Letters to the Editor
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I Got It
I'm surprised how many TV columnists (in other publications) and viewers think Tony said "I did it." Closed captioning confirms that he says (twice), "I get it."
I've never taken hallucinogens but have known many people who have and from hearing their accounts of how it affects you, it was immediately clear to me that the peyote-fueled Tony was having a moment of existential insight: He glimpsed the meaning of existence and was ecstatic at finally understanding.
To me, that suggested a potentially fascinating direction for the last few episodes: An enlightened Tony comes to terms with his life and his actions!
But sadly, the previews for the next episode suggest that his insight vanishes - or perhaps merely congeals with his sociopathic need to justify his actions. Rather than triggering a moral reckoning, it seems that Tony will either dismiss the revelation or perhaps even use it to elevate his ego, to feel even more certain that he has acted in the only manner possible.
"What are you gonna do?" Tony asks in this episode and many others, at moments when he is most pressed to maintain a secret (here he says it when the crew gathers at his bedside to mourn Chris). At those moments, his psyche seems pressed to justify itself internally even as his outer behavior maintains the fiction of his righteousness -- or even innocence.
The tragedy of Tony is that he seems to have at least some capacity for moral reflection, perhaps even for spiritual insight, and yet he continually turns away from it. His moral choices keep getting transformed into inevitabilities in his mind.
He has asked himself, and asked Melfi and others, what he can do, how things could be different, but he never believes the answers he receives. At the end of this episode, in a flash of insight, he gets the answer he has sought.
Yet we sense that it won't last, that even if Tony were to come face to face with God, he would say, "yeah, yeah, I get it, but what are you gonna do?"
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I think you got it a little wrong
Tony wins at roulette (Dostoyevsky’s favorite game)and with joy says "He's dead!" He thinks Christopher was his bad luck! he falls down in joy that his bad luck is over.
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Doomed Therapy
How interesting that so many of us heard "I did it" instead of "I get it," when (upon review) it seems clear that he said "get," not "did." That so many of us misheard it seems to say something about our reactions to Chris' death (and all the deaths that came before it, especially Adriana's) -- on some level we want to see someone take responsibility for it. We are pained just watching the denial descend once more. And I do think denial is the right word -- Tony may not be denying the facts of the situation to himself, but he sure as hell is denying the emotional and moral reality that follows from those facts.
As for the issue of the effectiveness of therapy, I agree that part of what we are learning is that evil is not something that can be cured, at least not unless the person who has chosen to do evil chooses to truly face that evil, process it, and risk everything to change. That Tony cannot tell Melfi what really happened speaks to the severe limitations he has imposed on the therapeutic process in order to protect what he can't stand to lose: his legal freedom and his wealth. Time after time, the two of them are stuck talking around the issue. They can't really explore the core of Tony's ongoing pain (which is his own actions, not the actions of his Narcissistic mother or Sociopathic father), so Tony remains in that pain and feels rage at his therapist for not showing him a magical shortcut.
I actually think that the therapist Carmella saw ever-so-briefly, who told her bluntly that she was living off of blood money and could never free herself of guilt until she gave it all up to redeem herself, was actually the better therapist. He was direct, bluntly honest, and challenged her to make the tough choices necessary to truly find peace and freedom. He was not willing to lie to her about the path she would have to take if she wanted therapy to work for her. Melfi has chosen instead to assist Tony in his game of denial. She knows it, and Tony knows it. Their work has been nothing but a waiting game and now they are both running out of patience, realizing that the thing they are waiting for -- Tony's break into honesty -- will never ever come.
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To mchebert
Where did you find the chutzpah to call this show "stupid" after admitting that you have never watched it. Get real.
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"Sopranos Wrapup" -
Christopher doesn't deserve sympathy, but his death at Tony's hands truly shocked and saddened me.
This espisode was a masterpiece, something I haven't seen in the Sopranos for a few years. The back and forth between Tony in Vegas, and AJ talking to his shrink was classic.
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Parallels with his mother, Livia
First of all, I've wondered since the beginning if Tony's mother, Livia, was named after the scheming, vindictive wife of Caesar Augustus. With this last season, I think we are seeing Tony developing into a sociopath with no feelings like his mother. In the first episode, he purposely upset Janice with the comments about the neighbor's kid drowing in the pool. Janice compared their mother to a snake that would sit in the grass all day until the perfect opportunity to strike - no matter how long it took. I think Tony has the flaws of his mother, and they are really showing in these last few episodes.
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"I get it..."
I'm so glad that someone was able to decipher Tony's last line in this episoide. I wound it back several times, and I thought it was "I did it" which would be out of character.
"I get it" makes so much more sense. Tony is saying that he gets Christopher's lifestyle -- the drugs, hookers, etc... He's already said in this episode that he's tired of the responsibility.
...And he did collapse laughing on the casino floor after winning, but that doesn't mean he was happy as some have said. I took it to be a bit of a grief overload--but then maybe I'm trying to find some good in this character.
The dumping at the end of the episode was brilliant writing. It symobolizes Tony shitting on all the things he loves.
That was a great, great fucking episode.