Letters to the Editor
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cleverly re-directing focus
back to the viewer. I guess that is what a social commentary does, generally. all of the objects we have focused judgement on are "shot down": the shrinks, the feds, the mobsters are all clusters of essentially self-interested people who we can comfortably watch as they struggle with basic questions of morality, ie "what is the right thing to do in this situation?"; their actions often failing our expectations of them. don't stop believing? but, what is there to believe in? the scenes that stick out, for me, in the culminating episodes are those depicting the horrified crowd or witness reaction to extreme violence. the staff, performers and audience at the Badda Bing who see the car/motorcycle accident, the guy in the electric train store trying to cover those traumatized kids with his body, the projectiling crowd at the gas station: as viewers, They are Us. and They have one clear, unambiguous, horrified reaction to extreme viloence. when it culminates in a moment. perhaps we are meant to draw in all of the mundane, seemingly-benign choices that lead to such an event: Episode One of this season brought us drink-by-drink from placid lake-side vacation to major family rift. in any case, Heather's article is the best I've read so-far on the last episode in a really interesting series. unless the do a movie in three years.