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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
A summary that picked up a lot of little things you can miss when you're "experiencing" your way though drama as finely crafted as this.
Not a summary actually, more an amplification, as neat in its way as the lovely, lovely ambiguous ending of this excellent series.
Thanks Heather, thanks David!
Mikey Palmice in hell (the Irish bar where every day is St. Patrick's day) says 3:00.
Thanks, Heather, for helping us wrap things up emotionally, in ways Chase didn't want to.
Luv ya!
What I am left with after this final episode is the question as to where to look for answers. Do we discuss the ambiguous, abrupt non-ending ending (which made me think the Tivo ran out of disk space)? No, that's all a red herring, as is pretty much everything else in this episode.
No, the key to this whole deal is the cat. What does the cat represent? Why does the cat stare at the photo of Chrissy (listening to his iPod), and why does that creep out Paulie, the last man standing in Tony's original crew?
The cat represents conscience, the reminder of past misdeeds, the worst of which is Tony's murder of someone who was the closest thing Tony had to a son. Moreover, Tony then goes to Vegas and seduces Chrissy's last sweetheart. This after having Ade killed.
Tony is the keeper of the cat, and the keeper of conscience. Chrissy is Christ fallen, hanging on the wall like a Crucifix. The cat stares at him almost angrily. "You gave your life for this man, and look what it got you." It is as if to say to Christ himself, "You sacrificed yourself for these humans, and for this angry, jealous, vindictive God, and look what it got us."
Tony is the ruler of this world. He keeps the game going, never falling too far unto evil or near redemption. Phil was evil, and therefore he had to die. But Tony must live on, for the game that is this life that we Americans are playing must go on. We must all submit to Tony if we want to survive and be safe, though that itself is no guarantee of survival or safety.
Who is the more fiendish - Phil or Tony? Tony is by far the more manipulative and intelligent of the two men, and also the more sympathetic, more complex. The Tonys will usually outlast the Phils because Tony keeps things in balance, never letting things slip too far in any one direction, whereas Phil is at the extreme. Tony allows us to be comfortable with the evil that men do, and with the evil that we do, and that is why we will ultimately tolerate him. We can live with Tony, but not with Phil (look at the reaction of the FBI man to Phil's execution). Moreover, we can live at Tony's will and at his disposal without it troubling us too much.
I think it's interesting that last night I discussed how this program would end with my significant other. She had watched in the beginning and I have never. We don't currently have HBO; but we were not immune to speculating on how it would end. How could you avoid hearing and reading about this momentous ending. We were in agreement though, that with all the problems of the world, it was truly sad that this was so important to so many.
I am not denegrating, just commenting on all the commotion. I too wanted to know how it would end, even though I couldn't bear the violence. How is that?
"Who is the more fiendish - Phil or Tony?"
yeesh, scaring the shit out of me.
Who is the most fiendish - Phil or Tony or Tronbrain?
:)
Am I the only man in America that never liked this series? Well, almost never -- I've watched every episode, initially enthusiastically, later out of obligation. Chase and his writers have never had a full grip on their material; their vague ambitions have been diffused over the last decade or so, the repetitive and muddled product resulting in about a dozen good episodes total.
Perhaps it's not entirely Chase's fault. Within the context of a media product, how can there be basis for a true critique? Composing a series about characters with no insight, written by people with limited insight can only result in an art-as-emetic: in other words, these trapped characters, entirely dead to meaning, might help speed up and induce in one (if at all -- for it seems to be principally a lucky thing to have such insight) an awareness of one's own trapped position within this culture, the better to vomit it out.
In this sense, this episode was very admirable and was among the very scattered good episodes within the series. Tony Soprano, his (ultimately corrupt) audience no longer in existence with the cessation of Melfi's "help", goes forth into life with vague and senseless experience behind him. Tony's death, imprisonment, flight, would all be false ends following the enforced nihilism of the previous seasons.
Chase and his writers have in sum offered a disappointing corpus, post the initial inspiration of archetype-examines-feelings-with-therapist. If I had to, I would pinpoint the failure to execute Big Pussy at (if memory serves) the end of the first season as the point when Chase and his crew demonstrated that they had none of the required insight, intellectual bravery or aesthetic boldness to carry out their designs. In the end, our default attitudes, given to us by the late capitalist system, converted the rogue elements into the core of the fascination with the mafia, that is, a bourgeois power-fantasy, among other elements I cannot point out in these hurried comments.
Even this series' famed use of red-herrings, dead ends, etc, is an affectation done to distract from the empty critique of America this series provided. Attempting to defy Aristotle in eschewing a beginning, middle and end (fair enough -- it worked in War and Peace) this series fell into that Greek philosopher's waiting trap: "Of all plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a plot 'episodic' in which the episodes or acts succeed one another without probable or necessary sequence. Bad poets compose such pieces by their own fault, good poets, to please the players; for, as they write show pieces for competition, they stretch the plot beyond its capacity, and are often forced to break the natural continuity." (his Poetics)
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
