DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW HOW “THE SOPRANOS” ENDS!
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It was the beginning of the year 2000 and I had just gotten my second DUI in five years. When I got the first DUI I thought, I just won’t drink and drive anymore. But after that second one I thought, Well, it isn’t the driving that’s the problem… So I quit. Cold turkey.
Since I knew I was going to be spending my nights at home and not at Harry’s in Westport or at Charlie Hooper’s in Brookside I called Time Warner Cable and told them to fix me up with the works, the whole shebang: HBO, Showtime, Cinemax… My cable bill was a hundred dollars a month but that was still cheaper than paying a lawyer to keep me out of a federal penitentiary for that third DUI.
I had read about the HBO shows in the newspapers and had heard about “The Sopranos” from friends. “Have you seen ‘The Sopranos’?” they’d ask. “No,” I’d reply. “YOU HAVEN’T SEEN ‘THE SOPRANOS’?!”
Hmmm… Now that you’ve asked me again- LOUDER, let me think… NO, I HAVEN’T SEEN “THE SOPRANOS”!
I always get that. Friends tell me that I HAVE to see this show or that movie. Plus, they know that I’ve had a thirty-three year love affair with “The Godfather”. So I started watching “The Sopranos” on Sunday nights. But it wasn’t because of the comparisons to “The Godfather”. I started watching because it was a TV series with no commercials and the characters cursed and got naked. Hey, if I’m going to PAY to watch TV, then I don’t want anything pimped to me and people better curse and get naked. And HBO knows that most of its viewers feel the same way I do. They’re not stupid.
I loved the show immediately. I had been living in the Midwest for seven years. It was nice to visit once a week with a bunch of greasy outlaws with style and balls. (Sorry, you Westport and Hyde Park hipsters. All the store bought tattoos and piercings don’t give you brass balls. You have to be BORN into the culture.) But the one thing that never sat well with me with the show was the Dr. Melfi angle. On a nit-picking level, no psychiatrist would’ve shown her legs off the way she did unless she WANTED to get laid. On a wider scope, she never would have continued trying to treat a patient who couldn’t talk openly about a major aspect of his life, namely his crimes.
But like the man said, If you want reality, go stand on a street corner.
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The show that impressed me more than “The Sopranos” was “Sex and The City”. It was on just before “The Sopranos”. What “Sex…” lacked in swagger and violence it more than made up for in quick wit and style- and in half the time. Every thirty minutes was a jewel of insight into sex and relationships- from a woman’s perspective. (Let’s face it, guys, we look at women… but women observe us.) The problem I had with the series is how it ended. After five years of watching these women being independent and questioning traditional roles the writers seemed to wrap it up by saying, OK, you’ve all had your fun. Now put on your aprons and get into the kitchen. They all seemed to settle. Especially my hero, Miranda. Sure, I know that life is about settling. But did she have to settle for STEVE?!
Then a year later, in the summer of 2001, came “Six Feet Under”. It rolled into that Sunday night lineup elegantly, like a shiny, black Hearse at a funeral for an old dude who died of natural causes and left everyone in attendance a ton of money. The pilot episode was amazing, as close to perfection as any TV show or even a film is ever going to get: The patriarch of a family run funeral business is killed after being hit by a bus while driving the new Hearse. From that moment on, every character is introduced in context and without clumsy exposition- Ruth, the repressed, control freak mother; David, the button down consummate professional and reluctant heir of the family business; Claire, the wild child high school student and youngest sibling… and Nate, the center piece of the ensemble, the restless and free spirit who just flew in from Seattle to celebrate an always surreal holiday season in L.A. After the first few episodes, I realized that “Six Feet…” had more in common with “The Godfather” than “The Sopranos” did. Like Michael Corleone, Nate is drawn into a family business he has rejected after a tragedy involving his father, and the family business is something outside of the norm for the average person. For The Corleones it’s crime and murder. For The Fishers it’s death, “Natural or not”, to quote from “The Godfather Part II”.
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As I write this I realize there are many fans of the show who don’t get HBO and haven’t even seen the fourth season let alone the last episode, so I won’t give anything away. I will commend the writers of the show for not resorting to an easy and obvious device like therapy for any of the characters, especially when those characters dealt with death on an almost daily basis. Also, I’ll say this about the character of Nate: In the first season he’s shown in a flashback as a boy, running out of the embalming room after his father tries to get him to touch the body he’s working on. At first I thought that Nate was afraid of death, which may explain why he left home at a young age. But the way I see it now, Nate was an eternal soul who was repulsed by the way our culture deals with a reality as profound and, ironically, as life affirming as death.
I think the appeal of the show is that most of us can identify with Nate’s conflict, at least on a sub-conscious level.
Oh, and about the acting: JEREMY SISTO SHOULD BE GIVEN AN EMMY EVERY YEAR FOR THE REST OF HIS LIFE FOR HIS PORTRAYAL OF BILLY CHENOWITH! When he was dark and criminally disturbed, you could never believe he could be sane and balanced- and vice versa. No one ever played both sides of the spectrum as convincingly as he did.
Since I started watching the shows I tell anyone who will listen that twenty-five years from now, when critics are writing about The Second Golden Age of Television, they’ll mention “Sex and The City”, “Six Feet Under” and “The Sopranos” in the first paragraph.
Screw it. I probably won’t be alive in twenty-five years, so I’ll do it now.
During that first Golden Age of Television, Paddy Chayefsky made a name for himself by writing the classic live drama “Marty”. Twenty some odd years later he went on to write “Network”, the most scathing attack on television that ever was and ever will be. In one of the opening scenes, William Holden, in a drunken state, describes to Peter Finch just how low TV may sink if Finch’s character, Howard Beale, kills himself on the air during his last broadcast as the UBS anchorman. “I can see it now,” Holden’s character declares, “mad bombers… suicides… The Death Hour. Great Sunday night show for the whole family.”
Who knew that Paddy Chayefsky was prophesizing “Six Feet Under”.
DO NOT CONTINUE READING IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW HOW “THE SOPRANOS” ENDS!
I’ve considered Tony’s fate, and the witness protection program is the only logical choice for the writers. Think about it. He can’t die of a heart attack or be executed. That would be too obvious. He can’t go to prison. He’d OWN the joint. He’s killed too many people for the writers to let him get away with murder. Our American viewing morality won’t stand for it.
But just imagine… it’s the last ten or fifteen minutes of the last episode. There’s a few exterior shots of some shit-hole like Omaha or Cedar Rapids during a gray, bone-numbing winter. We’re shown the dealings of some low level Wiseguys and we start thinking, Who the fuck is this? Just like we did during those first few episodes of “Six Feet…”, whenever they showed the people who were going to die. One of the Wiseguys has to take his kick-up to his capo but he’s out of envelopes, so he goes to the local shit-hole office products store- and there’s Tony, behind the counter, living a real life nightmare, a fate worse than prison or even death. He’s flipped so he could protect Carmela and the kids, but there’s no more crew, no more good gravy, no Escalade or Esplanade… just a lifetime of 9 to 5’s and mowing the lawn.
During the transaction the Wiseguy shoots Tony a few knowing glances and then leaves the store.
You had a good run, T. That’s all you can ever hope for.