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.)

This parrot is no more

Someone decided to make a list of the top 50 comedy sketches -- quite a bold undertaking. Personally, I prefer the cheese shop sketch (see below) to the dead parrot.

He was a friend of ours

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

"Roads? Where we're going we won't need any roads."

The only things missing from tonight's "Lost" were a De Lorean, a flux capacitor and Crispin Glover.

Seriously, though, it was another great episode -- one of the most intense and poignant in the show's history. Then again, just about every episode that features Desmond is a good one.

Jerry Orbach's dead, and this guy doesn't feel so good himself

This blogger really likes "Law & Order", probably more than he should, but he thinks the show may be close to jumping the shark. (Do people still say that?) Frankly, I think the expiration date passed on that show long before season 18, but to each his own, I suppose. Click here for my thoughts on "L & O". (H/t to The House Next Door.)

Bing!

It's been a long time since I discussed something truly important -- television. One of the few shows that I watch regularly these days is "Heroes", and one of the joys of this season -- which has been uneven at times -- is Stephen Tobolowsky's portrayal of the enigmatic and silver-tongued Bob, one of the men who runs The Company.

If you don't watch "Heroes", you'd probably recognize Tobolowsky as Ned Ryerson, the obnoxious insurance salesman in "Groundhog Day" who accosts Phil Connors (Bill Murray) on Connors' way to Gobbler's Knob. ("I dated your sister Mary Pat a couple of times until you told me not to anymore.") I've seen Tobolowsky dozens of times in movies and on TV, but rarely has he been given a chance to shine as he has this year on "Heroes."

It seems that one thing great television shows have in common these days is their ability to craft good roles for character actors like Tobolowsky, or for actors whose best days seemed long behind them. Tobolowsky himself had a nice turn on "Deadwood" as the weasely politician Hugo Jarry. "Deadwood" also featured Brad Dourif in arguably his most affecting role since "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", as well as Jeffrey Jones and Powers Boothe among others. "The Sopranos" had Robert Loggia and John Heard, who turned in an exquisitely fine-tuned performance as the corrupt and self-loathing Det. Vin Makazian during the show's first season.

Perhaps one of the best examples is Terry O'Quinn's role as John Locke on "Lost". Locke is the show's most engaging character, and O'Quinn is consistently its best actor. And yet, what did O'Quinn do before "Lost"? He had dozens of minor roles in which he more or less disappeared into the scenery, and a lead role here and there in B-movies. (He had several recurring television roles with which I'm not familar.) But on "Lost", he's all but indispensible.

What is responsible for this trend? It could be mere necessity: In addition to five broadcast networks, several basic cable channels -- plus HBO and Showtime -- now have original series, so producers need to rely on a deeper pool of talent than ever before. A lot of these shows are character-driven, with ensemble casts, so they need actors to fill a range of character types.

I also suspect we are seeing the influence of independent film directors like Quentin Tarantino and Paul Thomas Anderson, not to mention the Coen brothers and Wes Anderson. Tarantino is famous for reviving the career of John Travolta and bringing out of hibernation actors such as Pam Grier and Robert Forster. Paul Thomas Anderson has given great roles to Philip Baker Hall, Burt Reynolds, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzman. Wes Anderson and the Coens have their own stable of quirky performers who make their films consistently entertaining.

Of course, much of the movie industry remains focused on churning out blockbuster films, which require blockbuster names. Just as some of the best screenwriting these days can be found television, so to some of the best and most inventive acting.

UPDATE: Thanks to the folks over at The House Next Door for linking to me.

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.

Take a bow

The approaching finale of "The Sopranos" has me thinking about what can make a series finale memorable, and what can make them fail. Pulling off a great series ending seems like one of the most daunting tasks in television. Expectations among loyal fans tend to be so high that final episodes are bound to disappoint at least some people, and I'm sure "The Sopranos", a show that seems to cry out for some final, awful reckoning, will be no exception.

A bad finale can taint a series' entire legacy, which is what happened with "St. Elsewhere", in which, in the final moments of the episode, it was revealed that the series' events all took place in the mind of an autistic boy, previously portrayed as the son of one of the doctors. The hospital was nothing more than a miniature inside a snow globe. It left the show's fans feeling cheated, as though they'd invested their time in the show all those years for nothing. Of course, one of the greatest endings in television history played on the same theme. The ending of "Newhart" showed Bob Newhart waking up from a dream, next to Suzanne Pleshette, who played his wife on the previous decade's "The Bob Newhart Show".

The mistake that the writers of "St. Elsewhere" made was in underestimating the emotional investment that viewers had made in the show. "Newhart" had more latitude because it was a comedy (and its ending was much more clever) but the creators of a comedy can also misjudge the connection its audience has to the characters. Witness "Seinfeld", which ended with what many critics believe was a jab at the audience for even bothering to care about the show's four unlovable characters. Viewers will decide on their own what they care about, thank you very much.

To me, though, the great sin of the "Seinfeld" ending was that it was lazy. Come on, a clip show? Even "Family Ties", which loved the flashback episode more than any other show I can think of, didn't allow itself this indulgence for its finale. "Seinfeld" could have learned something from "Family Ties", an otherwise forgettable series. It's been years since I've seen it, but I recall that the "Family Ties" finale was a lot like any other episode of the show: gentle humor with a measure of family conflict thrown in.

"Seinfeld"'s meager effort aside, there is virtue in not trying too hard to make a finale spectacular. Some of the best finales have tied up a few loose ends while leaving the audience with the impression that life in the show's fictional universe will pretty much go on as it always has. That's what made the finale of "NYPD Blue" effective: It demonstrated that the transformation of Andy Sipowicz was complete, and led viewers to believe that the next day would be like any other for the detectives of the 15th squad. That's also why I so loved the "Cheers" finale. When Sam closed up the bar in the episode's final moments, it was easy to picture him opening it up again the next day. The finale also stayed true to the spirit of the show, which would have been violated had Sam and Diane, for example, decided to get married, rather than come to their senses at the last moment.

Of course, some shows seem to demand a final resolution. "M*A*S*H" simply couldn't have ended with the Korean War still going on. Sure, the real war lasted only three years, not 11 like the show, but even knowing this viewers desperately wanted these people to go back home to their families. I enjoyed the last "M*A*S*H", though it was often overwrought, particularly the stuff about Hawkeye going bonkers. "M*A*S*H*" had evolved into an entirely different show than when it started, and the finale was one of the best of the latter episodes. It also left us with one of television's most iconic scenes, when Hawkeye, leaving the camp in a helicopter, saw that B.J. had used rocks to form the word "goodbye", which he had been unable to say.

Crafting an ending for "The Sopranos" may have been particularly difficult--though David Chase has said he's always known how the series was going to end--because the show has defied the conventional narrative of television drama, in which conflicts are resolved by the end of each episode or shortly thereafter. "The Sopranos" has never been afraid to leave questions unanswered, but its audience has always had reason to hope that the big ones would get addressed sooner or later.

No more. Absent a movie, which seems unlikely, the June 10 finale will be the last time we'll see Tony and his whole rotten family. As with all the shows that came before it, "The Sopranos" has but one chance to end well.

"...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.

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.

The man behind the curtain

This week's "Lost" brought to mind an episode from the now defunct HBO series "Carnivale", in which Jonesy was convinced that Sampson had invented Management in order to bolster his authority. Similarly, on "Lost", Locke believed that Ben had made up Jacob to keep the rest of the Others under his thumb. Both Jonesy and Locke were wrong.

This was a great episode, revealing much about the island's mythology but raising many more questions. We now know that Ben was not born on the island, but the rest of the Others must know as well. So why did he tell Jack, and initially Locke, that he had been born there? And now that we know for sure that the Others--except for Ben--were not part of the Dharma Initiative, where did they came from? It was implied that the Others do not age, at least not rapidly, given that Richard first encountered Ben when he was a boy, but Richard was already a grown man. Plus, after revealing that it was his birthday, Ben said to Richard, "Remember birthdays?"

It's also become clear that Ben fears Locke, and I suspect that Ben did not think that Locke would be able to see or hear Jacob. The fact that he did seems further evidence that Locke has a deep connection to the island, which could undermine Ben's authority. I think Ben wanted to take Locke to see Jacob, figuring he could not see Jacob, which might have demonstrated to the Others that Locke was not particularly special.

Finally, Ben is now the second person that I can recall who has seen the dead on the island, the first being Jack, who saw his dead father roaming the island. (Let's not forget that Jack found his father's casket empty.) I'm not sure what this means, but I suspect it marked Ben as special to the Others.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike:

The scene references both the aforementioned "Psycho" as well as "Harvey", but most specifically reminded me of HBO’s long-canceled "Carnivàle" where “Management” would remain hidden away in his trailer, calling the shots despite all outwardly appearances that he lacked physical form.

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.

The art of the deal

NBC’s aging workhorse “Law & Order” is formulaic by design, and often plagued by leaden dialogue and mediocre acting (Sam Waterston as Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy appears to be on the verge of tears in every scene.). Nonetheless, even in its sunset years, it can occasionally hit the mark, particularly when it addresses one of its most recurrent themes: the tension between the law and politics, which is at the heart of the scandal du jour in Washington, D.C., over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

Take an episode in which a man suspected of kidnapping a young girl—who he has proven is alive—will not reveal her location unless he is promised that he won’t have to serve any jail time. McCoy agrees to make the deal, but his boss, District Attorney Arthur Branch (Fred Thompson), won’t allow it. It would set a nasty precedent and damage his office politically. McCoy risks his job by making the deal anyway, but Branch has outflanked him: He meets with the defendant-friendly judge hearing the case and convinces her to reject the plea agreement, which she does after the girl has been safely recovered.

Although the judge pointed out to Branch that she was appointed and has no plans to run for re-election, Branch reminds her, “The man who appointed you does.” Branch decides not to fire McCoy, who refuses to apologize. “You’re a great prosecutor, Jack. But you’ll never be a district attorney,” Branch says.

Arthur Branch is the latest in a succession of DAs to remind McCoy (and before him, Ben Stone, played by Michael Moriarty) that district attorney is an elected position. The prosecutors frequently debate the political ramifications of the case before them, with McCoy and his assistant DA often offended that such base considerations should influence the execution of justice. This seems rather naïve for high-level prosecutors, except when you view McCoy and his assistant—portrayed the last several years by attractive but increasingly interchangeable actresses—as surrogates for the audience.

Most of us, whether we are card-carrying members of the ACLU or the NRA, would like to think that justice is carried out without regard to the political consequences. It’s the rule of law vs. the rule of men. It’s why the most noxious act of the Nixon administration was not the dirty tricks that culminated in the Watergate break-in but Nixon’s attempt to subvert the FBI investigation, and why the Bush administration’s firing of the U.S. attorney seems so ominous.

But as “Law & Order” reminds us, politics and justice are forever intertwined, and in some ways that’s exactly as it should be. L & O definitely offers a right-ward tilted view of the criminal justice system. The rights of the accused are technicalities that protect the guilty, and defense attorneys come off as shamelessly opportunistic by pursuing outlandish defense strategies in order to make a political statement.

Yet the show offers one of the more honest accounts of the legal system in demonstrating the constraints that shape the pursuit of justice. McCoy may hate cutting deals, but there isn’t enough time and resources to send every defendant to trial. (And besides, sometimes his case isn't strong enough to prevail at trial.) One imagines that real-life prosecutors hate, for example, letting mobsters serve minimal jail sentences then live out their lives in the witness protection program, but their testimony may be the only thing that brings down a criminal organization.

In other words, the legal system entails choices and compromises, and many of those choices have to be made within the political system. Notice that none of the Democrats leading the charge against the Bush administration have suggested that U.S. attorneys shouldn’t serve at the pleasure of the president, or that they should be appointed to fixed terms, like the FBI director. Perhaps one president wants to make a priority out of prosecuting public corruption, while his or her successor wants to pursue more drug convictions.

Scarce resources demand that we set priorities, which is best done by people most directly accountable to the public--elected officials. Still, it’s nice to think that maybe there really are people out there like Jack McCoy to keep them honest.

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.