Sopranos 5/20

I agree on The Wire.

The Office is as good as can be. But, and I will argue this like any of my Pit Bull Specials.... the British one carved the ground and was better.

 

Predictions for the upcoming 2 episodes:

I still feel too much Godfather 3, in that Meadow gets treated worse than last nights episode. Maybe not assasinated like Mary Corleone, but I wouldn't count that out.

Phil is too old school, to go after civilian-family, though his crew might. But Phil will hit Tony, hard. The hardest hits to Tony's professional family are Sil and Bobby. And you know Miami Steve would love to play a death scene.

 

An uncool reference.
And I thought AJ was going to die. I think that the whole Arabs/terrorists plot line will go somewhere. Maybe Tony in witness protection after his family is killed. Or something like that, but who really knows. My understanding is that several different finales were shot, and the actors aren't even sure how it will end.

 

I've always considered AJ and the actor who portrays him to be a total clown on the show, so I was pretty much laughing right at the point the attempt went bad (or is it good?) Then, when Tony tossed away the Lincoln Log sandwich into the grass and started running, I pretty much lost it. Plays up to that "historically, he's been an idiot" line.

I thought last night's episode kind of sucked, even though it was pretty packed with action. Right now we're seeing the folly of spending an entire beginning of the season of fucking around with storylines like Vito. I still don't feel like this AJ storyline has been fully explored and I feel like they're rushing, rushing to get a lot of stuff done before it's over. People say that David Chase wouldn't fall into that trap, but it looks like it's happening.

 

Tony should have popped Coco and Butchie at the restaurant.

What an intense, outstanding, marvelous episode.

 

Who's who on the Sopranos and a little pulldown menu that will show you who killed who, who's in each crew, and more...
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/mm/index.ssf?SOPRANOS

 

And the weekly recap, insightful as always...

http://blog.nj.com/alltv/2007/05/sopranos_rewind_the_second_com.html

 

What about Sil talking to Tone in the previews? It sounded very serious, especially when he said something about double-dealing with the Feds. I know these previews are 90% misleading, but what Little Stevie said must have some kind of impact, shouldn't it?

 

I really liked the use of the Yeats poem.

The blood dimmed tide is loosed,
and everywhere, the ceremony of innocence
is drowned.

The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Surely, some revelation is at hand.



Also, good pull by one of the commentors in Sepinwall's blog about the song, "Into the Ocean" by Blue October, which is playing in the background, when Meadow comes into A.J.'s room and he's reading Al Jazera.

The lyrics A.J. is listening to:

I'm just a normal boy
That sank when I fell overboard
My ship would leave the country
But I'd rather swim ashore

Without a life vest I'd be stuck again
Wish I was much more masculine
Maybe then I could learn to swim
Like 'fourteen miles away'

Now floating up and down
I spin, colliding into sound
Like whales beneath me diving down
I'm sinking to the bottom of my
Everything that freaks me out
The lighthouse beam has just run out
I'm cold as cold as cold can be

I want to swim away but don't know how
Sometimes it feels just like I'm falling in the ocean
Let the waves up take me down
Let the hurricane set in motion... yeah
Let the rain of what I feel right now...come down
Let the rain come down.


The pool scene where Tony is hold A.J., for so many reasons, was one of the most emotionally powerful scenes in all six seasons for me.

 

Just a few observations:

I think Iler (an actor I hadn't thought much of until now) really nailed it. The entire pool scene had me crying like an idiot and when Gandolfini pulled him out of the pool and started calling him "baby", I really lost it.

The water bottle actually made me laugh. Not only was it the large supermarket variety, it was in a mesh shoulder carrier. Didn't you immediately picture Elliot in a three piece suit with his pant legs clipped riding his bike to the office every day (wearing a helmet, of course). It just added to my impression of him as the kind of liberal that conservatives point to when they want to mock the left.

I thought it was interesting that Meadow was switching back to law and was convinced to do so by the son of another 'family' member. She has also become much more protective of her family and her father's associates. Her outrage at Johnny Sack's treatment at his daughter's wedding was a real turnaround from her attitude in the first few seasons.

And maybe it was just me, but she had an interesting expression on her face when she told AJ "We're Italian. You're their son. You'll always be more important than me". She looked a little ... bitter?

 

I don't know. Giving your life to save another has always seemed a pretty honorable thing to me, and Mees and Delaney will always be remembered by me in that way.

 

I'm with 93Devil here. I think that was a tad oversensitive to be upset over him using that reference.

And HC, I agree that the pool scene was very powerful. My wife let out a very sympathetic, "awwww" and suddenly the room did seem a tad dusty. I think it is just an understanding of just how much a parent hurts when they see their child in pain and how terrifying it is to know that they almost died.

Of course, A.J. went right back to being a whiny brat and blaming his problems on everybody else.