There's a lot of talk about The Sopranos as having two phases. The first half of the show is said to be about the last of the salad days of the New Jersey crime family, where things are going well with hints that this kind of prosperity can't last. The second is said to be about decline, about the walls closing in and a certain dourness hanging over everything. Reviewers like Todd Vanderwerff talk about an "autumnal" vibe to these later seasons.
But thus far, despite suicides and shootings by Junior, there's an odd bit of optimism, sunniness even, to much of this season. Sure, things are tight in some corners, but things at least seem to be going well enough for The Sopranos themselves. (The show definitely seems to be playing in the theme that Tony and his family are living high on the hog while other people, like Jason Barone and the garbage truck driver, suffer.)
And for once, it seems like Tony might be making a change. He seems to take fellow patient Mr. Schwinn's view of the world to heart. When he sits in his backyard and sees and feels the wind blow through the trees, you get the idea that he's thinking about the idea of everything being connected. When he keeps repeating and rephrasing the mantra on that little index card in his hospital room, you get the impression that for once, he's realizing how good he has it and how minor his problems really are, to where he's content to let his paramedic keep the $2,000. It's baby steps -- like Tony saying "there's enough garbage for everyone" and just generally not being as hard-nosed and prickly and selfish as he generally is. It's him expressing his love for Carmela. Whether it's the coma dream or the near-death experience, Tony starts to feel like he might finally become a better person. It's The Sopranos, so we can't expect it to last, but there's a hopefulness here, a sense of keeping problems in perspective, even if the show undercuts it with Paulie's attack on Jason.
Oh Paulie. One of the things I like about the show is that while it's content to get its laughs out of unsophisticated or otherwise unenlightened characters like Paulie, it's also has a lot of sympathy for them. Paulie is incredibly cruel to his Aunt, revealed to be his mother, and even worse to the woman who raised him as her own. And yet he's pitiable in how hard he takes everything. He has a pre-set notion of what it means to be a mother and a son that is very formalistic, and when reality turns that on his head, he can't deal with it. He's hurt in a way that he doesn't know how to process, with strange feelings of abandonment, the come out when he hears Mrs. Barone pleading for her son's safety. Tony as much as tells him to appreciate the woman who raised him, and his reaction to her is childish, but Paulie is really a big kid. When he attacks Jason, it's less about the money and more a jealousy of something Jason has that Paulie feels was taken from him. It's a testament to the skill of the show that they can have Paulie be so shallowly awful and yet still imbue him with pathos in all his terrible actions.
The hip hop gangster stuff, as usual for this show, brings the proceedings down. The juxtaposition of Italian-American gangsters and African American gangsters, as is typically the case, seems interesting in principle, but the handling with Bobby and the junior rapper, is all thumbs.
Bobby providing comedic relief. With such a heavy episode, I needed that. Great arcs with Paulie and the brief pastor cameo. This show never lets us forget the raw, deeply veiled evil of these people.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2015-08-05T19:17:01Z
There's a lot of talk about The Sopranos as having two phases. The first half of the show is said to be about the last of the salad days of the New Jersey crime family, where things are going well with hints that this kind of prosperity can't last. The second is said to be about decline, about the walls closing in and a certain dourness hanging over everything. Reviewers like Todd Vanderwerff talk about an "autumnal" vibe to these later seasons.
But thus far, despite suicides and shootings by Junior, there's an odd bit of optimism, sunniness even, to much of this season. Sure, things are tight in some corners, but things at least seem to be going well enough for The Sopranos themselves. (The show definitely seems to be playing in the theme that Tony and his family are living high on the hog while other people, like Jason Barone and the garbage truck driver, suffer.)
And for once, it seems like Tony might be making a change. He seems to take fellow patient Mr. Schwinn's view of the world to heart. When he sits in his backyard and sees and feels the wind blow through the trees, you get the idea that he's thinking about the idea of everything being connected. When he keeps repeating and rephrasing the mantra on that little index card in his hospital room, you get the impression that for once, he's realizing how good he has it and how minor his problems really are, to where he's content to let his paramedic keep the $2,000. It's baby steps -- like Tony saying "there's enough garbage for everyone" and just generally not being as hard-nosed and prickly and selfish as he generally is. It's him expressing his love for Carmela. Whether it's the coma dream or the near-death experience, Tony starts to feel like he might finally become a better person. It's The Sopranos, so we can't expect it to last, but there's a hopefulness here, a sense of keeping problems in perspective, even if the show undercuts it with Paulie's attack on Jason.
Oh Paulie. One of the things I like about the show is that while it's content to get its laughs out of unsophisticated or otherwise unenlightened characters like Paulie, it's also has a lot of sympathy for them. Paulie is incredibly cruel to his Aunt, revealed to be his mother, and even worse to the woman who raised him as her own. And yet he's pitiable in how hard he takes everything. He has a pre-set notion of what it means to be a mother and a son that is very formalistic, and when reality turns that on his head, he can't deal with it. He's hurt in a way that he doesn't know how to process, with strange feelings of abandonment, the come out when he hears Mrs. Barone pleading for her son's safety. Tony as much as tells him to appreciate the woman who raised him, and his reaction to her is childish, but Paulie is really a big kid. When he attacks Jason, it's less about the money and more a jealousy of something Jason has that Paulie feels was taken from him. It's a testament to the skill of the show that they can have Paulie be so shallowly awful and yet still imbue him with pathos in all his terrible actions.
The hip hop gangster stuff, as usual for this show, brings the proceedings down. The juxtaposition of Italian-American gangsters and African American gangsters, as is typically the case, seems interesting in principle, but the handling with Bobby and the junior rapper, is all thumbs.