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Hello everyone, my name is Jared and I will be your tour guide/reviewer for this season of Tremé. This review is a few days late, but bear with me, I’ll be on track soon enough for the rest of the season. It doesn’t help that HBO isn’t very privy to people without subscriptions watching their shows, but oh well. Anyways, I’m very glad to be writing about a David Simon show for once, and writing for David Simon fans (hopefully you are, who would watch this show and not like him?). So let’s get into it shall we? It’s the premiere episode of Season 3, and it’s been a while since the last season (more than a year), and the “previously on” didn’t really help to get me up to date on things. I can’t blame them for trying, there was a lot of content to pack in and they did their best, but that’s why the internet was invented: to look up the whereabouts and last names of characters in Treme Season 3.

I’ll structure every week by going over each protagonist, and what they have been up to in the order of their appearance in each episode (like the opening credits in a Woody Allen movie). Ideally, I’d like to give each character their time in my limelight, so we’ll start off with Antoine Batiste again starting off a premiere, but this time with his old buddy Pythagoras in a very comical opening. As usual, he’s taking cabs, playing music, working at the local middle school, and being arrested. Wait, that last one didn’t sound right. That hasn’t happened for a while, so what’s up now? Apparently the lingering presence of corruption in the NOPD is ever clearer now, and an unfortunate expression of anger gets poor old Antoine thrown in the slammer. Once freed though, he gets back into the routine of being shunned from another band, this time the “Treme Two”, and not the “Treme Three” likes he tells the bouncer, and trying to choreograph and direct children in a marching band (“Y’all a band, not a herd”). I could watch him do that all day, so that was a nice, funny moment that welcomed me back into the show. Boy, I sure missed it more than I thought I would.

We then get to see my personal favorite onscreen couple and last vestige for actual love in Annie and Davis, and the way their arc this season is set up fills me with dread. Usually, each character gets their storyline introduced early on, and I’d hate to see less of Annie because of her new successful band, whose name is ridiculous and will (and should) be changed. I guess me and Davis fear she’ll pick her newfound career over him (and subsequently me, because I love Annie). There was a lack of her this episode, so I really hope she gets more time for me to fall in love with her all over again…I mean grow as a character this season. Davis, on the other hand, hasn’t changed much from when we last saw him; planning another album, setting up wild expectations with the radio station, breaking the rules and loving jazz. Man, it must be awesome to be Davis. We meet him giving guides around the city to tourists, and to no surprise he spices it up with his “Davis” version of history. But somebody had to ruin the magic with ‘facts’ from their ‘phones’, and the tour quickly subsides. The tourists were quite bewildered to not only the lack of things cleaned up in the city, but also with Davis, and it was fun to watch them ask questions, but sad to see Davis alone by the end of it. Tourists have a history of making problems on the show, but they’re always welcome in my eyes.

Super lawyer Toni comes back in action right away, arriving at the police station and leaving with a trumpet in hand. Melissa Leo has always been, in my mind, the person who shines the brightest in terms of acting. And that’s not easy to do, with such a wonderful cast, and when everybody is at the top of their game (Steve Zahn, Wendell Pierce, Clarke Peters, etc.), yet Leo put on a devastating performance the first two seasons, and I cherish every second she is on the show. Her daughter Sofia is still a train wreck waiting to happen, and the episode’s final reveal is very frustrating for any parents out there. At the beginning of this season, their relationship seems better than it ever was. Toni was cool with her having a boyfriend, and they had a nice day getting haircuts. But by the end of this season, I expect some turmoil, only because it is NOT okay for Sofia to be dating someone that old. Teens, why don’t they know better?

Janette pops back up in New Orleans, which was a pleasant return for not just her, but for the audience as well. The strange creeper plot thread will have to convince me it’s worth it, because I really just want more shenanigans of her and Ziggy in their NYC apartment. Note: I refuse to call that roommate character by anything other than Ziggy, since he will always be Ziggy to me. Forever. We also get a brief encounter with the Lambreaux’s, who are still savoring the sweet smell of success with the jazz/Indian collaboration record. Their relationship was, right off of the bat, a 180 from the first season, and the introductory piece of dialogue the Chief gets is talking about his son on the radio. It’s a nice moment, Delmond finally getting the respect from his father he deserves, but a little off-putting with the corn rolls, not going to lie. LaDonna is her usual sassy self, and the situation she is in with her family was awkward, and tense, and great. She seems to be the kind of person who is always attracted to conflict, because of her personality, and that’s a terrific thing for a TV show which likes to be laid back at times. Sonny got a haircut during the break, and while he used to be that scumbag who abused Annie, and that is irredeemable in my eyes, he is winning me over by trying to be the nice guy nowadays. I hope something comes out between him and the new girl, and he can do something redeeming to make me not hate him for the crimes he committed.

A few other bits I enjoyed: obviously the setting is the best part of Tremé, and no other show paints its location as truthfully and poetically. But I also love the way the show incorporates time and place, and adds little things like the “Aint’s”, and Obama’s riveting speeches, that make the world feel so authentic you would think these people actually exist. Finally, David Morse, as Terry the cop, still has the potential to break my heart yet again this season, and his ex-wife was really starting to this episode: simply by not being entranced by New Orleans like I am, and by being a Colts fan. She, and his sons, moved out to Indiana, where she tries to stay away from all of the “dreamers and drunks”, a perfect way to boil down everyone in The Big Easy if you had to. Just seeing that doofus of a stepfather is enough to make me feel sad for (and with) Terry, and I cannot possibly see a happy end for that character. Misery loves company, and Terry fits the bill for company in this case.

There were two quotes this episode that really sums up the series as a whole, and they make for terrific book ends for the episode. While meeting our newest character Chris, Toni asks if he had ever been to New Orleans before. He says no, and welcomes him “to another world”. If there was one city in the US that would fit this welcome the best, it would be New Orleans. As we’ve come to see, this oasis of culture is also a haven for disaster, yet despite all of the hardship and rebuilding and horror around, our characters wouldn’t want to be in any other place. Terry says it best right at the end of the episode: “don’t ever change”. “Of course not”, says the freak on the bike. This place is a home, so unique and special no one would ever dream of being pinned down to the norms of society. And with a new flashy title intro, and a new photo montage for the opening credits, this season looks to be another gem of TV, that most will overlook, and few will appreciate. Even though David Simon is a genius (literally, that is a fact now, thanks to the MacArthur Grant he received), fans like me have to savor every morsel we get, since this will be the last full season of this delightful show we’ll ever see.

Catch you next week, true believers!

-Jared