The Sopranos: Nobody Knows Anything

"A feeling of pending doom?"

This is indeed a doom-laden episode, as dark as Tony's mood, full of paranoia, depression and unease, and making both us and the characters question things. The FBI are on the warpath, and the ground is shifting beneath everyone's feet.

The main plot thread centres on the presence of a mole, and the possibility- plausible, until the last moment- that likeable old Pussy may be wearing a wire for the Feds. This turns out to be a massive piece of misdirection, but damage has been done- we end with Pussy missing and Tony despondent, looking very much at risk of a further panic attack.

Worse, Tony's pet cop reaches a low after his arrest for using a bordello, and jumps off a bridge. And Livia shows herself to be truly evil, as allegedly poisonous as her namesake. We have an early scene where Carmela visits her, rolling her eyes at the obvious tricks and calling her out on her manipulative ways. But far more gullible is Junior, who she finally manipulates into decoding to kill her son- and it's fascinating to ponder why she hates him so. Tony ends the episode oblivious, but in real danger.

e also have one bit of comic relief around the dinner table- Meadow, interestingly, sides very much with the recently impeached President Clinton whose misdeeds were, yes, not remotely as nefarious as those of the imbecile Trump, but nevertheless a massive abuse of power. 1999, in some respects, was a very long ago, much as it may not feel so.

As ever, a superb piece of telly. Not long now until the season is don...

The Sopranos: The Legend of Tennessee Moltisani

"Where's my arc?"

Another clever episode, this, and probably the

closest this programme has ever come to skirting with the fourth wall. Christopher, a minor character, thug and thicko, has an episode of angst about the fact he's just a minor character, a Rosencrantz or a Guildenstern, and not destined to be the deepest or most developed. Him being a bit of a prat, this consists of his failing to write (or spell) a film script, digging up a body and shooting a baker in the foot because he has to wait. Even his possible depression is made to look shallow in a discussion with Tony, a proper character. And the end shows all to be cured by him getting his name in the paper. Pillock.

There’s more fun with the fourth wall as we finally spend some time with Dr Melfi’s wealthy, educated yet dysfunctional family- and they morally disapprove when Jennifer lets slip the nature of her latest client. This leads, though, to her pompous husband pontificating about the Mafia-dominated depiction of Italian-Americans in the media. The irony of this being said in The Sooranos is not, I’m sure, lost on anyone.

This is all very fun, but we’re also reminded of the morality of what Tony and others do- Christopher is haunted by dreams of the Czech gangster he killed, and is reassured that it gets easier the more he killed. And, when Tony is told by Dr Melfi that he must pay for the session he missed, his scary reaction forces her to confront what he is- not evil, as that isn’t a grown-up concept, but perhaps someone she should keep at arm’s length. Will she keep him as a client? Perhaps the damage us done,  though. Livia has told Junior that Tony is seeing a psychiatrist.

Ultimately this episode is full of foreboding. The FBI are said to have indictments ready to go and people are jumpy. Tony’s house is searched just after the evidence has been hidden at Livia’s. and they know about Junior. So what next?

This is superb episode- fun, metatextual but full of ill omen...

The Sopranos: Meadowlands

"Hear about the Chinese godfather? He made him an offer he couldn't understand..."

The Sopranos is extraordinary, four episodes in. Yes, the first episode grabs you immediately and is a show-offishly and performatively classy piece of television. Subsequent episodes have been more restrained- no flashy direction, realistic rather than knowingly witty dialogue, but a masterclass on how to build a slow-burning and rich serial narrative.

Here we have a number of turning points, all seeming to emerge naturally from plot, certainly, but more importantly from character. We have some flashy direction in the dreamlike beginning as Tony has a surreal dream about Melfi's office in which worlds collide and it becomes clear that he fancies this somehow unattainable woman, who for once appears vulnerable. The bent cop that Tony ends to spy on her ends up beating and traumatising her boyfriend, unwittingly giving her a taste of Tony's violent world- and reminding us, by breaking the barriers separating the two worlds, that Tony is a very bad man, however much we may emphasise with his family problems.

The two worlds collide elsewhere, too, as young Anthony Jr is rudely ripped from his cosy teenage 1999 world of Super Mario Kart and mildly rubbish, forgotten metal bands by the realisation that there's a reason why, as Meadow points out, they can afford such a massive house on the wages of a "waste disposal consultant".

Tony has two families, both with simmering problems. His mother is as passive-aggressive and emotionally cruel as ever. And the death of the sincerely mourned Jackie seems to be leading inexorably to a Soprano vs. Soprano "War of '99", So Tony's creative solution, based on some unlikely advice from Melfi, unexpectedly undercuts this while showing a lot of guts- to let Junior be "acting boss" while being the power behind the throne- or so he thinks.

Incidentally, we learn that Jackie, dead at 44, had only been "acting boss" for two years. And the "boss", not a Soprano, is 74 and doing life. And, despite the power games and constant Godfather quotes, the Government is watching them all. There's a sense that the throne Tony wants is that of a shrinking empire...

This is bloody good stuff. And, just when you think the episode can't get any better, it ends with a bit of Mazzy Star...

The Sopranos: Denial, Anger, Acceptance

“And the Romans- where are they now?"

"You're lookin;' at 'em, asshole."

An unusually short third episode starts with Christopher and Brendan being absolute bell-ends in a way which makes it quite clear that at least one of them (and Brendan is the bigger bell-end) is going to get “whacked”. But this episode, as ever, is about Tony- and the anger which he, the classic exemplar of what we now call toxic masculinity, uses as a displacement for other difficult emotions. His reaction to the Impressionist-ish painting in Dr Melfi’s waiting room is revealing- he sees decay where others don’t. But his experience here is, of course, legitimate, in spite of his obvious inferiority complex where it comes to education and culture.

What is affecting Tony more than anything, at the moment, is Jackie’s cancer, which is obviously killing this much-likes man- and the title obviously mirrors the process Tony goes through. He arranges a girl and a party with booze for his friend, whose life has now shrunk to the hospital room within which he will very shortly die. It would upset anyone.

But Tony uses anger as a displacement emotion elsewhere too. Artie and Charmaine are broke, moving to a smaller house near the Sopranos, and the insurance company suspect arson which will leave them in penury. This is, of course, all Tony’s fault, so he reacts angrily to the pathetically loyal a Artie recounting his woes while acting as chef for a charity do at their house- and Charmaine, acting as waitress, is humiliated. A sudden class rupture seems to be destroying Carmela’s attempts to get close to Charmaine again, leading her to reveal that she once slept with Tony- but ultimately chose the decent, honest Artie.

There’s an interesting sub-plot with a family dispute between some Hasidic Jews who behave with an old-fashioned honour which Tony admires.

We end with a nice juxtaposition. Meadow and her friend Hunter perform the choir recital they need to do to get some kind of points to get to a good uni (ridiculous) which moves Tony deeply- but Junior has had a chat with Livia, who drops some wonderfully subtle hints. So Christopher gets a traumatic mock execution but gets to live- mistakenly thinking its Tony’s doing after he supplied crystal meth to Meadow. But Brendan is killed, in true Roman fashion, in the bath, ending a truly awesome episode as Junior watches...

The Sopranos: 46 Long

"Time and patience change the mulberry leaf to silk..."

We've had the introductions; now we get straight on with developing the characters and arc plot as David Chase hands over to lesser mortals to write and helm this second episode. The result is not quite as superlative but nevertheless constitutes superior telly. 1999 was a long time ago, though; no one has a mobile phone and a pay phone plays an important role, the Internet is not a thing for most people, while DVD’s are fancy new tech. It all felt very modern at the time, with the Millennium approaching.

Carmela and the kids take a back seat as this episode focuses on Mob conflicts and Tony's impossible relationship with his mother. The opening scene is suitably ominous, with a poker game soundtracked by a news programme about the inexorable decline of what we never hear described as the Mafia- and of omerta. Tony and his lieutenants Paulie, Big Pussy and Silvio- all fleshed out a little more in this episode- take refuge in pop culture references to The Godfather; Martin Scorcese's later cameo appearance is certainly appropriate.

This is a dysfunctional crime family; Giacomo (Jackie) is seemingly acting boss while some senior Soprano (isn't Tony's dad dead?) is in the slammer, but tensions are growing between Tony and his prickly Uncle Junior. These are largely because of the combination of Tony's incredibly thick and arrogant nephew Christopher and his even worse friend Brendan, both of whom keep robbing Junior’s stuff. This seems to reach almost a crisis, and frankly I’m surprised Tony doesn’t shoot Brendan. But he certainly isn’t happy.

Far worse than any of this, though, even the comical and Tarantinoesque shooting dead of the lorry driver, is Tony’s purgatory at the hands of Livia, the passive aggressive and drama-loving mother from Hell who knows how to wound with words. We learn that Tony has sisters who are estranged from her mother, but in setting her hob on fire and running over a friend she makes it clear that she can no longer live alone, spurning help with a combination of casual racism and emotional knife twisting. It’s no surprise that Tony’s mother- Nancy Marchand is brilliant- causes him such emotional turmoil, and Dr Melfi fulfils the time of Greek chorus here; this is far from a normal mother/son relationship. And it’s far from a normal television drama, too. More please.

The Sopranos: Pilot

“Here comes the Prozac...”

If you suspect that I’m starting The Sopranos mainly because I need some brain food to go alongside the not-exactly-intellectual Batman and Robin movie serial, you’re right. I’m only going to do the first season for now and then pause, but it’ll be enjoyable. I’ve seen this season, and this season only, before- on BBC2 in 1999, in my bedroom in my parents’ house, when I was 22. I suppose, prior to 1999 and HBO coming out with this, we Brits, while consuming a lot of American telly, considered it, on average and with many obvious exceptions, to be more lowbrow than our telly with its formulaic, 22 episode seasons. The Sopranos, and its ushering in of the golden age of American telly through which we’re living, changed that forever.

It’s an impressive start with the titles, a splendid tune, and spectacular views of the New Jersey turnpike, and then we begin- with Tony Soprano, in a shrink’s waiting room, looking at a statue in a scene which pretty much exists to show us, by being artily directed, that we are to expect cleverness. And so we have the early awkward exchanges as Tony and Dr Melli size each other up, he relating how he came to have his recent panic attack- we learn about his failing marriage with Carmela, his son Anthony being (as we see) a bit of a dick and a rather epic row between Carmela and their daughter Meadow. But there is also, of course, his other “family”, the family business of “waste disposal” and the rather hilarious juxtapositions of violent scenes and narration such as “we had coffee”. Dr Melfi, of course, knows. But she doesn’t “know”.

Worse than this, though, are the looming crises. Tony’s mother, Livia (an interesting name of one happens to have recently blogged I, Clavdivs) is the mum from Hell- dramatic, judgemental, hypocritical, resentful, with a degree in passive aggressiveness. And then there’s Junior, Tony’s uncle, the older brother of his late father, a proud and prickly old man who resents To t being boss and not him. Then there’s his arrogant dick of a nephew, Christopher. All this in a world where the Mafia is in decline, being squeezed by the law, and living in the glories of old movies, its future bleak and the old code of Omertà no longer a given. Oh, and Tony is having an affair with a trophy girl while Carmela is hanging around with a handsome priest who, to his credit, at least prefers the first Godfather movie.

There’s lots of wit but the fourth wall is never quite broken- I love that Junior (an absurd “name” for an old man!) is going to “whack” “Big Pussy” at the restaurant of Tony’s friend, ruining his business- the main A plot of the episode, solved by a judicious bit of arson, and Tony says “You think he’s gonna fuck with Big Pussy? My pussy?”... All is player straight, of course. And James Gandolfini is incredible, portraying real depth and subtlety.

We end, though, with a menacing exchange between Junior- a stupid old bigot who resents the old days of “the crazy hair, and the dope” and now whinges about that old ‘90s battleground of “fags in the military” and Livia, as “things may have to be done” about Tony.

This is simply superlative television, from the very start. I’m going to enjoy this.