The End

I briefly come out of retirement to discuss the finale of "Lost"...



Like "The Sopranos" before it, "Lost" ended after six seasons without answering many of its fans' most burning questions. I was among the minority that loved the ending of the "The Sopranos" and I'm also in the camp -- larger, I think -- that believes the ending of "Lost" wrapped up the show perfectly, or at least as well as we could hope for.

"Lost" had one advantage over "The Sopranos" in that the latter simply couldn't offer any kind of emotional uplift. "The Sopranos" featured a protaganist who was essentially a sociopath; Tony Soprano often knew what was right and chose wrong anyway. We rooted for him only to the extent that he was more likable than his equally amoral enemies.

"Lost", on the other hand, was populated by deeply flawed men and women struggling with their demons to do what was right. People, in other words, like us. The narrative at the heart of the show was in many ways the narrative of human history. Evolution has hard-wired us to put our own preservation above all else. And yet humans are social animals, and our own survival is dependent on our ability to cooperate with others. One of the show's early seminal moments was when Jack -- the show's hero -- urged his fellow castaways to live together or they would surely die alone. At that point they became a community, and the fate of one was tied to the fate of all.

But for a community to survive, its individual members must sacrifice -- sometimes their very lives. Self-sacrifice was a motiff that ran through the show up until the very end: Charlie drowning so that Desmond could be reunited with Penny; Sayid running to the other end of the submarine with the bomb to spare his fellow "candidates"; Jack giving his life to restore the light at the heart of the island which, apparently, saved the world as well as his fellow Losties.

On "Lost", sacrifice was the path to personal redemption, an idea at the heart of many religious traditions -- not the least of which being Christianity, whose themes were particularly prominent during the last few episodes of the series. Jacob's reluctance to take the drink from his mother brought to mind Jesus's exhortation to God to "take this cup from my lips." Jack opens his father's casket to find it empty, reminescent of the empty tomb that Christians celebrate on Easter. (Jack even asks his father -- named Christian, of course -- "Are you real?" much like the disciples who encounter the risen Lord after visiting his tomb.) And of course Jack makes a Christ-like sacrifice, not only to save his friends but, he believes, all of humankind.

There's plenty of Old Testament as well, like the allusions to the biblical story of Jacob and Esau in the story of Jacob and his twin, the Man in Black, and the hints of the Book of Job in their debate over the goodness of the other people on the island. But the show also relied heavily on Eastern religions, which teach that we strive toward spiritual unity with the universe, dying and being reborn until we reach a state of nirvanna. Time travel -- which I believe really happened to the characters on "Lost" -- is thus a metaphor not only for the castaways' attempt to escape their troubled past, but to make peace with their lives. The Man in Black tells Jacob "It always ends the same" to which Jacob replies "It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress."

Jacob was the island's protector -- its god, if you will -- and we can see in his successors a progression similar to the narrative that runs through Christianity. Jacob, who lorded over the island with inscrutable rules and indifference to the suffering of the people he used, yielded control to Jack and then Hurley -- the most caring and trustworthy of the castaways. Similarly, the mercurial and vengeful god of the Old Testament is transformed into a god of love and hope through the sacrifice of Jesus.

But it's worth noting that even in the Old Testament, the god of Israel is capable of great love and compassion, not only for his chosen people but also for the nations with whom they must reckon. In his persuasive book "The Evolution of God," Robert Wright explains that Yahweh's take on nonbelievers fluctuated depending on the political situation in Israel. When Israel was at the mercy of her enemies, or needed to form alliances, Yahweh grew tolerant of those other nations, more universal in his concern for humanity.

Wright sees the same pattern in other major religions, including Christianity and Islam, which accounts for the contradictions, for example, in how the Koran tells Muslims to treat nonbelievers. Sometimes Jews and Christians are fellow "people of the book"; other times they are infidels to be slaughtered. It's why the apostle Paul, trying to launch a new religion in a multi-ethnic empire, preached universal love and brotherhood, even though the historic Jesus likely did not espouse such a message.

Is this a case of religion influencing politics, or vice versa? Wright argues that it's a probably a little of each. The bottom line is that when human societies recognize the need to cooperate with neighbors with whom their religious beliefs conflict, then their religious beliefs become more accomodating -- bending to what Wright calls "the facts on the ground."

Wright sees in the sweep of human history soceities moving, in bloody fits and starts, toward increasing interdependence and mutual cooperation. It suggests that there is indeed a moral order to existence. And since it is our biological surival instincts, honed by natural selection, that push us toward cooperation, then this means the physical universe is part of this moral structure.

For Wright, this is a way to resolve the conflict between science and religion, faith and reason -- the debate at the heart of "Lost," between Jack and Locke, who was proven correct in his conviction that the island had a purpose for the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815. Bear in mind that Wright's formulation does not favor any particular diety or creed. People of science, like Jack, don't have to give up much ground. It doesn't challenge anything that we know or think we know about the physical world.

But it does not, however, allow us to believe in chaos. You can reject the designer, but you must reckon with the design. Jack understands this, finally, and it is all the more poignant that he can never tell Locke that he was right -- at least not in the land of the living. "Because you have seen me, you have believed," Jesus tells his disciple Thomas. "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed."

That was John Locke. And because of that, he, too, is the hero of "Lost."

Don't stop believin'

You thought I was obsessed with "The Sopranos"? I don't know when I'll have time to read this multi-part deconstruction of the final episode. (Which, after a second viewing, I've decided is one of the best series finales ever.)

"Nobody wants to pay twenty dollars to watch people living next to chemical waste! They can see that in New Jersey!"

Several weeks ago I came upon this collection of cameos by film directors, which included the recently departed Sydney Pollack's appearance in his film "Tootsie." It's inaccurate to refer to Pollack's role as agent George Fields as a cameo -- it was an important supporting role, and he and star Dustin Hoffman shared some of the film's most memorable scenes.

Pollack began his career as an actor and as the director cameo item notes, he had as many acting credits as he did directing credits. Among his other memorable acting roles, in my opinion, was his turn in the under-appreciated "Changing Lanes" as the amoral father-in-law of Ben Affleck's character, and his role as a man struggling with a midlife crisis in Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives." And let's not forget his appearance in the final season of "The Sopranos." (See my summation of that episode here.)

Rest in peace.

He was a friend of ours

The late William Buckley Jr. on "The Sopranos" finale. (Hat tip to The House Next Door.)

Fade to black

David Chase just couldn't help, one last time, having some fun at the expense of his audience.

"The Sopranos" ended, abruptly, with the Soprano family once again sitting down to dinner in a local restaurant. As Tony, Carmela and A.J. sat waiting for Meadow, Tony kept one eye on the menu, and one eye on the door. Every person who walked in had the look of a killer, and each time a diner brushed by Tony's booth the knot in my stomach grew tighter. When Meadow finally approached the door after several aborted attempts at parallel parking, the scene flipped to the restaurant, with Tony looking up at the door one last time. Then, nothing. No music. Roll credits.

So it is for Tony Soprano. He once again has triumphed over his enemies, lived to fight another day and all that. But he's doomed to live the rest of his life having to face the door, always looking over his shoulder. He'll never be sure which of his trusted associates is a rat, the prospect that loomed over him with the unexplained disappearance of Carlo. Tony practically ran from Junior in the mental hospital where the old man is destined to spend the rest of his days, but in reality Tony would be lucky to end up like Junior: too addled even to remember his own sins.

"The Sopranos" gave us the best finale we could have reasonably expected. It certainly won't rank as one of the series' most memorable episodes, but it remained true to the show's spirit to the very end. It had some great moments, like when Agent Harris forgot himself and cheered Phil Leotardo's murder. I've always felt sorry for Agent Harris and his fellow FBI agents, always short on luck in their pursuit of Tony. In retrospect, it almost seems inevitable that he would fall prey to Tony's crude charms, and I guess there's just enough rogue in me to have been grateful to see him give Tony the information he needed to track Phil down.

No doubt anticipating this reaction on the part of his audience, Chase wasn't content merely to have Phil shot nice and clean, but to have the deed occur within full view of his wife, who in her panic leaves her SUV in gear when she gets out to help Phil. The vehicle coasts toward traffic with her grandchildren strapped into car seats in the back, and in true "Sopranos" fashion, we never see whether it is stopped in time. The final indignity for Phil was to have his face run over by the vehicle, while a bystander vomits. This was the second episode in a row in which bystanders are witness to a shooting and its aftermath; I know I'm not the first person to wonder what "The Sopranos" is trying to tell its viewers about the vicarous thrills they have sought from the show.

Yes, Tony is alive, and his family, such as it is, escaped the series unharmed as well--at least physically. Meadow wants to become a defense attorney because of the way that she has seen Italian-Americans mistreated by law enforcement, most especially her father. If she'd grown up in any other home, she tells Tony, she'd become a "boring suburban doctor." Tony lowers his head, a rueful grin on his face.

A.J. had one chance to escape--I really, really wanted him to join the Army, but he let his parents talk him out of it, and now he, like his mother, will end up a prisoner of his father's money. A.J. could have interpreted the explosion of his SUV--a gift from Tony--as a sign to flee his family's orbit. Instead, he saw it as a sign that he should start taking the bus.

As insights go, it's probably the best we can expect from a Soprano.

"Oh my God. Oh my God."

After I watched, white-knuckled, last night’s episode of “The Sopranos”, I couldn’t help think of the tagline from another HBO series, “Six Feet Under”: Your whole life is leading up to this.

Last night’s final scene perfectly captured where Tony Soprano’s life has lead him. Tony is in bed, lying alone with a gun—which I briefly thought he was going to stick into his mouth--haunted by the words of yet another dead associate. He must face the greatest crisis of his life without his most loyal men: Silvio, hospitalized with gunshot wounds from which he is unlikely to recover, and Bobby, who died in a hail of bullets in a model train store.

That Bobby should die while buying one of his beloved trains perfectly underscores the fact that he was ill-suited for the world he inhabited. Here was a man twice damned, first by birth and then by marriage. As I’ve said before, Bobby was the closest we got on this series to a genuinely likable character, and his murder was the most awful in what has been a season of superlatives on “The Sopranos.”

Bobby was Tony’s brother-in-law, and his death is a symbol of the simultaneous disintegration of both Tony’s crime family and his real family. Meadow is drifting through life, heading towards the same comfortable but hollow existence as her mother. And it has become increasingly obvious that A.J.’s depression is just another manifestation of that old Soprano family narcissism.

As for Carmela, both she and Tony seem increasingly unable to relate to normal people, as evidenced by their awkward conversation with Artie and Charmaine Bucco. The Buccos have always been a sort of Bizarro world version of Tony and Carmella. Charmaine is the kind of domineering wife that Carmela wishes she could be, and unlike Carmela, Charmaine has a financial stake in her husband’s business. Artie and Charmaine, once separated, reconciled not long after Tony and Carmela got back together, but unlike Carmela, Charmaine no doubt negotiated from a position of strength.

But perhaps the worst blow that Tony suffered was being tossed on his ear by Dr. Melfi, who has finally faced up to the fact that she’s become his enabler. We’ve seen Tony try to go without Dr. Melfi’s help in the past, and the results have not been pretty. She is an emotional crutch for Tony, and she’s also unintentionally given him advice that has helped him to be a better crime boss.

Quite frankly, it’s about time she put down her foot. Dr. Melfi is something of a surrogate for the audience, and she appears to have had her fill of Tony at the same time that we have. This season has laid bare the rot at the heart of every character on this show. After next week, I’ll miss the series, but I sure as hell won’t miss the Sopranos.

"...what rough beast..."

W. B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming” perfectly captures the spirit of this season of “The Sopranos” and perhaps the entire series as well. The poem, from which last night’s episode took its title, speaks to a rising sense of dread and despair that foreshadows some heretofore unimagined horror. This sense has been imparted in every episode of this final mini-season.

The tension, however, seemed to be ratcheted down this week, as though the writers wanted to give us a breather to prepare for what is to come. Much of the episode dwelled on Tony’s home life, which with A.J.’s suicide attempt appears to be ready to implode. This near-tragedy, unsurprisingly, causes Tony and Carmela to trade recriminations, with Carmela blaming Tony and his gloomy forebears for their son’s depression. We know Tony blames himself, but he lamely suggests that Carmela’s coddling left A.J. unable to deal with life’s troubles. Tony, of course, wishes his own mother had treated him that way, and he invokes Livia’s spirit when he twice utters her famous “Poor you.”

We see that the wall Tony has erected between his family life and criminal life is starting to crumble. One of Phil Leotardo’s goons approaches Meadow in a bar and makes lewd comments. This incident becomes all the more ominous when we learn that the man she was with is the son of Patsy Parisi. We all remember how well things turned out the last time Meadow dated the son of one of her father’s associates.

We get a sense of just how stunted Meadow is as a result of growing up in the Soprano household during a conversation with her mother, during which she reveals her new boyfriend’s identity. She has once again changed her mind about going to medical school because “It is so hard.” Her mother, in a classic bit of Carmela hypocrisy, reminds Meadow that anything worthwhile is difficult, as though her daughter is unaware that neither she nor Tony has ever done an honest day’s work in their lives.

Tony beats Coco, the thug who accosted Meadow, within an inch of his life. This escalates his dispute with Phil over the asbestos dumping, and Little Carmine, who tries to broker a peace, warns Tony, “You are on the precipice.” But when they show up at Phil’s house, Phil refuses to see them, which made me wonder whether he hasn’t overplayed his hand. Tony has never responded well to being cornered.

Tony’s home life spills over into his work in other ways. He fears that A.J.’s problems reflect poorly on him in the eyes of his men, who fail to comfort Tony with their own tales of domestic woe. Paulie suggests that A.J. has been made ill by toxic chemicals, a statement loaded with irony and double meaning. Tony, supposedly a lover of nature, has been dumping asbestos all over the New Jersey countryside. At the beginning of the show we see an otherwise bucolic landscape spoiled by a load of asbestos-contaminated construction waste.

It is Tony who is toxic, poisoning the lives of those around him. As the show ends, we see him from behind, walking down a corridor in a mental hospital to visit A.J. He looks in silhouette like a lumbering beast, slouching toward the son he has so utterly failed.

There is no pain you are receding

"Sopranos" fan Brian Williams (oh, yeah, he's also the NBC Nightly News anchor) quotes a friend who called listening to Van Morrison's recording of "Comfortably Numb"--featured in this week's episode--"like being in church." (Thanks to Slate, where Tim Noah notes the similar themes played out on "The Sopranos" and in "The Wall".)

I know the feeling. I'm embarrassed to admit I'd never heard that version until I watched a trailer for "The Departed." Scorcese's use of the song in that film was damn near transcendent. And of course, it set the perfect tone for "The Sopranos" this week.

Three episodes left, my friends. Three episodes.

The dream is gone

Perhaps what was most shocking about this week’s “The Sopranos” was that it was shocking at all. We’ve seen people shot, brutally beaten, dismembered, and permanently maimed. Yet Tony’s suffocation of the helpless Christopher, following a violent car wreck, somehow seemed like the most depraved act the show has ever thrust upon us.

A channel surfer who stumbled upon this scene with no prior knowledge of “The Sopranos” might have thought they were witnessing an act of mercy. In reality, Christopher was the victim of the most grievous act of betrayal that we have seen from a show whose characters wallow in duplicity. Evil can be the only word we use to describe Tony’s murder of Christopher, who Tony had raised as a son.

Not that we weep for Christopher, whose own savagery was brought home to us last week when he gunned down J.T. Dolan. Let’s not forget the waiter that he and Paulie murdered over an insult in season five, nor the fact that he handed his own fiancé over to Tony to kill. Christopher’s death leaves his daughter fatherless, but this show has shown us what happens to the children raised by men like Tony and Christopher. They develop the kind of corrosive cynicism that Meadow mistakes for sophistication or they end as aspiring thugs like A.J. and his new buddies.

Still, murder is murder. What shocked Tony was his own lack of remorse. He was relieved, as he admitted to Dr. Melfi in a dream, and tried to tell her in real life. He projected these feelings onto Carmela, who was horrified at Tony’s suggestion that she was secretly glad Christopher was dead. She tearfully admitted that she was grateful it was Christopher and not Tony who had died. Tony, seemingly disappointed, says, “That’s normal.”

Tony tries to comfort Carmela by noting that in the accident, the car seat in the back of Christopher’s SUV was destroyed; had Christopher’s baby been in the car, she would have been killed. The sheer randomness of the accident epitomizes the moral chaos that reigns on “The Sopranos." When Tony goes to Las Vegas, he bets on the roulette wheel, a gamble that is totally based on chance. Later, stoned on peyote (which he gets from a stripper who used to sleep with Christopher) he stops at the roulette wheel and says “It’s like the solar system.” Suddenly he can’t lose, placing bet after bet until he falls on the floor in laughter, as though he’s suddenly realized that the bolt of lightening he’s been waiting for is not going to strike after all.

The end of the episode finds Tony and his new companion in the desert, where the rising sun seems to blink at Tony, who calls out “I get it.” Many fans and commentators online find the sunrise reminiscent of the mysterious beacon that Tony saw in his dream while in a coma after being shot by his uncle. It’s an interesting observation, but I’m not sure how much it really matters. Tony is bound to use whatever drug-induced revelation he’s discovered to justify his own narcissism. In Tony’s universe, he is the sun, and no one can break free of their orbit around him.

A man had two sons...

We often see the characters on “The Sopranos” engaged in the kind of prosaic activities that mark our own lives—enjoying a family barbecue, drinking coffee over the morning paper, or clipping coupons. But these people are not like us. They do horrible, evil things, and they are doomed in a way that the rest of us are not. Even now, as the show comes to its end, the writers still need to remind us of this on occasion.

So it was that, during this week’s episode, just as I was feeling sad for Christopher that he fell off the wagon—again—he murders in cold blood the hapless TV writer J.T. Dolan. This episode found Christopher struggling with his sobriety and his decision to spend less time with the guys at their favorite haunts, which helps to fuel a conflict with Paulie over bootleg power tools being sold by Christopher’s father-in-law.

Christopher seeks solace at his AA meetings, where he relates to a salesman who complains that his co-workers are angry that he never shows up at the company golf outings anymore. But when Christopher tells his own tale of woe, he has to speak in euphemisms. Adriana becomes a fellow employee, fired after Christopher sides with his boss in a dispute. This suggests that in his own mind, Christopher is denying his more affirmative role in bringing about Adriana’s demise.

The insights Christopher gleans from his recovery do seem to be heightening his self-awareness, which Tony—his surrogate father—could tell him is more a curse than a gift. Both men are smart enough to see the folly of their lives, but they lack the will to do anything about it. During a party at the Bing, Christopher can’t resist a drink even after Paulie graciously orders him a club soda. When he drunkenly tries to explain the joys of fatherhood to Paulie—to Paulie, for God’s sake!—, Paulie cracks a joke, and Christopher looks around the room at the laughing faces of his associates.

We see the scene in slow motion, reminiscent of the poker game in season five when Tony realizes it is fear and not affection that binds his friends to him. In that scene, slow motion had the effect of exaggerating the dopy faces of the mobsters as they laughed at Tony’s stupid joke. This time, the faces looked menacing in their laughter, monstrous even, with Tony in their midst, cigar smoke pouring out of his mouth, making him seem like a fire-breathing dragon. Christopher stumbles out of the room in a near panic and heads to Dolan’s apartment.

Every time Dolan appears on screen, I brace myself for the coming train wreck, and this week my fears were never more justified. Christopher thinks he’ll find a sympathetic ear in his fellow addict, and he starts talking about how he could bring down Tony and everyone else by going to the feds. He begins to describe his crimes, but Dolan will have none of it. He knows that Christopher’s impromptu confession endangers both their lives. Christopher appeals to their common affliction, to which Dolan replies, “You’re in the Mafia.”

As if to punctuate the point, Christopher turns before leaving and fires his gun at Dolan, killing him. When he returns home, Christopher rights a sapling that had been knocked over when Paulie had turfed his lawn earlier in the episode. We are left to wonder whether this is symbolic of Christopher’s decision to start anew, or just another meaningless gesture in a wasted life.

Tony, meanwhile, has his hands full with A.J., who is growing increasingly despondent over his break-up with Blanca. Tony laments to Dr. Melfi that he’s passed on his own morose personality to his son. It’s a typical moment of self-pity and denial on the part of Tony, who ignores the fact that his actions in raising A.J. have probably done as much damage as his DNA.

Tony’s solution to his son’s depression is to send him headlong into the world that he’s shielded A.J. from for so long. He encourages A.J. to go to a fraternity party with the sons of Carlo and Patsy. These kids aren’t just boorish frat boys (having been a boorish frat boy myself, I can say that), they’re mobsters in the making. They run a campus gambling ring, and at one point they use A.J. to intimidate a fellow student who owes them money. Later, when A.J. helps them hold down the student while they pour acid on his toes, we see a look of excitement cross his face. Well done, Tony.

(One might view Tony as having betrayed his son’s future to ease his guilt over A.J.’s depression. In the same way Tony may have inadvertently sold out Christopher by giving the FBI agents information about the Arabs who used to frequent the Bing, a move that seemed to have been born partly out of self-interest, partly out of some latent sense of patriotism.)

A.J. comes home, where he joins his parents and sister at the kitchen table for a late-night meal, a deceptively bucolic scene. Earlier, when A.J. pulls into the driveway, he momentarily startles Tony, who is sitting in his SUV, having just come back from the Bing. He pulls a gun and walks to the front of his car, only to recognize A.J.’s own SUV. He quickly puts the gun away and greets his son.

It’s hard not to interpret that as a harbinger of awful things to come. The show has signaled from the beginning that the doom Tony has long awaited will come to, or come from, someone he loves dearly. Maybe that’s why, to me, the Soprano family’s midnight snack had the feel of a last supper.

Hodge podge

In this week's "Lost" wrap-up, Andrew Dignan at The House Next Door makes a great reference, comparing the scene in which Sawyer makes Cooper read the letter that Sawyer wrote as a child to Inigo Montoya's revenge fantasy in "The Princess Bride." Brilliant. Dignan wonders if Sawyer, having finally carried out the revenge that was so tightly intertwined with his very identity, is primed to be bumped of by the show's writers. Personally, I still think Sawyer has demons to exorcise, but it's not for me to decide his fate.

Meanwhile, the boys at Slate, in their regular "The Sopranos" discussion, have completely ruined the ending of "Anna Karenina" for me by revealing that the title character kills herself. Of course, the point of the discussion is that in great drama, regardless the format, endings matter less than the journey that got us there, an important point to keep in mind as "The Sopranos" draws to a close.

You don't have to have read Tolstoy's classic to know its famous opening line: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This idea has often been discussed in relation to "The Sopranos", and an episode in season five was titled "All Happy Families." It reminds me too of a line in "The Godfather, Part III." (You're quoting part three? you ask. Hey, it wasn't that bad.) Michael's son, Anthony, tells his father that he'll never work for him because "I have bad memories," to which Michael replies "Every family has bad memories."

Indeed.

"It's not like him"

I’ve watched every episode of this final mini-season of “The Sopranos” with my stomach balled into a knot, as though I was waiting for something to explode. It seems as if catastrophe lurks around every corner, and as much as I’m enjoying the show, I’m nearly at the point where I just want to get it over with. David Chase, however, seems intent on prolonging our suffering.

The tension this week sprang from Tony’s sudden gambling addiction, a plot development that I found to be somewhat contrived. True, it’s not wholly out of character for Tony, who has a serious lack of impulse control and is deriving less and less joy out of the things that once gave him pleasure. Still, it felt less than organic, even if the groundwork was laid last week with Tony’s phone call to Hesh, asking for a $200,000 loan.

Hesh has long been Tony’s confidant, and he and Tony seem to have the warmest relationship of any two men on the show. So it was deeply unsettling to see that relationship disintegrate over Tony’s reluctance to pay back the loan. The anti-Semitic cracks that Tony hurls at Hesh were not only hypocritical—Tony hoards cash in his birdseed—but also, it seemed, a way for the show to slyly acknowledge that by portraying its only major Jewish character as a loan shark, it is trafficking in one of the most ugly anti-Semitic stereotypes. (Even if Hesh is one of the show’s more likable characters.)

Hesh talks with his son, Eli, about his Tony troubles and Eli--no doubt saying what the audience is thinking--suggests that Tony wouldn’t possibly hurt Hesh. The older man is not so sure, and he is near panic when Tony and Bobby show up at his door to invite him to a boat show. (Boats equal death in “The Sopranos.”) Hesh declines, and Tony obviously knows the effect his surprise visit has had when he tells Hesh that the next time, he’ll call first. Later, Tony pays back the money, at the most inappropriate time—when Hesh is grieving over the sudden death of his girlfriend. Tony’s insincere condolences make it seem as though he’s taken some secret pleasure over his friend’s pain.

As Tony and Bobby head to the boat show with Carlo, Tony laments the loss of his best earner, Vito, killed at Phil Leotardo’s hands because he was gay. This week’s only light moment comes when Carlo tries to compare Tony’s plight to a character from “The Twilight Zone.” Tony cuts him off. “You should stop watching so much Nick at Nite, and start sucking cock, because Vito brought in three times as much as you!”

Tony is feeling the loss of Vito for another reason. Vito’s teenage son, Vito Jr., is acting out—dressing Goth, knocking over gravestones and killing cats. His mother wants $100,000 so she can move the family to Maine. Tony acknowledges that it’s not the first time he’s had to be a surrogate father, and we know the results have not always been pleasant. (It was Vito, you’ll recall, who gunned down Jackie Jr.) Tony decides to pony up the money, but he ends up blowing it on a football bet, and so all he can afford is to send the poor kid to a bootcamp in Idaho.

With Vito dead, his family has become disposable, the exact fate that Carmela fears when she fiercely protects the earnings from her spec house from Tony’s gambling. Tony erupts, and the confrontation that ensued was reminiscent of the fight they had in the fourth season finale, and then as now, Tony accuses Carmela of hypocrisy for living off his money while turning up her nose at how he earns it. As they reconcile later, Carmela speaks to the sense of impending doom surrounding Tony when she says that he ignores that piano hanging from a rope his head.

Perhaps most ominous of all is Dr. Melfi’s warning to Tony that she may refuse to see him if he doesn’t start to follow certain "protocols." Maybe she is finally wising up to the fact that Tony is beyond redemption, and that rather than make him a better person, all she’s done is make him a better gangster. I’m not sure what it all means, but it seems that Chase and the series’ writers are determined to make us look forward to Tony’s future with the same dread that he does.

Role models

I can’t think of another television show like “The Sopranos” that is so full of portents that ultimately, to borrow a phrase from Shakespeare, signify nothing. The show seems willful in its refusal to tie up loose ends, which is its strength—real lives do not follow three-act story arcs—but also a source of endless frustration to its fans. It’s why it is so hard to predict the show’s ultimate outcome. Will there be some kind of reckoning, or will life, such as it is, go on as always?

The audience doesn’t know what will happen to Tony Soprano and neither does he—and that is what haunts him. Tony never knows when his past will catch up with him, or for which crime he will be called to account. In this week’s episode, Tony and Paulie must head south when the FBI digs up the remains of a man they murdered 25 years earlier—Tony’s first hit, it turns out. As they drive to Florida, Tony is subjected to Paulie’s ceaseless chatter, and he begins to wonder whether Paulie can be trusted to keep his mouth shut when it really matters.

It doesn’t help that all Paulie wants to talk about are the good old days with Tony’s father, when Paulie was Tony’s mentor and not his underling. (As unworthy as these characters are of sympathy, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Paulie, who, despite his past disloyalty, seems to have genuine affection for Tony, and only gets cruelty in return.) We’ve seen Tony grow increasingly uneasy discussing his past, and he looks pained when he recalls that he was 22 when his father first sent him out to kill a man. We can never absolve Tony of his sins, but occasionally we remember that he didn’t have the greatest role models.

That idea is played out as farce in the mental hospital where Junior is being confined since he shot Tony. Junior, having regained at least partial control of his faculties, is running an illicit poker game with the help of Carter Chong, a young patient who appears to idolize him. This episode features some of the show's most humorous moments yet with Dominic Chianese, like when Junior dictates a letter to send to Dick Cheney, who Junior thinks will sympathize with his plight because of the vice president’s infamous hunting accident.

We don’t know why Carter has been institutionalized, but during a terse visit with his mother we learn that he has some serious daddy issues and presumably imprints on any strong male who crosses his wake. Like most of the characters on “The Sopranos”, Carter sours on his mentor, savagely beating Junior when the older man becomes docile after agreeing to take new medication—because it controls his incontinence. The last time we see Junior, he is hunched in a wheelchair, his arm in a cast.

Meanwhile, Tony learns that the murder in New Jersey has been pinned on the late Jackie Aprile, and to celebrate he invites Paulie on a deep sea fishing trip before they head back to Jersey. Paulie appears unsettled as he steps on the boat, and for good reason. It was on a fishing boat where Paulie, Tony and Silvio killed Big Pussy, and the scene flashes through Paulie’s head as he comes aboard.

Tony is tempted to kill Paulie on the boat but balks, and the two men return home. Nonetheless, death looms even larger than usual in this episode, which also witnesses Phil Leotardo overcoming his existential crisis to orchestrate the murder of his family's new boss. We see Pussy in the aforementioned flashback and in a dream, and there are references made to Johnny Sack and Ralph in addition to Jackie Aprile. The visit with Beansie brings to mind Richie Aprile, who put Beansie in his wheelchair. When Paulie dreams about Pussy, he asks him “When my time comes, tell me, will I stand up?”

Paulie knows it’s a question of when, not if. He can die in a hail of bullets like Pussy, or broken and alone, the way Junior appears to be going out. Say what you will about “The Sopranos”, you'll never convince me that it glorifies the Mafia—or anything else, for that matter.

The road not taken

Regret has always been at the heart of “The Sopranos.” One of the memories that Tony extracted from his childhood during his sessions with Dr. Melfi was that his father had once been given an opportunity to go into a legitimate business, but because it meant moving the family west Tony’s mother wouldn’t allow it. How might his life had turned out differently, Tony wondered, if his father had escaped the mob? During a later episode, Tony tells his dementia-afflicted uncle to take his medicine to help him remember, and Junior responds, “There are some things I would like to forget.”

Regret is an inevitable part of life, but the characters on “The Sopranos” have far more to regret than the rest of us. That was brought into relief with this week’s episode, which made up for in poignancy what it lacked in subtlety. The episode seemed to fall prey to the loose storytelling that plagued much of last season (or the first part of this season, however you want to look at it), but “The Sopranos” has always been character-driven, not plot-driven, much to the occasional consternation of its fans. (We must all make peace with the fact that we will never know what happened to the Russian.)

Each episode is a series of portraits of people moving from one stage of their lives to the next, making choices that, like ours, all lead to the same place—the grave. It should not surprise us that, despite their grievous acts, we can on occassion muster sympathy for these characters. Like Johnny Sack, who doesn’t know whether to regret the lifetime of smoking that gave him cancer or the few months of clean living that failed to stop it. Like Phil Leotardo, whose loyalty to his associates cost him 20 years in prison, and returned nothing but a dead brother. And like Tony, who can’t understand where he went wrong with his nephew Christopher, who he wanted to raise like a son but who is angry at him for something that he didn’t even do.

But it is Christopher who, for all his stupidity and cruelty, understands more than anyone what his choices have cost him, and if he has anyone to blame other than himself for the path his life has taken, it is Tony—“the man I’m going to Hell for”, as he once told Adriana. Christopher’s dream of making movies might have been laughable but it was far more noble than following in Tony’s footsteps, and it was Tony who quashed it the first time around. That Christopher pursued this dream again only when Tony was in a coma is surely not lost on Tony, who may be wondering whether Christopher—as well as others—secretly hoped he might not recover.

It’s not just that Christopher is angry because he thinks Tony slept with Adriana. He no doubt blames Tony for Adriana’s death, despite his own responsibility for it. Who knows but that were it not for Tony’s influence, Christopher might never have ended up in the Mafia at all. Tony has tried to keep his own son, A.J., out of the mob; perhaps had Christopher’s father lived, he would have steered his son in another direction.

So Christopher, still wary of Tony’s wrath, plots his escape. And he’s not alone. Little Carmine refuses Tony’s entreaties to take over the New York family. Phil no longer seems to have the stomach for the mob life. (Though his comments in the bar were hard to decipher. It’s possible that, freed from his promise to Johnny Sack, he will now pursue his revenge against Tony.) And Johnny Sack is dead of cancer, an apt metaphor for the rot that has been eating away at the Soprano crew since first we met them.

That leaves Tony, moving toward his final reckoning, as always, alone.

Last man standing

If any character on “The Sopranos” comes close to being lovable—or even likeable—it would have to be Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri. Ever since he first waddled across our television screens, we’ve been left to wonder how this teddy bear of a man could possibly be a cold-blooded gangster like Tony. It was impossible to imagine the man who buried a birthday cake at his wife’s grave, or stood in his garage over his model railroad while wearing a train conductor’s hat, firing a couple of bullets into someone’s brain. Tony thought so little of Bobby that he didn’t bother killing him when he wiped out the rest of his Uncle Junior’s crew, and he gave his future brother-in-law the unenviable task of caring for Junior. Bobby took to the job with his usual fidelity.

The show addressed this mystery with this week’s episode, in which it was revealed that Bobby had never killed anyone. The topic came up while Bobby and Tony sat on a boat on the lake near Bobby’s cottage, where he, Tony, Carmella and Janice were celebrating Tony’s 47th birthday. Tony alluded to his displeasure with Christopher—who he did not name—and suggested that he may give Christopher's priviliged position to Bobby. Tony has rarely treated Bobby with respect but he has occasionally shown him affection, and Tony no doubt knows that Bobby is unfailingly loyal—whether to his first wife, or to Junior, or now to Tony’s sister.

It seemed a particularly cruel twist, even for “The Sopranos”, that Bobby should have ended up falling victim to Janice’s machinations. Janice's first relationship with one of Tony's associates, Richie Aprile, ended when she shot him to death after he hit her across the face. Knowing what we know about Janice, it’s hard not to think that Richie was better off being put out of his misery right then and there. (Never mind that he faced the same fate at the hands of Tony.)

Bobby, of course, would never hit Janice. Instead, he hit Tony, in what has to be one of the show’s most stunning moments. I can’t recall anyone ever assaulting Tony unprovoked. The fact that Bobby would do it was shocking; that it was done to defend Janice’s honor was pathetic. The drunken brawl that ensued provided some of the show’s most charged moments since the bloody melee between Tony and Ralph in season four. (And we all know how that ended.) I was hoping that Tony would come out on top, because I feared the consequences should Bobby get the best of him. No doubt Carmela and Janice had the same fears when they watched, with apprehension, the two men drive off to do business with a pair of Canadians under the guise of going to play golf.

But one can think of any number of reasons why Tony wouldn’t kill Bobby. Besides, Tony is adept at identifying a person’s weaknesses, and understands full well there are plenty of ways to inflict injury short of physical violence. When Tony agrees to have a man killed on behalf of the Canadians, he quickly passes the job off to Bobby, knowing that it will sit heavy on Bobby's conscience. What makes the hit even more odious is that the victim did nothing more than get involved in a child-custody dispute with the sister of one of the Canadians.

When Bobby tracks the young man down in an apartment complex laundry room, he hesitates long enough that I found myself hoping that he wouldn’t be able to do it. Alas, Bobby once again proved himself the good soldier. He returns to the lakefront cottage, where he is warmly greeted by his wife and young daughter, who leaps into his arms. Bobby holds the girl tightly to his chest, staring over the placid water of the lake, the joy extinguished from his eyes.

Thinking back over this episode, I recalled an episode in which Tony and his lieutenants are discussing what to do with the outed Vito. While debate rages over whether to whack the gay mobster, Bobby blurts out “We can’t let him hang out in our clubhouse anymore.” It was a comical remark, but it makes me wonder if Bobby, despite being raised in the Mafia, failed to appreciate the depravity that surrounds him.

If that was the case, then perhaps Bobby—though certainly not his victim—is now better off. It may just be that in the world of “The Sopranos”, naivety is the biggest sin of all.

Woke up this morning

One of my favorite blogs, The House Next Door, published a post I wrote about "The Sopranos", here.

"There's no getting out."

During season four of "The Sopranos", Rosalie Aprile warned Carmela against having an affair with Furio. Tony and his men, she warned, "are living in a different century."

Well, the best that might be said of Tony is that he lives in the 1950s, at least when it comes to his marriage. On Sunday, he finally submarined Carmela's ambition to be a home developer, and the final straw was his clumsy attempt to give a distraught Meadow relationship advice. (A great scene, providing another reminder that "The Sopranos" is as much sitcom as it is drama. How many times have we seen sitcom dads giving poor counsel to their daughters?) The thought that Carmela might achieve some measure of financial independence was bad enough. But the prospect of having to come home to make his own dinner, and having to shoulder the load in dealing with their spoiled and emotionally stunted children, was more than Tony could stomach. He's already given up his favorite pastime, adultery. I mean, how far can you push a man?

Contrast Tony with Johnny Sack, whose fierce devotion to his plus-sized wife Ginny has always been good for comic relief, and more than one tender moment. His decision to accept a plea bargain was motivated in no small part by the fact that it allowed Ginny to keep enough of their assets to support herself. What a turn for Johnny Sack. Last season, he consolidated his power with ruthless efficiency, while Tony was nearly undone by guilt over his cousin. (Thank goodness for him that Dr. Melfi was there to relieve that guilt.) Now it is Johnny's turn to be brought low by sentimentality.

Not that this is good news for Tony. Once again, he finds himself in a face-off with Phil Leotardo, who wants him to kill Vito, and who, with Johnny Sack disgraced and out of power, will no longer feel obliged to keep the peace with Tony. Will Tony do what needs to be done, or will he hesitate, and once again place his empire in peril?

Which brings us to Vito. I was growing bored with his adventures in Stonewall, but this recent episode provided a nice coda. Vito no longer felt liberated in his new life, but imprisoned; like Tony, he is driven mad by the demands of domesticity--the man couldn't even perform a few hours' honest labor, for God's sake. He sinks back into gambling, and by necessity, murder. You might be able to take the man out of the mob, but you'll never take the mob out of the man.

"Apparently they go down real easy"

My wife says that every time Artie Bucco enters a scene in "The Sopranos" she cringes. It's an understandable reaction. Bad luck clings to Artie like static, and much of it is of his own making. Between his dumb jokes, the awkward passes he's made at a succession of attractive hostesses, and the liberties he takes in referring to Tony's business (like someone who thinks they can drop the n-word around their black friends) you hold your breath every time he speaks, fearing--knowing--he'll say something incredibly stupid.

Artie loves rubbing elbows with gangsters, but his friendship with Tony clearly costs him more than it yields. In the series' very first episode, Tony torches Artie's restaurant so that Uncle Junior can't whack someone there (Pussy Melanga, a name with which we recently were reacquainted) and ruin the establishment's reputation. Talk about destroying the village to save it. Then, in season four, Artie, against his better judgment, accepts a loan from Tony to invest in what turns out to be a scam. When he realizes he can't pay Tony back, he attempts suicide. And Artie's loyalty to Tony and his lieutenants has caused him no end of grief with his domineering wife, Charmaine.

It is thus understandable that Artie avoided seeking Tony's help when he crossed paths with Benny. The irony is that this was the one time that Tony actually could have done some good. Then again, Tony has an uncanny ability to turn every situation to his own advantage, so who knows how things might have turned out had he gotten more directly involved? In "The Sopranos", as in life, things can always get worse.

Tony Soprano, liberal

Pennsylvania's junior senator was immortalized in tonight's "The Sopranos" and I don't know which is funnier--the way Tony butchered his name ("Sanitorium") or that Tony appears to have a more enlightened view of homosexuality. What a fantastic episode.

In non-Sopranos news, this post got a mention at the Trib's Best of the Blogs.

"Here I am, half a wiseguy"

Any discussion of this week’s “The Sopranos” has to begin with Paulie. This episode was chock full of reminders of why we love this character. As one critic has noted, Paulie is the Joe Pesci-type psychopath, the kind of guy that every mob story has to have. But on “The Sopranos” this archetype is richly textured. Paulie loves being a gangster, but more than anyone else on the show, he’s a regular schlub. The scene in which he is clipping coupons at his kitchen table—all the while sitting on one of the biggest scores of his life—is as typical of Paulie as is the scene in season four in which he robs and murders one of his mother’s elderly friends. (That was a classic “Sopranos” moment. It’s faintly chilling when the woman says “I know you” and a great nod to Paulie’s Oedipus complex that she seals her doom by threatening to call his mother, as opposed to the police.) I’ve always loved when, in season two (after another dream/not-a-dream sequence) Tony expresses his annoyance to Dr. Melfi with Paulie’s annual Christmas letters. Who doesn’t know someone who sends out those interminable holiday missives?

Paulie has increasingly been a source of agitation to Tony, so it was no surprise that Paulie’s chatter to his comatose boss should send Tony’s heart rate through the roof. The parallel in Tony’s alternate reality was hilarious: Tony banging on his hotel room wall, yelling at his neighbor to keep down the noise. And of course Paulie, along with Vito, reminded Carmella that it is fear, not respect, that binds him and the others to Tony. The minute Tony improves, they agree, finally, to share their cut of the score with her. The look of withering contempt she gives them, after they have handed her the money and are behind the closed elevator doors, is priceless. Carmella is yet again faced with the fact that without Tony, she is on her own, and one imagines that she will chafe anew at the gilded yoke that Tony has placed upon her. It is one of the many portents to come out of last night’s episode.

What are some of the others? Well, of course, there was the continuation of Tony’s “dream”, in which he almost literally walked through death’s door. To say that Steve Buscemi was creepy is to be redundant, but there was something particularly sinister in the glad tidings with which he greeted Tony, and the calm yet persistent manner in which he attempted to pry Tony’s suitcase from his hands. Buscemi not only represents the family members who have preceeded Tony in death—clearly, the woman standing in the doorway was meant to be Livia—but also a reminder of Tony’s sin. What does Tony insist on holding onto? And which of his two families drew him back to the land of the living? I suspect that Tony will find himself standing outside the doorway yet again before the show reaches its finale. Tony says to Carmella, “I’m dead, right?” For all of us, it’s only a matter of time, but perhaps for Tony, as with his Alzheimer’s-stricken doppelganger, the end will come sooner, not later.

In the meantime, Tony will recover to find both families in increasing disarray. A.J. seemed resentful that Tony was out of his coma, and once again the center of the family’s universe. Whatever attention he could siphon for himself will surely dissipate, except to be the focus of people’s disappointment. As for Silvio, who knows what becomes of him, now that he has failed, miserably, to live up to his—and his wife’s—expectations. Even the usually reliable Bobby is going to be a headache for Tony, now that he’s lost his role as Junior’s caretaker and has his own Lady MacBeth—Janice—whispering in his ear.

And Paulie? We know from the previews that Paulie’s mother figures in the next episode. An online rumor has it that he will find out he is adopted. Who knows how he would deal with that. As it was, there seemed to be numerous references to his mother last night, even more than usual. If Paulie should meet an untimely end, rest assured it will be bloody—and wickedly funny.