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July 04, 2003

A lonely fourth...

Boy, it sure is a lonely blogging day. With Mesh n' Lang heading off to Jarrod's wedding, and with Andy posting about as often as I excercise self-country with my language, looks like the only active Chattabloggers today are me, Gosey, and J-Steele. Everybody else is off on vacation...

Got an IM today from Maphet on his cell-phone. Turns out he's in town for a wedding. He and I are gonna head out and do lunch. This may be of interest to some of you old-school Catacombians.

I finished the last episode of fourth season of the Sopranos this morning. Boy, it was incredible. Carmela and Tony are splitting up. Basically, Carmela had finally had it with Tony's unfaithfulness. It was interesting to see how after these last four years of counseling and "growth" on Tony's part, he wasn't willing to justify his actions at all.

Continue reading "A lonely fourth..."

Gandolfini did a great job of just showing the guilt and angst on Tony's part. I guess I like Tony more and more through every episode. People have wondered if he'll ever find redemption, and I'm starting to think that Tony's redemption is like much of our sanctification, this slow, gradual, situation by situation growth. I loved that Tony absolutely refused to use his kids during the separation, and that he even told Tony Jr. to be respectful of his mom and to cut her some slack because she's going through a really difficult time.

It's interesting though, becuase for 4 years, 4 seasons you've watched this guy learn an unbelievable amount about himself and life, all with a thick laquer of morality thrown over it, and at one point in a fight with Carmela he yells at her that "You don't even know who I am!" and it feels immediately trite, but then you realize that it's true, that much of her anger at Tony is for things that he just isn't anymore.

And it's interesting to see that Tony realizes this, but realizes that even though his wife is wrong about certain facets of the relationship, he still bears the brunt of the responsibility, because it was he that was unfaithful.

But off to an earlier episode. I've gotta say, one of the funniest moments I've ever seen on tv or film was the "intervention" with Tony's cousin Christopher. The idea of both family and "family" sitting down with one of their own to challenge him by his drug usage is absolutely brilliantly hilarious. The dynamic between contemporary "non judgemental" honesty and the brutal mafiosa willingness to kill somebody who gets outta line is played so brilliantly by the writers and actors. The ending, when Tony and Paulie beat the crap outta of Christopher when he mouths off to his mother, in front of his family and in front of the AA worker, is a glorious picture of tough love.

Maybe an important message was said, that love and caring without the willingness to, well, "kick some ass" as Tony put it, is ultimately impotent. I think it's a good lesson, and from Christophers return in the final episode, one they may have just work out all right in the end.