Season 3 (2012)
It is now September, 2007, another year removed from Katrina, but the inhabitants of NOLA continue to bear her effects as they try to get on with their lives: Jeanette (Kim Dickens) continues to dissuade anyone from wanting to enter the restaurant business, as a return home proves less than satisfactory as Davis (Steve Zahn) provides a similar caution against the music industry as he struggles to produce his "epic" opera. Toni (Melissa Leo) teams up with an investigative blogger (Chris Coy) as police harassment hits home and Terry (David Morse) is given a Serpico-like plot, becoming a pariah in the Homicide Department. Big Chief (Clarke Peters) celebrates the release of the jazz CD with his son (Rob Brown), but receives some bad news which he shares with a new friend (Khandi Alexander) who is undergoing heartbreak of her own. Season 3 is where all of David Simon's sermonizing and blame casting finally begins to wear on the viewer's patience (at least on my own) and mute some of the elements that it does exceedingly well. Characters who were once perched at the show's zenith, namely Zahn, Alexander, Leo, and Morse, now fall prey to wheel-spinning storylines, while others include Peters, Brown, Dickens, and Wendell Pierce (who unexpectedly endears himself much in the same way he did later on in "The Wire") continue to be compelling as does, of course, the music.
***
Season 2 (2011)
Season 2 picks up about one years following the storm, and the residents of NOLA and principals on the show are still struggling: Toni (Melissa Leo) is fighting to overcome a personal tragedy and the delinquency of her daughter (India Ennenga) while taking on a case involving an officer involved shooting, while Ladonna (Khandi Alexander) and Annie (Lucia Micarelli) face the horrors of urban violence. Batiste (Wendell Pierce), and Davis (Steve Zahn) face the trials of musicianship and band leading while Albert, surprisingly, embraces a musical partnership with his son (Rob Brown). The sophomore season of David Simon's lively series resumes with the same festive fervor that predominated the premier outing and made it such a rare joy. In some ways, Simon is more successful this time around because he has gotten past much of the preaching that slightly inhibited the first run, now allowing him to focus more on the elements that make this series great: namely acting, sensational photography, and of course, the music.
*** 1/2
Season 1 (2010)
Three months after Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans and particularly the cultural district known as the Treme is reeling. As residents begin returning to their homes, they find obstacles in the form of weather damage, police and government obstruction, urban violence, national ignorance, patronizing, and just general bad luck. As Mardi Gras approaches and the second line parades begin to form, the citizens of the Big Easy fight to restore their great American city. "Treme" is David Simon's followup to his acclaimed series "The Wire" and is not that far removed from that loving portrait of another American metropolis. Focusing on the stories of a few wide ranging individuals, from a woman (Khandi Alexander) and her attorney (Melissa Leo) searching for her incarcerated brother lost in the storm, to a struggling trumpet player (Wendell Pierce), to a trouble making activist (Steve Zahn) and his on again off again girlfriend/struggling restaurant owning girlfriend (Kim Dickens), master storyteller Simon is able tell a touching, angry, and sometimes overbearing story of The Crescent City. Additionally, each episode contains scores of wonderful and (assumedly) authentic New Orleans music. As for the performers, I really liked the work of Alexander, Clarke Peters as a headstrong local, and especially Zahn who gives a magnetic performance as a rapscallion activist. The series does have a tendency to preach and sometimes I have a hard time understanding its viewpoints. John Goodman's blowhard character states that a great city must speak for itself and through this series, for the most part, it does.
*** 1/2
It is now September, 2007, another year removed from Katrina, but the inhabitants of NOLA continue to bear her effects as they try to get on with their lives: Jeanette (Kim Dickens) continues to dissuade anyone from wanting to enter the restaurant business, as a return home proves less than satisfactory as Davis (Steve Zahn) provides a similar caution against the music industry as he struggles to produce his "epic" opera. Toni (Melissa Leo) teams up with an investigative blogger (Chris Coy) as police harassment hits home and Terry (David Morse) is given a Serpico-like plot, becoming a pariah in the Homicide Department. Big Chief (Clarke Peters) celebrates the release of the jazz CD with his son (Rob Brown), but receives some bad news which he shares with a new friend (Khandi Alexander) who is undergoing heartbreak of her own. Season 3 is where all of David Simon's sermonizing and blame casting finally begins to wear on the viewer's patience (at least on my own) and mute some of the elements that it does exceedingly well. Characters who were once perched at the show's zenith, namely Zahn, Alexander, Leo, and Morse, now fall prey to wheel-spinning storylines, while others include Peters, Brown, Dickens, and Wendell Pierce (who unexpectedly endears himself much in the same way he did later on in "The Wire") continue to be compelling as does, of course, the music.
***
Season 2 (2011)
Season 2 picks up about one years following the storm, and the residents of NOLA and principals on the show are still struggling: Toni (Melissa Leo) is fighting to overcome a personal tragedy and the delinquency of her daughter (India Ennenga) while taking on a case involving an officer involved shooting, while Ladonna (Khandi Alexander) and Annie (Lucia Micarelli) face the horrors of urban violence. Batiste (Wendell Pierce), and Davis (Steve Zahn) face the trials of musicianship and band leading while Albert, surprisingly, embraces a musical partnership with his son (Rob Brown). The sophomore season of David Simon's lively series resumes with the same festive fervor that predominated the premier outing and made it such a rare joy. In some ways, Simon is more successful this time around because he has gotten past much of the preaching that slightly inhibited the first run, now allowing him to focus more on the elements that make this series great: namely acting, sensational photography, and of course, the music.
*** 1/2
Season 1 (2010)
Three months after Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans and particularly the cultural district known as the Treme is reeling. As residents begin returning to their homes, they find obstacles in the form of weather damage, police and government obstruction, urban violence, national ignorance, patronizing, and just general bad luck. As Mardi Gras approaches and the second line parades begin to form, the citizens of the Big Easy fight to restore their great American city. "Treme" is David Simon's followup to his acclaimed series "The Wire" and is not that far removed from that loving portrait of another American metropolis. Focusing on the stories of a few wide ranging individuals, from a woman (Khandi Alexander) and her attorney (Melissa Leo) searching for her incarcerated brother lost in the storm, to a struggling trumpet player (Wendell Pierce), to a trouble making activist (Steve Zahn) and his on again off again girlfriend/struggling restaurant owning girlfriend (Kim Dickens), master storyteller Simon is able tell a touching, angry, and sometimes overbearing story of The Crescent City. Additionally, each episode contains scores of wonderful and (assumedly) authentic New Orleans music. As for the performers, I really liked the work of Alexander, Clarke Peters as a headstrong local, and especially Zahn who gives a magnetic performance as a rapscallion activist. The series does have a tendency to preach and sometimes I have a hard time understanding its viewpoints. John Goodman's blowhard character states that a great city must speak for itself and through this series, for the most part, it does.
*** 1/2
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