Sopranos (4/29): likely spoilers

Ok, that's your thesis. Now please lay down your apparent argument that this was a good episode because I'd like something to chew on ... I thought this was total crap but I wouldn't mind being wrong in this case. What do you know?

 

Tell me, matador, why should that be in blue font? Tell me one good thing about that episode other than the Tony-Carm scenes about the house and "her money." only because Edie Falco is incredible.

 

First of all, we all knew that Chase wasn't gonna wrap this up in one big happy ball of closure.

Second of all, the conflict between Tony and Carmella was a very nice throwback to the last episode of the third season. Like anyone here coulda predicted Tony teling Carmella that she's a shitty businesswoman who built a shitty house that was going to kill an unborn baby.

Third of all, if we're gonna piss away half a season watching Moltisanti shooting up I have no problem with showing Tony betting on which crows gonna fly off the electrical wire first, and the subsequent stress that comes from owing an assload of money and trying to win it back to pay off the debt.

Was it one of the best episodes? No. But it was not nearly as bad as people make it out to be. Not after watching fat Vito spooning with volunteer firemen. This episode showed that things aren't what they seemed with Hesch and Tony. It also showed that Tony gives more of a fuck about Vito's kid than the kid's own family does.

 

Ugg. So it's a good episode because it's not as bad as past episodes? That's your argument? It is as bad as people are making it out to be because you take all these crappy episodes and put them together and you get one steaming ball of shit.

 

Agreed, I always thought Hesh was an interesting character, and he was very close with Johnny Soprano. He was obviously a more key player in the earlier episodes, but I liked his role tonight - he's worried that Tony's out to kill him, which just shows how no one can really trust a mob boss, even a guy like Hesh who was once Tony's short-lived psychatrist when Melfi wouldn't see him (and if I remember right, Hesh was complaining to someone how Tony was bitching about all his life problems to him).... But yeah, I'm real confused about the death of his woman at the end.

 

I wanna know who is booking Tony's action. A while back, I think right after Christopher was made, they showed him following games because he was running the family's bookmaking operation. I was under the impression that that actor guy owed Christopher money from sports betting losses. I thought Tony and his boys WERE the book.

 

Know the difference between me and some of you: I bailed on this series emotionally after last season's steaming ball of shit. And so did a bunch of others according to Neilsen, who said this year's season opener was down something like 2 million viewers from last year. After half a season of Vito swooning "I love you Johnny cakes" and Moltisanti jamming needles in his arm I said "Fuck 'em. I'll watch but I no longer care."

Some of you expect perfect cinema every sunday night. Know what I expect now: to be enter-fucking-tained for 60 minutes. And this episode did that for me. Had the conflict with Carmella and Tony, had the rising conflict between Tony and Hesch and you had whatever the fuck is going on between Anthony Jr. and J-Ho.

Maybe the fact that last season sucked so bad that my expectations are diminished, I dunno. What I do know is that Chase always takes one ball out of the bag, pulls his driver, and hits the ball out of bounds on purpose just to see where the fuck it lands. Pine Barrens was one of those episodes, as were about three Vito episodes last year and so was this. At least with this episode I didn't feel like I was pissing away an hour watching bullshit.

When Tony and Carmella were fighting, as she ran upstairs he yelled "You can live in a fuckin' dumpster when I'm gone." The fuck's that mean? Where's he going? He going into witness proection? Can he feel the heat coming from the Feds? Death? Or is Chase getting us to watch for the left hook only to kick us in the junk.

 

I'm starting to believe that this will end in a 'happy ball of closure.' If you think about it, so far we've witnessed the 'closure' of Uncle June, Johnny Sack, Hesh, Vito's family, Asian kid, Hesh's girlfriend and maybe one or two others. I'm starting to believe that Mr. Chase is slowly, and I mean slowly, building up to the closure of the main characters in a whirlwhind of red herrings and violence in the last episode or two.

Part of my frustration is that going into this final season I was hoping that we would see a better developed story line involving the main characters with a bit of closure. Instead we've been suffering through all these storylines we don't care about.

 

Well I gave up on it emotionally before the end of last season [one-upping your one-up] ... honestly I just took it for what it was ... but with this season there's more urgency, more significance. Less room for bullshit.

 

Chase is so unorthodox in the writing of this series that, if the series ended with a special two hour "Best of the Sopranos" with Tony closing by sitting on a stool and saying "I wish you all a very heartfelt goodnight" while Doc and the band play "I'll be seeing you" I wouldn't be shocked in the least.

 

Vito Jr. summed things up nicely. : :-X

 

The dialogue was absolute crap.

The sports-betting back-and-forth was absolute crap.

The Hesh angle was OK, but then the death of his 30s-something nurse? Absolute crap.

Wasn't much redemptive here, except, as another poster mentioned, the scenes with Falco.

The Vito firefighter episode was better, and I hated that shit.