You know, watching The Sopranos last night brought back some memories of my own. Once, a long time ago, I was in the same position as Finn, Meadow Soprano’s boyfriend. I couldn’t decide whether to ask my girlfriend to marry me. Ambivalence was stalking me. Then, early one morning while parking my car at work, I, just like Finn, saw a hugely fat mobster performing fellatio on a security guard. Then later, the mobster followed me to a porta-John and offered me two tickets to the Yankees. (It wasn’t a Padres game, though.) Well, that did it: I made my decision then and there. In order to keep from being whacked by an obese fellator, I got engaged. Pretty wild, huh? And you think these things only happen on The Sopranos? And guess what—our favorite song is “If I Were a Carpenter” (the Johnny and June Cash version), a variation of which provided the perfect end to a superior episode.
The most surprising thing of all in this episode was that Joseph Gannascoli, who plays Vito, can lean over. The second-most surprising thing was seeing Vito leaning over for romance. A brilliant move by the show’s writers: You’re never sure where to direct your dread while watching The Sopranos. Any number of terrible things could have happened to Finn when he pulled up at that job site just after dawn. But this was the least likely.
I don’t know about you, Jerry, but I like Finn. He’s a wimp beyond measure, but likable and useful; he’s a stand-in for decent, law-abiding American citizens like us (well, a stand-in for me, anyway). Through his eyes, we’re reminded that the violence of these men is not normal but sadistic and pathological.
Finn is certainly more likable than his fiancee, who is exhibiting, in increasingly less subtle ways, behaviors one associates with the moral utilitarianism of mob life. Wasn’t that bedroom fight scene excruciating? Meadow was given some brilliantly irrational lines, as well as this magnificent non sequitor: “Vito Spatafore is a married man. I don’t think he would kill you.” (It is no coincidence that Vito Spatafore, who pulled the trigger on Jackie Jr., is plaguing Finn. And don’t you get the sense that all this is going to lead Meadow to realize who had Jackie killed? A long time ago—maybe two seasons—Meadow’s cousin suggested to her that it was not a black drug dealer who killed Jackie Jr., but a fat Italian in see-through socks. Meadow reacted angrily and denied it, but it seems to me that she’s coming to the verge of a breakthrough.)
A couple of other notes: The bear is back, but Adriana isn’t. A couple of weeks ago in this dialogue, one of the writers of last night’s episode, Terence Winter, let us know in no uncertain terms that we should just relax about discontinuity. Characters come and abruptly leave and then show up again, and elaborate story lines are concocted and then put into deep freeze, to be thawed only when we least expect it. (This is why, of course, I’m waiting for Furio to walk into the Bada Bing and kill Tony and steal Carmela to Umbria, or some such.)
But the main themes are present continually: Tony’s pathetic grappling with his “pussy-ass weakness” (I’m going to pre-emptively agree with you and say that Dr. Melfi was in fine form last night) and Johnny Sack’s hypermalevolence were on display last night, and I’m sure you get the sense that the latter story line, in particular, is coming to a head. Not fast enough for Jerry Shargel, who last week in this space mistook my patience with narrative development for some kind of New School-derived film snobbery, but I think Johnny Sack is ready to explode. The question is this: When he does he explode, does the shrapnel take out Adriana or the bear?
Best,
Jeff
