My wife and I are excited about the upcoming season of Sopranos. We've been waiting for about 2 years for this next season. This show is addictive.
Originally, I missed the first few episodes of season one. I've never seen them. But HBO has been showing all of the Sopranos episodes in order lately. I started watching every episode, starting with season one, episode one about a month and a half ago. It's been great. I watch it every weekday night at 7pm. I'm picking up allot of stuff that I missed the first time around. Also, seeing the entire series from the beginning, in order, episode after episode is really making things more clear. There were some things that I was foggy about. There's such a long offseason between seasons that you can forget important details sometimes. The timing will be just right. I should finish the final episode just prior to March when the new season starts. I can't wait.
Discuss.......
After reading another Soprano's thread, the topic of
SPOILERS came up. So I thought there should be some
RULES about spoilers for this thread.
I would say that one should read and post at your own risk. We will bump this thread to the top after each episode and have a discussion of that episode. I don't know how you can have a discussion without revealing spoilers. I don't even know why they'd be considered spoilers if the episode has already aired and most of America has seen it. So, if you want to post a "spoiler warning" in your post, that's fine. But if you don't, no one should complain. If you haven't see the current episode, you should not read this thread until you have.
With that said, if you have some inside information about an upcoming episode that would be a spoiler, you SHOULD NOT post that on this thread. I can't imagine that happening, because the Soprano's producers gaurd their secrets like Fort Knox. But, if you know something about an upcoming episode, keep it to yourself until after the episode airs. This is really common sense stuff, but I thought it should be spelled out just to keep arguments to a minimum.
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Here's the take of the season so far from salon's TV critic:
There's a whole setup about her ex-boyfriend, but it's really boring, so I'll just cut to the chase.
http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/review/2...ike/print.html
His story repeats itself
As boring and exasperating as they can be, the stories people repeat over and over again end up telling us a lot about them as human beings. In my boyfriend's case, his parents had separated right after he went away to college, and maybe he was haunted by the sense that something innocent and sweet from his childhood, some moment when he was the most important thing in the world to his father, was lost and gone forever.
This same sense of melancholy and loss is what has made Tony Soprano a compelling character over all these years. He was a sensitive boy, but his mother and father weren't capable of giving him the love that he needed, so as an adult he's fated to look back with anxiety and grief. He worked tirelessly for his mother's approval, even as she treated him with disrespect, insulted him and plotted to kill him.
Still, like my college boyfriend, people who are caught up in golden moments from the past are likely to neglect people that are in their lives here and now. For Tony, mangy-looking, stinky mutts are wandering around every corner, but like the mom who shrugs and leaves the dog outside instead of giving it a bath and taking it to the vet, Tony tries gingerly to solve his problems by following his own instincts, but inevitably ends up shrugging his shoulders, cutting his losses, and shutting the dog outside in the rain. The question is whether or not, in the final season of "The Sopranos" (9 p.m. Sundays on HBO), Tony is going to continue to make the same brutal decisions that are necessary to fulfill his duties as mob boss, or whether he's finally lost his stomach for the heartless requirements of mob life.
Each season, this is the repeating story of "The Sopranos": There's a bad little sheep in Tony's flock, and Tony is forced to pull out his shotgun and eliminate the problem. From Big Pussy to Ralphie to Richie (whom Janice conveniently gunned down so Tony didn't have to) to Tony Blundetto to Adriana, Tony has struggled, year after year, with the unsavory responsibilities of keeping his business up and running.
This season, it may be that Tony's humanity and his loyalty as a friend are being tested more than ever before. After putting business first so many times before, Tony suddenly seems less able to make the same kinds of barbarous decisions he's had to make in the past.
When Vito is discovered at a gay bar and forced to go on the run, it's impossible not to feel sorry for him. This isn't a guy who's squealing to the feds or screwing up and challenging Tony like Ralphie did. Despite his sneakiness when Tony was in a coma, overall Vito is a loyal guy, a good earner who hasn't caused trouble for Tony in the past. He's obviously meant to be a fairly sympathetic character, particularly in the face of the anger and rejection of the macho mob guys, who think he has to go simply because he makes them all look like girly-men by association.
Our sympathy for Vito peaks when he discovers a quaint little town in New Hampshire that appears to be a sort of gay paradise. I love the scene where the hot guy with the handlebar mustache serves him Johnny Cakes and says something like, "Do you like what you see?" Or the other scene where he's surveying a vase in an antique store, and the seemingly gay owner says to him, "You're a natural!" For once, instead of taking out the long knives because the mad dogs in the pack can't stand to let a perceived offense go unpunished, Tony urges the others not to rush to judgment. Even though he eventually seems intent on chasing down Vito, Tony is delaying the process in a way that makes it uncertain whether Vito will go down the way so many others have before him.
And then there's Artie, who's sometimes a sympathetic character, but whose overall demeanor is that of the prideful, irrational jackass. Artie has always inspired Tony's loyalty, but he himself isn't all that loyal, either to his wife with his relentless crushes on Adriana and now Martina, or to his staff, whom he treats with respect on good days, and then explodes and abuses at other times. Artie is stubborn, he refuses to listen to others, he makes really bad decisions, and he follows his own bloated ego in little circles.
Tony has been consistently loyal to Artie. Even the fire at Artie's restaurant, which Tony felt so guilty about, yielded Artie enough insurance money for him to rebuild and start over. But every time Tony tries to reason with Artie and to steer him away from danger or ruin, he does so in vain. Artie can't discuss anything reasonably -- he's massively insecure yet too enamored of himself to see the truth.
With Paulie going off the rails, Vito hiding out, Artie threatening to lose his mind, and Christopher falling off the wagon and acting like more of a self-serving jerk than ever, how will Tony keep it all together?
But more important, what's new under the sun? We've seen most of these situations before. Do we really need more scenes with Christopher navigating Hollywood like a confused meathead? Do we care that Carmela is put off by her rude friend Angie? And don't we know what happens to traitors eventually? They get taken out in one horrible way or another. Even if Paulie is discovered to be double-crossing Tony -- and that's likely, the way Paulie is acting lately -- Tony will take him out. The End.
Unless Tony is going to put his foot down and take a very different course of action this season, I really wonder why we're being treated to the same scenarios we have been since the very first season. Why would every single season's narrative arc involve a traitor to the family? And why is this season shaping up to be just like all the others?
It bothers me that these characters aren't changing or growing more, particularly in the final days of the show. I know that's the nature of this show and the nature of its characters, but you'd think they could break from tradition at the 11th hour to liven things up a little. A.J. is still chumpy and annoying, Meadow is a somewhat ineffectual do-gooder, Carmela compromises and keeps the peace, Tony's men are all self-interested, short-sighted assholes with no conscience who aren't evolving past a violent, simian state, and Tony, despite his near-death experience, is just as beleaguered and angry as he ever was.
The show remains as imaginative and funny as it ever was, but it feels like we've seen it all a few times already. The Sacramoni wedding episode was heartbreaking and memorable, with its theme of weakness vs. strength in men; the casual Italian assassins were hilarious and odd; even Artie's outbursts were thoroughly entertaining, as frustrating as Artie himself can be as a character. But most of the stories here feel like retreads, and that makes this season a little less exciting than seasons past. I no longer look forward to Sunday nights in the same way, and sometimes (gasp!) watch "Big Love" only, and catch up with "The Sopranos" the next day.
The only outcome that might explain the status quo of this season so far is that something big is in the cards, and the point of these episodes is to remind us of the usual state of affairs before the entire picture is turned upside down. Some possibilities: 1) Paulie or Christopher rat to the feds in exchange for immunity and take the whole family down in the process, 2) Tony joins the witness protection program and writes a book about his experiences (unlikely, since that's pretty out of character, plus Tony would naturally be the main target of any investigation), or 3) Tony goes easy on Vito, Artie and a few others, ends up being seen as soft, and then gets displaced by one of his longtime loyal associates.
Those are my best guesses. How do you think the final season will end? Send your ideas my way and I'll publish the best predictions in next week's column.
I have to say, though, if something that big is going to happen, I'm anxious for it to start already. As harsh as it might be to see the family get ripped apart, it's getting to the point where it's hard to care about any of them. Aside from maybe Tony and Silvio, the characters on "The Sopranos" are frustratingly stagnant and self-concerned, and that dampens my interest in the show. It's time for "The Sopranos" to stop telling the same old stories and start trying out a few new tricks on us. I'd love to see Christopher make a terrible decision and meet with a well-deserved horrible fate, while Vito grows old eating Johnny Cakes. Isn't it about time Tony showed a little mercy and let the mangy old dog in from the rain?
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