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• Monday, June 11, 2007 06:24 AM

  All is well in the family, yet I woke up this morning hating these people and myself.

  You cant’ only look at one show, you have to look at the past two seasons to see what it was all leading up to, and in that regard it was satisfying and also incredibly cynical.

  As always, the Italians are dying out – the tour bus guide tells us – and swarms of Chinese are taking over the world.

  Tony can’t do anything about that. All he can do is worry about his family.

  We were led to believe that Tony’s getting shot last season was the event that gave him a “new lease on life,” but it wasn’t – it really was being holed up in a safe house with a machine gun propped over his gut that got him thinking. So last night’s episode, while rather slow and short on the pyrotechnics, was about protecting his family and wrapping up loose ends. Because he had a 90% chance of being indicted, and probably going to prison.

  He He got some money for Bobby’s kids out of Junior, and gave him a shred of dignity to live on by reminding him of the glory days. He shared some real feelings about his mother in front of Carmella (with some random shrink and Melfi substitute – OK, a little too convenient). He rubbed out Phil (with the help of Agent Harris – that was the one scene that took me for a loop: where did that desk-pounding celebration come from?)

  And the show let us know that things would be OK in Tony’s absence: He made sure AJ would give up his dream of saving the world, and channeled his energy into working on shlocky movies. Meadow would earn triple figures defending low-lifes, and she won’t get pregnant any time soon. She is free to bang up cars while parallel parking all she wants. And Carmela can continue selling over-priced vacation condos to rich people. In the end, we see that protecting your family means aspiring to be nothing less than a normal, Bush-era, self indulgent American family. As viewers we’re implicated in rooting for this to happen, for them to be participating in a society that is even more warmongering and materialistic than when the series began. Boy, I don't feel so good.

  Oh, and the guy in the diner went to take a leak.

  —Norman Read Norman's other letters
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