Letters to the Editor
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Watch the Melfi scene again
Okay, we still had the penultimate episode on our Tivo, so I watched the last session with Melfi a second time. I have a totally different take on it now that I've seen how the series ends. Last week, we were all totally appalled that Melfi would dump Tony like that after 8 years in therapy, especially while he was in "crisis." But looking at it now--and setting aside discussions about whether her conduct strictly adhered to professional standards--I think what she did was justifiable and based on a dead-on read of Tony. I was actually kind of proud of her.
Last week, I would have said that Melfi and Elliott K. were wrong about Tony being a sociopath. But in retrospect, I think he kind of is, and I think Melfi realized she was being conned and threw him out of her office when she realized he ultimately had no respect for her profession and what she was trying to do. The dead giveaway is that Tony didn't fall apart after Melfi dropped him. In fact, it didn't even faze him. Indeed, one might have thought that either Melfi's move, Sil's shooting, Bobby's death, or having to run for his life and spend a couple of weeks in a safe house might have prompted Tony to reassess the way he lives his life. However, once the "crisis" had passed, he and everyone else in his family resumed doing what they've always done. Moreover, it didn't take more than a week for Tony to start warming up to AJ's new therapist, whose sexy legs rival Melfi's, and to immediately start up with his interminable whining about the way his mother treated him. Tony values the people in his life only insofar as they are useful to him. Once they are no longer useful, they might as well be dead (like Christopher).
So Melfi called it correctly. Tony had absolutely no willingness to commit to any change, he just wanted an hour a week to whine about his mother, and for that matter, all the women in his life (as Melfi says, "And somehow, the female always disappoints"). He was not there for treatment, he was just there to pay some woman to listen to him whine for an hour. And once Melfi realized that, she realized she had been little more than a goomar and couldn't tolerate the relationship for a moment longer.
Watch the scene for yourself, and see if you don't feel differently about Melfi's actions.