Treme Season 3 Primer

David Simon excels at creating rich, textured, multi-strand narratives that serve as a kind of animating current meant to bring a particular setting to life. The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Streets gave us grimy, bottom-up views of institutional malaise and its deleterious effect on urban life in Baltimore. His newest show, Treme (which has its third season premiere this Sunday), deals with New Orleans, a city equally as damaged by bureaucratic ineptitude and entropy, and further enervated by natural disaster in the form of Hurricane Katrina. Whereas his Baltimore opuses had their eyes set on crime, however, Treme finds its through-line in the singular and enduring culture of the Crescent City. Of course, examining a slowly healing city through its music, food, history and potential future leaves a lot of characters of which to keep track. To help you gear up for the coming season, here’s a quick primer on where we left our expansive cast following the first two seasons. Continue reading on the next page… Sonny: A musician hailing from Amsterdam, Sonny was in a relationship with Annie when we first met him. He spent his time either on the keyboard with her accompanying on violin, or in bars telling people about his time helping to rescue stranded residents during the flooding. His music suffered from his addiction to heroin, however, and soon enough Annie left him to chase her own rapidly ascending star. He got a steady gig with Antoine's band but had to clean up in order to keep it, taking a day job working the shrimp boats trolling the gulf. There he met the daughter of a Vietnamese captain, and worked the man's boat to get his blessing for their budding relationship. Annie: A shy, nieve young woman who can saw the fiddle with the best of them, Annie stuck with Sonny as long as she could. When they broke up she had nowhere to turn, and wound up on Davis' doorstep. They had a chaste history, having spent Mardis Gras together enjoying the charms of their city. Now they are an item, each working to bring their dreams to life. Annie is an accomplished player, but was struggling to segue into composing. She was under the tutelage of Harley, a well known street musician, and was with him the night he was shot during a mugging. While dispensing his remaining possessions she found a series of unfinished pieces, and set to finishing them to not only aid herself, but to honor her fallen mentor. Toni & Sofia Bernette: The series has not been kind to the relationship between this mother and daughter. Husband and father Creighton Bernette was a professor of English who loved the city of New Orleans. Following the storm, he grew despondent over the state of his beloved city, a place he would never see again in full, and took his life. Toni tried to hide the nature of her husband's death from their daughter, Sofia. Sofia put two and two together on her own, though, and began a series of small but escalating rebellions. Toni, meanwhile, was using her law practice to uncover the crimes of the New Orleans Police Department following the storm. This brought her closer to Lt. Terry Colson, but also put her at odds with the rest of NOPD. Sofia meanwhile took an internship with Councilman Thomas to make herself look better in court following a minor arrest, an internship that ended when the Councilman was indicted for taking bribes, but which gave her a new and positive perspective on her mother all the same. Continue reading on the next page… Ladonna Batiste-Williams: Ladonna is the ex-wife of wayward trombone player Antoine Batiste. Their marriage disolved, and she took the kids to live with her new husband. They fled to Baton Rouge before the storm the storm. She maintains her family's New Orleans bar, however, and still is an active member of the community. Her brother was killed in the days following the storm, and lost in the interminable shuffle of inmates between harried police departments. Toni helped her find his body and finally put him to rest. Her trouble with the police wasn't over, though. Ladonna was assaulted and raped one night while closing her bar, and was set to leave the Big Easy forever until she went to her bar and saw her assailant sitting free. A clerical mistake had him released early in error, and after making sure the mistake was righted, her husband knew that the only way to bring his wife back from the verge was to return to the city she longed to fight for and live in. Antoine Batiste: Everyone knows someone like Antoine Batiste. He never has money, barters with taxi drivers, and promises to pay back everyone later, but he's got charisma and charm to get him through life. Gig to gig he makes just enough to stay alive. That is, until he sets up his own soul revival band and starts getting steady gigs. His new wife, however, is tired of his meandering and shuffling. She makes him go out for a job at the local school teaching band to children. Antoine thaws to the idea, and begins to take some kids under his wing, which eases the blow when his band falls to pieces around him. Suddenly he is paying his debts on time, becoming a better father to his kids with Ladonna, and a more faithful husband to his new wife. When last we see them, they are moving into a duplex together, finally getting out of their temporary housing. Davis McAlary: An uptown boy with a downtown soul, Davis is a staunch defender of the music and culture of his fair city. Davis DJs for a local radio station, though time and again he gets fired for treading too far outside the tried and true standards his station manager demands. Following a disastrous stint as a hotel receptionist, Davis starts a politically satirical band that becomes a satirical campaign to become a city councilman. He takes a literal "get out of jail free card" to stop, but bitten by the music bug he can't help but start up a new band, though this time one that pays tribute to the musical traditions of the city while melding them with the new sounds emerging. However, his uptown roots betray him, and after making a star of his co-singer, to the detriment of his own fame, Davis goes out with a delightfully "white" sendup of James Brown's 'Sex Machine.' He's still looking forward to producing more music, though, and helping Annie get through her trauma any way he can. Continue reading on the next page… Nelson Hidalgo: Don't ask Nelson what he does, or what he makes. He came to New Orleans to help buy and sell land, looking to make a pretty profit off of the mad grab for real estate. Using his contacts, he greased Councilman Thomas' palms in order to make his wheeling and dealing go smoother. In the course of his time in New Orleans, he came to love the city, growing to understand the culture and the people intimately, even taking part in some of the more esoteric aspects of the town. It all goes to hell, though, once Councilman Thomas is ratted out and starts to go down in flames. Nelson becomes a persona non grata in the town he grew to love. Terry Colson: Terry respects the law almost as much as he respects Toni Bernette. One of the seemingly few honest cops left on the force following the mass exodus as a result of the storm, Colson isn't thrilled by the resurgence of crime in his city which is still badly undermanned. The crime is one thing, though - the corruption of his own department is something else. Cops who killed at will during the storm are being covered for through the loss of evidence and suppression of witness testimonies. Cases are being worked at half-effort. Following the death of her husband, Colson grew close to Toni, but his growing frustration with his own department reflected onto her, and now they are at odds with one another even though they are working toward the same goal. Janette Desautel: Music may be the biggest draw for the show, but anyone who has been there know it shares the New Orleans spotlight with the food. Thus, we have Janette, a struggling restauranteur. She employed Ladonna's brother, used to date Davis, and she used to have a restaurant in the city until Katrina washed her dreams away. She scraped and struggled to keep the business afloat, but the fates aligned against her one too many times. She tried doing mobile catering, but ended up exiling to New York, where she bounced between restaurants. Her most recent posting gave her a stage on which to show off her culinary talents, and drew enough attention to give her an opportunity to head back to New Orleans. She has yet to decide, but given the glee she showed when she saw the trolleys running again, and the new relationship she has with her old sous chef, the odds are good she'll be back. Delmond & “Chief” Albert Lambreaux: The Chief is the head of a tribe of Indians, a group of musicians and performers who lead chants and marches in the city for various holidays. They create tribal dress by hand, and survive off their fierce pride. Albert was one of the first back to New Orleans in his tribe, and pushed the men to get to work to be ready for their moment in the sun. He also took a stand against the local government and cops by squatting in a housing project untouched by the flood but still set up for demolition. His despondency over his failure in that regard was compounded by getting kicked out of the bar he had been living in, and running into constant roadblocks while trying to remake his home. It fell to his son, accomplished New York jazz musician Delmond Lambreaux, to pull him out of his funk. Delmond had only recently come to understand his own ambitions and attachments with regard to New Orleans. Father and son recorded an album of Indian tunes crossed with standard jazz, and Del gave his father a phony "advance" off the sales to circumvent his father's pride and allow him to continue rebuilding his house. Now they are together in New Orleans, rebuilding the house and their relationship, with promises of further records to come. So there you have it, hopefully you're up-to-date and ready for tomorrow night's premiere. Be sure to check back on the site tomorrow night for our review on the season three premiere of Treme.