The House Next Door

What was amazing to me about last night's episode was that despite it being free of violence (at least explicit, physical violence), it felt like the most tense of the episodes yet.

Horrible possibilities floated before my eyes--for conflicts between all of these characters for so many reasons. Tony's attempting to turn over a new leaf, and there is no way it won't be trampled underfoot.

I have no idea what David Chase has in mind for a grand, overarching theme for this show and my re-reading of the all the Sopranos Monday posts and comments suggests to me that other viewers may be similarly baffled on this score.

Does this leave us all free to invent our own themes and then map them onto the show as best we can?

The theme which resonates most fully for me after last night's episode would be the difficulty of change, not the impossibility of it. Once Dr. Melfi helped Tony navigate his ambivalence about Vito he came down fully on Vito's side, and one of the telling moments in the show was when he was informed that Vito's old crew wouldn't work with him any more--you could see Tony relishing the idea of a confrontation to make them heel to his decision on the matter. (I thought that was a particularly neat bit of acting--there's a reason these guys get the big bucks!)

It may well be that everyone does pay for having the temerity to try something new. I'm reluctant to forecast either way on that. But I feel the struggle to change is being portrayed with respect and even compassion.

i don't know, i appreciate the themes, but this episode by-in-large felt like another sledge-hammer to the head, as so many Sopranos episodes have. I know we've discussed this before, and I know, Matt, you've argued that a certain baseness is expected in the presentation of a show about gansters, but to me this episode was one long syrupy, no-blatant-gestures-or-imagery-barred snooze-fest. Do we really need half an hour of Vito walking around Mayberry experiencing nothing but good old fashioned kindness to make us realize "whoa, maybe there is good that exists in the world, and maybe these characters can attain it!". To me it was as tiresome as seeing the countless acts of unmitigated, unprovoked, unapologetic, unnecessary violence and or brutality (both in action and in the staging) which keeps this show from the brilliance it could achieve.

Yeah, maybe it was a nice surprise that they didn't take the easy way out and have Vito just hang himself, but to me this huge mushy set-up to whatever's going to happen next week was just that, a huge hour-long mushy set up that honestly should've been done with Vito over the course of the last few seasons, not all jammed into one over-the-top episode.

Is this Chase's final insidious attempt to drive home his cynical worldview crashing down all around us, by getting us to sympathize (or at the very least, empathize) with his characters, before sweeping the rug out from under our feet and knocking any hope of happiness out his characters' lives? Let's face it - no one in the family was forced into this life, they all to a certain extent chose it. But it's near impossible not to feel for Carm, Vito, Tony, the usually noxious AJ and Meadow, Johnny Sack, Paulie, Bobby, etc. But if I may be so bold as to quote the immortal Barry Bostwick as Ace Hunter in Megaforce, "it's all on the wheel," and undoubtedly any brief respite of happiness or expanded worldview will be shattered, and everyone will end up dead, in prison, or even more miserable than they were before.

On another note, it was nice to see Vito get lost in a Terrence Malick movie for a night.

I just want to say how happy it made me to see Sharon Angela (Rosalie Aprile) FINALLY in the opening credits, though I don't see why they started doing it on the sixth episode when she had substantial scenes in most of the episodes of this season. She has always been among the most undervalued of the show's ensemble, especially when she was coping with the fall of her son Jackie Jr. and her relationship with Ralph Cifaretto.

lutook asks, "Does this leave us all free to invent our own themes and then map them onto the show as best we can?" Sure, why not, if the imagery and dialogue support your thesis? So far, though, I haven't seen a huge divergence in interpretations, just little gradations. One person thinks the theme is redemption/salvation, another thinks it's the difficulty/impossibility of change, another says it's nature vs. nurture or free will vs. predestination; these are all different wrappers on the same biscotti. I'm staying away from exact predictions, though, because when I make them, I tend to be wrong.

Brett writes that Sunday's episode "was one long syrupy, no-blatant-gestures-or-imagery-barred snooze-fest." Depends on your definition of blatant; more people email me than post comments here, and a lot of them are baffled by what seems to you like hammer-on-the-head symbolism. I think "The Sopranos" has often been misread as trying to be a realistic take on mob life, or life generally; truth is, it's closer to a three-dimensional theater piece, where every line and every piece of blocking and every wardrobe choice is meant to steer the subconscious in a particular direction, and the narrative usually plays out in self-contained scenes with beginnings, middles and ends (ends that could actually be signaled by somebody offscreen saying, "...aaaand SCENE"). I think it's an exceptional example of that type of storytelling, and if I had to choose a cinematic comparison point, it wouldn't be Cassavetes, Rohmer, the Dardennes, Soderbergh or anybody else trafficking in forms of so-called "realism," but Hollywood movies from the 40s or 50s (only with no restrictions on content, of course). This comparison is fresh in my mind because just last night I re-watched one of Odienator's favorite movies, IMITATION OF LIFE, which, like most Douglas Sirk, is as blatant as all get-out. The sequence with Vito wandering around the town was very Sirky, and also had echoes of "The Twilight Zone." What those two outwardly different 50s storytelling modes have in common is a fondness for the grand gesture, and a willingness to shape every detail so that it drives the theme or themes home. I don't think it's clumsy or obvious -- if this series is too on-the-nose, what's Kubrick? -- but it is purposeful and emphatic. it's a fine line, I know, but the show walks it pretty gracefully, except when it's killing or beating people to keep the fair-weather fans happy.

Vito's storyline is interesting because of its centrality--Chase could have spun it out as a subplot, comic or otherwise. But it speaks to what seems to be the closing theme for the series: identity. And what is more essential to "self" than sexual identity.

On this point, Tony has no issues. But everything else about his identity is up for grabs: is he, deep down, a murderous mobster? Or is he learning that that identity is no longer right for him. What happens to someone when he realizes that he's not who he thought he was? If a new identity is clear--if there's something to more forward to--then there can be a rebirth. For Vito, it looks like it will be a positive thing, for as long as he's allowed to live in his utopia. But if Tony isn't a murderous gangster, who is he? What is out there for him? I don't see the clues to who Tony might be-come. Is anyone going on record with predictions?

m.a. peel: No predictions from me -- see above -- but the reason I doubt Tony can or will truly change is because that course of action would first require him to totally repudiate/abandon/destroy his present lifestyle. The costs would be too great -- as he said, a guy like him tends to go out one of two ways, dead or in jail (or a third route, witness protection). Moral redress requires Tony to repudiate the man he once was, rather than simply run from it. As soon as he does that, he's dead, his blood family's dead, and his mob family either gets killed, goes to jail or hunts him for the rest of their natural lives. Tony's choices are, (1) acknowledge his immorality and do something about it, (2) acknowledge his immorality and do nothing, or make only cosmetic changes (a varation of what he's been doing all along), or (3) forget he ever had this life-changing experience and keep going like he's been going. I have no clue which of those Chase will pick, or if he'll come up with something else. Whatever he does will be surprising and/or anticlimactic, since that's his M.O.

I do appreciate the little flourishes of the Sopranos. I thought the Tony-intro was nicely done and well-placed. However, I don't feel Vito's storyline was anywhere near surreal enough to compare to anything Kubrick ever did and certainly not anything from the Twilight Zone. Tony's "other life" scenario, yeah, but not this one.

To some extent the playing out of Vito's recent storyline has me entirely bored. Vito has always been a character that the show has boasted about more than it's worked up the adequate sympathy for. The Sopranos does this time and again, but given that we're supposed to sympathize with Vito's condition it feels really forced and lacking. What Sirk had was an ability to inhabit the lives of the characters through his attention to detail (Kubrick had this too, except his film-universes were always one-step, sometimes more, removed from reality, so it was a constant push-pull you went through...a real tension you're almost always aware of while watching his films). This Sopranos episode might've been reaching for the same goal, but it felt really forced and far too idealistic - like they're taking a short cut to the dramatic tension the other directors spent entire films building up.

Anyway, I don't mean to be flippant, just wasn't impressed while watching the episode. I appreciate all the little things people have mentioned - that there was very little violence, that Tony is struggling with what to do, etc...but to me it added up to one big "awwwwwwwwwwww".

your last comment, matt, explains exactly what i do think is interesting from this storyline - the implications it has for Tony. Seeing how Tony's decision and it's ramifications will play out will be potentially very interesting...

I kept waiting for one of the characters to use Uma Thurman's line from 'Pulp Fiction,' about the gangsters gossiping like a sewing circle. I also expected a quote from Carmela along the lines of 'I never say that and don't like people who do,' when Tony talked to her about his uncle.

Brett: Just to clarify, when I invoked Kubrick and "The Twilight Zone," it wasn't for the surreality, it was both Kubrick and Rod Serling unabashedly hit the nail on the head every chance they got -- often really, really hard. (Pvt. Joker with a peace sign and "Born to Kill" on his helmet, Alex the Droog bludgeoning a female victim with a giant phallic sculpture, etc). Kubrick once came right out and said that his definition of a good movie was one that focused on a single theme and illustrated it in every scene, line and performance.

I mentioned Sirk for the same reason, because he didn't exactly sit back and wait for audiences to figure out what the point was.

Subtle isn't automatically prefereable to blunt; the quality lies in the telling. I think "The Sopranos" traffics in this mode confidently and often brilliantly, particularly in the filmmaking. That thrice-repeated pan of the tree line at the end of episode four, for example, illustrating the notion that every part of Tony's world is connected, and his alternate universe (which also contained a fourth variant of that treeline pan) was connected as well.

I think if we are talking about theme here it is too early to tell and can only really be understood when we reach the midpoint-to-end of the season.

I thought this episode was far from syrupy. In the beginning of the episode you saw Vito hobbling in the rain to the B&B looking pathetic, by the end he's looking at a waterfall wondering if this life is possible, to be this free. There is so much visual richness in that moment, it carries so much weight. The guy is torn in so many directions. His family, "the" family, his happiness. What makes Vito so different from someone who has a shitty job or a shitty marriage? What's the line about silent desperation? I don't find this boring I find it heartbreaking and touching.

The parallel of Tony and Vito is there. To think that gunshot didn't change Tony is ridiculous. People change there lives when they come that close to death, even if it's temporary. So what do we do with Vito? Tony has a place in his heart for this man like he had a place in his heart for the ducks. He says it's because he's a good earner, a "come from behind kind of guy". We know it's more. Tony wants to be free, to be released of the burden of this life and all the judgement and anxiety that come along with it. So does Vito. And yet, we all know, that just can't be.

I want to respond to m.a. peel who asked (referencing Tony): "What happens to someone when he realizes that he's not who he thought he was?"

This may well stand as the central theme of the Sopranos oeuvre.

According to Matt, Stanley Kubrick once remarked that a good movie was "one that focused on a single theme and illustrated it in every scene, line and performance."

The central theme -"What happens to someone when he realizes that he's not who he thought he was?" --was on clear display in Episode 6.

Beyond the obvious mobster-goes-antiquing storyline, we watched as the Widow Bompensiero (the formerly meek Mrs Big Pussy, now a confident, self-supporting business owner) pull out her cellphone to talk auto repair while the mob ladies-who-lunch looked on in confusion.

In the same episode, thanks to Finn, (who sees everything, it seems) Meadow is forced to face herself: is she the confident, educated young woman, the wannabe crusader against injustice, the detached and superior Soprano family observer?) Or is she, not unlike her mother, the enabler and beneficiary of myriad injustices?

Over the past five years and now into Season 6, Chase and his writers have crafted countless scenes which which touch on this theme.

For me, one of the best came in the run-up to the brutal murder of the pregnant Bada-Bing girl Tracee by the vicious Ralphie Cifaretto.

In the scene, Tracee descends literally (and figuratively) from the raised, spot-lighted platform where the bored, naked, impossible pneumatic strippers bump and grind endlessly around their poles.

Tracee approaches Tony, proffering a home-made nut-bread, a token to thank him for some small kindness he had shown her young son.

She waits patiently beside Tony, who is talking business with some of his crew, hoping to catch his attention. It's painful to see her standing naked (and exposed in other ways, too) next to the fully-clothed men. She is no longer bathed in the pink, fantasy glow of the stage. We see her as she really is: skinny, small-breasted, with limp hair and braces on her teeth: a girl from the wrong side of the tracks with bad judgement in men, a fatherless son and another child (the spawn of Ralphie) on the way.

What a poignant scene...it hints that Tracee doesn't know who she is, or at least doesn't understand her role. She is unaware that she is forbidden to cross over (like Vito, like Eugene Pontecorvo)to approach the Boss as a human being.

Looking uncomfortable at this breach of the Bing hierarchy, Tony refuses the pathetic nutbread and sends Tracee back to the stage, where she belongs, where she can revert to a fantasy creature for the club's male patrons who don't know or care that she really exists.

But Tony has been affected. The payoff from this seemingly minor scene occurs later in the episode (and indeed later in the season) when he is struck by a sudden, disturbing reverie -- quick-edit images of Tracee and his cherished daughter Meadow. Are these two young women so different? If they are not, how can Tony live with this dichotomy, except to suppress it?

m.a peels asks, "If Tony isn't a murderous gangster, who is he? What is out there for him? I don't see the clues to who Tony might become. Is anyone going on record with predictions?"

Well, I have some thoughts about that. Indeed, this has become something of a parlor game in our family!

From that first, resonant image of him in the swimming pool, marvelling at the arrival of the duck family to the dream images and sounds of Season 6 (young Meadow's voice calling him back from the brink), Tony has always been, first and foremost, a family man. In terms of his "family of origin" (to use a term Dr. Melfi would prefer), his devotion was motivated more by duty and guilt than by love. But in his own family -- Carm and the kids -- he is fiercely loving. Yes, he fucks his goomars, but when Carmela erupts in a volcano of hatred and resentment, hurling designer shoes out the window and awful truths at her husband, he finally punches...the wall.

And I believe that being the ultimate family man is what fate -- and Chase -- have in store for Tony. To punish him by death or injury or incarceration or via the impoverished anonymity of a witness protection program existence would be pointless.

No, Tony must be at last be forced to face himself, to understand that he is, finally, better than the others (better than Paulie, who cruelly abandoned both his mothers; better than Christopher, who sacrificed poor, naive, ever-loving Adriana; better than Livia, the viper who bore him so she could hate him; better than Uncle "Joon" who cast off his naive, indiscreet girlfriend of 16 years, finally twisting a cream pie in her face ("Eat that! I'll never eat you again!), Uncle "Joon" who plotted against and finally shot his loyal nephew).

And because Tony is better than them (thanks, in part, to his therapy with Dr. Melfi), he will suffer (or as someone remarked in a recent episode: "No good deed ever goes unpunished.")

Chase may yet surprise us. But with just a dozen episodes left, I'm ready to go on the record: I believe Tony's punishment will revolve around the loss -- real or theoretical -- of his son. Perhaps the seed was sown in the first season when Tony, talking to Melfi about A.J.'s grade school misdemeanors, remarked hopelessly: "The kid is doomed."

Such a resolution would bring all the elements of the series together and return us to the overarching theme: "What happens to someone when he realizes that he's not who he thought he was?"

I'm surprised that no one has commented on the one character in this week's episode who has changed her life: Angie Bonpensiero. Several seasons back, after her husband "went into the Witness Protection Program," she was reduced, much to Carmela's horror, to handing out samples at a supermarket. Last season, when a separated Carmela screened "Citizen Kane" for her court, Mrs. Big Pussy was expressly persona non grata. Now, having with Tony's start-up help established a successful car repair business, she has the independence to buy her own car (instead of relying on a man's largesse), blow off Queen Carmela's society matron act, and even get into mob business. As Rosalie remarks, Angie's gone from being one of the girls to one of the boys. What's ironic is that she's gone into the line of work that Tony, Vito, and Eugene are/were thinking of getting out of.
As for the Twilight Zone, all I could think of when I saw the quiet little town of Dartford NH with its bandstand in the park was the "This Stop is Willoughby" episode of The Twilight Zone. If that reference was intended by Chase, Vito does not have long to live.

eve m. in toronto and m.a. peel said: "What happens to someone when he realizes that he's not who he thought he was?" . . . “This may well stand as the central theme of the Sopranos oeuvre.”

Didn’t Paulie use almost those exact words in “The Fleshy Part of the Thigh”?

Due to a take-out sushi ordering fiasco, I missed much of Sunday's episode on Sunday but watched the replay last night. Before I start, let me say that if not for her unrivaled hotness (me likey Jamie Lynn Sigler very much!), Meadow would be my least favorite character on the show. It seems from week to week her dialogue is becoming increasingly speechified and it's annoying, unnecessary and cumbersome. Maybe it's the didacticism of youth that the writers are going for, but to me the writers come off as using Meadow as a tool to express their personal politics (bluntly) and it's bad. Please tell them to stop. Her dialogue just never seems as natural as the other characters for this very reason.

I disagree with what seems to be the general consensus that Tony will not change. Will he make a complete 180? No. It's too late for that--that ship sailed a long time ago. But I think there's evidence already that, with family, he has finally squared his actions with his words. In his scenes with Carmela it seems clear that his near-death experience has made him a more devoted (outwardly at least) father, more open and more loving. For example, in all the show's run I can't remember him ever being as open with Carmela about his therapy than he was when she was rubbing his tummy with Vitamin E (Gandolfini was masterful by the way). I wouldn't be surprised if that change persists--Tony's tenderness, honesty, and fidelity with family--until the series' climax and Chase uses it as the vehicle to deliver its tragic end. (Tony changes--recognizing what it truly means to be a loving husband and father--but too late to save what he cherishes most.)

- Big Silly

Eve, I'll get behind your take on Tony's eventual fate. As I said on the discussion of an earlier episode: "I've got to rethink where I think this thing is headed. I've always contended that Tony must wind up either dead or emotionally destroyed (no mere prison sentence for him, that's too easy), abandoned within the grip of some kind of abject psychic ruin, seated in that lawn chair, perhaps, beside the (drained?) pool, with those forlorn ducks come home to roost. Now I don't know."

I'm going to ditch the eqivocating within that comment and say, emboldened by your sharp take on events within the show, and with full conviction, that this is how this series must end. Tony Soprano's utter psychic devastation. No easy retreat into madness where he might be permitted no recollection of his past transgressions, or the confinement of a cell, or the finality of death. No, he must forever remember and be shattered by this remembrance, completely ruined by it. Because Tony does possess the moral, albeit deficient, awareness of the effects his actions, because he is in some ways better than the murderous cretins in his employ, he must suffer most.

But it's not not A.J.'s demise which should mark the beginning of Tony's descent. It must be Meadow. Linking Meadow with the stripper, with her mother's tendency towards denial and rationalization of the truth of their "family", and her own conflicted positions, not to mention Meadow is the apple of Tony's eye, daddy's little girl, these are the reasons she must be sacrificed. Sacrificed for all the women who have been abused and victimized by these monsters.

It would be extremely hard for me to except anything less.

kj writes, "It would be extremely hard for me to except anything less." I'm with you. The reason I stopped covering this show regularly for the Ledger is because I felt that, simply by virtue of being on the air once a year, it had stopped being an examination of evil and had become an advertisement for it. You can't help but get somewhat comfortable with regular series characters, however loathsome, if you visit with them every week. This season has drawn me back in with the promise that all that darkness is leading to some kind of illumination. And I agree that the ending can't be glibly cynical. It has to be not just superficially tragic, but wrenching.

However, I'd caution viewers not to get attached to the idea of THE SOPRANOS balancing the moral scales by killing one or both of Tony's children. However satisfying that might be, Chase probably won't do it because Francis Coppola already went there in GODFATHER III. Chase tries to do something you haven't seen before, even if it risks anticlimax. It's his M.O.

Matt,

Longtime reader, first-time poster. I've enjoyed your insightful commentary on this season of The Sopranos with one major exception: your constant digs at the show that revolve around variants of this refrain "...I felt that, simply by virtue of being on the air once a year, it had stopped being an examination of evil and had become an advertisement for it."

An advertisement? What the heck does this mean? Beyond the great food, the trips to Italy, the fly mistresses and the occasional nights in the VIP at the Bing, have you ever seriously been tempted to enter Sopranoland, the way you might be tempted to sign up for those incredibly low fares at Southwest.com? Do you honestly mean to say that episodic television is somehow morally incompatible with criminal-centered narratives? And why your continued insistence that the series run will only be worthwhile if Tony is somehow punished for his transgressions? (And if it's punishment you really need, take another long look at his life and the people around him and ask yourself whether he isn't being punished *right now.*) The world doesn't always work like that--heck, it often doesn't--so why would apply that expectation to The Sopranos before you've seen the entire arc of the series?

The Sopranos doesn't just examine evil, it explores it--two similar yet not identical approaches--and that's an equally valid dramatic approach that you don't seem to give it credit for when you casually dismiss seasons 1-5 with statements like the one aforementioned. No-one on the show is all good or all bad; what they are is as fully human as the limitations of a TV episode will allow. They've never given Tony a pass on his actions, and they never let us get too comfortable with him; just look at how he was behaving with his wife, kids and associates right up until he got shot in this season's first episode. They've just allowed him to keep on going, and for that simple act, you seem to have established a standing objection that won't be lifted until Tony is forced into some kind of moral accounting for everything that he's done.

Not that I feel Chase owes us that--exploration and depiction is a valid form of dramaturgy--but did you ever consider that there was a valid dramatic reason for not forcing Tony's character into a sustained inquiry of his existence until The Sopranos' final act? This season is using the aftermath of Tony's shooting to push him beyond the mere flashes of insight he would achieve in seasons past into a more forceful inquiry into the nature of his existence, an inquiry that the writers have engaged in from day 1 even as their characters groped in the darkness. At the same time--and this is likely why we haven't seen the "reckoning" you keep calling for sooner--it's incredibly dangerous for a gangster to pursue this line of inquiry. In other words, trying to be a "good" man in a "bad" world may very well be what finally does Tony in.

But back to your central objection to The Sopranos--"...that, simply by virtue of being on the air once a year, it had stopped being an examination of evil and had become an advertisement for it"--I'd really like it if you could flesh it out more fully. And, if possible, not in comparison to either The Wire or Deadwood, which are constructed in fundamentally different ways than is The Sopranos. Sorry if that seems like asking you to "fight" with both hands tied behind your back, but I thought I'd throw that out there. And to differentiate me from all the other anonymice, call me...

God's Lonely Gangster

You make an excellent point, Matt. I tend to regard Chase as a black humorist or absurdist, even, not that the two are mutually exclusive, with their jundiced eye towards morality. If this is correct what kind of ending does such a person conceive of? Is it a wild, violent, over-the-top spectacle, emphasizing the waste and pointlessness of these people and their endeavors, or something else? What? I think we can count on it being black, pitch black, leavened, maybe, with only the most bitter kind humor in the mix.

Hi, GLG.

First off, I never have and never will "dismiss" the first five seasons of THE SOPRANOS, because they offered many extraordinary episodes, moments, scenes, performances, lines and shots. And the first season in particular (and long stretches of the fourth) surely rank among the most finely wrought series ever aired on American television. Beyond that, THE SOPRANOS is a landmark series, not simply for its content -- which did break with traditional notions of the "sympathetic" lead character -- but also because of its form and style. It sometimes felt like a novel, sometimes like a series of short stories with recurring characters, settings and themes. Very few American series have attempted such a thing, and fewer have succeeded in building a long-term audience.

My objections are not throwbacks to the Hays Code, either. I don't expect immorality to be punished, and in fact I think the entertainment industry's longstanding conviction that they have to do that -- so as not be be considered "irresponsible" -- is not proof of their moral fiber, but just another kind of hypocritical opportunism. The gangster narrative is built around attraction-repulsion; it draws us in by showing us characters who do things most of us cannot or would not do -- murder, steal, rape, deal drugs, etc. -- with the impllcit understanding that at the end, they'll be crushed by so-called polite society, and we can all just go home and forget about it, absolved of our complicit in the narrative.

The problem isn't necessarily THE SOPRANOS but the pop culture template it fills (and sometimes subverts). You cannot, repeat cannot, watch these murderous thugs week after week without getting comfortable with them, and I think the very fact that it's been on the air for seven years does in fact invite us to get comfortable with them. Yes, they are living in constrained circumstances -- I've mentioned that in my posts, and in Star-Ledger articles over the years -- but there is still a strong power fantasy aspect to the show's appeal, and it is not always as complex, subtle or challenging as the shows most vocal defenders (myself included) sometimes insist. Trust me, I have to read the mail each week from people who are complaining that there haven't been enough beatings, shootings or trips to the Bada-Bing. To them, the dream sequences, therapy scenes, quiet character moments and moral/ethical/spiritual questions are the price they have to pay for the chance to see Paulie Walnuts waste some Dominicans and then get kicked in the balls. You can't tell me that Chase and company aren't aware that the show is a hit mainly because of those elements rather than for the qualities we pore over in the comments thread of this site. You could say that Chase isn't to blame for the ignorance of the show's yahoo fan contingent, but that would be letting him off the hook.

On top of that, the show is so damned funny, often downright charming, that we can't help looking forward to these characters, and looking forward to the next Chris Moltisanti dumbass one-liner, or Tony Soprano malapropsism, or Silvio Dante shrug and muttered aside. Admittedly the show's walking a difficult line; if they make the characters totally unpleasant, nobody will watch. But some of the recurring gags, lines and character traits veer perilously close to sitcom cuteness. In an interview with me back in 1999, Steve van Zandt described the show as "the gangster HONEYMOONERS." Obviously he was exaggerating to make a point about the show's black comedy approach and social striving characters, but I quote him because he was also sensing the risks involved in centering a series on mobsters.

And the key word is "centering." I understand your telling me that you'd like me to discuss the show without bringing in THE WIRE or DEADWOOD, but I can't agree to those terms, because those examples illustrate my point. They do examine, and yes explore, criminal behavior, but they do it in the context of the larger society, which includes fine gradations of lawfulness and lawlessness, morality and immorality. THE WIRE is not centered exclusively on criminals, nor is DEADWOOD centered exclusively on Al Swearengen and Cyrus Tolliver and their henchmen. They are more like Robert Altman or Jean Renoir movies turned into TV shows; they present a cross-section of representative social types, and that automatically places the criminals' power trips in perspective, diminishing the possibility that they'll turn into fantasy identification figures or harmless sitcom buffoons.

THE SOPRANOS is different. It's about Tony and his crew and other mobsters they do business with. The wives and girlfriends are part of that life, too, and even the seemingly nonaffiliated characters -- Artie Bucco, for instance, or Dr. Melfi -- are seen only in relation to the gangsters. Every moral or ethical comment implicit in every episode of THE SOPRANOS is filtered through the subjective worldview of career criminals who happen to be funny and even likable. The writers and producers and actors are handling explosive material, and you can't tell me that there haven't been times when they dropped that material and set off an explosion that was intended mainly to jolt, excite or amuse viewers just for the sake of jolting, exciting or amusing them.

I had this argument with a friend of mine who refuses to watch the series because he didn't want to give an hour a week to such evil people. I protested that BLUE VELVET was once of his favorite movies, so wasn't he being hypocritical? His reply was valid: BLUE VELVET isn't about Frank Booth, it's about Jeffrey, and it's not a weekly series, it's a self-contained movie that's over in two hours." You can't raise TWIN PEAKS as a counterexample, either, because that series, like DEADWOOD and THE WIRE, dealt with a cross section of society, and explored th insidious nature of evil within that society. On THE SOPRANOS, the criminals ARE society. That's not out-of-bounds for a drama, but it does create pitfalls that the writers have not always managed, or even tried, to avoid. To give just one example, in the first season, as in GODFATHER I, the writers cheated a bit in corallling our sympathies by having Tony and his crew commit the overwhelming majority (all, if memory serves) of their violent acts against other criminals, never against tangentially connected, much less innocent people. In Season Two and beyond, as in GODFATHER II, Chase provided more examples of how innocent or non-aligned people suffered as a result of the lawlessness Tony and company enjoyed. That's not easy moralizing, that's an admission of reality. Criminality doesn't just hurt the criminal, it injures everyone else as well. Any TV show or movie that doesn't regularly acknowledge that, however obliquely, is not defensible as serious drama. It's just brain candy.

Now I'll repeat this again, because I really don't want to be misunderstood. I do not condemn THE SOPRANOS as immoral because it's about criminals, because if I did, I could not watch a production of MACBETH or pop in a DVD of BLUE VELVET or THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY or (yes) GOODFELLAS or THE GODFATHER movies. I don't particularly care what characters do for a living as long as the TV show or movie is intelligent, surprising and on some level true to the human experience. THE SOPRANOS qualifies in all departments, particularly this season.

Nor am I saying that the only acceptable outcome is for Tony to be punished. David Chase can do whatever he wants, and if it's well-done -- if this season, and the five seasons that preceded it, seem to have let inevitably to that ending, whatever it is -- I will accept it and consider my committment to the series to be time well-spent.

But from a purely personal, subjective, probably indefensible and unexplainable standpoint, I would like to see Tony suffer, or at least experience truly profound and lasting changes as a result of what he's been through over six seasons. Because if he doesn't, then we really have been asked to spend an hour a week in the company of an evil man who does evil things. Drama should lead to insight and the decision to change or not change; if it's just a series of situations and events that are thrown onscreen to keep us interested, it's not really drama, it's just escapism. To intentionally mangle the cable channel's slogan, if that happens, I will feel that what I've spent seven years watching isn't HBO, but television.

I hope that clarifies things a bit, and if it didn't, my apologies. I've written tens of thousands of words on this show during its first three seasons, much of it not available online, and some of it probably articulates my point of view more exactly. If anybody's interested I'll dig them up and see if I can post them in the future.

Also, if you want to put your screen name up top, instead of "anonymous," click on the middle tab beneath the comments box, the one that says, "Other."

One last point: I wrote, "Drama should lead to insight and the decision to change or not change." Meaning that whether Tony reforms or stays just the way he is, and whether he's punished severely or not at all, I'll accept the ending, as long as we see him making the decision to live a particular way, and gaining a deeper knowledge of himself. In drama, black comedy, slapstick or anything else, the heart of everything is the decision.

I was under the impression that this series is filmed in sequence, and that the season is pretty much in the can before HBO begins airing it. I was therefore surprised to see a reference in this season's sixth episode to something that happened only a month or so before this season's debut -- the riots over the Mohammed cartoons. In fact, by referring to this incident as being a while back, Christopher placed this episode in April 2006. One thought is that Christopher's two Muslim associates are going to become much more important later in the season, and Chase went back and, for foreshadowing, shot Tony and Christopher's discussing the possibility that the two were terrorists. If the FBI could hold the threat of Gitmo over Christopher's head, they would probably have better luck at getting his cooperation.
Now that Tony has revealed to Melfi that his people want Vito's head, isn't she obligated to report this to police? If she were practicing in California she would be.
One final question -- Was this the first time Tony mentioned that he had done time?

MZS: Because if he doesn't, then we really have been asked to spend an hour a week in the company of an evil man who does evil things.

I hate to argue with you, Matt (okay, that's a lie -- secretly I love it) but I think the great punchline to this whole show is that Tony's "evil deeds" are treated like the same workaday headaches as the crap we all deal with at our own day jobs.

This gangster business is just a nusisance (and nobody does "exasperated" better than Gandolfini -- check his facial expression when Carmela drags him into the kitchen to hear Meadow's story. It's maybe the greatest "Oh, now what???" reaction shot in TV history.)

As I seem to say every week in these posts, I look at the show as more of an acidic satire about the way we live now, and in that regard you can't top Tony's therapy speech about how "You want to look at every day as a gift... but life has a fucking way of chipping away at that!"

Some part of you just wants the guy to be able to read his friggin boat magazine without the pool filter falling apart and making too much noise.

Sure, Tony's a monster -- but he's also being punished for it constantly, with never a moment's peace! I don't think the idea of consequences is exactly a new direction for the series (though I will agree that the storytelling now feels more focused and purposeful than in recent seasons.)

Richard Leary asks: Was this the first time Tony mentioned that he had done time?

And basically admits to ass-fucking at the same time? Sure, he denied it three times before the cock crowed, but methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Also Matt, I'm only one day in, but the IFFBoston aint the same without you, pal.

Would love to read more of what you've written on the first three seasons of The Sopranos, Mr. Zoller Steiz.

"...I think the great punchline to this whole show is that Tony's "evil deeds" are treated like the same workaday headaches as the crap we all deal with at our own day jobs."

Sean, I totally agree. To my mind the entire arc of the show, and particularly Tony's journey, works best as an examination of the midlife crisis of the 21st century man. I don't see Chase or the show as being particularly interested in good and evil, which are kind of religious distinctions anyway, and Chase certainly seems to regard all religion with an active cynicism. For his characters religion is just a bargaining table-- Carmella hoping her good intentions and guilt will excuse her for her sins, or Paulie Walnuts adding up the years he has earned in Purgatory and figuring he can do the time. It's just another way the characters find to lie to themselves about themselves.