Is there a really easy way I can take an array of JSON objects and turn it into an HTML table, excluding a few fields? Or am I going to have to do this manually?
If you accept using another jQuery dependent tool, I would recommend using Tabulator. Then you will not need to write HTML or any other DOM generating code, while maintaining great flexibility regarding the formatting and processing of the table data.
For another working example using Node, you can look at the MMM-Tabulator demo project.