6x06 Live Free or Die

It's interesting to see the macho mobsters deal with the idea of homosexuality. Tony in particular seems not to care except that he has to. Again, we're seeing a lighter, more sensitive, more understanding Tony who keeps having to go back to his old ways because of his business. As Silvio lays out for him, if he's seen to have gone soft, even on something like who his capo sleeps with, because of the prejudices of his men, the whole thing could fall apart (as we saw when he was in a coma). Tony is trying to give into his better nature (despite his air conditioner bugging him) but more and more has to make the same compromises he always did.

I did enjoy the Melfi scene in this episode particularly. These scenes have a way of nudging at Tony's various hypocrisies and, the way he explained that guys get a pass in jail and how adamant he was that he never partook, and this large defense of homophobia he gives before essentially admitting that he doesn't care and wishes that he could let Vito be Vito was very Tevye-esque. It's an interesting idea -- Tony hates the idea of homosexuality in the abstract, but he knows Vito as a real live human being, and that's something much harder to hate. There's an interesting parallel with and Tony and Chris's conversation about the Arab men Chris has been dealing with. Chris concludes that they can't be terrorists because one of them has a dog, and they act like real people, not like scowling villains in a bond movie. I don't know whether or not those men are or aren't terrorist, but both scenes gesture toward the idea that we have one conception of the things we fear or hate or are uncomfortable with, and the reality of the situation, how complex and, dare I say, human, the people who embody those fears are, can throw us for a loop.

In some ways it's the same thing with Meadow's story. She sees the Afghani family who comes to see her as real people while her parents write them off as part of a nebulous other, to where they conclude that their son probably deserved whatever happened to him. But on the other side of the coin, Meadow was socialized into the civilian mafia culture and sees them as real people in a way that allows her to excuse and ignore the terrible things they do and that the culture endorses in a way that Finn, who is not nearly so indoctrinated, cannot.

And at the same time, Carmela is feeling restless again, in no small part because the two significant men in her life -- Tony and her father, have hindered her attempt at independence with the spec house while Angie Bumpensero is not only living well from her own body shop business, but is "putting money on the street." There's the hint that frustrated by her shot at legitimate business, she may want to be a bigger part of Tony's.

And Vito is...doing Vito stuff. We don't see much of him running away, and the show wisely chooses to depict most of it visually rather than in dialogue, but you do see him glancing at a seemingly accepted gay couple and get the impression that he too is torn between two worlds - the life he wants to live as his out self and the mob life that allows him to provide for his family (there's a lot of talk about him being a good father and a good husband). As in the last episode, both he and Tony can push down parts of themselves or they can get eaten alive but those around them. Vito's hoping he can live free here, at least for a while, with death very much looming in the corners of the place he might have belonged has his life gone differently.