Reviews: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button & The Sopranos 

     David Fincher directs 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a romantic fantasy based on Eric Roth’s adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story about a man who ages backwards, that is, he’s transformed from a wheelchair-bound “youngster” into a healthy middle-aged stud and then into a child.  Roth has converted Fitzgerald’s farce into an overlong, over-serious mundane romance. Recommended—71% positive reviews—if you have nearly three hours to waste on a rainy day (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button trailer). 

     In August 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches New Orleans, the dying Daisy (Cate Blanchett), eighty-one, has her daughter Caroline (Julia Ormond) at her bedside in the hospital. (Daisy looks ninety-one but she must have been born in 1924 and I assume it is 2005’s Katrina.)  Slightly spacey from morphine for her pain, Daisy tells Caroline the story behind a large wall clock commissioned for a new train station in 1918.  Teddy Roosevelt attends the unveiling when the blind Monsieur Devereux (Elias Koteas), a master clockmaker, reveals that his clock runs backwards, representing the desire of so many to have time reversed so that the young men who went to fight in Europe and were wounded or killed might never have gone. Devereux’s beloved only son had died on the battlefield, which explains his grief and the creation of his remarkable timepiece.  Devereux later vanishes, perhaps a suicide, rowing his boat into the ocean. 

     Daisy asks Caroline to read from an old journal in her handbag.  As Caroline begins reading, her voice is replaced by that of the author, Benjamin (Brad Pitt).  Benjamin is born on 11 November 1918, the night the First World War ends.  Thomas Button (Jason Flemyng), prosperous owner of a family business, Button’s Buttons, rushes home through the joyous crowd to discover his wife has died in childbirth.  The infant is grotesque, so Thomas abandons him on the porch of a nearby old folks home where it’s found by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), a black caretaker. Queenie, a kindhearted single woman nearing forty with no children of her own, names the infant Benjamin. By 1930, when he’s twelve, Benjamin looks like an old man, in a wheelchair or on crutches. He’s entranced by the stunning blue eyes of Daisy, six, the granddaughter of a resident, Mrs. Fuller.  Daisy likes the cute little old man Benjamin.   

     In 1936, Benjamin, eighteen but seemingly a spry senior citizen, leaves the retirement home to work on a tugboat. In Russia he meets a married Brit, Elizabeth Abbott (Tilda Swinton).  After Pearl Harbor, the tugboat is enlisted by the Navy. Daisy, meanwhile, has attended ballet school in New York. When Benjamin returns to New Orleans in 1945, Queenie repeats her aphorism: You never know what’s coming for you.  (Similar in wisdom to Life is like a box of chocolates from the mother of Forrest Gump, another screenplay by Roth.) Over a weekend visit to Queenie, Daisy renews her friendship with Benjamin.   

     Stuff happens as the paths of Benjamin and Daisy cross several more times. Will his love fade as she becomes an old crone?  Will his age-regression be an intolerable burden on the aging Daisy? The film’s bromides are that life is full of surprises, true love is forever, a person can reinvent himself if he wants to, and when death is imminent, “let go” and die.   

     SPOILER.  Do not read this paragraph if you want surprises when you watch it on TV.  Benjamin and Daisy reunite in 1962 when he’s forty-four and she’s thirty-eight.  She opens a dance studio in 1967 and has a baby a year later. Benjamin, who has long ago reconciled with his father, inherits the button business. He deposits his assets in a fund for Daisy and Caroline. He then splits, believing his age-regression will be an imposition on Daisy and will rob Caroline of having a real father. His decision makes no sense. In the film’s fictional universe people notice his youthfulness and are surprised, but no one is amazed. (He’s not a notorious oddity.)  He’s a rich man.  He could easily live with them for at least twenty-five more years—by then Caroline would be an independent adult—before hitting his teens. (Admittedly, it’s tough to calculate the rate of his regression because when he does see Caroline again, in 1980, she’s twelve, and he is thirty-six, but looks twenty. I assume he ages backwards from his eighties at a consistent rate. Thus, it’s just Pitt’s natural good looks, not a faster rate of regression.) If he must split, do it in twenty-five years as a footloose teenager, but not now. I’m upset because couples often struggle with a spouse’s serious illness. That’s life.  Neither one should bail out.  A second gripe is the unintended stereotypes common to Fitzgerald’s era.  Queenie and the other black folks are assumed to be gullible and superstitious enough to accept Benjamin’s backwards aging without question. So are the dumbbell sailors on the tugboat.    

     TRIVIA.  I’m not a fan of Fincher’s Se7ven, The Game, Fight Club, or Zodiac. Roth’s Forrest Gump and The Insider are okay. Blanchett and Pitt are fine. 

The Sopranos, Six Seasons & The Many Saints of Newark (Omitted) 

July 2005, November 2007, and May 2022 

     David Chase created The Sopranos for HBO and it has been a runaway success. One of the best opening songs of all time.  I’ve seen the previous seasons but have not reviewed them. My sister, who loved the series, sent me all of Season Four on tape.  Here’s Season Five with the main characters. 

Tony                   Carmela                      Dr. Melfi 

          Meadow                    Anthony, Jr.                    Uncle Junior 

Paulie                    Silvio                 Christopher          Andriana 

     The setup. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) is a mobster married to Carmela (Edie Falco).  They live in the New Jersey suburbs with their two kids: Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), a college junior, and Anthony Jr. aka AJ (Robert Iler), a high school senior. For cover, Tony sets up his uncle as the putative head of the crime family. But now Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) is on trial.  Tony also has a troublesome sister Janice (Aida Turturro).  Uncle Junior’s factotum is a fat doofus, Bobby (Steven R. Schivripa). Janice has recently married the widowed Bobby. Tony’s coterie of thugs includes Paulie (Tony Sirico), Silvio (Steve Van Zandt), and Christopher (Michael Imperioli), who is engaged to Andriana (Drea De Matteo).  Tony has a boyhood friend (now on the outs with him), the restaurant owner Artie (John Ventimiglia), who is married to Charmaine (Katherine Narducci). A Sicilian henchman Furio (Federico Castellucio) fell for Carmela but then wisely returned home. 

     The premise is that Tony is like any other ordinary guy beset by problems at home and at work. A guy who suffers from panic attacks and needs psychological counseling.  Thus, he attends sessions on the qt with Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco).  When his marriage breaks down, he and Carm see Melfi for couples therapy.  To no avail.  As the fourth season closes, Tony is booted out of the house.  In that final ep Christopher leaves rehab, kicking his heroin habit. His fiancée Andriana has been snared as an informant for the feds. Johnny Sack, the right-hand man to Carmine, the head of the New York Family, urges Tony to whack the old man. Tony agrees but then reneges, which upsets Johnny. The Sopranos Season Five trailer. 

     SPOILER. Stop reading if you intend to rent the DVDs. 

     Ep 1) David Chase co-writes. Two of the mobsters from Tony’s younger days, who have been in prison for fifteen years, are paroled. Feech (Robert Loggia), a tough old bird, wants some action within Tony’s territory. And Tony’s cousin, Tony B., is mentioned but does not appear. A black bear roams the suburban neighborhood where Carmela lives with AJ.  Carmine, the head of the NY Family, has a stroke.  Uncle Junior is free after a hung jury (the fix was in). Paulie and Christopher settle their spat at the expense of a waiter who is truly stiffed on his tip.  Dr. Melfi rebuffs Tony’s romantic overtures. 

    FORESHADOWING. As the guys chinwag they mention the Russian who got away in the woods. And Tony tells Carmela that Furio is now a marked man because he was attentive to her and she reciprocated. Both items may be unimportant, but they could be a setup for one or both of these hitmen to reappear and kill a leading character.  The Russian and Furio are deadly, both have reason for revenge, and both carry a certain force of destiny as loose ends that need to be tied into the plot.  If not this season, then later. Just a guess. 

     Ep 2) At Carmine’s funeral a feud erupts between his top henchman, Johnny Sack, and his son, Little Carmine. Cousin Tony B (Steve Buscemi) wants to go straight.  Tony senses that Tony B harbors a measure of hostility and resentment for his jail time; moreover, he’s not sufficiently deferential towards Tony as the head of the local family branch.  Tony is bickering with Carmela and is driven to distraction, as always, by the fear that one of his collaborators has turned snitch. Ep 3) Johnny Sack and Little Carmine battle for control of the New York Family; Feech and Paulie are crosswise over landscaping turf; and Uncle Junior slips into senility.  Ep 4) Rodrigo Garcia (Ten Tiny Love Stories) directs. Carm and AJ argue over his grades; she and AJ’s guidance counselor, Robert Wegler (David Strathairn), have lunch; and AJ moves in with Tony. Tony tries to reconcile with Dr. Melfi. After a passing comment by Carm, it dawns on Tony that his thug friends are fawning stooges. Feech pushes a mite too hard. 

     Ep 5) Tony returns to therapy with Dr. Melfi to confess his lust for Andriana after an incident at her nightclub.  A mutual attraction accidentally results in gossip that is defused with Carm’s cooperation.  Ep 6) AJ moves back in with Carm and Carm moves on with Wegler, the school counselor. (I anticipate a violent mishap in Wegler’s future.  Call it film karma because the actor Strathairn is the high school English teacher who seduces a vulnerable student in Blue Car, reviewed in November 2004.) Tony B is led astray by the hoodlum’s lifestyle: all-nighters of booze, strip clubs, and poker with no early morning wake-up calls are his undoing. He’s ready to work for Tony.  Ep 7) Buscemi directs. Tim Daly plays a TV writer and Chris’s closest friend in their recovery group.  That is until Tim sits in on one of the mob’s poker nights.  Chris doesn’t hesitate to collect. Tony happens to meet his father’s mistress (Polly Bergen), who has stories about old times that force Tony to recognize that his mother may not have been entirely at fault for his parent’s miserable marriage.  Ep 8) Imperioli writes.  Carmela’s father’s insistence that Tony attend his 75^th birthday party presents an opportunity for reconciliation. Behind Tony’s back, Tony B, itching for action and dough, is hired for a hit by Angelo (Joe Santos), his best friend from prison who now works for Little Carmine in New York.  

     Ep 9) Tony covers for Tony’s B’s hit because, as he finally confesses to Dr. Melfi, he feels guilty that it had been a panic attack fifteen years earlier that had caused him to drop out of the hijacking that got Tony B sent to prison.  Had he not been “weak” (as he views it), he, too, would have been arrested and not had the time with his family or had the opportunity to become the boss. Meadow’s boyfriend Finn, meanwhile, is scared shirtless by one of Tony’s thugs.  Fear and exhaustion prompt a proposal. Carmela discovers how difficult it is to retain an attorney to battle Tony in divorce court.  Ep 10) Following a brawl, Janice enrolls in an anger management course. Chris is jealous of Tony B’s promotion.   

     The malicious underside of teasing is on display in all of the subplots. Tony is particularly ugly in praising Chris for his sobriety and then berating him for not having a drink like a man and in complimenting Janice for dealing with her anger and then intentionally provoking an outburst.  Chris and Tony B are able to put aside their differences until Tony arrives and then they vie for his favorable attention with cheap shots against one another.  In short, the worst adolescent behavior carried over into adulthood.  This episode is a wake-up for those who may have been lulled into sentimentality about Tony’s plight with a marriage on the rocks and underlings complicating his business life.  Tony is not merely a thief and strong-arm thug; he is a petty, spiteful, malicious, jealous, vengeful, and violent bully.  He’s unpredictably dangerous, with a short fuse and an uncontrollable rage.  He’s a frightful enemy, but he’s also an untrustworthy friend. 

     Ep 11) David Chase co-writes. Tony B’s New York connection, his friend from prison, is killed and promptly revenged. Johnny Sack wants Tony B’s head. Tony, in a luxury hotel, has a complicated dream in which characters—including his horse—from previous seasons appear. One tidbit, Tony’s alternative “daydream” life would have that of a high school football coach.  Ep 12) Chris, undermined by Tony’s “teasing” and by jealousy over Tony B’s status, hits the bottle. As the price of reconciliation, Carm accepts Tony’s $600,000 for her real estate speculation and his promise to be discrete.  Tony B is in hiding.  Andriana is under even more pressure to cooperate with the feds. 

     Ep 13) David Chase co-writes and ends with the bear-in-the-suburbs motif he opened with. (Tony is the bear, of course.) Just as Tony resolves his differences with Johnny Sack over Tony B, the feds raid Johnny’s house, which leaves the permanence of the peace as a cliffhanger. Tony and Carm are surprisingly pleased that AJ has shown enterprise in throwing beer parties.  He may become an “event planner.”  AJ, by the way, has switched counselors, so Wegler may be off the hook unless Carmela, in the midst of a shouting match with Tony, fingers him the way she did Furio.   

     The Sopranos is a first rate production, but its quality is the measure of James Gandolfini’s performance. He’s the best! He is the show.  The other actors are fine, especially Edie Falco, Dominic Chianese, Michael Imperioli, and Drea De Matteo, but Gandolfini overpowers them in every scene. This season also has excellent continuing characters portrayed by Steve Buscemi and Robert Loggia. The plots are well structured as Tony works though his breakup with Carmela and with his complicated relationship with his cousin, Tony B. The subplots about Andriana’s role as a snitch and the turf war between Little Carmine and Johnny Sack suffer by being a step removed from Tony’s direct participation. When Tony steps in, each takes on more dramatic heft.  Excellent TV drama. 

*     *    * 

Edie Falco as Carmela & James Gandolfini as Tony 

Daughter Meadow                       Son AJ                          Dr. Mefli 

      Uncle Junior                     Paulie                 Silvio                Christopher 

     HBO’s The Sopranos Season Six wraps up the series in two parts, totaling twenty-one one-hour episodes on eight DVDs. Here’s the setup, as updated, from my July 2005 review. 

     Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) is a mobster married to Carmela (Edie Falco).  They live in the New Jersey suburbs with their two kids: Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), a legal intern, and Anthony Jr. aka AJ (Robert Iler), a college freshman. For cover, Tony’s uncle—Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese)—is set up as the putative head of the crime family. Tony’s loudmouth, trouble-prone sister Janice (Aida Turturro) has recently married the doofus Bobby (Steven R. Schirripa), one of Tony’s men. Tony’s coterie of thugs includes right-hand man Silvio (Steve Van Zandt), hot-headed old-school Paulie (Tony Sirico), and Christopher (Michael Imperioli), nephew and protégé, engaged to Andriana (Drea De Matteo). Tony is close to his boyhood friend, the restaurant owner Artie (John Ventimiglia), who is married to Charmaine (Katherine Narducci). 

     In Season Five, Tony’s cousin, Tony B (Steve Buscemi), returns after fifteen years in prison. The head of the NY Family has a stroke and dies. Johnny Sack asserts control. Uncle Junior slips into senility. Behind Tony’s back, Tony B, itching for action and dough, is hired to hit Billy, the brother of Johnny’s right-hand man, Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent). 

     Tony covers for Tony’s B’s hit because, as he finally confesses to Dr. Melfi, he feels guilty that a panic attack fifteen years earlier had caused him to drop out of the hijacking that sent Tony B to prison.  Had he not been “weak” (as he views it), he, too, would have been arrested and not had the years with his family or had the opportunity to become the boss. Meadow’s boyfriend Finn proposes to her after he’s threatened by one of Tony’s captains, Vito (Joseph R. Gannascoli), a closeted gay thug. (Finn has the misfortune of spotting Vito engaged in oral sex with another man.) Carmela and Tony reconcile after she discovers how difficult it is to retain an attorney to battle him in divorce court.  Tony, forty-five and 280 pounds, is not merely a thief and a brute; he is a petty, spiteful, malicious, jealous, vengeful, and violent bully.  He’s unpredictably dangerous, with a short fuse and an uncontrollable rage.  He’s a frightful enemy, but he’s also an untrustworthy friend. (That he remains likeable is Gandolfini’s genius.) 

     Chris squeals on Andriana’s betrayal and Tony has her whacked. After Tony kills Tony B. to appease Johnny Sack, they reconcile. Just then, the feds raid Johnny’s house and Tony dashes through the snow towards safety. 

     SPOILER. In my summaries I’ve tried to provide details about relationships and to avoid disclosures of surprises when possible. But of course reading them in one sitting does reveal the entire season’s plotline. I’ve added another warning before the last four episodes when the fates of characters are decided. The Sopranos Season Six trailer. 

    Season Six, ep 1) More than a year has passed. Sister Janice and dimwit hubby Bobby have a toddler and are caretakers for demented Uncle Junior. While Johnny Sack is in prison awaiting his RICO trial, Phil is the boss.  Gene, once a school-mate of Tony’s and now one of his lieutenants, inherits two million bucks and wants to move to Florida with his wife Deanne and their kids. Tony and Carm dine at Nori’s, their favorite sushi restaurant, where she reminds him to lean on a building inspector who has shut down construction on her spec house.  She’s invested $600,000 and hired her retired father as contractor. The old man has used substandard framing lumber.  Carm also mentions a dream she’s had about Adriana, who is rumored to have run off with a man. Both Tony and Carm say they fantasize about the restaurant, their one place to be alone together.  Son AJ is in college. Daughter Meadow is a legal intern, living at home, while fiancé Finn attends dental school in California.  Tony returns to his therapist, Dr. Melfi.  Even after performing a hit for Tony, Gene, who has serious complications in his life, is not allowed to retire. Crazy Uncle Junior plugs Tony in the gut. Tony crawls to a phone. 

     Ep 2)  The creator David Chase writes two subplots—Tony’s dream about a business trip in California alternates with the real world where he’s comatose as his family stands watch. Finn drops out of dental school and moves in with the Sopranos.  AJ flunks out of college.  Silvio is temporary boss.   

     Ep 3) Tony’s comatose dream continues while his hoods bicker and jockey for promotion if he dies.  Christopher dragoons his fellow former addict, J.T. Dolan (Tim Daley), a screenwriter with gambling debts, into drafting a script for Chris to produce, backed by the mob. Gay Vito scares Finn again. Tony wakes up but is still spaced out.  

     Ep 4) When the owner of Barone Sanitation dies, his son Jason wants to sell the business, which puts Tony in a pinch because he’s on the payroll as a consultant with the perquisites of legitimate taxable income and health insurance. Jason winds up in the middle of a dispute between Tony and Johnny Sack. Paulie is hurt and angry when he learns his dying Aunt Dot, a nun, is actually his birth mother. During his last week in the hospital, Tony chats with a scientist (Hal Holbrook) with cancer, a rapper who’s been shot, and a fundamentalist evangelical minister.  Recuperating at home, he has a broader perspective on the world—wanting to treat each day as a gift. (“But why does it have to be a pair of socks?” he later jokes.) 

     Note: On character development and plot structure through a five-second scene without words. In the previous episode Carm glimpses the unspoken thoughts—scheming ill-will—of Paulie and Vito as the hospital elevator door closes on them.  She unexpectedly turns and reads in their expressions that their supposed concern for her and Tony is a sham.  Back home with Tony, she warns him to look out for both of them, especially Vito.  Tony shrugs it off. That five-second scene and its brief follow-up offer insights into all four characters: Paulie and Vito’s duplicity, Carmela’s sharp-eyed savvy, and Tony’s unwillingness to concede untrustworthiness in his henchmen. Of course these very brief scenes merely confirm what we already know: that Vito is sneaky and ambitious, that Paulie is vicious and petty, that Carm can be sharp, and that Tony can be pig-headed. 

     Ep 5) Steve Buscemi directs. Six weeks pass.  Johnny Sack is released from prison to attend his daughter’s wedding, during which he implores Tony to kill a rival, Rusty (Frankie Valli).  Tony hires a muscle-bound, hotheaded bodyguard but must knock him around to regain the respect of his crew.  Vito (photo) is seen dancing in a gay bar by a couple of mob guys, knows he’s ruined, and contemplates suicide.  

     Ep 6) David Chase co-writes. Tony plans to import hitmen to kill Rusty. Rumors about Vito are confirmed while he hides out in New Hampshire. Tony wants to cut Vito slack as a good earner but the others want him dead as a matter of honor. One hardliner for death is acting NY boss Phil (who’s never forgiven Tony as the sponsor of Tony B., who killed Phil’s brother) because Vito’s wife is Phil’s cousin. 

     Note: On foreseeable consequences. Perhaps I’m overly sensitive to a minor plot point because I’ve been in situations where a woman has unthinkingly provoked trouble. (Men, including myself, I’m sure, are equally guilty.) When Carm is gossiping about Vito, Meadow breaks her pledge to Finn and reveals what he’d witnessed a year earlier. Carm, of course, tells Tony, who has Finn describe the incident to the crew. Finn, however much he may fear and detest Vito, believes he’s signed the man’s death warrant.  Thus, Finn rightfully confronts Meadow when she’s complaining about the violations of her clients’ civil rights but not facing the reality that her father is prepared to kill a man because he’s gay. Meadow puts Finn in this mess, with his ethics hopelessly compromised, because she fails to consider the foreseeable consequences of her gossip, which, I emphasize, broke her pledge to Finn. Finn is a jerk who should bail out of his engagement, but on this point he has my sympathy. 

     Ep 7) Rusty is whacked.  Tony’s friend Artie beats up Benny Fazio (Max Casella—best friend in Doogie Howser, MD!) for running a credit card scam in his restaurant, which is on the verge of failure. Chris and Little Carmine (Ray Abruzzo) fly to Los Angeles in hopes of signing Ben Kingsley for their movie. Kingsley passes. Lauren Becall also has a cameo role. The script, by the way, is for a horror film called Cleaver with a protagonist loosely based on Tony. 

     Ep 8) Realtor Julianna Skiff (Julianna Margulies from ER) makes Tony an offer he can’t refuse on a building with a meat and poultry emporium from his youth. The old neighborhood is being transformed by corporate franchises, which means fewer private owners to squeeze for “protection.”  Vito falls in love.  AJ has his first panic attack, the problem that drove Tony to therapy in the opening season.  (Admirable plotting by the writers to use this hereditary proclivity for panic attacks as a narrative device.) 

     Ep 9) Christopher marries his pregnant girlfriend, Kelli.  He and Tony heist crates of wine during a trip in Pennsylvania. Carmela hears that Chris is suspected by the FBI of killing Adriana, but Tony’s version that she ran off sounds more plausible. Paulie, depressed after a run of bad luck, reconciles with his adoptive mother.  

     Ep 10) Annoying Janice pitches a promotion to captain for her hubby. Shortly thereafter his eye is damaged during a mugging. Dr. Melfi probes Tony’s childhood attitudes towards Janice (reflected in his denigration of Bobby as well). The crew obviously feels Tony is not adequately concerned about Bobby’s welfare. Tony, with mixed motives, arranges for Janice and Bobby to buy Johnny Sack’s house on the cheap. The purchase is part of a larger deal between Tony and Johnny, who pleads guilty to racketeering and is sentenced to fifteen years but is allowed to retain some of his ill-gotten wealth for his wife and daughters. In short, Johnny needs to sell his hidden assets, which provides Tony with leverage for a cut of the action. Tony selfishly allows Carm’s spec house to sit idle, hoping she will sell and pay more attention to his needs.  Gay Vito is homesick. 

     Ep 11) David Chase co-writes. Tony finds a construction job for AJ’s lazy ass. Meadow moves with Finn to California when he returns to dental school. Carm absorbs a sense of history during a vacation in Paris. Vito’s unpleasant fate heightens the bad blood between Tony and Phil, who, with Johnny Sack in prison, is effectively the head of the New York Family.  

     Ep 12) Chase co-writes the finale for Part I. Chris and the realtor Julianna, for whom Tony has eyes, begin an affair after meeting at Narcotics Anonymous. Both resume bad habits. Tony leans on the building inspector for Carm’s spec house so she will attend to it instead of pursuing inquiries about the missing Adrianna.  AJ dates the secretary at his construction job, a thirty-year-old single mother named Blanca Selgado (Dania Ramirez). Tony visits Phil after a heart attack to bury the hatchet.  Part I ends with a Christmas Party at the Sopranos.    

     Note: Part I Critique of Actors: Robert Iler (AJ—punctuated as initials A.J. by other writers, but not by me) is a lousy actor.  His personal life has been a mess with serious run-ins with the law, so I have mixed feelings about him as an individual—a teen when thrust into the spotlight of minor celebrity with its temptations of dough, fast friends, drugs, and all that.  Which is of human interest (and I wish him well), but does not excuse his lousy acting in a pivotal role of a character with a dramatic arc.  Joseph R. Gannascoli (Vito), an okay actor, is also in a pivotal role.  Surprisingly, Chase focuses on Vito over many episodes as a closeted gay menace to Finn and then as an outed gay on the lam, who temporarily finds romance once he’s freed from the mob’s homophobia. A strong subplot. Vito is written as a three-dimensional character, but Gannascoli is unable to capture fully Vito’s inner demons with conflicted worldviews that are turned upside down. He is the “insider” mobster and the “outsider” sexual pariah in the Jersey world but just the opposite in the cozy, liberal New Hampshire village.  Aida Turturro (Janice) is wonderfully unlikable as a pretentious, nagging, conniving bitch and deserves better than Steve Schirripa (Bobby), another weak actor, as a foil in her domestic scenes. Edie Falco is excellent. James Gandolfini continues to dominate the screen. I like the premise of Tony as philosophically mellow while he maintains his rep as the violently ruthless boss.  He’s not torn between these opposites; he’s drawn to each and indulges each.  A monster who stops to smell the roses. 

     (While I’m on the subject of acting, my impression was of a consensus that Gandolfini was robbed by James Spader for the Emmy.  I can’t recall the specifics of Spader’s performances in Boston Legal last season, but he’s terrific so far this year, and he’s been consistently convincing in lengthy, complicated, emotional courtroom speeches—he has an uncanny ability to literally envision long speeches, “reading” them from thin air—and in his interplay with other actors.  I love Gandolfini, but at best it was a tight race with Spader and House’s Hugh Laurie.)  

   The Sopranos Season Six Part II trailer. SPOILER. 

     Ep 13) David Chase co-writes.  Several months have passed since Christmas. AJ has not returned to college as promised but works as a waiter/night manager and spends most of his nights with Blanca and her son Hector. Meadow is once again living at home, attending medical school.  (We are to learn Finn dumped her.  Good for him.) Phil returns from recuperating in Florida after heart surgery, but it’s not clear if he’s still in charge. The feds have been building a RICO case against Tony for five years. By a fluke, a weapons charge drops into their lap because the gun Tony tossed in the snow when he was running away from Johnny Sack’s house after the raid in 2004 has resurfaced in the hands of a teenager who’d seen Tony drop it.  

     But the meat of the story is a family get-together on Tony’s 47^th birthday when he and Carm drive to the lake house in the Adirondacks owned by sister Janice and Bobby.  A drunken scuffle spoils the festivities.  The next day Carm tells Janice that Tony is not a vindictive man. Jeez! His entire life is built around settling scores! In fact, during that afternoon he manipulates a payback for Bobby. Tony’s hang-up about Janice (which extends to Bobby) is predicated on her striking out on her own when she was eighteen, leaving him behind in the clutches of his violent father and evil mother. He can’t forgive the abandonment, now exacerbated by her return with a sense of entitlement, as if she deserves some of his spoils.    

     Ep 14) Control of the New York Family is unsettled because Johnny Sack is dying of lung cancer and Phil is weakened from heart surgery. Meanwhile, the premier of Chris’s Cleaver stirs deep emotions in Carm and Tony because the protagonist—obviously based on Tony—has an affair with his protégé’s fiancée. Carm assumes Chris believes the rumor that Tony had an affair with Adrianna. She also voices the suspicion to Chris that he had a hand in Ade’s death.  Chris has taken credit for the screenplay, and, in fact, has created the romantic triangle, but has J.T. tell Tony that he, J.T., borrowed from the 1950’s classic Born Yesterday with Broderick Crawford as the brutal bully in creating the lead character and the illicit affair.  Tony is proud of Christopher until he hears Carm’s interpretation and J.T.’s ploy to shield Chris. Tony is now convinced that Chris (at least subconsciously) despises him as a bully and wants him dead. Chris, who’s broken with Julianna and has a new AA sponsor, Eddie Dunne (Christopher McDonald), asks Tony to be the godfather for his baby boy.  

     Ep 15) The feds find the corpse of a bookie, the victim of Tony’s first murder twenty-five years earlier. He and Paulie prudently leave the jurisdiction on a road trip to visit “Beansie” (Paul Herman) in Florida. Paulie had worked for Tony’s father and been Tony’s mentor, a father-figure when his own father was distant. Nevertheless, Tony realizes that Paulie’s constant chatter includes incriminating details if overheard by the authorities. He’s also sure that Paulie is the one who, a few years earlier, intentionally repeated a cruel joke told by a rival to infuriate Johnny Sack (who then killed the jokester). Paulie rightfully feels threatened. Tony borrows from Hesh to cover gambling losses.  Meanwhile, Uncle Junior’s protégé in the mental facility is Carter Chong (Ken Leung), a young man with father issues of his own.  Phil solidifies his position in the Family.  

     Ep 16) When Vito’s son “acts out” as a Goth delinquent, Tony, strapped for cash, pays $18,000 for a tough-love boot camp rather than give the family $100,000 to relocate. He’s on a losing gambling streak that strains his friendship with Hesh. AJ is the night manager of a pizzeria and in love with Blanca, but he’s due for a rough patch after she dumps him. Tony is beset by troubles.  He is psychology estranged from four of his closest, long-term associates: Bobby, Christopher, Paulie, and Hesh. Phil hates him.  Dr. Melfi has threatened to end the sessions if he continues to treat therapy as no more than a respite from his work. Carm is frightened she will wind up destitute if he’s shot again or imprisoned, thus, not easily persuaded to cough up the profits on the sale of her spec house to cover his gambling debts. 

     Ep 17) Chris and Paulie have a serious dispute over the hot power tools delivered from Florida by Cuban mobsters. Property damage, personal injury, and, when Chris goes on a bender, a fatal shooting. Tony provides the feds with the names of a couple of Arab customers who he thinks might be tied to terrorists. AJ, twenty, quits his job and is medicated for depression after the break-up with Blanca. He hangs out with the two Jasons (ruthless sons of other mafia guys) who are running a sports book in their college. 

   SPOILERS. I can’t avoid it. In these final four episodes, there are major turning points. A number of folks are killed or wounded. A summary is disjointed without revelations. Sorry. Stop reading if you haven’t seen the series and have any plan to do so. 

     Ep 18) Chase co-writes. After a meeting in New York with Phil over a dispute about illegally dumping asbestos, Chris is driving on the highway the high way on cocaine with Tony riding shotgun.  Crash! In the wrecked car, Chris is in critical condition. Tony opportunistically pinches Chris’s nostrils so it appears he’s suffocated on his own blood. Along with other grievances, Tony fears the junkie Chris hates him and will some day flip for the feds. Paulie suffers a loss.  After the funeral, Tony flies to Las Vegas for a rest.  He visits Sonya (Sarah Shahi from The L Word and Life), one of Chris’s old girlfriends, pops a peyote button, and has a hallucination in the desert. AJ is depressed that his friends are brutal racists and that life is meaningless.   

     Ep 19) AJ attempts suicide.  Meadow switches from medicine to law and begins dating Patrick (Daniel Sauli), the lawyer son of Patsy Parisi (Dan Grimaldi), one of Tony’s captains. When she’s insulted by one of Phil’s lieutenants, Tony’s reprisal is brutal. Phil won’t consider Tony’s apology. 

     Ep 20) David Chase co-writes.  AJ is released from the mental ward. Dr. Melfi quits treating Tony after reading a study about sociopathic criminals who con their therapists with phony emotions and justify their lawlessness with trivial “insights.” Tony can’t believe she’s summarily dumping him after seven years. (And neither can I, even if he fits the profile. It’s a study with general conclusions, he’s an individual patient. Disappointingly weak resolution of the Melfi subplot.) Tony’s first strike against Phil fails. Phil’s counterstrike does not.  Bobby is shot, Sal is hospitalized, Carm and the kids relocate, and Tony hides out with his crew.   

     David Chase writes and directs the finale,  with its controversial ending.  AJ has a new girlfriend, a seventeen-year-old high school student and model. (Yeah, sure.) After flirting with the idea of enlisting in the army, he’s hired on a new movie project backed by the mob. Tony reaches an accord with the New York Family captains who acquiesce in the prospect of Phil’s demise.  Phil is whacked.  Tony’s newest captain, Carlo, flips to protect his son on a drug charge. Tony’s lawyer advises him that he’s virtually certain to be indicted by the feds on numerous counts based on Carlo’s testimony. Tony has a final scene with Sil in a vegetative state and with Uncle Junior in a demented one.  The Sopranos plan to meet for dinner in a small local restaurant. Tony arrives first and eyeballs the patrons, checking out new arrivals who ring the bell above the door as they enter.  Carm arrives. Then AJ. As they chat, Meadow tries repeatedly to parallel park her car.  Appetizers arrive. Tony scans the jukebox song list at the table.  Meadow rushes towards the restaurant. Tony looks up as the bell rings. Abrupt fade to black. No music as the credits roll. 

     Because Tony is eyeballing the customers and at least one seems suspicious, there is an undertone of menace. Moreover, Tony earlier has a flashback where Bobby tells him that you probably don’t know when you are about to be murdered. Thus, the sudden blackout could be Tony’s death. But actually there’s no reason to presume anyone still threatens Tony.  No further “authorized” payback from Phil’s crew. In other words, omit the artificial tension and the ending seems to be simply a reaffirmation of the original premise that Tony is a regular guy in the suburbs with problems at home and at work who, on this night, is catching a break in his life, a quiet meal out with his family, a respite from the difficulties he faces in his job—indictment, trial, and probably prison. “Try to remember the times that were good,” AJ reminds Tony of his own advice.  The imagined ending for this scenario is Tony’s face lighting up with joy and pride as Meadow bounces through the door, the bell sounding behind her, as she completes his family circle.   

     THE FATMAN’S CUTS TO THE CHASE.  Chase offers alternatives of Tony’s death (the sudden blackout with, in our imagination, Meadow’s horrified expression as she sees her slain father) or of (in our imagination) Tony’s broad self-satisfied smile at the sight of his pride and joy’s entrance into the restaurant to complete the family circle on a pleasant night out for dinner. I’ve created a better alternative based on three earlier scenes. 

     At an uncomfortable sit-down of the future in-laws (Patsy and his wife), Meadow’s boyfriend Patrick, a lawyer with a prestigious firm, tells them that he’s been assigned to the defense team of a well-known figure in New York. Patrick excitedly describes the case: “Bid riggin’. It’s got bag men and whores. . .it’s fascinating.” Tony and Carm exchange glances as if to say, Doesn’t this kid know that’s our life?  Tony and Carm, disappointed that Meadow has decided to drop out of med school, perk up when Patrick says his boss has been impressed in a meeting with Meadow and might offer her a job when she graduates—starting salary of $170,000.  This scene reinforces the (unlikely) naiveté of the adult children about their fathers’ mafia connections.  And Tony’s pride in Meadow is reasserted when he learns how much dough she might command after graduation.  

     Tony invites Meadow out for drinks to discuss her future. She says her interest in civil rights is rooted in the government’s persecution of him as an Italian-American. She’s seen him dragged away in handcuffs several times.  She wants to stand up for the vulnerable. Tony’s reaction, for me, highlights his essential need to “compartmentalize” his life.  At one level he knows this is nonsense because he’s always been guilty as sin. But at another level he believes it because he (like all of us) kids himself, justifies his criminal behavior as just doing business, providing for his family, acting in accordance with his status of mob boss, the job thrust upon him when his father died and his uncle became erratic. Tony has “compartmentalized” his thoughts to avoid reality and he’s consistently misled Meadow about his true nature because her good opinion of him is crucial to his self-esteem. 

     For cinematography style only, the third scene is from the previous episode with Dr. Melfi in bed reading the study about sociopathic criminals in therapy.  A sequence of key words flash on the screen: “false emotions,” “stories about children and pets,” etc. 

     Okay, here’s how I would use those three scenes as a predicate for the ending. (The new scenes I envision are not complicated or lengthy. To fit in the one-hour format, I’d cut AJ’s burning car and the palaver about the cat.) 

     Meadow’s boyfriend Patrick, in the course of his defense work, gains access, due to a slip up by the prosecutor, to sensitive government documents about organized crime in New York that refer to Tony’s New Jersey activities. Foreshadowing: Tony gets wind from his lawyer or FBI pal that Patrick might see damning info with the slight chance that Meadow might also see it. (We know the feds have been surveilling Tony for five years so there could be spillover into related matters.) Not hard evidence for a legal conviction but raw intel based on wiretaps, gossip, speculation, photos of Tony with other women, and whatnot. Through Patrick, Meadow becomes privy to these files. 

     Meadow and Patrick are seated in a law office. He can’t let the files out of his sight. As she reads, we see flashes of key words (as in the Melfi scene): “criminal enterprise,” “murder,” “extortion,” “armed robbery,” “fraud,” “suspected in the disappearance” “’Big Pussy’,” “Jackie,” “Adrianna,” etc. Flash photos of the “disappeared” and of Tony with women. Throw in Vito’s murder, which presumably caused Finn to break up with Meadow as noted in my episode 6 comments. Meadow might even briefly flash back to the argument when Finn upbraids her for weeping over civil rights violations while turning a blind eye to her father’s probable execution of Vito because he’s gay. (Phil killed Vito, but Tony planned to kill him at a meeting he’d just scheduled, so Tony’s hands are not clean.) She’s devastated. She finally accepts that her father is this monster, a confirmation of what she must have suspected at some level of consciousness for many years. He’s a fraud with blood on his hands, not a victim of an overzealous government, but a violent predator on the weak, frightened, and vulnerable, the very kinds of people she wants to protect.    

     The final scene. Meadow struggles to park her car because she’s overwrought, inflamed by the years of deceit. In the final shot, she walks into the restaurant, the bell rings, and Tony looks up.  He sees in her eyes the hatred and contempt she feels for him as a brutal killer, womanizer, and mob boss. Tony’s greatest fear is realized. Meadow has seen the incriminating files.  His precious, intelligent, beautiful daughter knows the truth about him.  And her knowing forces him to face the same ugly truth about himself that he can no longer conceal through “compartmentalization,” by his phony excuses and rationalizations: he is a monster.  But that epiphany flickers out in an instant. He reverts to form. Now he’s angry with Meadow and her accusatory expression. We read it in his eyes: How dare she disrespect Tony Soprano! I’m her father. I’m a good guy in a tough occupation. Who needs her?!  His eyes turn hard, cold, lifeless.  Fade to black. 

     After writing the above scenario, I read an October interview in which Chase said Tony was not whacked at the end.  Chase was miffed (or “miffled,” as Tony would say) at the fans crying for justice—Tony’s death—after applauding his corrupt violent behavior for eight years. But if Chase didn’t expect fans to speculate about the ambiguous conclusion, he should have ended with the final shot of Tony’s smiling at Meadow. Chase seems to excuse himself for creating the undertone of tension by expecting the audience to dismiss it.  Lousy artistic choice.   

     Nonetheless, a great series with unforgettable performances by most of the lead actors, especially Gandolfini and Falco. A morality play with well-developed characters in a complex fictional universe. Tony has love/hate relationships with everyone he knows, including himself. I prefer David E. Kelley’s approach of structuring drama around conflicting opinions about serious contemporary problems.  Chase, unlike Kelley, is fascinated by our compartmentalized lives, fooling ourselves, plagued and ultimately driven by our subconscious demons and our childhood experiences. The Sopranos is a psychological study.  Tony is an exaggeration of the dark impulses that lurk in all of us, the monster of unbridled lust, greed, pride, duplicity, betrayal, and revenge. Finally, he embodies those two human needs often at odds with one another, the need to dominate and the need to be loved.