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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
In the "Sopranos" season finale, Tony preserves the peace in his kingdom the only way he knows how.
Jun 7, 2004 |
"It's my mess. All my choices were wrong."
Just when it looks as if his empire might fall into the sea, Tony Soprano reverses course -- how else? -- by getting rid of someone. Forced to shut out his conscience in order to uphold order in the family once again, Tony personally hunts down Tony Blundetto and kills him for the sake of keeping the peace with Johnny Sack.
Tough break, when it takes blowing your cousin's head off with a shotgun to keep your family together. But Tony's uncomfortable position from the start of David Chase's series has been that of the ambivalent patriarch, called on repeatedly to cast aside his own concerns for the sake of his dependents. Unfortunately for Tony, he seems to have more dependents than the leaders of most small nations.
Fitting, then, that at a pivotal point in last night's fifth-season finale of "The Sopranos," Tony (James Gandolfini) would find the painting that Paulie (Tony Sirico) was supposed to get rid of, and gaze at himself dressed up as a jolly Napoleon next to his adored horse Pie Oh My. "The general," Paulie calls Tony in the picture, and something about the image spurs Tony to action, and he drives out to take care of the problem of his cousin, protecting his people from the threat of vengeance at the hand of New York boss Johnny Sack. Like a besieged modern leader, Tony changes course, putting aside his own conscience and taking extreme measures to prevent any change in the status quo that might erode his family's grip on the good life.
Since Tony's desire to escape his role as the lonely king has been growing, it follows that his immediate family should cling to the spoils of mob life more determinedly than ever. After toying with a fulfilling life far from the corruption -- and cash -- that Tony represents, Carmela (Edie Falco) gave up her fight and named her price for reconciliation, Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Discala) seemed to abandon her former ideals and dreams of escaping to California after too much time away from her cushy, climate-controlled upbringing, and A.J. (Robert Iler) continued to bumble thoughtlessly toward a thuggish existence simply out of his barely conscious familiarity with its juvenile thrills and spills. Tony and his family might hope for more as individuals, but the grip of what they know always seems to be stronger than those passing whims and fleeting notions about a better life they embrace and then discard whenever the going gets rough. The irony, of course, is that by providing his family with everything, Tony keeps them enslaved to the same attachments that bind him to a discontented existence.
Far from blossoming into her own person outside her marriage with Tony, this season Carmela found herself overwhelmed with the prospect of waging a legal battle against Tony and raising A.J. on her own. She quickly soured on the single life after an affair with A.J.'s college counselor ended bitterly. While the temptations of life away from Tony always seemed to bring out the more conscientious, sensitive side of Carmela while she was still married to him, the realities of life alone seemed to bring out the worst in her. Once she slept with Tony and recognized that she could have him back whenever she wanted, forging her own path became an utter impossibility. Instead of exploring ways to support herself or make her own way in the world, Carmela wound up simply increasing her financial demands on him, essentially agreeing to reunite with him as long as he would allow her to construct and design a new home. The project is ostensibly a business she and her father are starting together, but that means little to Tony -- he's willing to pay for whatever project will keep Carmela busy and get him his old life back.
