'The Sopranos': One to go

When “The Sopranos” debuted, no one knew quite how to describe it, and everybody has spent the last eight years trying. A struggling mob boss enters therapy to deal with his mother issues and spends the years vacillating between what seems to be the private search for mental health and the public actions of a sociopath. A post-modern mob story, “The Sopranos” sometimes seemed a sardonic, often hilarious treatise on love, death, family and self-help; and sometimes like an epic battle for the American soul, as embodied by Tony Soprano.

But if the second-to-last episode is to be believed, if it isn’t some fever dream of Tony’s, some vestige of last season’s post-shooting hallucinations, “The Sopranos” was, at its heart, just a really great gangster drama.

Opening with Silvio’s garroting of Burt, Episode 8 clipped along at a murderous pace as Phil Leotardo called for Tony’s head and Tony paid him the same courtesy. War was declared, somewhat openly, and once again Tony called on the services of his "cousins from Italy.” This time, however, things went awry, and another silver-haired gentlemen took the bullet for Phil.

Phil’s gang did not suffer from the same misfortunes, and within a few minutes, both Bobby and Silvio were, in the parlance of the genre, shot full of lead.

There were, of course, a few truly “Soprano” moments in the aftermath. Paulie admired A.J.’s female friend—“look at the stems on blondie”—even as he and Tony prepared to go into hiding; A.J. dissolved into an only slightly whinier version of his old man when told that his Uncle Bobby has been shot—“and I was having such a hard time maintaining.”  It was only one episode ago when Tony managed to view A.J.’s suicide attempt as yet another of his personal misfortunes, but never very sensitive to irony, Tony reacted by throwing him to the ground and dragging him into the closet.

For the most part, the narrative, shot in shortest, most pause-free scenes ever seen on “The Sopranos,” was classic gangland payback; there was no tortured ambivalence, no kinder gentler Tony as he called for Phil’s death or prepared Carmela and his family for flight. With his back to the wall, Tony is who he is: a mob boss. Even Dr. Melfi passed final judgment. Her work with Tony outed at a dinner party by her own shrink (the psychiatric profession is only slightly more scrupulous than the mob), she was forced to consider the evidence that talk therapy with a sociopath only helps polish the criminal. And so, acting more like a jilted girlfriend than a therapist, she literally and figuratively, showed Tony the door. As that door slammed, any hope Tony had of escaping the limited possibilities of a gangster’s archetypal fate was severed.

We were left, in the moments before “the final episode. Ever” with the image of Tony alone on a bare mattress, clutching a machine gun, his eyes fixed on a closed door. It is the end, one way or another, of Little Rico, Little Caesar, Sonny Corleone, Michael Corleone and Bugsy Siegel. Yes, Tony may yet kill himself, or go to the feds and save his skin or somehow avoid being the body slumped over a restaurant table surrounded by police tape, but any hope he had of being a different sort of mob boss, a different sort of anti-hero, is gone.

He is simply a man alone in the dark with his gun.

-- Mary McNamara

(Photo: HBO)

Comments

[Robert]

Finally. I decent episode. The last 2-3 seasons have been as boring as it gets with only flashes of greatness. This most recent episode was very good. I'm hoping the final will be much better...and I PRAY there is no Soprano's movie.

[deefromsanpedro]

Whatever happens in the final episode, I can honestly say I've been delightfully satisfied with this wry mob drama. "The Sopranos" will go down in history as one of the great shows. Despite these clearly sociopathic/psychopathic people, I feel a bit of a familial connection. In the quiet moments, they were actually likeable. In the crazy moments, they were completely horrifying. If that ain't family, I don't know what is. Goodbye, Sopranos! I'll celebrate your departure with a cannolli or two.

[cafe-risque.com]

Okay, sure....but what about the allusions by the FBI agent that Tony's forebears (the mafiosos) guarded the ports during WWII and all the recent mentions about the middle-eastern guys and the images/background of suicide bombings?

What would call off a mob war other than a common even more despised enemy?

I'm just sayin... is all.

[Nasher]

All signs point to turncoat Paulie:

1) The lack of Phil naming him as a member of "management" to be killed. How could he not name Paulie as management, to be "decapitated"? Because Paulie wants to join Philly's gang, and is in cahoots.

2) Paulie's freaking out/nervousness/questioning when told the hit is out on Phil. "Does T know about this?"

3) His lack of wanting anything to do with the hits. He couldn't get out of there fast enough when informed the cousins had arrived from Italy. One look at them, and bam, he's high-tailing it out of there.

4) Now he's in the safe house with T, and doesn't want to leave even when told he can go. The rat is in the hen house!!

5) A surprsingly unmentioned penultimate scene in the episode--a flashback to T and Bobby in Bobby's small boat. Bobby asks (in the flashback) "Do you think they know it's coming?" Or words to that effect. Tony says "Why don't you go ask your friend on the wall!" (Referring to the big buck's head hanging in Bobby's lake house!) Then we cut to T, lying alone in bed with the gun Bobby gave him for his birthday.

The (fantastic!) writing is on the wall. T's gonna get hit (probably from behind, and probably with incredible suddenness) by turncoat Paulie Walnuts.

Lord knows that won't be the only blood shed. It's gonna be a great final episode, Sunday can't come soon enough!!

[Martin]

Nasher, Interesting take. I think Tony is going to get it as well, but not so sure if Paulie is a turncoat. In fact I think there will be a big showdown & Paulie may take out Phil's right hand man. I think Phil's other Lt., (the Chubby guy with glasses) is the snitch to the FBI & Phil will take care of him.
Somehow I think it will come down to Tony vs. Phil & Tony will prevail. Then Tony will go home to be with his family and his mentally deranged wimp of a son, AJ will kill Tony!

[nicole]

nasher - those are great references and theories. But did you ever think maybe, in the end, when it all comes down to it - Tony figures it out and uses Paulie to get to Phil and takes them both out?

I highly doubt that Tony himself will go - though I do think we'll see the sociopathic side of Tony that we haven't seen - the dark dark evil corners of his mind. maybe he has been polishing his game with Melfi all this time. Maybe by doing so he draws Paulie into a flase belief, a false safeness.

Is paulie in on things with Phil - Probably. Didn't Brooklyn and Phil try to woo him at some point. And afterall, Paulie thought he was gonna get whacked by T down in Florida - and maybe T should have done it then. But all those signs pointing to what a loose cannon and Loud mouth he was is why T kept him at arms length.

Maybe T knows much much more then any of us are giving him credit for.

[Ralph Robert Moore]

One thing to consider is that even if Tony kills Phil, Tony's mob is still fatally crippled.

His right hand man (Bobby) is gone, his consigliore (Sil) is probably gone—Who does he have left? All viable candidates for either position have been killed over the years, mostly by Tony himself (Ralphie, Tony B, Christopher, to name just a few).

If Tony does manage to kill Phil, he's still going to have to deal with whomever succeeds Phil, and from a now much, much weaker position.

My guess is that Tony sits in bed for a long time, gripping Bobby's birthday present machine gun, does some long thinking, then picks up the phone at the side of the bed and calls the federal agent from the task force on terrorism, offering to turn himself in, in exchange for witness protection (the feds would much rather let Tony go if it meant they could bring down the far more powerful Brooklyn family).

Tony testifies against the Brooklyn mob, and winds up in some place like Utah in the witness protection program, under his new name of Kevin Finnerty.

[buzZzed.com]

What if all Tony's therapy allows him to break loose and become a free man after all? Wouldn't that be unexpected?

Meanwhile the ride -- the journey is the destination is it not?

This particular Mr Toad's wild ride has been capable of being both pop-culture and a 'mortality' tale (as one of the malaprops might have been written).

An allegory for our times. An allegory of we, ourselves and US -- comical, violent, self-deluding, conflicted, full of anxiety, humility, humiliation and insecurity, brash arrogance, malignant hubris, sociopathy, psycopathy and pathos ... maybe simultaneously showing us at our best and worst -- possibly even desperately seeking redemption, refuge from the storm (and all the impending ones to surely come). Reminding us that life itself is open-ended, dynamic, loose-ends everywhere, mostly messy, rarely as neat as stories, fantasies, movies, myths, fairy tales, even cautionary tales.

It's been (sur)real. This american viewer will miss your brilliance and thanks you deeply for a journey that has been all at once entertaining and profound, explosive and quiet, high art and low art, bawdy and modest, powerful and subtle, theatrical and nuanced. What a ride. What a high wire act. R.I.P.

Thank you David Chase, Jimmy G., Edie and all the cast, writers and crew. Thank you.