Just A Little While To Stay Here
December 1, 2013
It’s an open thread, kids. I’m still in GO buffer Hell.
(‘Cause he is a suckubutt).
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Back Of Town 
I loved the Trombone Shorty “Backatown” stuff. I remember when I first heard some of that. My reaction was similar to Davis and Simply’s.
Me too – that album is just masterful!
Just a Little While to Stay Here is a an old-fashioned, quiet spiritual, almost the antithesis of the city’s signal gospel number I’ll Fly Away. It is a reminder of the transience of the flesh and the things of this world.
So begins our last leg of the journey down the never-end road but life is not television and everyone from David Simon down to lowly bloggers knows we have reached the end times and not with a bang but with what I expect many critics will find a whimper. There was not a lot of drama in this episode, no one hollering in the spirit, no one falling out. It was a quiet transition to the final episode but that is a fair reflection of where we stood by the election of 2008: trying to settle back into something like normality.
What is subtle and maybe missed is the fidelity of this episode, the rearrangement of lives in new ways: LaDonna settling in with Albert, Terry and Toni figuring out how to fit football into their lives, Annie and Sonny reconciled as friends, Antoine settling into his job-job with a happy smirk on his face as he learned his student had the clap, his own youth reaching back to touch him. His calm, wry reaction is not the father figure most of America will expect, but one that did not seem out of place to his character, not in inner city New Orleans.
I was going to say it was a catch up episode, something necessary to an interrupted serial and it wasn’t really that. The characters have moved forward just a bit closer to a place of comfort 38 months after The Event. It was where we were all trying to be, whether we made it there or not.
The one detail I missed seeing is my most profound memory of the election of 2008, an elderly couple who came into my polling place dressed in their Sunday best, her church crown perched just so, his hard-pressed suit perfect and shoes shined within an inch of their life. For New Orleans it was moving past the Bush era, a major marker for the citizens, but for that couple it was so much more than that. It was a dream delivered against all adversity, a healing miracle. I could not think of a more fitting symbol.
— Wet Bank Guy
We laughed over and over at Antoine’s New Orleans musician line. Feel like only Wendell Pierce’s and Clarke Peters’s hearts were in the acting this go-around. The episode also brought back lots of negative memories of late 2008. Like Kermit observed at the beginning, one too many gunshots, cop cars, ambulances and fire trucks around my house in those months.
Maitri, sorry about the negative experiences and the memories of them. Treme had already caused me pain because of my love for New Orleans, and that love had already caused me pain over the federal flood, but this episode contained some uncomfortable reminders for me: Hurricane Ike in Galveston where I’d lived for 23 years and subsequent exile to non-diverse “Aggieland,” during the election and seeing t-shirts that used one of the school’s signature phrases, “Beat the hell out of,” coupled with Obama’s name.
BTW, I read that the shopping center they used for the Galveston scene was in New Orleans, not Galveston; but, I already knew it wasn’t on The Island. If I remember the scene and/or a photo of it, the building looked too new and pristine to be in Galveston. Nothing looked that good in Galveston even before Hurricane Ike. Salt water and air really do a number on things. Galveston is a beautiful, weathered city, like New Orleans.
Go ahead, Treme, break my heart.
I just watched last night’s episode.
With the almost throw-away references to the crime cameras and Meffert, I guess they’re going to try to show a little of that whole thing. It’s hard to see how they do it any justice in the little time that’s left. I thought the episode was sweet (all except the Atlanta-bashing), and I think Peters (Greg, not Clarke) would’ve loved making the final cut.
Davis playing to the empty Big Top resonates, as it just closed.
Made me miss all y’all.
Beth,
Sorry to hear that. Late 2008 was a bizarre up-down-up-down time for many. At least, we have places that break our hearts.
According to this week’s Treme Explained by Dave Walker, that shopping center was in NO East. So, you’re right. Nelson Hidalgo was downright creepy in that scene.
Great to see all the characters again. I still have my favorites played by Kim Dickens, Mellisa Leo, and David Morse. Sad for Larry – good guys finishing last and all that. Glad for me that even though I am not one of the “bad boys”, I have a gorgeous, adventurous, full-of-life wife, but I feel for him. Dang!
I am rooting for Sonny that he weathers the storm that he witnessed in the jail cell and turns to his beautiful girlfriend rather than the dragon for help. I am ready to see him succeed, in a way that I didn’t want or care for last year.
Agreed with the sentiment that there was some “walking through the paces” either in the acting, directing, or editing. I am not sure which. Also, there was a lot of place/personality/song dropping. Felt a little like I was watching ESPN or an Adam Sandler movie – only I had never heard of the sports or products being pimped. I am heartbroken that part of that is a result of being forced to squeeze all that needs to be told and shown into a half season. How does one dot all the i-s and cross all the tees in five episodes? I am grateful that we get this much more. I’ll take it! Thank you!
Having complained about cameos, Ellis Marsalis! Talk about tickling the ivories! I never knew. I guess I never thought about Wynton having a father. I saw him play the trumpet on the Phil Donahue Show when he was a little boy – no father, or mention of a father, on the show. And here he is a skilled jazz musician in his own right. So, thank you for the intro.
The Shorty song was indeed fantastic. I loved Steve Zahn making it rain in his car. I wanted to jump up on my bed and start making it rain with him. Music is SO powerful to move the soul. I don’t dig all the music on the show, but Hurricane Season is an awesome piece!
The problem with the cameras were kind of an anti-climactic example after seeing all the other things wrong with the police force (and watching The Wire, and knowing that it must be that way in many American cities). Kermit’s look down the street didn’t tell me (as an outsider) anything either. Aren’t the police often out on election night? Did I miss the sound of gunshots? (I’ll have to watch again.)
And Obama. How is that working out in Nola? Seriously, I can see things through my own filter for American and the rest of the world, but I haven’t a clue how he and his administration is affecting the micro situation in a single hurricane ravaged city.
Cameos: Trombone Shorty is already a thing, out there touring more than he is in New Orleans. That was fill, nothing more. It echoes back on the Delmond/Annie parallel story lines, but only if you already know that. Unless he’s written back in as a roaring success into the Delmon and Annie lines (say, he runs into Delmond in New York, and he’s selling more records than Delmond every dreamed) I don’t see the point.
Obama was a moment here, as I suspect it was in every other large, predominately Black city, but more so as it was the end of Bush who had a particular relevance to New Orleans in a way that Obama never has had.
As I said before, the hints at future drama were absent. We’re just going to have to wait a week and see where things go. I argued with Ray about Murakami’s 1Q84, which he found repetitive, and I pointed out that it was published serially in Japan and there is a certain amount of re-grounding and catching up that is going to be necessary. There are enough characters in the mix that it took up most of the hour.
— Wet Bank Guy
The Obama thing was a double-edged sword
1) you HAD to document it, because at the time it WAS a major historical event
2) the scene captured the hope many had at the time, even for us cynics
3) the scene was tempered by Albert’s sobering “you think this makes a difference?” because two terms later it really is the same as it’s always been
4) It provides a codified bridge between Toni’s pitch of NOPD corruption to the Feds in S3 to where we’re headed for the NOPD Consent Decree of today (partly due to a new DOJ)
With only 4 more episodes, I think we all need to temper ourselves because there is no way for this to end cleanly. How much further do we see these 10 characters progressing in the next 200 minutes? The rebirth and rejuvenation of the city will be documented but not in maudlin terms….but I don’t foresee any story lines reaching closure. I’m sure all will be open ended, just like the city itself
I think the Annie/Delmond thread of stay true or succeed will get closed out, and the Trombone Shorty scenes are a hint at that (he’s straddled that divide as has the model for Delmond, Donald Harrison, Jr.) I hope to see that closed in some surprising way. Otherwise, who knows? I’m not expecting a bow, or a universally happy ending. Toni and Terry remind me a lot at this point of McNulty and Beadie from The Wire, which is about as close to a happy ending as I expect. I wonder what will happen to the Chief? The ghost of Tootie’s suit from Season One hangs heavy in my mind.
Will We Know What it Means to Miss “Treme”?
by Larry Blumenfeld
05/12/13 2:31 PM EST
http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/992331/will-we-know-what-it-means-to-miss-treme
Thank you for the link Constance. I am still considering what was said in it. My favorite part of the premier of season 4? The pothole from Hell! LOL!. So perfect.
May we please have a new thread for the new episode, or is there too much disgust at killing off Charisse