The Sopranos

[Controlled Chaos]

[southsider2k5]

What a great episode.

 

I won't rehash anything that has been said already, but they are really laying the ground work for Tony to flip to states evidence. There are little hints all over the place, but think about it... Tony is getting sick of everyone who works for him, except maybe Sil, heck he even killed Chrissy, and really thought about killing Pauly. One big hint was the scene where Tony calls Carm to tell him about Chris's death, and her laptop is open to homes in Panama City FL. There are also illusions to the first season with Tony's ducks a couple of different times in this episode, which is one of the few things that totally relaxed Tony in this entire series. Its another hint of getting away from it all. Then there is the obvious trip to Vegas without anyone else, to get away from the stresses of his job. Also add in earlier his cooperation with the feds on the two potential terrorists laying the groundwork for him to cooperate a little more and a little more. Finally we have the feds trying to get a RICO indictment against Tony, which could be the tipping point to finally make him decide to protect himself in the ultimate manner.

 

Heck even if you think back to the scenes after he was shot and was on deaths door, there are some hints that could also be taken out of there where Tony has a new identity and living in Arizona.

 

Who knows if it will happen, but the groundwork is there.

[Y2HH]

I agree, this was one of the best episodes in YEARS.

 

Seasons 1 and 2 are by far the best of the show, as this season has been hit or miss like the past few seasons, but the episodes that focus on the major characters (Pauly Episode/Christopher Episode) have been top-notch. I find it as no suprise that the best episode in years was co-written by the shows creator, either.

 

Hopefully they end it with a bang, but not a predictable bang. I think killing Tony is such a cop out of storytelling, especially when it comes to mob movies, since if that's what they end up doing, I've already seen it done in just about every other mob movie out there. Hopefully they're more creative than that.

[Brian]

There is NO WAY that Tony gets flipped. The FBI goes after bosses, see Johnny Sac, they don't try and flip them.

 

I'm starting to agree that killing tony would be a cop out. I wouldn't be surprised if the show ends with Tony behind bars, when was the last time we heard about the RICO case against him? Or with Tony, still as boss, AJ working with him, or something like that.

 

Who knows? Could go in any direction.

[southsider2k5]

There is NO WAY that Tony gets flipped. The FBI goes after bosses, see Johnny Sac, they don't try and flip them.

 

I'm starting to agree that killing tony would be a cop out. I wouldn't be surprised if the show ends with Tony behind bars, when was the last time we heard about the RICO case against him? Or with Tony, still as boss, AJ working with him, or something like that.

 

Who knows? Could go in any direction.

 

They could use him to get to the New York family... Like I said, it is just a theory, but they seem to be dropping a ton of hints that way.

[Controlled Chaos]

There is NO WAY that Tony gets flipped. The FBI goes after bosses, see Johnny Sac, they don't try and flip them.

 

I'm starting to agree that killing tony would be a cop out. I wouldn't be surprised if the show ends with Tony behind bars, when was the last time we heard about the RICO case against him? Or with Tony, still as boss, AJ working with him, or something like that.

 

Who knows? Could go in any direction.

Yeah I don't see it either. Tony is the top dog...he's the guy they want.

[tonyho7476]

that chick he tripped out on payote with was so f***ing hot. Seeing Tony with his grubby, fat fingers on her, gave me hope.

[Controlled Chaos]

that chick he tripped out on payote with was so f***ing hot. Seeing Tony with his grubby, fat fingers on her, gave me hope.

Sarah Shahi...She was hot. I had to look up who she was cause I knew I saw her before. She was the chick that was blowing the cucumber in that one scene in Old School.

 

Here's some other pics for ya

 

http://members.fortunecity.com/noops051/sarah_shahi001.jpg

http://members.fortunecity.com/noops051/sarah_shahi002.jpg

http://members.fortunecity.com/noops051/sarah_shahi003.jpg

[The Ginger Kid]

I agree, this was one of the best episodes in YEARS.

 

Seasons 1 and 2 are by far the best of the show, as this season has been hit or miss like the past few seasons, but the episodes that focus on the major characters (Pauly Episode/Christopher Episode) have been top-notch. I find it as no suprise that the best episode in years was co-written by the shows creator, either.

 

Hopefully they end it with a bang, but not a predictable bang. I think killing Tony is such a cop out of storytelling, especially when it comes to mob movies, since if that's what they end up doing, I've already seen it done in just about every other mob movie out there. Hopefully they're more creative than that.

I get the feeling a gangland type war is about to explode and Tony will take out Phil, not before he loses someone like Paulie Walnuts. I think it will end on some sort of domestic scene, since this has always been a story about family.

[RockRaines]

Sarah Shahi...She was hot. I had to look up who she was cause I knew I saw her before. She was the chick that was blowing the cucumber in that one scene in Old School.

 

Here's some other pics for ya

 

http://members.fortunecity.com/noops051/sarah_shahi001.jpg

http://members.fortunecity.com/noops051/sarah_shahi002.jpg

http://members.fortunecity.com/noops051/sarah_shahi003.jpg

EVERYONE has seen her before in this pic

 

 

[Brian]

that chick he tripped out on payote with was so f***ing hot. Seeing Tony with his grubby, fat fingers on her, gave me hope.

 

Agreed. And you could tell she knows how to "move".

[Rex Hudler]

Agreed....... seeing her riding Tony was hot. She was smokin in those cutoff jean shorts when Tony first arrived.

 

On that note, we need to see more Meadow in the last few episodes.

[Brian]

On that note, we need to see more Meadow in the last few episodes.

 

It was wierd how they just mentioned in passing that she wasn't engaged anymore. I thought a whole episode around Meadow's wedding would be interesting. The Boss' daughter getting married would be huge.

[RibbieRubarb]

Yeah I don't see it either. Tony is the top dog...he's the guy they want.

 

Tony is the top dog in Jersey. He could give them the New York guys. Bigger Dogs!

[DrunkBomber]

This weeks episode was OK. Its setting up for some fireworks with the New York family.

[FlaSoxxJim]

The most disgusting thing in that episode was not the teeth - it was those cream cheese hotdog things Carm was making for AJ that turned my stomach.

[Brian]

The entire series has been Tony with his household family and his mob family. They were always separate for the most part. Tonight, they came together when CoCo crossed the line.

 

If AJ had succeeded in the suicide, that would of been a shocker. I don't want to see the kid die. Tony helps Christopher die, but helps his son live.

[RibbieRubarb]

Someone's pulling the strings behind Phil...

[KipWellsFan]

Someone's pulling the strings behind Phil...

 

Who did you have in mind?

 

Too bad we have to wait 2 weeks before the next episode. Looks like it's going to be a hell of a barnburner. I bet there'll be some kind of cliff-hanger, to be continued... type thing going into the last episode.

 

These new episodes, other than "Chasing It", have been great.

[FlaSoxxJim]

I like the fact that they have o many balls in the air now, with regard to what might bring everything to a head. Most of the conflicts they set up won't lead to anything and not everything will find a resolution which I think is fine. Now that Tony has a boatload of people who want a piece of him, all we can do is guess which she in a closet full of shoes is going to drop.

 

I have a bad feeling AJ is going to die. Having made a willful decision to live, having Meadow tell him the importance of being the son in an Italian family, and Toy's torn feelings about being ashamed of him and also guilty over being partly responsible for is mental condition, I think that all leads to AJ not making it.

[Controlled Chaos]

Sopranos Rewind: The Second Coming

Posted by Alan Sepinwall May 21, 2007 12:29AM

Categories: The Sopranos

WARNING: This column contains major plot spoilers for last night's "Sopranos" episode.

 

Sometimes, it's not the fire that burns you. It's the juices.

 

Two episodes ago, in "Walk Like a Man," Tony suggested that Chris pull a steak off the barbecue because it would continue to cook in its own juices, even away from the flame. At the time, it was an apt metaphor for the growing resentment Chris and Tony were feeling for each other in the aftermath of Adriana's death. But it applies even more to last night's "The Second Coming," where nearly every character is stewing in the juices of some very old beef.

 

Phil is still after Tony about the ancient murder of his brother Billy; he makes a not-so-veiled reference to it when he says of Chris' widow that grief takes longer the closer the dead person was to you. A.J. botches a suicide attempt, then tries to justify it with sob stories from seasons past. Carmela finally unloads on Tony, not only for passing on "The Soprano Curse" to their son, but because she's tired of hearing about his depression: "You have any idea what it's like to spend day after day with somebody who is constantly complaining?"

 

When talk of A.J.'s near-fatal plunge into the Soprano family pool leads some of the other Family captains to acknowledge their own children's shaky mental health, Paulie suggests it's all the toxins these kids have been exposed to for their entire lives (in an episode where Tony's guys are still dumping asbestos into the Meadowlands). In this environment, it doesn't matter when the initial exposure or tragedy was; it stays with you for years, maybe your whole life.

 

A.J. tries to kill himself -- in the pool where Tony's beloved ducks once represented his desire for a happy family -- after too much time studying the W.B. Yeats poem that lends its title to the episode. It's the second time someone on the show has quoted it; in season five's "Cold Cuts," Melfi used the famous "Things fall apart" line with Tony, and Yeats' bleak outlook on the future of civilization applies to this whole season. The center of Tony's world -- the men he loved and trusted most -- is coming undone. Bacala. Junior. Paulie. Hesh. Chris. Either humiliated or marginalized or dead at Tony's hands. The week after killing his surrogate son, Tony barely gets home in time to save his actual son's life, in one of the more harrowing sequences the show's ever done.

 

And then there's Phil. Question: If you locked Phil and Paulie in a room together, whose air of entitlement and martyrdom would suffocate the other one first? But where Paulie's too dumb and relatively low-ranking to cause much pain and suffering through his woe-is-me routine (save to the odd civilian like Minn Matrone or Jason Barone), Phil is just clever enough and far too powerful to be dismissed. No way his man Coco feels confident enough to harass Meadow, the daughter of a boss -- even the boss of Jersey -- unless he knows he'll get Phil's backing on it. Back in "Stage 5," Phil told Butchie he was done with compromises, and here he explains to Tony -- who's never done any significant prison time -- that in the can, "compromise" meant, at best, getting a very pale imitation of what you wanted. Phil won't compromise on the asbestos deal because he's itching for a war with Tony -- a war he's willing to wage only because of his huge manpower advantage. (Witness the way he hides from Tony and Little Carmine in the little turret of his suburban castle; he's a coward at heart.)

 

But the show's built up to wars before -- both within New York and between New York and New Jersey -- and always backed off at the last minute. With only two episodes left, is there still time for one?

 

Whatever happens over the final two hours, don't expect anyone to get out of the life. We've been told time and again over the last two years -- with Eugene and Vito and Chris -- that there's no escape from the Family, and "The Second Coming" provides even more reminders.

 

Midway through the episode, Melfi's own therapist, the smug Dr. Kupferberg, tells her of a study suggesting not only that sociopaths can't be helped by traditional "talk therapy," but that it can make them worse, help them justify their worst traits. As omniscient viewers of the TV show, we know that Kupferberg has a point, that Tony usually lies too much to get anything useful out of Melfi (last week's dream session where he confessed to killing Pussy and Tony B. was more productive than most of the real ones), and that he sometimes uses her to map out strategy. Most times, he's running a scam on Melfi, which is why he's able to spot A.J.'s lame excuse-making in that endless family session with Dr. Vogel.

 

But Tony -- who's not even bothering to hide his newfound Livia-ness with multiple "Poor you!"s -- does have the occasional moment of insight, as he does when explaining part of the meaning of his "I get it!" peyote revelation from last week. Mothers, he says, are like buses: "They're the vehicle that gets us here. They drop us off and go on their way, they continue on their journey, and our problem is we continue trying to get back on the bus instead of just let it go."

 

Only someone with Livia for a parent would view motherhood that way, but the Family functions as a bus, too, one that everyone's either afraid or incapable of staying off for long.

 

Meadow reveals that she's dating another son of a wiseguy (Patrick Parisi, whom Patsy had earlier acknowledged "can be a moody (expletive deleted) sometimes") and has now given up on med school in favor of becoming a lawyer -- two choices guaranteed to keep her involved in her father's lifestyle in some way. (Meadow being Meadow, she lets the man in her life talk her into it.)

 

Meadow had her chance to get off the bus for good, but instead she's inching towards a lifetime bus pass. Carmela had two chances -- first when that elderly shrink told her to leave Tony, then when she actually threw him out -- and both times she couldn't do it. Vito drove home to his own death, so great was the pull of his old life. Adriana couldn't leave Christopher and died because of him. Chris in turn couldn't leave Tony, and now he's gone to Hell for him.

 

Getting back to Yeats, one of the lines that transfixes A.J. is the notion that "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." On this show, "best" is a relative term -- of the regular characters, Melfi's the only genuinely good person -- but there's no lack of contenders for "worst." And they're all filled with their own stupid, destructive passionate intensity, even if what made them passionate happened so long ago that -- like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that vexes A.J. so -- they can't really remember how the fire got started. But so long as those juices keep flowing, they'll keep cooking.

 

Some other thoughts on "The Second Coming":

 

-If you're Silvio Dante, will there ever be a more useful book to read than "How to Clean Practically Everything"? Maybe he can loan it to the waitstaff at Coco's restaurant.

 

-Michael Imperioli remains in the opening credits, while Vince Curatola (Johnny Sack) has been gone for weeks. Show of respect to an original castmember, or hint that Chris will pop up in a dream sequence soon?

 

-One of the readers of the Sopranos blog reminded me last week of Tony's story from "Soprano Home Movies" about the brain dead little boy who fell into a pool, and the season has been littered with talk of dead children and babies, including all of Tony's infant car seat references last week. So what does Tony say after he gets A.J. out of the pool? "You're all right, baby. You're all right."

 

-What kind of finesse has to be involved in a curb-stomping like the one Tony gave Coco without actually killing him?

 

-As usual, the show is taking Memorial Day weekend off, so the next new episode won't air until June 3, with the series finale on June 10.

 

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at [email protected]

[FlaSoxxJim]

-Michael Imperioli remains in the opening credits, while Vince Curatola (Johnny Sack) has been gone for weeks. Show of respect to an original castmember, or hint that Chris will pop up in a dream sequence soon?

 

I like these recaps by this Sipenwell guy and had to avoid the thread last week until I could catch up on a missed episode. Thanks for sharing.

 

Very minor point, but he's probably making a bigger deal out of Chris still being in the credits. The Ahmed and Mohamed actors were in the credits last night too, apparently because their likenesses appeared as still photos when the feds showed them to Tony. Similarly, Chris showed up as a photo from the Cleaver set on the wall at Satriele's (sp?), so Imperioli probably had to appear in the credits.

[Controlled Chaos]

I like these recaps by this Sipenwell guy and had to avoid the thread last week until I could catch up on a missed episode. Thanks for sharing.

 

Very minor point, but he's probably making a bigger deal out of Chris still being in the credits. The Ahmed and Mohamed actors were in the credits last night too, apparently because their likenesses appeared as still photos when the feds showed them to Tony. Similarly, Chris showed up as a photo from the Cleaver set on the wall at Satriele's (sp?), so Imperioli probably had to appear in the credits.

I was thinking the same thing...he would have to be in the credits if they showed his picture. Not to mention Sopranos has about as many credits as a small movie...what's one more.

[RibbieRubarb]

Who did you have in mind?

 

Too bad we have to wait 2 weeks before the next episode. Looks like it's going to be a hell of a barnburner. I bet there'll be some kind of cliff-hanger, to be continued... type thing going into the last episode.

 

These new episodes, other than "Chasing It", have been great.

 

I don't know.

It was odd that there was a sudden change of heart and that we couldn't see his face when Tony went to his house.

It seemed to me someone was in the room with Phil.

 

or...

 

Could Little Carmine be the one playing both sides as suggested in the preview and he is lying to Tony.

Hmmmmm.

 

 

I love this show.

[Controlled Chaos]

Anyone also notice what a prick Baccala has become. His character has done a 180 since his first wacking.

 

 

Next Episode Detail: The Blue Comet - The Sopranos

Loyalty to Tony reaches a critical stage for those within his sphere of influence; a case of mistaken identity has grave consequences.

 

Could the mistaken indentity be Meadow? She was supposedly rear ended in this last episode. Which they didn't even elaborate on. I thought that was kinda strange, but if she is driving Tony's car in the next episode and something happens then it would all make sense. It's a stretch, but possible.

Edited May 21, 2007 by Controlled Chaos