Treme III

Highlights from last night’s Treme:

• A shred of humanity from Janette’s scary boss. The man’s clearly deranged — he ends a hissing admonition with “listen to your fish,” whatever that means — but he shows us two things: he cares about the food at least as much as the ego-trip, and he can occasionally handle frustration without having a meltdown.
• Nelson Hidalgo may love the city and its culture, as he repeatedly (and unctuously) claims. He’s still an out-of-towner taking profit on the money earmarked for clean-up, while natives like Albert Lambreaux do the actual work and can’t even return to their homes.
• Michael Huisman is great at being a bad musician. Sonny’s street performance is awful. When the kid pulled his cable, my first thought was that they were sick of his mealy-mouthed white-guy blues growl.
• Batiste’s frustration putting a band together is an echo of my own experience. You explain what you hear in your head to dozens of people, and you can’t find one with the time, enthusiasm or commitment to help make it happen. Especially in a town where everyone’s a musician, everyone has their own thing already. They want you for their thing, but they aren’t gonna do yours.
• Another shout-out for Wire fans: “Bullwinkle! Bullwinkle!”

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