette ate what looked like a fabulous meal with Delmond (every meal on "Treme" looks fabulous!) and explicitly connected food and music - how could she not, with a chef and a musician sitting across each other at the same table? Delmond said, with a touch of wonderment, "I don't think you get to pick to do what you like." There was a sense that it was all connected, all of a piece. I was struck by how many of Janette Desautel's lines echoed conversations occurring among the show's many musicians, and how Albert Lambreaux's discussions of sewing mirrored his son Delmond's struggles this season with finding his own voice as a jazz man, a composer-performer trying to reconcile a modern sound with his New Orleans roots. It showed the similar thought processes that connect chefs and musicians, and then went further, illustrating how all of life is a creative act, one that's ultimately about creating newness and joy (if we're lucky) and connecting the lessons (and creative achievements) of the past to the present. The most recent episode, " Feels Like Rain," moved this element into the foreground to such a degree that it practically subsumed everything else. In fact, the creative process is often the glue holding the show's other disparate elements together. To say that "Treme" gets all this would be an understatement. ![]() It's not easy in fact it's often infuriating, because society at large tends to see creative work as somehow "easier" than other kinds, and because artists themselves tend to be somewhat more eccentric or even volatile than other kinds of people, and more likely to be disconnected from mundane reality. ![]() Khandi Alexander- LaDonna Batiste-Williamsĭavid Simon's New Orleans drama "Treme" is very good at many different things, but it has a special knack for showing how artists make art, and what it actually means to make a living from creative work.
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