Home Reviews

Treme Season Premiere Review: “Knock With Me – Rock With Me” (Season 3, Episode 1)

The story of Treme is that of the battle for the soul of a city. Every character we meet in this expansive, lively television show comes to the city with an eye to give or take something in the name of some grand idea that is New Orleans. To some, it is a home, a place to preserve and love. To others, it is the heart of an artistic movement they believe in.

Recommended Videos

Elsewhere we see people simply struggling to make their lives move forward, still driving themselves out of the quagmire left in the wake of the storm. Lt. Terry Colson is trying to get out of the intractably corrupt homicide division, but his strides in cleaning up the department have made him invaluable. He goes to Indianapolis to see his ex-wife and sons, and finds that his ex is uncomfortable with the idea of them visiting him so long as he is living in a possibly contaminated FEMA trailer. One of the more striking visual images this episode is Colson moving around his tiny little temporary home, his head nearly scraping the ceiling as he smells for the supposed formaldehyde contamination.

In that same vein, Toni Bernette is still working hard to right the institutional wrongs done during and after the storm. Working with a shooting victim’s father, she is still trying to build a timeline on a wrongful death. She may get some unexpected help from an investigative journalist, LP Everett. He’s looking into the vigilante killings that took place in New Orleans after the storm, and their could be a powerful alliance if they can manage to break past the bureaucratic stonewall.

Ladonna, meanwhile, is back with a vengeance. She is more committed than ever to making her bar the best it can be, and is not about to take flak from her sister-in-law. Staying with family while looking for a house, her ‘low class’ ways rub her hosts the wrong way, but she is not about to let the withering gaze of her upper crust family bring her down. Annie, likewise, is growing more brash and bold with her rising successes in the musical sphere. Her soulful club performance is a far cry from the retiring young fiddler we knew two seasons ago, and her pride at getting good reactions from her own song translates into an even stronger bond with Davis.

Antoine, meanwhile, is still having trouble reconciling his new life with the life he wanted. Even when he is among those arrested in the opening scene for clashing with police breaking up a memorial party for Kerwin James, his name isn’t among those getting the hero’s treatment. When he goes to a benefit concert at a bar, he can’t help but note that the “Treme Two” should really be the “Treme Three.” Sure, he’s helping the kids under his tutelage, but he isn’t getting back from the city the recognition he thinks he deserves from giving so much to it.

He’s not alone, though, as Nelson Hidalgo – our developer from Dallas – can’t break back into the real estate game. His association with the now-jailed Councilman Thomas has made him toxic, and he can’t even get a meeting with a fellow developer. But he won’t quit, not now that he has New Orleans in his veins and it’s future in his mind. The prospect of being involved with the creation of the proposed National Jazz Center should keep him around, though the phrase “monetizing the culture” gets dropped with pragmatic ominousness from his employer. We know Nelson has come to love the city, but he’s still a man out for money, and it’ll be interesting to see where he falls if the concept of creating capital from creativity sticks some people the wrong way.

The rest of the cast is in a kind of holding pattern. Janette is still cooking in New York, but flying down to New Orleans to tend to her house, as well as her burgeoning relationship with Jacques. Sonny is working the shrimp boat owned by the father of his girlfriend, Linh. He’s got a new hair cut, he’s clean, and he’s in love. I’m not sure how he’s going to keep being a player in this season though, unless we begin to see some of the issues affecting the fisherman who troll the gulf. Likewise, Sofia is still working at the coffee shop, is not dating one of the musicians who posts outside daily, and is slowly becoming what passes for a hipster in New Orleans.

Continue reading on the next page…