Final Thoughts

Overall, I have to say that I was very happy with how my selection of Season 1 of The Sopranos worked out. As I said, initially, I did not know anything more about the show than “gabagul” and “badabing.” But I have to say I got a lot out of the season: more insight into the intricacies of life (both within organized crime, and in life in general: family dynamics, child-rearing, parent-child relationships, husband-wife relationships, and the burdens and requirements of friendship) as well as more faith in the power and quality of television. I had never been an avid watcher of any TV series growing up, aside from the sitcoms watched during dinnertime (Simpsons, Seinfeld, Family Matters, Full House, etc.,) the saccharine (ok maybe The Simpsons ins’t saccharine, but the rest certainly) exemplifications of wholesome American family life, where the problems are usually caused by a zany neighbor and resolved before I have to go finish my homework. Other shows I have followed from time to time, (The Office, Entourage, Always Sunny in Philadelphia) may have been less straightlaced, but invariably falling under the heading of entertainment, and not necessarily a relatable representation of real life. But the Sopranos was not afraid to take on any topics, the highs and lows and complications of modern life which indeed makes it very difficult for many people to live productive, successful lives (from drugs, alcohol, and sex to depression, suicide, intimidation, and overall feelings of a lack of control due to the manifold circumstances which intersect to frustrate and interrupt our carefully laid plans.) And throughout this accurate portrayal of both sides of the coin of life, there was gripping dialogue, countless literary allusions, and an overall adherence to the questions of morality and ethics which punctuate life, religious or social or completely depraved.

Christopher, I thought, was the most humorous character, simply for his brashness and inflated self-confidence. He can hang comfortably with Paulie, Silvio, and Pussy, shooting pool and drinking and putting bullets into people, but always has gnawing feelings of inferiority, due to his lack of experience and lack of exposure.

Another favorite (and least favorite) was Father Phil, played brilliantly by Paul Schulze, who Carmela finally calls out in the last episode for his strange fixation on playing the ’sexual tension game’ with married, spiritually hungry women, thirsting for some carnal fulfillment he has vowed not to have, and filling the void with homemade Italian dishes.

Nancy Marchand’s portrayal of Tony’s mother, Livia, was equally devious and enjoyable, as she ran the gauntlet from painfully inept to painfully manipulative and involved beyond what even she was willing to admit. As powerful of a character as Tony Soprano was (there is no need to say hats off to James Gandolfini,) he was constantly pulled and pushed in a million directions by his frail old mother.

Overall, I really don’t know what to say. I feel as if I have given my complete and honest reaction to each of the episodes throughout my blog posts, and I enjoyed seeing not only how each episode played out, but how the plot details related to my own life. The show was part drama, part comedy, part mystery at times, but never got old to return to. I am already trying to obtain a copy of season 2 and I’m sure I will enjoy it (although I don’t know if I will continue to blog about it…)

At the end of the day, the process of blogging about the show was both a joy and a challenge. There was so much to cover in every episode that it was at once easy to want to ramble on and on, but at times dizzying and frustrating to try to fit everything in. Really, my blogging can only scratch the surface of my experience of the show; it really is one of those complete works that needs to be experienced first hand to be really appreciated and enjoyed. As I said in an earlier post, David Chase thrust his art up their on the mantle with Jesus and the Beatles by trying to boil it down to a finite amount of time, but the show really does transcend itself at times, and reaches out to cinematic history and modern reality. It was really a joy to watch, but at times a Herculean task to try to respond to with completeness, dignifying just everything that was happening on multiple levels.

My final assessment: like all good art….you have to see it yourself to find out how it speaks to you.

 

The end.

I’m sorry for veering off of the Sopranos again but…

am I the only one who knows about this or the last one to learn?

Does it make a difference at all in terms of one’s political career and ambitions (I mean Reagan was a film actor, right?), does Palin talk about her broadcasting years in her Going Rogue book, and for the love of all things good does anyone think/fear we will really be subjected to the circus of a possible Palin-Beck ticket in 2012 (hopefully Beck buried himself already when he made that ‘Palin in the kitchen’ comment….)

But anyway, this is new information to me… I never liked Palin as a political candidate, obviously, but I’ve been finding it kind of fascinating to watch the way in which she is being molded into a Republican mouthpiece and legitimate (?) politician (though I did not say a legitimate intellectual or legitimate visionary or legitimate policy maker or legitimate…)

Anyway, I also had the chance to watch the new Lil’ Wayne documentary last night (The Carter) and its message seemed to me to be “stay the hell off drugs….unless you have been rapping since age 8 and defacto signed to a label since age 11 and your rich surrogate father owns a production company and allows you to virtually live in the recording studio 24/7 and your only purpose in life is to take a lot of drugs and spit catchy, quirky rhymes whenever the muse hits you, but clearly this is not any sort of model for the average person, burdened by social and fiscal responsibilities, to follow…in other words, no one else can be Lil’ Wayne…” I’m not saying he is the greatest rapper ever, or the “best rapper alive” as he says, but he has certainly said it enough times to convince himself and everyone else that it is true…and since he devotes truly his entire life to it, no one can really say any different (but it still does not make him immune from being dragged into court every once in a while)

But it just goes to show what a person can become….in their own mind and in the public consciousness, if they are surrounded by the right people and told the right things and they devote every waking second to the goal of building a unique persona and unique method of communication..whether their goal is to become a legendary rapper or President of the United States.

Again, I don’t know if this stuff even matters on a grand scale…you have to decide for yourself.

Sarah Palin, (here Sarah Heath,) proving she has always been a Rogue Maverick whatever she wants to call herself, as a female sports broadcaster in Alaska, 1988

 

Young Glenn Beck in 1986 as a snappy morning-rush-hour radio host in the vein of Elvis Duran and the Z-Morning-Zoo or the two guys from KBBL on the Simpsons

And just for the sake of my argument, young Lil’ Wayne as the Tin-Man in a New Orleans middle school production of the Wiz (yes the video clip is suspect but he did admit it was him in a Blender Magazine article…but no one has to take my work for it) He starts out on the right..

 

More Science

Season 1 Final Episode Ratings

13. I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano

To be perfectly honest, I really don’t like this choice of title to lead off the finale of Season 1.

You're lucky I don't break your face into 50,000 pieces!

The only time they mention Jean Cusamano during the episode is towards the middle where Tony is back in Melfi’s office after having snapped, flipped her coffee table, and got all up in her face threatening to smash said face into 50,000 (count’em) pieces when she insinuated (maybe a bit more than that) that Grandma Livia may in fact have borderline personality disorder, which according to the DSM IV, means that the phobias in her mind are more real to her than any actual relationships she has, and she therefore experiences joylessness and is a master manipulator. Which all sounds about right, but Tony has enough on his plate (as discussed in the last episode) and does not need to hear this shit.

Anyway when Tony comes back to see her again, and promises to a scissor-wielding, 911-dialing Melfi that she is in no physical danger (from him at least…although someone may want to kill her for seeing Tony and she may want to go on the lam–I can’t just pick up and leave I have patients! Some of them are suicidal! Well they’re not gonna feel any better about themselves if you get whacked! says Tony) she asks if Tony’s had any dreams since the FBI had a little sit down with him and revealed that they’d wiretapped the Green Grove Nursing Home where Livia and the mothers of two other capos were staying. They play Tony clips from several conversations between Livia and June, including the one where they agree that Tony needs to be whacked for his subversion (blood or no blood…I’m the boss, Livia!)

So Tony says, no, no dreams (in the past his dreams have included his Isabella hallucination and further delusion of her breastfeeding him, symbolizing the caring Italian mother figure he so sorely wishes he had right about now while his life is going to shit, and that old one about the duck flying away with his penis, which Melfi although thinks has to do with Livia and June usurping power from him,) except this one sex dream, where he’s hitting Jean Cusamano from behind, then he finishes, and he’s just looking at her big ass……

So that’s where the name of the episode comes from. Whether they just wanted to make the reference to the 60’s TV show, I don’t really know. Jean hasn’t really played a prominent role in the series–she’s Tony’s neighbor and Melfi’s friend, but she doesn’t really do anything, so it seems random for Tony to be fantasizing about her, and it seems as if this was just stuck in there so they could make this reference, which is strange. I mean it is the finale of the season, as I have said, and you’d think they’d want something more epic or idk, something to go out with a bang. But this is what they chose. Which I guess in a way is fair, because it’s not the last episode of the series–there are a good 6 seasons left before that, and we see the end of this episode doesn’t really tie anything up, it’s more of just a resting point, as Tony, Carmella, AJ, Meadow, Chris, Adriana, Paulie, and Silvio all end up in Artie Bucco’s restaurant during a terrible rain storm, and Tony toasts to his family: “To my family. One day you’ll have families of your own, and just try to remember the little moments, like this, that were good. Cheers.” Not the most eloquent piece of poetry ever, but I suppose a touching tribute and a fitting way to show the love Tony still and always carries for his family, even when his own mother and uncle are trying to kill him. Just gotta keep it together one more day…such is the life of a gangster.

Mikey Palmice gets laid out.

Mikey Palmice gets whacked, thank goodness. He goes out for a little jog, calling his wife a “ho” and telling her to “go take a mydol,” (in the past he has told her to “slit her wrists why dontcha” and asks if she was “this fucking stupid when I married you.”) So he goes off for a little jog in his little tracksuit with his little gold chain to try out his little new running shoes, and a dog starts ominously barking at him as he jogs past. He finds himself on some woodsy path, just joggin along, when we see a tan Caddy cruising up the path behind him. Oh shit, Mikey! It’s our heroes, Paulie and Christopher, both clad in their own flashy nylon tracksuits, who chase Mikey through the woods at top speed (although Paulie has to slow down a bit..he is kind of an old man, and runs right into a poison ivy plant.) Mikey trips and slips right into a muddy little creek, and as he’s lying there Chris shoots him in the thigh so he can’t run away. “You shot my friend Brendan naked in the bathtub when he had no chance to run away!” screams Chris. Mikey pleads for his life, saying it was all Junior who shot Brendan, to which Chris replies, “Yeah right, Mr. Magoo!” Paulie catches up, covered in poison ivy and “can feel it itchin [him] already!” The two empty their clips into Mikey Palmice’s chest, I have to say one of the most satisfying moments of the whole season (retribution for the two gangsters and the end of this scumbag, finally.)

Jimmy the Rat gets his too.

Jimmy the Rat gets killed in the first 5 minutes of the episode. Chris lures him to a hotel room with the promise of a couple “Russian booboos” (you go for some basic foreplay they’ll detail your car! Chris says) Jimmy, doused in cologne, but who didn’t have any time to put on anything decent, is really excited when the broad comes out to greet him, and I don’t know if it’s sad or what that Jimmy thinks this girl is actually into him. These guys walk around all day thinking what big shit they are, and these girls know it, and know they just have to bat some eyelashes and shake some ass and make them think they think they’re big shit, too, and they just give them their money! Not bad. But anyway, they sit Jimmy down, Jimmy who had called a meeting of all the capos and bosses to discuss business they’ve already talked about (just to get it on microphone,) so Silvio steps in with a silenced pistol and splatters that nice hotel room with Jimmy’s brains (what a shame.) To add insult to injury, Chris later calls in a bomb threat to Jimmy’s wake. (Too much! Paulie says.)

Livia wanders into the Soprano home at 1 am on a Friday or Saturday night, while Meadow is busy hooking up with her Domincan boyfriend and AJ is jerking off in his bedroom (I’m serious.) Anyway, I don’t know how far the nursing home is from the house, but she apparently walked all the way up the street, then barges in, calling Meadow her “feccia bruta” (something like a dirty whore) sister Satimia, who’s dead, and thinks AJ is someone who has whooping cough and needs to be under the vaporizer (Holy Shit, says AJ.) So a patrolman comes and asks if this is Livia’s house, if she knows where she is. Livia is moved to the nursing unit of Green Grove and it’s believed she’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Tony and Carmella strongly suspect that she’s faking it so she can get out of any connection with Tony’s whack job (the FBI have plenty of her on tape…) but I think it’s somewhere between faking it and really truly her mind going. I mean stress and guilt can do strong things, so while her senility might be partially her own construction, it might be a bit more complicated and a bit more beyond her control, or her willingness to control (Borderline Personality Disorder? I don’t know.) Later on she has a stroke, but Tony is sure to get to her gurney before she can be transferred to the ambulance, and tells her it’s not that easy to take him out and Uncle June is in jail now, being interrogated by the FBI (but unwilling, even against his own jail time, to admit that Tony is the real boss of North Jersey.) The paramedics tell him she can’t hear him, but he flips when he thinks he sees the hint of a smile behind her oxygen mask. Livia is f*cked.

Bucco!

Artie Bucco, who we find out is the 3rd generation of Buccos to own the Vesuvio and now this new restaurant, refurbished by the insurance money collected after somebody (Not Tony, he swears on his mother’s life, which is funny because we know he wants to kill his mother for her wanting to kill him, but obviously somebody Tony hired, another set of hands) set it on fire and burnt it down. “How can I look you in the face after what Tony did to you?” Livia asks poor Artie. “You don’t blame him for burning down your restaurant?” Bucco puts two and two together (f*cking finally) but stupidly confronts Tony in a parking lot with a hunting rifle. Tony talks him down, but Bucco is f*cked, and doesn’t know what the hell is going on anymore. He goes to Father Phil, talking about how he’s filled with murderous rage ! (stifle your laughter, please) and how he doesn’t just hate “this man” (Tony,) he hates all men, and he hates life! Father Phil tells him it seems as if he’s had these problems for a long time, and he left God a long time ago. Whenever he comes to church his mind just wonders, says Bucco, he looks at the stained glass, at people’s hats…I’ve seen people in services before too who look like they could care less about the spiritual aspect of why they are there, but just come for the food and the conversation and just gaze around idly while prayers are being said, c’est la vie. But anyway, after seeing how great his restaurant is turning out, how happy his wife is now, he kind of comes to terms with the whole thing, and delivers probably the best quote summing up Tony’s life (remember how Det. Makazian hated how Tony could some up a whole man’s life in one sentence..degenerate gambler with a badge..) :

Is he complicated? Yes. A little too comfortable outside the law? Yes. But it would only add to the quotient of sorrow in the world to doubt him.

He’s Tony Effing Soprano, for better or worse, and with his Uncle and 13 others in jail, his mother maybe on her deathbed, his daughter ready to go to college, his son bulldozing into puberty, his wife faithful and supportive after all this shit, his best friend missing and maybe dead, his wiseguys cracking wise as ever, the feds with reams of information on him, his Prozac and Lithium sitting pretty in the medicine cabinet and his shrink in danger of being whacked herself…..

…..well, I should probably just keep watching this series.

My Rating

5 Sopranos R-shaped gun logos, my friends. Not just for this episode, but for the way all of the plotlines and all the details flowed to this inevitable stop, with the family sitting together at the dinner table, which is, before that final blackout scene, also the way the series ends, I already know. But the whole season was just so beautifully written, full of allusions and wordplay and witty banter and jokes on jokes, but through the genuineness of the acting never feeling as if you weren’t a voyeur, right there in real life, watching these things unfold. Being a journalism major myself, I felt like a journalist at times watching this show, taking notes as I ‘cover’ these people’s lives, waiting for that great quote or that interesting observation. This was a great season for so many reasons, but mostly because it showed not just a shoot-em up mobster tail, but a balanced account of the realities of life in North Jersey, in America in the 1990s, a tale that can be related to on many levels by many people, a rewatchable work, and hopefully, a good indication of things to come. Now I know how to spend my winter break…and if anyone wants to buy me the Sopranos boxset I know Christmas is coming soon…

 

….coming next I will post my final thoughts on the season and the blogging process.

The end is near

Woke up this mornin’
Got yourself a gun
Mama always said you’d be the chosen one
She said, ‘You’re one in a million
You got to burn to shine’
That you were born under a bad sign
With a blue moon in your eyes (yeah)

Woke up this mornin’
And-a all that love had gone
Your papa never told you
About right and wrong

But you’re, but you’re looking good, baby
I believe you’re a-feelin’ fine
Shame about it, born under a bad sign
With a blue moon in your eyes
So, sing it now

Original song: Woke Up This Morning by The Alabama 3

12. Isabella AKA Tiny Tears Make Up An Ocean

And here I find myself again trying to recreate some kind of a natural response to the final two episodes of the first season of The Sopranos. The problem here is that there is so much going on, so much that has been building, and at the height of such exuberance in screenwriting, nearly every line is a verse of poetry, a carefully placed piece in the jigsaw puzzle which helps to create the larger picture of what Tony Soprano’s life is. And verily, just like real life, any real life that any person lives, Tony’s is not merely composed of the relationships he has or the actions he takes on a conscious level, but also the unconscious feelings and concerns he has, and yes even the medication or stress or what-have-you-induced hallucinations. It is all of these underlying, deeply personal mental incantations which have so much effect on a person’s life, decisions, and actions, but are nearly always taboo or inappropriate to discuss. But here David Chase is again, putting it all out there on the line. For a TV show assumed by many to be a “shoot-em-up,” “capicola-eating,” “boozin and screwin” depiction of Italian-American mafiosos (which it is,) The Sopranos certainly is not afraid to deal with the minutiae of personal and psychological life, without which it is nearly impossible to understand why anyone does anything they do that they haven’t been instructed to do through years of civlizing programming.

OK.

Tony is depressed as f*ck. He’s hopped up on Lithium and Prozac, his best friend Pussy is missing and likely dead, his mother will not stop laying the guilt I’m-a-poor-old-uncared-for-lady-you-bastard-son-and-my-husband-is-dead-and-you-sold-my-house-and-I-have-a-questionably-intimate-relationship-with-my-dead-husband’s-brother-who-is-also-a-mob-boss-with-no-credible-power-and-now-wants-to-murder-my-son-and-I’m-kind-of-complicit-in-this trip on him, he has federal indictments hanging over his head, he’s in love with his therapist, whose visits with are jeopardizing his whole organized crime career, his daughter is a somewhat obnoxious anorexic borderline feminist/activist who hooks up with skeezy Dominican guys and knows her father’s in the mafia, and he has hallucinations of eating lunch with a gorgeous imaginary Italian dental student where he then has a further hallucination of being breast-fed by her as a baby in a chalet in the Avolina countryside, and who really knows what the hell is going on?

So in response, he lies around all day in his bathrobe, half-conscious sprawled out on his king-size bed in his king-size master bedroom in his North Jersey McMansion and limps around the house waiting for the day that someone shows up to put a bullet in his skull if he doesn’t grab a gun out of his mother’s hatbox and do it first himself.

And the boys are starting to talk. Christopher (Michael Imperioli) thinks he may be depressed since he’s sleeping all day and not taking care of himself. “What the fuck do you know about depression?” retorts Silvio, with an apparent air of personal offense. All the top guys in history had black moods, and it’s somewhat fascinating and maybe even appropriate that he would compare Tony in his position of power to the likes of Winston Churchill and Napoleon. It might be a bit of a stretch, but that’s how seriously they take this life. So yeah, Churchill swilled a quart of brandy before breakfast every morning and Napoleon was a moody f*ck too, so don’t go worrying about Tony and making accusations of depression, the guy from the E-Street Band says. It’s just ridiculous. Later, when Christopher is talking with the bathrobe-clad Tony in his kitchen, and Tony turns to go down the stairs, Chris asks “What are you going to do?” with a look of concern on his face that says “If you’re going to hang yourself down there, I hope you have enough rope for me too.”

Over in Uncle June’s camp meanwhile, we see what big douchers Mikey and Jimmy, and especially Junior are. They’re at this poor old woman’s wake, kneeling in front of her casket talking about the hit on Tony (they’re getting “black guys to do it…no way to trace it back) while Junior gazes down at the chilly, wrinkled hands lying so limp and lifeless in the casket, reminiscing of how they were the first ones to yank his canoli when he was wee boy behind the local chicken market. “God, what am I saying at this poor woman’s wake,” he immediately catches himself. Junior’s a scummy man, plotting the mob assassination of his own nephew because of his own personal insecurities. Everyone knows he’s just “Joe Jerkoff,” as Silvio puts it–he’s got no real power, Tony is calling the shots behind his back, rendezvousing with his fellow capos at the old-folks home while Grannie Sopranie eats pastries and looks for her lost slipper and hate hate hates on everybody and everything with that loose-jowled scowl still conjuring up images of the Grandmother in Psycho. So June’s puking out of his car door when he finds out the hit on Tony didn’t go down and having Mikey give the hired thug a Moe Green Special of his own in his own car on an abandoned street in broad daylight for cracking  jokes about Tony’s own mother wanting to see him popped.

Sh*t, as they say, is f*cked.

• 1000s of dollars for Honus Wagner and jack sh*t for Jesus Christ, Junior laments, thinking back to the prayer cards of his youth and how they don’t get nearly the respect or admiration that the same cards with pictures of guys who hit little leather balls with sticks of ash-wood that come with dry, powdery old stick of gum get. Such is life. Can Jesus Christ hit 73 dingers in one season? Not likely!
• At the very least, when they pop Tony, they’re gonna shoot him below the neck, so he can have an open casket. That’s nice.
• No wonder Tony can’t lose weight…he’s running off to buy donuts! Which produced the epic line, “Let Soprano have his donuts, we gonna pop him when he gets out!” by one of the hired assassins.
• Tony’s Prozac gets bumped up to 60mg by Melfi. They’re just trying to find some way to jump start his system a little bit.
• Well later on he gets that jump start he needs. Walking back to his SUV after buying a Tropicana and a racing form from the news stand, one gunshot shatters his glass bottle. He freaks, hops in his car, and wrestles the gun out of the hand of the dude unfortunate enough to stick his head in the car window. The second assassin steps up, shouting, “You dead now, muthaf*cka!” or something epic to that effect, as he shoots his partner in the head, instead of Tony’s melon, sitting a couple inches away. Tony sheds the first body, grabs the gun in the second guys hand, and starts driving off, wresting the firearm away and leaving the dude bleeding on the pavement, and a jovial look reminiscent of Tony’s days as a young boy eating cherry-vanilla ice cream while his dad and a circus clown get shoved in the back of a paddywagon washes over Tony’s face—he showed those guys!–before he careens solidly into two park cards and busts his head up against the steering wheel.
• In the hospital, after the requisite mushy visit from his family, Tony is visited by an FBI agent, who gives him the old Henry Hill deal: Total immunity and relocation in exchange for his testimony. It’s just not safe for him on the streets or in prison anymore, and the government is Tony’s last hope. But fuck that, Tony says. While he was sitting in Melfi’s office earlier, lamenting that fact that he feels nothing, is empty and dead inside, isn’t a husband to his wife, a father to his kids, or a friend to his friends, Tony has a renewed sense of zeal. While Carmella pleads with Tony to consider the FBI offer because she wants her children to have a father, he pronounces, “They got one, right here, Tony Soprano, and everything that comes with it, mutherf*cka!” Ok, I added the muthaf*cka part, but you get the effect.
• Outside in the hallway, AJ doesn’t believe it was a carjacking that landed ol pops in the hospital. “It takes more than a couple Jamaican bobsledders with capguns to stop your old man” Paulie racistly remarks, as he and Silvio embrace Tony’s kids in front of a deliciously ironically placed sign which reads: Safe Families, Everybody Needs One! Arguably, these two kids are safer than any two who’s father isn’t a mob lord in Northern New Jersey. Verily, Tony will die and take 40 men with him before he lets anyone hurt his wife and kids, and God bless’em for that.
• There’s crazy wind outside, as the man at the news stand observes. The winds of change, anyone?
• Capicola (colloquially pronounced “gabagool“) and attributed every so satirically to this show, is mentioned for the first time in the entire season, with Meadow telling her grandmother not to eat it because it’s so full of cholesterol. Grannie Sopranie proceeds to ask, “Who is that girl?” “What the f*ck?” everyone else asks. Her memory is going, apparently, though Junior is sure to call her out about that later. Convenient, that right after she was complicit in the plot to murder her own son, which failed, that she all of a sudden has memory loss and doesn’t even recognize her own granddaughter. She loves to have her hand in everything, but will never, to the very end, admit what it is she is doing or what she knows. She’s just a poor old lady! An old shoe! What can you do about her though?
• AJ goes off in the end to the school dance with the “future Miss New Jersey,” as Tony, half pumping up his son’s ego and half planning the phonecalls and handshakes and extortion he’d need to put into place to actually make this girl win the Miss New Jersey contest one day. Paulie and Silvio accompany them in the limo, smoking cigarettes and straight-facing little AJ as he mischievously asks if they can have a little whiskey. Oh kids!
• Also Chris walks in wearing a ridiculous fisherman’s cap to complement his classic Nike jumpsuit. What!? He was just out on a boat down the shore in Tom’s River when he got the call of Tony’s failed hit. Whoever it was that ordered it will wish they were never born, says Silvio, looking with bold disdain right through the four-eyed face of old Curacao drinkin’ Uncle Junior.
• Tony’s grandfather was a stonemason.
• Tony describes himself to Melfi in maybe one of the best metaphors of the series: “I’m like King Midas in reverse, everything I touch turns to shit!”

Don’t be so hard on yourself, man. Just remember your good spirits and muster up the strength you need to take on the world, one last time.

My Rating

Great writing, great plot progression, excellent laying out the pieces for the foundation of the last episode of the season. Props to the actors and crew all around.

Tony describing Isabella to Cusamano as "beautiful."

 

11. Nobody Knows Anything

 

With only two episodes to go in the season after this one, this is the point where the holes really start to get poked in the fabric of Tony’s reality.

The world is going dark and the blackness–in the form of the Law, in the form of his jealous Uncle June, in the form of his own associates turning their backs on him for their own personal safety–is beginning to close in around Tony. Such is the consequence of a life of crime, I suppose: sooner or later the shit hits the fan. Tony, in a way, sees the world as just a big playground; not merely in the sense that it is made purely for hedonism, but also in the sense that he can bully and intimidate his way around wherever he likes. This life, to him, is a playing field, a chessboard, on which he wants only to move freely and take as much as he can for himself. While he has opponents, he never really doubts the ability of charisma or guns or alcohol to help get him through it, hopefully unscathed. Unfortunately, this is the way many people see the world. And unfortunately, this is not the true nature of life–to rob and steal and garner power at all costs. This is the life we have been convinced to live, whether you blame Corporate America, whether you blame Biggie and 2Pac, whether you blame Christopher Columbus, it doesn’t really matter. The true purpose of life is to build and create something bigger and better for everyone, to use your intelligence and compassion to shape a more perfect reality; but sadly there are too many longstanding divisions and animosities standing in the way, and truly this can be a job ranging from difficult to impossible and nearly always thankless.

 

So maybe Tony is smart to fill his coffers and hope he can fuck and drink as much as possible before he does die or get taken out. Who am I to say?

 

• The FBI comes in to bust up the boys’ card game, but really, they’re working on a tip from someone, and find a cachet of automatic weapons hidden underneath the lid of the pool table. Whoops! “If I wanted to bust up card games I’d have a donut in my mouth,” says the federal agent with blunt honesty and disdain.
• “I don’t like it…this is how it starts,” says Tony. Already he can see that darkness looming. As he tells Dr. Melfi, he walks around all the time, always looking up feeling like a safe is going to fall on his head. It’s that feeling of impending doom, whether a real mystical harbinger of ill fortune, or years of corruption and immorality catching up with him, or just a psychosomatic paranoia induced by Johnny Black and too many dirty bitches.
• And Big Pussy (Vincent Pastore), despite all his recent back issues which leave him being escorted gingerly down the steps in the bordello and then consigned to the couch in his bathrobe, popping Percosets like M&Ms as Christopher so visually observes, finds it in himself to make that mad dash out the door to escape the Feds, before being apprehended by an agent waiting for him on the corner with a set of cuffs. When Tony goes to meet up with Lt. Makazian (John Heard,) who he calls a “degenerate gambler with a badge” and tells that he doesn’t give 2 shits about him, his family, or whether he takes it up the ass (Tony is paying him money for his services, why should he deserve any delicate treatment?)  he finds out that Pussy has been trafficking heroin to pay for his son’s college, is up to his eyeballs in gambling debts, and met with the Feds in Las Vegas a while back to cut a deal, and is now apparently wearing a wire for them. Can this be true, or does Makazian, who has a few screws loose himself, have his signals crossed? Pussy is a man who loves his family above all else, Makazian says, and that’s exactly the kind of person the Feds look for..someone with a lot to lose personally looking for a way out of jail and financial obligations so he can hold together the semblance of the straight life he is leading.
• Grandma Livia (Nancy Marchand) is a no show at the Soprano’s annual open house. Though Tony is upset, he knows that she is just looking for attention. ‘Negative attention getting,’ he says, and tells Carmella not to call her again because that’s just what she wants. Carmella brings her some ricotta pie and confronts her about manipulating her son, who really does love her and is trying his best to please her amidst all of his other worries and obligations. ‘What are you talking about?” she asks. She will fight til the end to not have her veil lifted. The only joy she gets anymore is form Uncle Junior’s (Dominic Chianese) visits, because he’s the only person who listens to her and doesn’t treat her like an old shoe. I mean there she is, an old, lonely lady, with her “saint” of a husband (funny she never called him a saint when he was alive) passed away, her house goes into escrow and is sold and she really has nothing much left to her name, and not much left to do besides do aqua-therapy and make the best of things before she dies (ouch) while Tony and two other Capos including Johnny Sack hold secret meetings under her nose. She is manipulative at times, but it’s understandable when she really feels that she has no purpose left in life.
• Meanwhile back at the open house, Paulie (Tony Sirico) tells Tony that this back specialist, who fixed him up after he got whacked in the head with a pool stick down at the shore last summer (so Jersey…the seashore barroom brawl!) who fixes up the Jets’ frontline says there’s nothing even wrong with Pussy’s back (he gave him CAT scans, dog scans, MRIs, everything, and there’s nothing wrong with him. To be fair though, when it comes to backs, nobody really knows anything.) Melfi informs Tony, however, that psychosomatic pain can be very real, especially when someone has increased responsibility or a secret they’ve been keeping (dun dun dun…)
• Makazian goes off on Tony a little bit when he’s being shittalked in the bordello, the only place where he really feels loved and respected. He had an abusive father as a kid, and when he’d start to get drunk and angry and smack his wife around, Makazian would go and hide under his bed, because it was peaceful and safe under there, and wait til morning. Well, “under the bed” for him is now the bordello (a fancy word for a whorehouse, Meadow explains to AJ.) Debbie (Karen Silas,) the house madame has often consoled Makazian in her naked arms over the years (hey, who wouldn’t want to sleep with their shrink, she says) and even when he comes in loaded up after a weekend of football gambling winnings, he’d leave his cash out on the nightstand and every last cent would be there when he woke up. He wouldn’t f*ck the rest of the girls with Tony’s d*ck, though, they’re all no-class and always on the hustle. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do, though, asks Tony? It’s true, to an extent I suppose. A woman who lays down for money has few other preoccupations, for one reason or another. If there’s anything this show teaches us, it’s than anyone who engages in activities that might be deemed immoral by the general public has their skeletons in the closet, their reasons why they’ve been fucked up by life or family or a bad case of genetics, but they either need to find a way to eek out an existence, or take a swan dive off the Route 1 bridge. At long last, this is the route Makazian goes, using his detective’s badge one last time to cruise through traffic, mount the guardrail and plunge to his death.
• Jimmy is the wire. He interrupts Tony’s dinner and starts talking…about the money Tony got from the Colombians (they put a bullet in one of their skulls at the beginning of the last episode) and says how the bills may or may not be marked and the Feds may or may not have new methods of lifting prints right off the bills. Tony should’ve killed him right there in his basement, he tells Silvio, and practically lifts Paulie right off the ground by his collar to make sure that he didn’t wrongfully kill Pussy yet. He says he didn’t, but nobody knows where Pussy is…
• Nobody knows anything.

My Rating:

Good episode, but it’s just building to the end now.

 

 

Revisions

Amended and revised versions of posts for episodes 11, 12, and 13, as well as concluding remarks on the season and the blogging process I experienced soon to come.

This is from

A few days ago..that’s when I read it but I didn’t think to post it to the blog.

The race is over obviously. “Fat,” as he was described by his opponent, Chris Christie, the Republican candidate won, which kind of surprised me. Corzine, a former Goldmen Sachs exec and who had been the incumbent governor, holding support from Barack Obama, lost. I haven’t really lived in New Jersey during Corzine’s tenure, but I did hear him speak when I was at Boys State (embarassingly enough.) I can’t speak to the man’s moral character but I had the feeling he was an effective governor, as far as someone who is a fiscally-minded and rational decision-maker. I guess I most remember him as the man who shut down Atlantic City (and as the governor who nearly died in the hospital after a horrific car crash in which his SUV flipped at 91MPH on the Garden State Parkway and he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. He was actually on the way from a Mayors’ Conference in Atlantic City to go mediate between Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team at the govenor’s mansion in Princeton when the accident happened. He had a state trooper driving and his personal assistant in the backseat, and they walked away, but he had to get airlifted out to the hospital with 12 broken ribs, a broken leg, and about 7 pints of blood loss (no lies.) But he recovered in 3 1/2 weeks and then got back out there (no lie.) I had to write a story about this for my news writing class…so while this is technically off the top of my head I have gone over this information fairly recently.

OK then..

After some ‘Sopranos’-style campaigning by both sides, Democrat Jon Corzine may pull an upset and win reelection.

10. A Hit is A Hit

Shot of the twin-towers in the opening credits…..wonder if this changes after 2001….

Funny shot in the first scene where Paulie, Pussy, and Silvio are disguised as refrigerator delivery men, jumpsuits, caps and all. They’re holding up this huge box going “Talk it through the openings.” They really are pretty good at disguising themselves undercover, maybe a little too good, this is what they do. Walking around the world trying not to arouse suspicion while they shoot people in the skull with a silenced pistol.

They sure had a lot of racist animosity towards this guy though. I mean fair enough, his people were doing business in New Jersey on their territory, but they really know how to pile on the racial epithets. Refrying beans with Pablo Escobar, Juan Valdez has been separated from his donkey….we get the point. If there’s one thing they don’t like it’s people infringing upon their territory, maybe even more than they don’t like people who aren’t Italian….it’s about family, or something.

F*cking crackheads and their small bills. Nothing I like more than a mixed salad, though.

Tony gives Cusamano, his doctor neighbor, a box of Cuban Monte Cristo cigars for recommending him to Melfi. “They fell of a truck,” he jokes. Cusamano is gracious, of course, but does hesitate for a moment at the illegality of his gift. But what can you do, it’s a gift, and they’re good cigars. I tried getting into cigars recently, actually. I found a good tobacconist and talked to the shopkeep in the humidor while he showed me the differences between the different grades of cigars. I bought a Dominican one, E. Zarzuela. Mild, they said, something good to start out with. It wasn’t bad, pretty flavorful and enjoyable at times but at other times a bit overpowering and noxious, but I suppose that’s how it goes with cigars. I worked at it on and off for over a week and there’s still a good inch or two sitting in my room, unsmoked. I do not think I will make it into a regular habit, but it’s a nice thing to enjoy or pretend to enjoy every once in a while.

Cusamano invites Tony to play golf at his private course, after noticing him practicing his putting in the back yard. Tony appears rather hesitant, he plays at the public course, he says. He is a man of the people. But why so hesitant about playing the private course. He gives in, eventually, for the sheer fun and privelege of it, but what does he really see as the damage of playing at the country club?…

Then there’s talk of making the business work for them out in the open, legit, a little IPO, perhaps. Of course, they would use some insider trading tips to gain their financial edge, but if you can get your foot in the door, and be able to show some receipts, then there goes a great deal of your worries.

Christopher takes his girl out to a fancy restaurant and then to see Rent on Broadway, which she fawns over. “F*cking Broadway musical. We’re supposed to get all f*cking weepy eyed cause some guy gets the heat turned off in his loft?” Poignant, Chris. He might have something there, but then he proceeds to act racist and ignorant as all hell at the burger joint. But it’s not racist in the traditional white-black sense of the word, as much as he simply doesn’t like other groups of people. He’s Italian, an OG Original Gangster, as he so proclaims, and he doesn’t particularly care for anyone else who isn’t. He’s got his ways, but still, it’s a tad offensive. But such is Christopher…
Rent….fucking Broadway musical….we’re supposed to get all fucking weepy eyed cause some guy gets the heat turned off in his loft?

Adriana wants to own a restaurant. Or, you know be a music industry exec, or you know. Just be something where she gets to handle a lot of money and wear $1200 dresses and feel really important. That becomes kind of a theme of the episode…is she really talented or is she just a face? (or a pair of legs?…) Chris seems to think the latter. I mean perhaps she has some business savvy…that’s what you get hanging around those types of people. But really it’s about independence, as we see in the parallel with Carmela trying to get into stocks (CNBC is really a very interesting channel!) No woman wants to just live off her husband, as much as she may enjoy living off her husband. Adriana wants to be champion her own cause, make her own name, and not end up pushing out a bunch of rugrats and then hanging out at the gym with her stretch marks like Carmela.

Defiler, or Visiting Day, or whatever you want to call them, really does suck though.

The problem is nobody can relate to the semi-suicidal whining of a 30 year old singer who works at Kinko’s, lives at home with his parents, and got electrocuted trying to grill a trout with a downed power line. That’s the difference between a hit and not a hit—even though Hesh cannot verbalize it. A hit song is one that is immediately relatable to every single person in the room, no matter who they are. The message is clear, universal, emotional, maybe uplifting, and under everything makes you want to shake something.

Bold men make Bold statements.

So Massive Genius is seeking ‘reparations’ for a distant but deceased quasi cusin on his mother’s side. Seeking vengeance for his extended family, and rightfully so, I suppose. Who else is going to do it? Such is the burden of power. Once you get it, you’re obligated to stand up for those around you who cannot. Or else what the hell is the point? You could sit on top of your money and chill alone for the rest of your life, but that’s not what it’s about. You have to use the power you have to help those dear to you who cannot help themselves. Or to help those who can do you a favor… Or to help those who maybe you want something from in return. It’s a complicated system. It’s a complicated life.

Junior with his moldy old sweaters and hes a f*cking boss. Christopher juxtaposing crusty old Uncle June with Massive Genius, who is clearly balling with his mansions, guns, and guests. But as Adriana says, if they can make it big themselves, maybe Alec Baldwin will come visit them. That’s the downside of the mob, as Chris sees it. It’s all secret this, secret that. They can’t do anything out in public, and can’t reap the benefits.

Christopher on hip-hop: f*cking drum machine, some igorant poetry, and any 4th grade dropout is chairman of the board.

It’s always multiple choice with Tony: either he’s old fashioned, paranoid, or just a fucking asshole.

Funny little thing: Chris wearing a leopard print shirt (does it relate in anyway to Tony’s tattoo?) and then Massive Genius wearing a leopard print hat in the next scene.

Chris is willing to set Adriana up with a shot in the music industry..as long as he can dress her up. Yeah baby!

I guess just one last thing: The whole juxtaposition of Tony talking about making fun of the kid Jimmy Smash with the cleft pallete, making him sing songs for their amusement…and later finding out that the kid went home crying every night. But Tony never knew what he felt like, to be someone’s dancing bear…until he plays golf Cusamano and his friends. They’re doctors, bankers, successful businessmen making money the “legitimate” way (although as Cusamano says, the only difference sometimes between the American boardroom and the mob is whacking somebody..) and therefore they can enjoy the spoils of their professions out in public, be open about their lives. Tony is a gangster, born and bred, loves the life, wouldn’t change a thing, yet still feels somewhat incompetent, ashamed, made fun of, around these guys. Dems the breaks.

I believe the expression is…you made your bed, now you have to lay in it.

My Rating:

Nice self-contained episode. We get to meet Adriana a bit. Massive Genius reminds me incredibly of Germaine Williams aka Canibus in his ‘C True Hollywood Stories’ days, Tony is pretty funny to watch around those Polo wearing jerk-offs, and Christopher is my favorite character, so always good to hear him talk out of his ass.