Letters to the Editor
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Per your recommendation I did a google search with all filters off
And found nothing nude. A lot of bikinis and underwear, etc. I've never seen the L Word but if you say she's been naked on that show I'll take your word for it. And run to the video store to find the L Word on DVD.
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calm down
I said "semi-nude and topless"... I never said porn. She's an actress; she's not just a Ba-Da-Bing pole-dancing girl.
All I meant is that she showed more of her body on the pages of Maxim than she did in Sunday night's episode. So it's obvious the lack of nudity had nothing to do with her "demands" -- it had to be a creative decision. You really think if David Chase wanted a nude scene he couldn't have found a sexy actress willing do it? Get real.
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Killing Chrissy
Chrissy's relapse with Julianna started a period where the impending sense of one inevitable King of All Last Straws colored everything Chrissy did and said, paralleling Tony's all around losing streak. Chrissy going on the nod at the wheel while driving the boss of the family, nearly killing both of them, was that last straw. The shocker to me was that even his dying words were less a cry for help than yet another conveyance of his stubborn and childish sense of entitlement ('I don't want to lose my license!'). Simply put, The Life gave Tony no choice but to put Chrissy down ('he was suffocated by his own blood' as Paulie poetically put it); even if pulled safely from the wreckage, there was no scenario supporting Chris' survival.
Tony has taken so many half-steps toward walking in Chrissy's shoes, and vice versa. I loved the scene at the grill this week, with Chrissy complaining and Tony telling him not to burn the meat - a neat reversal of a similar scene from Season 3. Julianna, Adriana, soft drugs, hard drugs, Vegas, and now taking a potentially unwholesome interest in Kelli. So, Is Tony's losing streak really over, or is he just starting a new one? Or put a different way, has he finally figured a way out?
Oh, and did you hear the ducks when they dumped the asbestos at the end? Another bad sign.
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How it might end
I think Tony may have said too much to Melfi, regarding Adriana's death, something like, "Girlfriends, wives-they get in the way. I don't have to tell you that." Then he said, "I took care of it."
Since the very first episode, Melfi and Tony have had an agreement regarding Tony's speaking about specific crimes. I think her needing to turn him in would be an excellent way of the entire story coming full circle.
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Melfi -- jimmm
jimmm, you wrote:
"Since the very first episode, Melfi and Tony have had an agreement regarding Tony's speaking about specific crimes. I think her needing to turn him in would be an excellent way of the entire story coming full circle."
Nah. The tale doesn't end if Tony goes to jail after the endless tedium of prosecution in a federal courtroom. He is not headed for a slow death at the ultra-high security penitentiary at Marion, Illinois like John Gotti.
He goes out in a blaze, though surely not a glorious one.
However, it is worth thinking about the common practice of therapists to record their sessions with patients. I don't know if taping sessions was discussed by Melfi and Tony, but it would introduce a powerful red herring.
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comic relief
Someone might have posted this and I missed it, but did anyone else hear Tony's malapropisms? Last week, talking about either his or one of his buddy's older male health problem, he made the common mistake of citing the "prostrate problem." This week, talking to Dr. Melfi, he compared his relative lack of response to Christopher's death to his feeling about the death of other friends, when he was "prostate with grief."
He knows both words, but just not when to use them.
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AJ as mirror
ChristineP suggested that AJ is the mirror of Tony's soul 20 years ago, and I think that's brilliant. It makes Tony's spiral into isolated yet hedonistic evil all the more sad, because AJ is clearly at that turning point (or one of a series of turning points) where he could either follow his friends and his own father into hell or find a different path - and he can't stand to think about following them.
He's stayed clear of committing actual violence - he only pushed the biker away, even if he made no effort to stop the beating - and not even the support of antidepressants, which have protected him from the natural sadness over Blanca and Christopher, can protect him from the horror of purposeless violence. It pulls Tony's dissolution into even sharper focus.
My sense of Tony's dissolution, in fact, is not that he's in denial about the horror of his act. He is, of course, but I don't think he's hiding that horror from himself. He wants to be able to tell people that he killed Chris, and he wants their reaction to be his own - that he should have done it, that it was necessary. He isn't feeling guilty, he's feeling justified. Ordinarily his murders and mayhem are seen as such. This time, it's not, and the fact that he has to pretend that it was an accident and not his own carefully considered decision, more than Christopher's death, is what's troubling him. I think that car seat, far from being a tool to show people he deserved it, was even more importantly part of his decision-making process. He's been playing God for a long time with other people's lives, and he wants to be seen that way this time and can't.
Finally, I don't see his crack-up at the casino as horror. He's relieved that his luck has come back, and clearly connects that with Christopher's death, as though it was only Christopher who was between Tony and success. If he had a God complex before, it will only get worse now, and the last three episodes ought to be a trip.