The Sopranos: Isabella

"Top guys have dark moods..."

The penultimate episode, and Tony has succumbed completely to the black dog, in what is a fascinating way to portray depression through performance, music and artistic camerawork- even with a snippet of Garbage's splendid "Temptation Waits". But this seems to be a bad time for this to happen; despite Junior's obvious unease, and disinclination to know the details, the hit on Tony is about to happen.

It's an interesting point in the season to go full-on in the portrayal of depression- but the conceit is, of course, that the experience of almost dying gives Tony the jolt he needs, something which the Prozac and Valium didn't manage to do. He finishes the episode feeling good and raring for revenge.

It’s not just an episode focused on Tony, though; Junior spends the whole episode uneasy, and nearly panics when the “carjacking” goes awry. And Livia, in quite a state of cognitive dissonance having pretty much instigated her own son’s attempted murder, starts to show more serious signs of dementia. And Tony’s dream of Isabella, the exchange student next door, is clearly important, especially once it’s revealed that he imagined her- a properly loving mother figure, as opposed to his actual mother. Who is always talking about infanticide. Hmm. This is very clever and gripping telly.

Also significantly, Tony turns down an offer of immunity from the FBI- he swore an oath, he’s reinvigorated and there’s an episode to go. He has things to do...