Less tense, but equally and troubling from a relationship standpoint, is the growing schism between Annie and Davis. Annie’s star continues to rise, and she guests on a track for Sonny Landreth – one of the episode’s finest musical performances, right up there with Antoine trying to leave some modern jazz – while Davis is finding his completed opera to be less than he hoped. There’s something intangible that he just isn’t feeling, and Steve Zahn does a great job of playing the confusing emotional low to the hilt. Trying to express his lack of agency at this late point in his life, he muses, “Everything’s just… off. My music. My career.” His aunt gets to the heart of the matter, though, and coaches him on keeping his relationship with Annie alive, maybe being ok with her in the spotlight. It’s good advice, and I hope he takes it.
Speaking of Antoine trying his hand at modern jazz, he is beginning his education in a very proactive way. Wendell Pierce does a great job bringing to life the anguish of a man who is trying to become good at something just to prove that he can, rather than from love of the form. Likewise, Desiree is still pursuing her passion – figuring out what the hell is happening to her city. She sees Nelson’s crew tearing down a house that just a few months ago they had been remediating. She begins taking pictures to document the travesty, but ends up talking to the foreman, who humanizes what until now had been a band of malevolent misfits. They just go where the city tells them to go, he says, before putting it in more pragmatic terms. He has a family to feed, and this job pays the bills. These aren’t bad men, they are just victims of a system that is just as baffling from the inside as it is from the outside.
I’ll close on Sonny, who had the best arc of the Mardi Gras episode, and follows it here by taking a surprising turn. Having gotten back in Linh and her father’s good graces, he pawns most of his musical equipment, to the ribbing of his friend. When he jogged across the street to the pawn shop, I feared that he was reacting poorly to the jokes about being whipped. Instead, he was leaning into it, and proposes to Linh, knowing full well he still needs to ask her father. It’s a sweet scene, and a surprisingly hopeful note to one of the series’ more dour character arcs.
That’s a lot to chew on, and we still have two more episodes to go. Where we will wind up is anyone’s guess, and while I have my inklings I will keep them close to the vest until next week. For now, let’s just do as Antoine is coached to do, and listen to the soothing sounds of Viscosity by Jay Jay Johnson, and dream about what brave new future awaits these beat but not beaten denizens of the City that Care Forgot.
