The greatest joy of the new Sky Atlantic channel was Tremé, a glorious first series of ten episodes on the attempt by the core citizens of New Orleans to salvage something of their lives and their city after Katrina. The programme is full of great characters portrayed by a host of intelligent and sensitive actors and although there have been some award nominations the series is yet to gain the recognition it deserves. The background music-clips of jazz, traditional, mainstream and modern, Cajun and country western, is always sufficient to wet the appetite for more. There is another aspect of traditional jazz to be mentioned at the outset of the second series, ensemble, integrated story telling as well as playing which was the feature of the original New Orleans jazz music, although with strong solo performance which historically was developed more in Chicago than New Orleans.
One reason for the lack of recognition has been the stance taken by the Director and writers in presenting what happened as a political failure, alleging corruption in the building of the fortifications against flooding after the 1927 disaster, and the subsequent failure to give priority to the rebuilding of the city.
At the core of the series there was and remains a conflict between those who wanted to protect and to celebrate the African, West Indian, French culture with at its heart traditional jazz and blues music born from the slavery and racism intermixed with eclectic fine food cooking, and those who genuinely wanted to clean up a city where the drug culture was rampant and crime and organised crime with regular killings the order of every day and who saw the disaster as the opportunity to create a New Orleans along the lines of Dallas and Houston in neighbouring Texas. White supremacy remained rampant.
One cannot escape the macro issues covered in the series although the programme is a delight with its constant snippets of the range of music emanating from the city. When the first series ended I was not sure if it was returning after the shock suicide and series departure of the most prominent of the actors John Goodman as Creighton Bernette, an English Teacher at a University who was working on a novel about the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and how the failure of the response to that situation governed what happened with Katrina. He developed national notoriety through a video Blog in which he made rants against the authorities using a flurry of expletives to voice his dissent and frustration. His departure was a loss but added to authenticity the life of a city that had become dependent on Conventions and tourism with the jazz entwined with drugs and sexual libertarianism.
While the Goodman character ranted his “white” educated wife ran a one woman with assistance civil rights legal office in which she has established a close but love hate relationship with city officials especially a local police commander. She remains angry as well as devastated by the suicide for her husband who she regards as cowardly act abandoning her, their daughter, and the city he professed to love. She initially refused to arrange a Second Line for his funeral.
A permit is required for a jazz band to parade through the city in relation to funerals and the Second Line is the familiar walking celebration after the burial to the Wake and which starts mournfully and then bursts into an energetic celebration to mark the life of the subject. Aspects of the walking dancing are the fluttering of handkerchiefs and the twirling of umbrellas. To be accorded a Second Line is a mark of respect. Toni has to drag herself to the Second Line for her daughter’s sake, than her own.
In the first episode of the second series, Accentuate the Positive which continues the story of all the former characters less Goodman it and begins fourteen months after the disaster on All Saints day in the Fall.
I say Glory B, because I eventually found the first episode which I had recorded and then accidental erased when started to view last weekend and thought I had just cancelled because I was too tired to enjoy. I had to go through the alphabetical list of the several hundred Sky Anytime plus programmes to reach Tremé and find the first episode so Glory B because without it would not be impossible to do justice to what promises to be as important if not even better a series than the first
Toni (Melissa Leo) Goodman’s widow has a new assistant who struggles to understand what her new boss is talking about with reference to Indians, Second Liners and such like. She also has a friendly breakfast/lunch meeting with the police chief to discuss a raft of problems arising from the youth Curfew, the continuing racism and million other problems over a year after the event. This is the worst side of USA especially as Federal and public services are understaffed, overwhelmed and bureaucratic while those with money concentrate on how to make more.
Her main problem is with Sofia, (India Ennega) their daughter who is at High School and who her mother suspects is cutting classes and generally being anti social redirecting the anger she feels at the death of her father against her mother and society in general in which she gives voice by echoing the approach of her father with a video Blog ranting about the situation with a musical rap of the word fuck continuously repeated. We learn that 100000 homes are still to be recovered with the displacement of the residents involved.
In the second episode Everything I do Gonh be Funky Toni grows more anxious about Sofia as they attempt to celebrate Thanksgiving by going out to a restaurant and later talking things over with a third party takes up the idea of using her connections to get the daughter an Internship with the Mayor’s office which she is taken for an interview by the assistant in the third episode On Your Way Down, after she stays out late defying Curfew with a mix of college friends at a jazz playing bar.
Throughout the first series Toni had helped La Donna Batiste Williams (Khandi Alexander) to try and find her brother who disappeared during the hurricane. The story unfolds that he was picked up on his way to the restaurant when he worked on suspicion and then held because of a warrant for his arrest which had in fact been sorted but was not correctly recorded. He had been caught up in the situation where the prisoners had been moved out and the authorities were then paid a premium by the Government to look after them. When they track him down they find it is someone else who has changed names because he was wanted on a more serious charge. They eventually find the body of the brother, just one more victim but at lest they are able to give him a burial.
In this series it seems her main focus of attention will be a new case she initially refused to take on because of existing commitments and moving into new office premises. The case is of a white out of town parent who visits to try and find out how his son died given that he was said to have been found in the street close to some looters. His son visited the city a few years before with a group of friends. They returned home but his son decided to make a new life which had ended so abruptly. He wanted answers to take home to his wife and relatives and Toni use her links with the police Lieutenant Terry Colson (David Morse) to try and get the real story as so far everyone he contacted by phone provided conflicting information.
Toni gets to talk to the street cop who says he was called out to sort out the body a few days after the flooding and that the body was in a ransacked supermarket store shay in the head with three cartridge cases nearby and that some paper work had been sent in. Subsequently there is no trace of the report or the evidence. At one point a black female cop is talking over the situation of a Federal investigation with her boss where there has been denial of the order was given to shoot to kill looters. He says he does not understand why those in authority do not admit the order was given and that mistakes were then made. My instinct is that the two sequences are related.
La Donna, the previous client, is remarried divorced but living apart from her second husband, a dentist and her two sons by the first marriage in Baton Rouge, upstate in Louisiana. In the first episode of the new series she goes to see her husband for a marital visit but he wants her to sell up the bar she runs in New Orleans and the home of her mother who has also died in the intervening months and make a new life away from the city. He may suspect rather than know that after the hurricane damage she had a brief relationship with her former husband Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce).
Her husband visits the city in the second episode to celebrate Thanksgiving bringing the two step sons with him. They think it is strange not being with their grandmother again. The bar is struggling because of a lack of trade and she considers starting live music. One night in the third episode she is in the bar locking up on her own when she sees young men outside and one who she speaks to before two perhaps three break in and she badly beaten and raped as well as losing her stock, money in hand and even the keys to the premises.
She is in a bad state in hospital afraid and ashamed because of what has been done to her dependent on her husband but unwilling to talk to the police or deal with the sexual aspect of the assault. She is given various medications to prevent sexually transmitted diseased, HIV infection and pregnancy. She wants to get home as quickly as possible. Her former husband has decided to try and lead a band on his own as he is finding working difficult and calls on the bar having previously asked abut doing a gig to find it closed not knowing what has happened,
The former husband, Antoine is a Trombonist constantly in search of a regular job earning a basic income from a part time job as an assistant music instructor in a middle school. We see him in this episode playing a mournful solo over the grave of a friend and in a gig in which he speculates with another instrument player that their lives could have been so different if they had been trumpet players attracting all the pussy! He is living with Desireé, the mother of their daughter who works in primary school but has found herself losing seniority and pay in the shake up following the disaster. She attends a parent night to find more turning up and speaking out than ever before, such are the changed circumstances.
She has decided to accept a government grant to leave her family home because she does not have the cash to renovate but the problem is the house was built by an ancestor and passed on through generations perhaps without any official deeds of ownership being created. She points out that for them to get a new mortgage they would need to marry, a comment which Antoine chooses to ignore. During the second and third episodes we follow his attempts to find musicians including female singer for the band which costs money which he does not have. He continues to take casual work jobs and to be under pressure from his mistress to marry and provide a stable home for them together. He gives up the job teaching music as a primary school because he cannot cope with the behaviour of the children.
There are four individuals, previous couples, who split up with two of the four establishing a relationship together. The most anarchistic of the four is Davis McAlary a white part time DJ and song writer from a comparatively wealthy but unconventional family who has had his troubles with the law. In this series he loses his job as a DJ for refusing play a broader range of music. He is devoted to New Orleans Culture and remains angry at what happened and the official response. He had some financial success with a protest record. He has been living a chaotic bachelor life since his girl friend went on tour.
She is Annie Tallericp (Steve Zahn) a classical trained violinist of Asian family background) who are the start of the series had a relationship with a street musician Sonny (Michael Husiman) keyboards and guitarist who uses drugs with the consequences that he fails to get regular work inside and repeatedly messing up relationships. When Annie finds another woman in her bed she leaves and an attempt at reconciliation fails she becomes homeless and having spent a good day of festivities with Davis she turns to him for help and becomes his girl friend.
Because she is a talented musician she is becomes the subject of various offers including a lounge artist with an established pianist and with the tour band where she is a great hit with her playing and also participating in vocals. Sonny makes a good attempt at cleaning up the home before her return which impresses her. However he tries to avoid taking her to meet his family, but she is a great hit and stays behind while takes a mad aunt to a Hip Hop bounce music session in during which it appears the approach is to bend over and parade your backside.
During a lounge performance at the opening of a photographic exhibition about the effects of the hurricane on the city, Annie comes across a photo of her former boyfriend rescuing a baby and this reminds they established a relationship in the first instance.
Sonny meanwhile is having a hard time on the street playing on his own. He falls for a classic theft by a couple of teenagers. One unplugs his amplifier and when he goes to protest another steals the collected cash can. He then returns home as the police break into the place where he is staying to arrest the flatmate, He then finds his keyboard smashed and his guitar stolen soon after deciding that he needs a band job to get off the street. He places notices asking for work without success as the weeks go by and then learns that Antoine needs a guitarist and tries to persuade a fellow street musician to lone him his guitar for the interview. He cannot get Annie out of his mind and knows he needs to remain clean and get regular work if he is to have any hope of continuing their relationship
The fourth member of the quartet is Jeanette Desautel who tried to make a success of her own restaurant with money from her New York State parents. She had a casual relationship with Davis providing him with expensive meals and wine and although they did not appear compatible there was obviously a bond stronger than sexual attraction.
It was Janette who employed La Donna’s brother. Following one disaster after another she returns to New York and ay the start of the second series she is working for a top highly volatile chef with a tendency to scrap dishes if they are not perfect even if the customers get tired of waiting and walk out. She has turned her back on the life her parents want for her and has lodgings some distance from where she works sharing with a couple of gay men. She appears to spend her free time in bars and picking up men one who robs her before leaving the following morning. She is called back to New Orleans when Davis who has been collecting and redirecting mail finds the place broke into and by the time police arrived the place has been trashed. She sleeps on the couch of a former staff member before going to the FEMA office with regard to her previous claim for assistance in relation to the restaurant where her parents had provided the funds to get it fixed to open pending payment.
Another central character also at the FEMA office at the same time as Janette is Albert Big Chief Lambreaux (Clarke Peters). A Mardi Gras Indian, who dresses up in costumes which are works of art and museum pieces to dance and play on Mardi Gras days, usually under the influence of drugs and therefore always in conflict with the police. In the first series because his home is a wreck from Katrina he moves into the vacant closed bar of a friend who has not returned to the City. He tries to persuade the authorities to open new Federal Housing development which remains closed because it is not earmarked for the Black community. He breaks in and Squats attracting media attention but leaves in compromises which enables the Indians to have their day on the street during Carnival.
He is depressed at having to leave the bar and returns to camping at his home while he waits for settlement of his claim. He enjoys an open air Thanksgiving with his friends and his son who has returned home for the event. His son Delmond (Rob Brown) is a talented modern jazz player who now lives and works in New York and also goes on national tours with his music selling well for jazz records. There is conflict and pride between father and son over the music he plays and his rejection of the culture of his father. Father refuses to accept any financial help from his son.
When in New York the son is horrified by the contempt other Black musicians have for the music and culture of New Orleans, although he has often said worse. Similarly Janette is horrified on reading an article lambasting the quality of food in New Orleans and one feels that both will return to the City. The son expresses disappointment at a restaurant club date where the audience are lukewarm to the music and the place is half full. He is advised about the growing importance of the Internet in music (2006) with using MySpace, Facebook and other new media contact points. He sacks his manager who clearly does not know or want to know about the changes underway.
A new face this season is Nelson Hidalgo (Joe Seda), a young man say early thirties who waltzes into town in smart suits and cars with the suggestion of high political fixing and possibly Mafia links, possibly con man and all three, with a local cousin but saying he is going to be big time because of the opportunities. His first venture is to get a FEMA demolition contract where he sub contracts the work to an existing local operative offering a money making deal and when this is delivered in quick time he invites the local operative to his hotel for drinks and suggests a new deal in which the man will get a top slice of 12½% and he admits he will make 50%. I am unsure what the reaction was to this level of profiteering. We see him at the race track, going out in the evenings eating the local food and going to bars and to the music as well as being with several high maintenance young women. His first contact appears to be a major Republican developer, but when he takes up the suggestion of befriending the Democratic Mayor he appears to cut not ice because he is not local yet just as he is leaving the office he finds the TV crews arriving because new Recovery Tsar has been appointed (who is from out of Town).I have recorded the fourth episode but will wait to view with the fifth and sixth and then review and write again if I can bear to wait.
One reason for the lack of recognition has been the stance taken by the Director and writers in presenting what happened as a political failure, alleging corruption in the building of the fortifications against flooding after the 1927 disaster, and the subsequent failure to give priority to the rebuilding of the city.
At the core of the series there was and remains a conflict between those who wanted to protect and to celebrate the African, West Indian, French culture with at its heart traditional jazz and blues music born from the slavery and racism intermixed with eclectic fine food cooking, and those who genuinely wanted to clean up a city where the drug culture was rampant and crime and organised crime with regular killings the order of every day and who saw the disaster as the opportunity to create a New Orleans along the lines of Dallas and Houston in neighbouring Texas. White supremacy remained rampant.
One cannot escape the macro issues covered in the series although the programme is a delight with its constant snippets of the range of music emanating from the city. When the first series ended I was not sure if it was returning after the shock suicide and series departure of the most prominent of the actors John Goodman as Creighton Bernette, an English Teacher at a University who was working on a novel about the great Mississippi flood of 1927 and how the failure of the response to that situation governed what happened with Katrina. He developed national notoriety through a video Blog in which he made rants against the authorities using a flurry of expletives to voice his dissent and frustration. His departure was a loss but added to authenticity the life of a city that had become dependent on Conventions and tourism with the jazz entwined with drugs and sexual libertarianism.
While the Goodman character ranted his “white” educated wife ran a one woman with assistance civil rights legal office in which she has established a close but love hate relationship with city officials especially a local police commander. She remains angry as well as devastated by the suicide for her husband who she regards as cowardly act abandoning her, their daughter, and the city he professed to love. She initially refused to arrange a Second Line for his funeral.
A permit is required for a jazz band to parade through the city in relation to funerals and the Second Line is the familiar walking celebration after the burial to the Wake and which starts mournfully and then bursts into an energetic celebration to mark the life of the subject. Aspects of the walking dancing are the fluttering of handkerchiefs and the twirling of umbrellas. To be accorded a Second Line is a mark of respect. Toni has to drag herself to the Second Line for her daughter’s sake, than her own.
In the first episode of the second series, Accentuate the Positive which continues the story of all the former characters less Goodman it and begins fourteen months after the disaster on All Saints day in the Fall.
I say Glory B, because I eventually found the first episode which I had recorded and then accidental erased when started to view last weekend and thought I had just cancelled because I was too tired to enjoy. I had to go through the alphabetical list of the several hundred Sky Anytime plus programmes to reach Tremé and find the first episode so Glory B because without it would not be impossible to do justice to what promises to be as important if not even better a series than the first
Toni (Melissa Leo) Goodman’s widow has a new assistant who struggles to understand what her new boss is talking about with reference to Indians, Second Liners and such like. She also has a friendly breakfast/lunch meeting with the police chief to discuss a raft of problems arising from the youth Curfew, the continuing racism and million other problems over a year after the event. This is the worst side of USA especially as Federal and public services are understaffed, overwhelmed and bureaucratic while those with money concentrate on how to make more.
Her main problem is with Sofia, (India Ennega) their daughter who is at High School and who her mother suspects is cutting classes and generally being anti social redirecting the anger she feels at the death of her father against her mother and society in general in which she gives voice by echoing the approach of her father with a video Blog ranting about the situation with a musical rap of the word fuck continuously repeated. We learn that 100000 homes are still to be recovered with the displacement of the residents involved.
In the second episode Everything I do Gonh be Funky Toni grows more anxious about Sofia as they attempt to celebrate Thanksgiving by going out to a restaurant and later talking things over with a third party takes up the idea of using her connections to get the daughter an Internship with the Mayor’s office which she is taken for an interview by the assistant in the third episode On Your Way Down, after she stays out late defying Curfew with a mix of college friends at a jazz playing bar.
Throughout the first series Toni had helped La Donna Batiste Williams (Khandi Alexander) to try and find her brother who disappeared during the hurricane. The story unfolds that he was picked up on his way to the restaurant when he worked on suspicion and then held because of a warrant for his arrest which had in fact been sorted but was not correctly recorded. He had been caught up in the situation where the prisoners had been moved out and the authorities were then paid a premium by the Government to look after them. When they track him down they find it is someone else who has changed names because he was wanted on a more serious charge. They eventually find the body of the brother, just one more victim but at lest they are able to give him a burial.
In this series it seems her main focus of attention will be a new case she initially refused to take on because of existing commitments and moving into new office premises. The case is of a white out of town parent who visits to try and find out how his son died given that he was said to have been found in the street close to some looters. His son visited the city a few years before with a group of friends. They returned home but his son decided to make a new life which had ended so abruptly. He wanted answers to take home to his wife and relatives and Toni use her links with the police Lieutenant Terry Colson (David Morse) to try and get the real story as so far everyone he contacted by phone provided conflicting information.
Toni gets to talk to the street cop who says he was called out to sort out the body a few days after the flooding and that the body was in a ransacked supermarket store shay in the head with three cartridge cases nearby and that some paper work had been sent in. Subsequently there is no trace of the report or the evidence. At one point a black female cop is talking over the situation of a Federal investigation with her boss where there has been denial of the order was given to shoot to kill looters. He says he does not understand why those in authority do not admit the order was given and that mistakes were then made. My instinct is that the two sequences are related.
La Donna, the previous client, is remarried divorced but living apart from her second husband, a dentist and her two sons by the first marriage in Baton Rouge, upstate in Louisiana. In the first episode of the new series she goes to see her husband for a marital visit but he wants her to sell up the bar she runs in New Orleans and the home of her mother who has also died in the intervening months and make a new life away from the city. He may suspect rather than know that after the hurricane damage she had a brief relationship with her former husband Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce).
Her husband visits the city in the second episode to celebrate Thanksgiving bringing the two step sons with him. They think it is strange not being with their grandmother again. The bar is struggling because of a lack of trade and she considers starting live music. One night in the third episode she is in the bar locking up on her own when she sees young men outside and one who she speaks to before two perhaps three break in and she badly beaten and raped as well as losing her stock, money in hand and even the keys to the premises.
She is in a bad state in hospital afraid and ashamed because of what has been done to her dependent on her husband but unwilling to talk to the police or deal with the sexual aspect of the assault. She is given various medications to prevent sexually transmitted diseased, HIV infection and pregnancy. She wants to get home as quickly as possible. Her former husband has decided to try and lead a band on his own as he is finding working difficult and calls on the bar having previously asked abut doing a gig to find it closed not knowing what has happened,
The former husband, Antoine is a Trombonist constantly in search of a regular job earning a basic income from a part time job as an assistant music instructor in a middle school. We see him in this episode playing a mournful solo over the grave of a friend and in a gig in which he speculates with another instrument player that their lives could have been so different if they had been trumpet players attracting all the pussy! He is living with Desireé, the mother of their daughter who works in primary school but has found herself losing seniority and pay in the shake up following the disaster. She attends a parent night to find more turning up and speaking out than ever before, such are the changed circumstances.
She has decided to accept a government grant to leave her family home because she does not have the cash to renovate but the problem is the house was built by an ancestor and passed on through generations perhaps without any official deeds of ownership being created. She points out that for them to get a new mortgage they would need to marry, a comment which Antoine chooses to ignore. During the second and third episodes we follow his attempts to find musicians including female singer for the band which costs money which he does not have. He continues to take casual work jobs and to be under pressure from his mistress to marry and provide a stable home for them together. He gives up the job teaching music as a primary school because he cannot cope with the behaviour of the children.
There are four individuals, previous couples, who split up with two of the four establishing a relationship together. The most anarchistic of the four is Davis McAlary a white part time DJ and song writer from a comparatively wealthy but unconventional family who has had his troubles with the law. In this series he loses his job as a DJ for refusing play a broader range of music. He is devoted to New Orleans Culture and remains angry at what happened and the official response. He had some financial success with a protest record. He has been living a chaotic bachelor life since his girl friend went on tour.
She is Annie Tallericp (Steve Zahn) a classical trained violinist of Asian family background) who are the start of the series had a relationship with a street musician Sonny (Michael Husiman) keyboards and guitarist who uses drugs with the consequences that he fails to get regular work inside and repeatedly messing up relationships. When Annie finds another woman in her bed she leaves and an attempt at reconciliation fails she becomes homeless and having spent a good day of festivities with Davis she turns to him for help and becomes his girl friend.
Because she is a talented musician she is becomes the subject of various offers including a lounge artist with an established pianist and with the tour band where she is a great hit with her playing and also participating in vocals. Sonny makes a good attempt at cleaning up the home before her return which impresses her. However he tries to avoid taking her to meet his family, but she is a great hit and stays behind while takes a mad aunt to a Hip Hop bounce music session in during which it appears the approach is to bend over and parade your backside.
During a lounge performance at the opening of a photographic exhibition about the effects of the hurricane on the city, Annie comes across a photo of her former boyfriend rescuing a baby and this reminds they established a relationship in the first instance.
Sonny meanwhile is having a hard time on the street playing on his own. He falls for a classic theft by a couple of teenagers. One unplugs his amplifier and when he goes to protest another steals the collected cash can. He then returns home as the police break into the place where he is staying to arrest the flatmate, He then finds his keyboard smashed and his guitar stolen soon after deciding that he needs a band job to get off the street. He places notices asking for work without success as the weeks go by and then learns that Antoine needs a guitarist and tries to persuade a fellow street musician to lone him his guitar for the interview. He cannot get Annie out of his mind and knows he needs to remain clean and get regular work if he is to have any hope of continuing their relationship
The fourth member of the quartet is Jeanette Desautel who tried to make a success of her own restaurant with money from her New York State parents. She had a casual relationship with Davis providing him with expensive meals and wine and although they did not appear compatible there was obviously a bond stronger than sexual attraction.
It was Janette who employed La Donna’s brother. Following one disaster after another she returns to New York and ay the start of the second series she is working for a top highly volatile chef with a tendency to scrap dishes if they are not perfect even if the customers get tired of waiting and walk out. She has turned her back on the life her parents want for her and has lodgings some distance from where she works sharing with a couple of gay men. She appears to spend her free time in bars and picking up men one who robs her before leaving the following morning. She is called back to New Orleans when Davis who has been collecting and redirecting mail finds the place broke into and by the time police arrived the place has been trashed. She sleeps on the couch of a former staff member before going to the FEMA office with regard to her previous claim for assistance in relation to the restaurant where her parents had provided the funds to get it fixed to open pending payment.
Another central character also at the FEMA office at the same time as Janette is Albert Big Chief Lambreaux (Clarke Peters). A Mardi Gras Indian, who dresses up in costumes which are works of art and museum pieces to dance and play on Mardi Gras days, usually under the influence of drugs and therefore always in conflict with the police. In the first series because his home is a wreck from Katrina he moves into the vacant closed bar of a friend who has not returned to the City. He tries to persuade the authorities to open new Federal Housing development which remains closed because it is not earmarked for the Black community. He breaks in and Squats attracting media attention but leaves in compromises which enables the Indians to have their day on the street during Carnival.
He is depressed at having to leave the bar and returns to camping at his home while he waits for settlement of his claim. He enjoys an open air Thanksgiving with his friends and his son who has returned home for the event. His son Delmond (Rob Brown) is a talented modern jazz player who now lives and works in New York and also goes on national tours with his music selling well for jazz records. There is conflict and pride between father and son over the music he plays and his rejection of the culture of his father. Father refuses to accept any financial help from his son.
When in New York the son is horrified by the contempt other Black musicians have for the music and culture of New Orleans, although he has often said worse. Similarly Janette is horrified on reading an article lambasting the quality of food in New Orleans and one feels that both will return to the City. The son expresses disappointment at a restaurant club date where the audience are lukewarm to the music and the place is half full. He is advised about the growing importance of the Internet in music (2006) with using MySpace, Facebook and other new media contact points. He sacks his manager who clearly does not know or want to know about the changes underway.
A new face this season is Nelson Hidalgo (Joe Seda), a young man say early thirties who waltzes into town in smart suits and cars with the suggestion of high political fixing and possibly Mafia links, possibly con man and all three, with a local cousin but saying he is going to be big time because of the opportunities. His first venture is to get a FEMA demolition contract where he sub contracts the work to an existing local operative offering a money making deal and when this is delivered in quick time he invites the local operative to his hotel for drinks and suggests a new deal in which the man will get a top slice of 12½% and he admits he will make 50%. I am unsure what the reaction was to this level of profiteering. We see him at the race track, going out in the evenings eating the local food and going to bars and to the music as well as being with several high maintenance young women. His first contact appears to be a major Republican developer, but when he takes up the suggestion of befriending the Democratic Mayor he appears to cut not ice because he is not local yet just as he is leaving the office he finds the TV crews arriving because new Recovery Tsar has been appointed (who is from out of Town).I have recorded the fourth episode but will wait to view with the fifth and sixth and then review and write again if I can bear to wait.
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