Treme Recap, Season 3, Episode 8: “Don’t You Leave Me Here”

Lindsay Beyerstein

A teaser for Davis MacAlary’s R&B opera, Old Cats That Ain’t Got Paid,” is finally out. Instead of basking in the glow of his accomplishment, he’s agonizing over the chintzy packaging and lack of liner notes.

My opera is Moby Dick, this is a farm-raised salmon,” Davis says, slamming the package on the table.

Aunt Mimi is normally bemused by Davis’s outbursts, but she’s not prepared to let him dis the album they made with her money. She righteously berates her nephew for being an immature, ungrateful whiner. (The audience nods along emphatically.) When Davis launches into his usual pro forma grovelling routine, she shoves a bottle of tequila into her purse and announces: In the words of the immortal Big Al Carson, I am taking my drunk ass home.”

Annie doesn’t supect that Davis cheated on her on Mardi Gras. Nevertheless, the two are drifting further apart as Davis piles unspoken guilt on top of his insecurity over Annie’s quickening career.

For all his personal and professional ineptitude, Davis could teach General Petraeus a thing or two about cheating: If you want to fool around, do it in person. Don’t commemorate it on gmail. Find a partner who’s more emotionally stable than you are, someone virtually immune to jealousy, someone who won’t get caught up in your drama. Someone you don’t work with… Janette Deshautel is the anti-Paula Broadwell.

After much trial and error, Janette and her crew stage the successful soft opening of her eponymous high-end restaurant, Deshautel’s. An alert waiter susses out undercover food bloggers by their cheap shoes.

Chief Albert Lambreaux pays a visit to LaDonna’s bar the night before his first chemo session. It’s going to be his last hangover for a long time, he explains. LaDonna confesses that she’s being intimidated by friends of the robber she’s about to testify against. Albert advises her to show them she’s not afraid. LaDonna is terrified. Albert’s scared of chemo, too, but he puts up a good cantankerous front.

The police continue to target Sofia to get back at Toni for investigating misconduct in their ranks. The harassment gets so bad that Toni sends Sofia to live with her grandmother in Florida. In the first season, Sofia begged to come home from boarding school in Baton Rouge as soon as possible. Katrina couldn’t drive her away, but the NOPD has sent her into exile.

Oh, yeah, and Sonny proposed to Linh. Tran’s not so much losing a daughter as gaining a brooding Dutch musician in recovery. He’ll be thrilled.

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Lindsay Beyerstein is an award-winning investigative journalist and In These Times staff writer who writes the blog Duly Noted. Her stories have appeared in Newsweek, Salon, Slate, The Nation, Ms. Magazine, and other publications. Her photographs have been published in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times’ City Room. She also blogs at The Hillman Blog (http://​www​.hill​man​foun​da​tion​.org/​h​i​l​l​m​a​nblog), a publication of the Sidney Hillman Foundation, a non-profit that honors journalism in the public interest.
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