Letters to the Editor
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bad karma
You can't live the way these people have lived for the years this show has been on, and not pay for your sins.
Sure, sometimes people don't pay. Look at Rupert Murdock.
But that's real life. In the world of the Sopranos, all the main characters are now too close to the whirlwind to avoid reaping the same.
AJ was absolutely turned-on by the torture. That was obvious. Maybe even too obvious. It's seemed likely for a long time that AJ was the kind of kid who would pull wings off flies for fun, if he thought of it. Now that he's activated, who knows what he'll do?
Gandolfini is doing a remarkable job of showing Tony in the midst of his final train-wreck. I'll be curious to see if Tony goes out like a shark, or like a lamb...it could go either way.
I thought Christopher's story in last night's episode was almost beyond words to describe. I could see him ratting everyone out in return for immunity..that would be perfectly in character.
Most of all though, I love the slowly building tension. It's in every scene now. You can almost see the air vibrating around the characters. This is not going to end well for these people. But it will end well for the Universe-at-large. David Chase is, at heart, a moral philosopher, and the Sopranos will stand, at last, as one of the great morality tales of our new century.
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remember that friendship bracelet?
something is going to happen involving the body that was dug up, the friendship bracelet Pauley was wearing in the old picture, and the fact that the picture was going to be scanned into a computer with copies being made. The friendship bracelet will probably be found in the grave and they will link it to Pauley and because he's such a blabbermouth, will rat out everyone. Don't forget the terrorist storyline that will somehow play a part in Tony's downfall too. I don't think there will be a lot of deaths, I think they will all go down as the Feds close in. The characters have to be kept alive for the inevitable movie!
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Tony Soprano
Is Tony Soprano becoming Vinnie "The Chin" Gigante with the bathrobe and his mumbling?
Why did A.J.'s girlfriend break up with him? Doesn't David Chase owe us an explanation?
The final segments are getting darker and hopefully a number of loose ends will be tied up.
Perhaps Chris can hire Ari from the Sopranos to represent him as his agent?
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the end is nigh
I'm ready for this show to end. After the last couple of seasons, I'm less interested in the characters. Their actions seem to have a lot fewer consequences, which is disappointing. But I'm liking this last 10-episode set, and thinking it's going to end on a level equal to the first 4 seasons.
Some things I've noticed so far that I think are interesting:
1.) The TV. All of the shows that have been on the TV have been from the past, and most of them from Tony's lifetime (3's Company, $20,000 Pyramid, lots of eighties infomercials, I believe there was an episode of Hill St. Blues on yesterday when AJ was watching TV at night). They're out of place on air, but add a nice tone of looking backwards. Here's hoping there's a Rockford Files episdoe on TV soon. Tony used to watch the history channel and black and white moves almost exclusively, but now we're into color and bad video.
2.) The recreations of previous murder scenes. Heather noted the Paulie/Pussy parallel, but there's also the drive off of the freeway Tony takes Bobby on before meeting the Canadians, which may as well have been the same road Sil drove Adrianna down.
Predictions?
Tony will die from eating spicy peppers or eggplant or any of the foods he's no longer allowed (as he mentions every episode at this point). I'm hoping it's a few episodes before the end, because the aftermath will be interesting.
The 2 "Arabs... or maybe Arabians" will turn out to be FBI agents, and part of a trap they'd tried to set for Tony. They'll come back into the Bing next episode with a line on some goods that they'll offer Tony. The FBI agent will have finally outsmarted Tony - but he'll be dead by the time they have a solid case against him.
Bobby's the next boss. Technically, anyway - Janice really will be in charge.
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Doesn't it all come back to Adriana?
Christopher loved her. Carm loved her, too, and her blissful ignorance about what happened to Adriana mirrors her wilfull blindess to Tony's business. Isn't the truth about Adriana's murder the one thing that can blow this whole ship apart?
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This is such a great article
This is such helpful analysis. This season has prompted me to actually take notes (I am not kidding), because the didactic nature of the dialogue is so obvious. I was surprised by it, at first, thinking that the characters would not come right out and say all that they were, making grand summations left and right. But I have gotten used to Chase's straightforwardness this season. And it seems to me Havrilesky is right-- Chase is revealling his true feelings about these characters. In "Philosophy and the Sopranos", the chapter on Tony and Happiness makes the case that Chase holds to the same account of moral psychology as Plato. Chase is giving us the inevitable results of living a life of immorality-- writ large. Even Plato was not this detailed when it came to his description of the psychological devolution that comes from crimes, lies, and the wrong aspirations.
(A smaller point, but finally, with Tony in the previous episode, manhandling Carmela, my insistance that the one liberty Chase took with realism, for the sake of the audience's like for Tony -- Tony's gentleness with women-- finally this has been redressed.)
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Another parallel
Did anybody notice the shot of Tony contemplating the nude statue in the waiting room outside Melfi's office? A callback to the very first shot of the pilot, the very first time he went to therapy, and a nice bookend to Tony's now complete (?) disillusion with it.