“The Sopranos” — The Second Coming
Before we get to the details, I have to say that I’m frustrated that we have to wait two weeks until the next episode airs due to the Memorial Day weekend. I mean, I get why they’re doing this, but those weeks off are huge momentum killers. Oh well. I’m sure we’ll survive.
That, however, can’t be said for most of the cast members on our favorite “mob as metaphor” dramatic series, which I’ll talk about right after the jump…
There were three key moments in last night’s episode that struck me on a gut level. The first of which being A.J.’s attempted suicide. Remember when Eugene Pontecorvo hung himself in his basement at the beginning of last season? It was unglamorous and painfully long in duration. The Sopranos doesn’t sugarcoat. So, of course watching A.J. try to drown himself couldn’t be more awkward and suspenseful — suspenseful because we could see the expression on his face when he realized the mistake.
The intensity amplified when Tony came to the rescue. We were all watching last week when he saw an opportunity to get rid of Christopher and took it. As he pulled A.J. from the pool you had to wonder if he was going to perform an encore. Perhaps most shocking was that he didn’t take this opportunity. In previous seasons we might have interpreted this action as a father who truly loves his son, but now that series has finally exposed Tony for the sociopath that he is we see that this action is much more about the blood of the family than about a father and son.
That whole sequence had me on the edge of my seat.
The second moment from the night had me actually off my seat. When Tony curbs Coco, I had to look away. The show has always been violent. In a way it kind of markets itself as violence because it seems to be one of the few places in narrative media where the violence seems to actually mean something and have some resonance. Because of this it can be exceptionally brutal. That act last night might have been the most brutal. There’s something about hearing teeth scatter on the floor that isn’t the easiest of sounds to shake from your head.
Still, it was the third moment that seemed to have the deepest resonance: that scene with Melfi and Kupferberg (Bogdanovich) where Elliott keeps grabbing for that ridiculous water bottle. The scene was so weird, highlighted specifically by the fact that Elliott comes off as such a sniveling lightweight, yet one that can completely play Melfi like a rented kazoo.
This leads to him telling about a study he read on sociopaths in therapy and how the therapy actually makes them better criminals. It’ll be interesting to see if this finally causes Melfi to dump Tony as a client (something she can’t really do, as she seems to be as addicted to his sessions as he). For me the part of the story that really seemed to jump out was that word: Sociopath. We always think of Tony as any or all of the following in this order: father, mobster, friend, killer, but it’s “sociopath” that seems to be working its way up the list.
Of course none of this even touches on the boiling mob war between New York and New Jersey that will likely come to a head as the series concludes, but all of that seems like a distraction from what is really going on within the Soprano household.
