So Long "Sopranos"

Spoilers everywhere, for the last season of "The Sopranos," and everything that came before.

I still don't like the opening sequence of "The Sopranos." By 2007, when the final episodes were rolled out, it must have looked dated as hell. However, I can't find much about the last super-size sixth season to complain about. Okay, the Vito storyline was a little ungainly, and Melfi dropped Tony from therapy awfully fast. However, there was so much else that was so gratifying to see. Season Six, particularly the second half of it, saw the house of cards that was Tony Soprano's mafia operations crumble at last. More than that, we saw every bit of bad karma and divine retribution that these guys had coming to them finally being meted out. I knew from the beginning that Christopher was going to die, having stumbled across an impassioned reaction to his death a few years ago, but I didn't know the circumstances. I didn't know about Bobby or Sil or Johnny Sack. I expected Junior to go a few seasons ago, but his ultimate fate turned out to be much, much worse.

And I didn't know anything about AJ, and that was the storyline that really caught me off guard. I ignored or got annoyed with the kid in past seasons, but his last arcs really drove home a lot of the show's major points - ignoring problems until it's too late, inheriting your parents' sins, and the bad consequences of taking the easy way out. I loved how they insinuated right at the end there that AJ might be just as much of a psychopath and a manipulator as his father. It's just that up until now he's been a really bad one. And then there was Janice turning into Livia, trying to keep her kids from running away from her, and Meadow finally revealing that in spite of her successes she's also been deeply shaped by her family. Tony and Carmela carry on as they always do, but in the face of all the mounting crises they seem more petty and self-deluding than ever. They divert AJ from the military, where he might have had the chance to really grow, in favor of a low-level job at an entertainment company that they control.

The scope and depth of "The Sopranos" is something I haven't seen any of its imitators or its progeny match up to yet. There's the multi-generational aspect, and the cultural heritage aspect, and the mob aspect, and the suburban aspect, and the spiritual elements, and the morality tales, and the pop culture critique, and the state of America, and so many different character studies. I still don't find the show particularly entertaining, except for the few really big, cathartic episodes where there's a real crisis going on. I don't particularly empathize with the characters, though I appreciate the hell out of the better performances. Intellectually, though, it hits all the right buttons. It chases after all these big ideas and themes and really has something to say about them. It gives us all these characters who could be good people, who are all perfectly redeemable, but they give into their worst impulses over and over again until every chance at turning back is gone. Melfi's the only one who gets away unscathed, who drops Tony and doesn't go back on it, finally. And yet, her reasons are awfully selfish in the end.

I was impatient with "The Sopranos" at the halfway point, wondering if Tony was ever going to change and learn the lessons that Melfi and a string of dead associates kept trying to impart, or conversely when he was ever going to get what was coming to him. The long, slow burn was often aggravating, but I guess that was the point. It took me much too long to realize that "The Sopranos" is largely about the inaction, about letting things slide, and being content to follow in the footsteps of all the bad that came before. And ignoring and rationalizing the worst bits. I loved that little irony that Tony thinks that his gambling luck has changed for the better thanks to Christopher's death, right before things really go bad. All these awful consequences kept looming on the horizon, but they weren't as important as the build-up to it. The famous final scene of the very last episode encapsulates this. I'm pretty damn sure that Tony's dead, but if the show had ended with his death, it would have been too conventional, too easy. Just showing the minutes leading up to the end is what made that scene such a shocker and a cultural touchstone.

I never really rooted for Tony Soprano, but in the end I felt sorry for him. He does learn and he does change, just not in a way that does him any good. He sends an old associate back to prison rather than let him become another Richie Aprile or Ralph Cifaretto. He stops sleeping with women who remind him of his mother, or at least has a hell of a lot more doubts about it. He's nicer to his wife and opens up more to his son. However, at the core of him is still the guy who murders Christopher out of paranoia and mistrust. The show never explains why he did it. The excuse is that Tony suspected he might have flipped to the FBI. But that's the excuse. Maybe Tony was just tired of dealing with Christopher's endless screw-ups and junkie habits. Maybe he was resentful of the distance that had come between them, or that he had moved on to Kelly after Adriana. Maybe Chris was just the most convenient outlet for Tony's frustrations at the moment. We'll never know.

The last run of episodes were more melancholy than exciting, despite all the action that was happening onscreen. While it wasn't the grandiose downward spiral that I had been anticipating, there was a definite sense of decline and uncertainty, a bleakness that had been a long time coming. It still retained that wicked humor from the beginning though, that cynical, black-hearted wit that gave us Bobby's death cross-cut with a toy train derailing and had Tony go out on "Don't Stop Believin,'" of all things.

And this post has gone on much longer than I originally intended, so I'll just wrap up by saying that I'm glad I watched "The Sopranos." Sometimes it was a slog, and but it was worth it. The show genuinely surprised and impressed me in ways I wasn't expecting. It wasn't afraid to show the truth and the ugliness of life. And it wasn't afraid to make us hate it, once in a while. And it was great TV.
---