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Saturday, Nov 22, 2008
A bloody "Sopranos" season ends with an emotionally bruising finale.
May 21, 2001 | After the sort of season "The Sopranos" had -- bloody, dark, ever-more complicated -- you'd expect the finale to have been a little more explosive. But, like the first two seasons, the third one ended Sunday in an affirmation of family. In the final scene, the whole cast gathered at Artie Bucco's restaurant after Jackie Jr.'s funeral, and listened to Junior Soprano sing a melancholy Italian ballad about an "ungrateful heart." Tears welled up in many eyes as thoughts turned perhaps to the old country, or to a style of song long out of favor, or to broken hearts, ungrateful children and dashed dreams.
Within this tableau, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and his immediate family put on a kind of living puppet show on the theme of ingratitude and insufficiently counted blessings. A drunken Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), mourning ex-boyfriend Jackie and seething with the suspicion that he wasn't really shot during a drug deal gone bad, threw rolls at Junior (Dominic Chianese) as he sang. As Tony lunged for her, she jumped up and ran out of the restaurant, eluding his grasp, as she's done all season. Back inside, Tony steered Anthony Jr. (Robert Iler), recently expelled from school for cheating, to a protective spot between him and Carmela (Edie Falco). Earlier in the episode, we'd seen Tony near tears in the office of his shrink, Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), telling her that he didn't know how to save this kid, his dull, soft child of suburban privilege, from falling into the mob life by default. And Tony knows A.J. wouldn't last a day if he did.
And there was Carmela, who watched Junior's performance with oddly dry eyes and a scowl. This season, Carmela grappled with her own ungrateful heart. She was driven to depression by the hypocrisy of her life, drowning in guilt over taking Tony's ill-gotten gains while calling herself a good Christian, and feeling ungrateful toward Tony, who, after all, was a good provider.
The finale, co-written by David Chase and Lawrence Konner, left as many loose ends as it tied up. Paulie (Tony Sirico), in desperate money trouble, is in a panic at seeing his stock falling in Tony's eyes; Tony seems to openly favor his new enforcer, Furio, and sides with sinister Ralph Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano) in a dispute between Ralph and Paulie. Outside the restaurant after Jackie Jr.'s funeral, Paulie is approached by New York boss Johnny Sack (Vincent Curatola); Paulie seems ready to jump ship. Meanwhile, Christopher (Michael Imperioli), who along with Paulie badly botched a hit on a Russian mobster in the harrowing "Pine Barrens" episode, has also fallen out of favor with his uncle Tony, who rebuffs his attempts to make amends.
Ralph remains a divisive presence, a loose cannon who seems intent on bringing Tony down. Why does Tony continue to mollify him? We'll have to stick around for season four. Uncle Junior has beaten cancer, but his trial on RICO charges is set to begin, also in season four (which will be, by all accounts, the last). The FBI, having failed amusingly in its earlier attempt to bug Tony's house, has just hatched a new scheme to get close to Tony, sending a female agent (the delicious Fairuza Balk) undercover as a big-haired Jersey fashionista with orders to become Christopher's fiancée Adriana's (Drea De Matteo) new best friend.
Those hoping for a violent end to the season (what about all those rumors that somebody major was going to get whacked?) may have been disappointed. But this finale was as emotionally bruising an episode as "The Sopranos" has ever turned out. Since the series began, Tony has been trying to keep order and harmony in both of his families, and the stress is giving him panic attacks. He's largely failing on the home front, but at least his men seem to respect him. But in the finale, you could sense Tony's grip loosening with his old crew, as they bickered with one another, grumbled about him behind his back and questioned his authority. In a burst of misplaced dictatorial heavy-handedness, Tony exploded at the wayward A.J. and Carmela's "Berry Brazelton" parenting and decreed that his son was going to military school.
Like Carmela, Tony is fooling himself -- he can't separate the two parts of his life, or his two families. Where abundant dark humor once arose from Tony the thug's attempts to be New Jersey lord of the manor, this season, Chase and his writers brutally drove home the point that Tony and his associates do very bad things and they take their evil home with them -- it builds their castles, it makes their wives and children complicit.
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