Meanwhile, Adriana (Drea de Matteo), Christopher's fiancée, attempts to play the devoted and supportive partner while continuing to report on the family's business as an FBI informant. There's no real escape from this trap for Adriana, and despite the eerie ease with which she transitions between serving drinks to Tony or ironing Christopher's shirt to ratting them out to the female agent in charge of her case, Adriana has more compassion and heart than most of the other characters, and we sympathize with her impossible position accordingly. Like the others, though, she has no idea how to talk to Christopher or the mob wives about what she's going through. Like Tony turning to Dr. Melfi for love, Adriana ends up treating the FBI agent, the only person in her life with whom she's communicating honestly, like a trusted friend.

Roles in the Soprano clan are further strained by the return of Feech La Mana (Robert Loggia) and Tony Bludnetto (Steve Buscemi), former mob associates who were incarcerated in the '80s and recently released. Feech quickly asserts his interest in "getting back into the game," and though he appears to be a wild card, Tony hesitantly agrees. In contrast, Tony B., Tony's cousin and close friend, tells Tony he wants to work a straight job and continue his training to become a massage therapist. Tony says that he respects this decision, but he still can't keep himself from pitying Tony B. for making an honest living at a blue-collar job. Adding to the strain, Tony B. tries to pick up his friendship with Tony where it left off, and ends up joking around in ways that Tony feels are disrespectful. One senses that, as the boss, Tony has lost his sense of humor and genuine connection to others, and although he tries, awkwardly, to keep his rapport with Tony B. alive, once again, Tony can't tolerate the two-way street that real relationships demand. Tony B. recognizes this fatal flaw first, and seems resigned to fail at the impossible task of maintaining a relationship with someone who requires deferential behavior.

This has always been Tony's struggle: maintaining relationships from his spot high on the throne, when everyone from his kids to his cronies are wary of his friendliness, since he could turn on them without warning. As much as Tony desires real connection with others and craves honesty from them, he reacts violently against any hint of the truth, and has so little patience with anything but pandering that the impossibility of any real love in his life is painfully clear. At one point, Carmela tells Tony that he has no friends, only flunkies who laugh way too loud at his stupid jokes. Later, in a creepy slow-motion scene, when Tony gazes out at the faces of his inner circle, laughing loudly in unison at a mediocre joke, his loneliness is palpable.

As unstable and under siege as the business is and as lost as most of the characters are this season, Tony and Carmela seem to be faring particularly badly without the reassurances of family to keep them on course. After all, no matter how terrible Tony and Carmela's marriage was, they matched somehow, from their fiercely protective urges to their solidarity against the rest of the world. Despite trying circumstances, their compatibility offered hope that their partnership would somehow save them, all they needed was just a little communication and mutual understanding. Easier said than done, of course -- Chase's characters aren't exactly great communicators and rarely see past their own needs. But when Tony and Carmela's marriage evaporated, some essential strain of hope vanished with it.

So the landscape where we find these characters is far more desolate and grim than any we've seen before. No longer finding safety in their old roles, Carmela and Tony and Christopher and Adriana and the others stumble into uncharted territory with few intimate friends or heartfelt principles to guide them. Their relationships are littered with lies and confusion; their old tricks are powerless to deliver them from the kind of isolation that inevitably leads to self-destruction. As rich and alive as these characters are to us, though, the real genius of David Chase is that, instead of pounding us over the head with on-the-nose dialogue and clear-cut scenes that ring with the impending doom of, say, an FBI crackdown or an explosive fight that will tear the family to shreds, these characters' lives unravel just as real lives do, slowly and eerily, in both violent and barely discernible ways. "I think there should be visuals on a show, some sense of mystery to it, connections that don't add up," Chase recently told the New York Times. "I think there should be dreams and music and dead air and stuff that goes nowhere. There should be, God forgive me, a little bit of poetry."

This poetry is, of course, what weaves these dismal narratives together. The first episode's image of Tony sitting alone in a lawn chair with a rifle in his lap, waiting for the black bear to come back, inspires both pity and affection, and reflects the absurdity and delusion of Tony's adherence to his role. The shot captures volumes more than dialogue ever could: This is how Tony shows his love, this is how he soothes himself, this is where he feels comfortable and needed, as misguided as his efforts might be. This is the patriarch charged with a ridiculous task, one part courageous protector, one part clown.

Once again, "The Sopranos" makes other dramas look like clever puppet shows by comparison. Through lyrical digressions, rich images and a dismaying clutter of missed connections, David Chase dredges up the thinly veiled chaos of family life and the melancholy of clinging to old roles that no longer fit.

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