[Last month I got to return to my favorite American city for the 2025 MLA Convention. So for this year’s Valentine’s Day series I’ll be offering some love letters to what makes New Orleans so unique, leading up to a special tribute post this weekend!]
On five
characters through which the wonderful
HBO show charts Katrina’s and New Orleans’s stories.
[NB. The
hyperlinked clips are just relatively random ones from YouTube, not summations
of everything about these deeply human and multi-layered characters.]
[Also NB.
Here be SPOILERS, so if you haven’t watched this great show yet, hie thee
hence!]
1)
Creighton Bernette: I wrote
about John Goodman’s Creighton and his righteous rants about New Orleans and
Katrina in this
post, and those rants are what made Creighton famous, both on the show and
in the responses to the show. But while those rants were indeed righteous, they
were also fueled by Creighton’s inability to move on, his permanent state of
mourning for what had happened to his adopted, beloved city. In retrospect,
everything in this character (and in many ways in the show’s first season)
built inevitably to his suicide at the end of that season’s penultimate
episode, as a statement about Katrina’s all too permanent effects for New
Orleans and many of its residents.
2)
LaDonna Batiste-Williams: Khandi
Alexander’s fiery bar owner LaDonna’s first season arc embodies a different,
even more tragic lingering effect of Katrina: all those families who literally
lost loved ones in the storm and its aftermaths, and who never knew (or did not
learn for months if not years) what had happened to them. But while the story
of LaDonna’s brother Daymo wraps up by the end of season one, LaDonna’s
character endures, experiencing another decidedly different tragedy of her own
while fighting to maintain a foothold in a city that seems intent on pushing
her and her family out. New Orleans is still trying even in the series finale,
but against LaDonna I don’t like even an entire city’s odds.
3)
Janette Desautel: Kim
Dickens’ chef and restauranteur Janette reflects a third, slower burning kind
of post-Katrina tragedy—someone who tries her hardest to stay but finds the
storm’s lingering effects too much for her, and more exactly for her career and
passion. Like her on-again/off-again boyfriend, Steve Zahn’s DJ Davis McAlary,
New Orleans post-Katrina seems as if it might be more destructive than
constructive for Janette, a passionate but unsustainable relationship. But in
truth, even what would seem to be a significant relationship upgrade (to the
New York City culinary world) can’t ultimately compete, and the show’s end
finds Janette back in New Orleans and back with Davis—and despite ourselves we
fully understand and support her in those choices.
4)
Albert Lambreaux: My
favorite character is Clarke Peters’ Big Chief Albert, a handyman whose true
talent and passion is in the world of Mardi Gras Indians. Albert’s
return to New Orleans and his decimated house (and to masking Indian) seem for
much of his arc like the acts of sheer stubbornness that his children
(especially Rob Brown’s jazz trumpeter Delmond) believe them to be. But the
traditions and legacies that Albert embodies and carries on are too potent to
be broken and, it turns out, too charismatic to be resisted, even by his
frequently resisting son. Like New Orleans post-Katrina, Albert may be fighting
a losing battle—but he makes the fight so irresistibly appealing that we’re
with him every step of the way.
5)
Antoine Batiste: And then
there’s the first character we meet, Wendell Pierce’s jazz trombonist Antoine. While
Antoine is certainly affected by Katrina (particularly in the loss of his
house), in some ways he is the character who seems least by either the storm or
the events of the show’s multi-year arc, who feels the closest in the final
episode to where he was in the opening one (down to his continued disagreements
with cab drivers). But Antoine’s difficulties finding steady gigs (which might
be an effect of Katrina, but might be the challenge of a city jam-packed with
jazz musicians) push him into a new profession, that of middle school music
teacher, and through that work Antoine becomes connected to the most crucial
question of all when it comes to post-Katrina New Orleans: what it will mean
for the city’s young people, and especially young people of color. That remains
a painfully uncertain question at the show’s conclusion, but with Antoine at
the front of the classroom I feel better about the answer to be sure.
Next love
letter tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Cities you’d love on?
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