I liked it during the gambling episode where they used Howlin' Wolf's version of "Going Down Slow" as a recurring motif, with Willie Dixon's monologue about spending money...
Still seems real wet around the ears and a little light in the intel department, but they are giving him a raw ruthless streak that might make up for the shortcomings.
really though? he looked real shook when the frat boys were pouring acid on dude. I don't see him taking the helm of shit.
BTW I was behind a couple weeks but now I'm back on track. the smart nerdy Asian with the overbearing parents was the lamest stereotype ever. REAL weak way of disposing of Jr. I thought.
Bobby Bacalla is probably the most devoted family man on the whole show.
When EVEN HE started laughing at Chris for talking about his newborn child, I knew right then that Chris had to find himself a new circle of friends.
Although we know that won't happen. He's too much of a made man by now, and everytime he attempts to interact with the outside world, he reverts back to his gangsta ways and flips out.
thanks, that was one of the episodes i put my most contributions into. i was happy especially with "walk on by." i agree with goatboy that the scene with tony tearing up about his son's "wretched fucking genes" was very emotional and some of gandolfini's best acting work i can remember recently. he shines most this season in the scenes with AJ. also this was one of my favorite episodes this season (so far). The Jasons crack me up.
really though? he looked real shook when the frat boys were pouring acid on dude. I don't see him taking the helm of shit.
I mostly agree. He seemed pretty fucked up by the experience and a little shocked by what he was involved in. On the other hand, the existential bleakness of his current mood may just make him say, "what the fuck?"
I have to admit that I usually hate AJ scenes, but this week's ep sort of changed my perception. And Mandrew's right - the scenes where Tony is dealing with AJ and his effect on his son are pretty wrenching.
Did y'all not notice AJ's demeanor at the late night family get together? "I'm so wired." Yeah, the violence may have shocked him at first but he is down.
It seemed they were gonna follow a line like this a few seasons ago when they had Anthony Jr. presiding over the "kegger fight" at the party he threw.
medication + break up with girl + frat guys talking him up as "Tony Soprano Jr" = AJ finally going buck? i can see it. i just don't see him playing an important role in the gangster shit by the end of this season.
medication + break up with girl + frat guys talking him up as "Tony Soprano Jr" = AJ finally going buck? i can see it. i just don't see him playing an important role in the gangster shit by the end of this season.
Nor do I...at least in any significant way.
The whole series Tony has kept AJ away from "that side of the family" but in his haste to see him "Walk Like a Man" he unwittingly pushed him into that.
the smart nerdy Asian with the overbearing parents was the lamest stereotype ever.
Dude, are you kidding? That Ken Leung shit was fucking great.
I appreciate you looking out for my brethren and all, but seriously, his character was so far ahead of the curve on "media representations" compared to the norm.
the smart nerdy Asian with the overbearing parents was the lamest stereotype ever.
Dude, are you kidding? That Ken Leung shit was fucking great.
I appreciate you looking out for my brethren and all, but seriously, his character was so far ahead of the curve on "media representations" compared to the norm.
First off, what an episode, so much to process. This episode definitely threw off the normal balance on this show between Tony being sympathetic and completely vicious. I'm not even going to wager a guess on whats coming, I have no idea where they are going with this, but Tony definitely was a heartless bastard in this one...
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO DIDNT SEE TODAYS 5/13 EPISODE...
i think that (with the "aid" of the peyote) tony realized (in is own private mind garden) that Christopher - unreliable, never really kicking, caught up in whats apparing to not be a very profitable movie venture (at the expense of his other earning) Christopher - was like a bad luck albatross to tony's own life. And with Chissys death (a terrible yet convienient accident, then completed with the 'Tony assist' of course - i am sure tony would never have just straight up capped him or whatever - he took a perfect opportunity here), Tony was "free", or felt free again. He suddenly started winning at roulette - without ven trying, and then went on the peyote bender with the hot mama, mystical experience out in the desert etc, and determined that he had shaken the bad mojo.
now... of course meanwhile, theres hell of problems piling up - with the NY crew, garbage thing, and AJ etc... but Tony is all about the immediate gratification and rationalizing in the present moment.
i for one am sad about christophers death. you really felt like you knew the guy!
dollar_binI heartily endorse this product and/or event 2,326 Posts
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO DIDNT SEE TODAYS 5/13 EPISODE...
i for one am sad about christophers death. you really felt like you knew the guy!
AJ coming full circle on his road to becoming his father - in the shrinks office (ala Melfi), crying his eyes out over guilt and a lot of other bullshit. He is his father's son but he doesn't have stomach/balls to deal with it either. Not good.
i for one am sad about christophers death. you really felt like you knew the guy!
Dude, if 95% of us knew Chris in real life, we woulda wished we never met!
Christopher's JOB was being a dick. It's hard to show compassion for someone who gets paid to kill people, so he had his coming, ya know what I mean? Live by the sword, die by the sword, and there ain't but three episodes left anyway...THAT SAID, it was a bit of a shock to the system to see Chris take himself out (with a little help from his fake father Tony).
Chrissy had to die, he was about to snitch/O.D./get whacked anyway. I kind of wanted to see him go to the feds, all tore up about what happened to Adriana, and she could get revenge on Tony- I'm still mad about how all that went down AND then Tony's at the shrink bragging about how he "took care of the that problem" for Chrissy. What a sweetheart.
anyways, the peyote trip was awesome
but what's up with AJ's new friends, ugh, I'd rather see him hanging out with Paulie and Sil.
it was a bit of a shock to the system to see Chris take himself out (with a little help from his fake father Tony).
Chris' death was confusing -- you mean to say he *wanted* to take himself out so Tony gave him an assist? After the accident, I thought he told Tony he was drunk and it would show up in a blood test... but I didn't get the impression that he actually wanted to die. Tony saw his opportunity to eliminate a potential problem, and he did, in cold blood. A pretty shocking scene to say the least. but I get the distinct impression this is going to come back to haunt Tony in a big way.
it was a bit of a shock to the system to see Chris take himself out (with a little help from his fake father Tony).
Chris' death was confusing -- you mean to say he *wanted* to take himself out so Tony gave him an assist? After the accident, I thought he told Tony he was drunk and it would show up in a blood test...
I believe he said he wouldn't pass a drug test, but either way, Tony could have been instantly pissed that he wrecked the car cuz he was fucked up, when he was supposed to be clean (lying about being clean, endangering Tony's life). It was just the right opportunity for Tony to get rid of him, he's been itching over it all season so far. Ever since seeing Cleaver.
it was a bit of a shock to the system to see Chris take himself out (with a little help from his fake father Tony).
Chris' death was confusing -- you mean to say he *wanted* to take himself out so Tony gave him an assist?
I don't know if he meant to off himself, but that little choke hold that Tony did on Chris' face sure didn't help matters. At least that's the way it looked from where I stood.
I guess the conclusion we're rushing towards is what we've always known: Tony is all about TONY and he will devour or crush anything in his path.
SPOILER ALERT:
I'm suprised that people are suprised Tony killed Christopher. As a matter of fact, during the awkward silent moments before the crash, I was thinking Tony was thinking about killing Chris.
Tony is a mob boss, you don't get there by being a nice.
Sopranos Mondays: Season Six, Ep. 18, "Heidi and Kennedy" By Matt Zoller Seitz
The most significant scene in the entire run of The Sopranos occurred in last night's episode, "Heidi and Kennedy." It wasn't the bloody car wreck or its disturbing aftermath. It wasn't Tony's trip (in any sense of the word "trip"). It wasn't either of Tony's two therapy scenes, and it wasn't any of the scenes of mourning (or not mourning). It wasn't even a scene really. It was a five-second cutaway to the two title characters, Heidi and Kennedy -- the teenage girls in the car Chris Moltisanti swerved to avoid.
"Maybe we should go back, Heidi," says Kennedy. Heidi's reply: "Kennedy, I'm on my learner's permit after dark."
We all know David Chase's view of human nature is profoundly cynical. The Sopranos is set in a universe where good and evil have renamed themselves principle and instinct. Animals are not known for their inclination to act on principle. Nearly significant scene enacts the same basic struggle, pitting the instinct toward self-preservation against the influence what Abraham Lincoln called "The better angels of our nature." The angels have glass jaws.
That cutaway to the girls in the car made Chase's central, recurring point more bluntly than six season's worth of beatdowns, strangulations and shootings, because the girls seemed so "ordinary" -- just a couple of students driving on the highway late at night, maybe thinking that when they got back home they might sneak a couple of glasses of wine and watch some TV (Six Feet Under, maybe). The difference between Heidi and Kennedy and Tony and Christopher is one of degree, not kind. The young women had a chance to do the right thing but didn't. The exact reason for their decision not to help -- by driving back to the scene or calling the cops -- doesn't matter in the end. What's important -- for Chase's purposes -- is that they were presented with a moral test and they not only failed it, they didn't seem terribly aware that it was a test. Tony Soprano and Christopher Moltisanti have failed too many moral tests to count.
Besides mirroring Tony and Chris at various stages of their lives, Kennedy and Heidi also represent the two identities inside so many Sopranos characters -- especially Tony, whose deeply submerged true self (the guy who dotes on his kids, banters with his wife and idealizes young mothers and innocent animals) rarely breaks the surface of his toxic cesspool of a personality. There have always been two Tonys, and in case we hadn't figured that out, Chase gave Tony a cousin named Tony Blundetto, a convicted gangster who'd gone straight, and introduced him in an episode titled "Two Tonys," and then, near the end of the season, had Tony B. impulsively revert to his gangster self and go on a rampage. Kennedy is the voice inside Tony's head that says, "Do the right thing," and Heidi is the voice that says, "Protect yourself." ___________________
As I sit here writing this in the wee hours of May 14 -- and grinding my teeth over a hard drive problem that made it impossible to post episode screenshots tonight -- I am already dreading morning-after discussions that focus on whether Chris, who spontaneously killed his screenwriter and AA mate JT at the end of last week's "Walk Like a Man," had already turned state's witness when we saw him at that meeting on the ferry.
True, there were a lot of clues suggesting as much, from Chris' nervous glancing around during the meeting with Phil Leotardo on the Staten Island ferry to his incessant fiddling with the radio while driving with Tony to the fact that he was wearing a goddamn "Cleaver" hat. (As Sars pointed out to me, Chris is not a hat man.) And I'm sure that in the last three hours of The Sopranos, Tony and various associates of Tony's will discuss the matter, obliquely or directly, with each other and perhaps with representatives of law enforcement; Tony already brought it up this week in the "dream" therapy session, telling Melfi that he'd killed friends and relatives but that you get used to it, and that was relieved to be presented with an opportunity to kill Chris cleanly and quietly, because Chris fit the description of a guy who might turn state's witness and he was tired of waking up every morning wondering if this would be the day that Chris flipped. (I don't think there was any indication that Tony or anyone else in the crew knew about JT's murder.) In the end, the question of whether Chris flipped or was just acting strangely because he was coked up is not central to the show's concerns. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the show ended without definitively answering the question of whether Chris flipped or not, because I have a strong feeling that it's the ultimate example of a Sopranos specialty: a characterization catalyst posing as a big plot twist.
The disappearing "Pine Barrens" Russian has never reappeared because he was just an amusingly brutal catalyst for a bleak comedy revealing how helpless and whiny Paulie and Christopher could be when they were denied creature comforts and the home turf advantage. Ralphie's savage murder of his pregnant girlfriend -- the stripper and single mom, Tracee -- was never "resolved" in the law enforcement sense (i.e., scenes where cops snoop and gangsters cover for each other); it was the catalyst for a nearly two-season arc that saw Tony trying to punish, or at least control, Ralphie while concurrently demonstrating his deeply buried capacity for tenderness by doting on the racehorse Pie-O-My. Tony snapped after Ralphie killed the horse (an innocent animal) in a fire for insurance money, fought Ralphie and killed him, then dismembered the body (with help from Christopher) and made the pieces disappear, just as Tony's mob family must have made Tracee's pieces disappear months earlier. The show never came out and said that Tony snapped because on some subconscious level, he associated the horse with Tracee (whom he described to Silvio in "University" as "a thoroughbred"), and belatedly did what he'd wanted and needed to do on the night that Ralphie killed Tracee months later, for an outwardly different set of reasons. The Sopranos never spelled this out because if it did, it wouldn't be The Sopranos . Tony's murder of Christopher isn't about Tony's murder of Christopher: it's about the human impulse towards cold self-protection, illustrated with Macbeth-like viciousness in the scene where Tony silenced his potential rat of a surrogate son, and in the cut-away to Kennedy telling Heidi they should go back, and Heidi saying they couldn't because she'd get in trouble. (Tony started to dial 911 but stopped himself, punching all three digits only after Chris was safely dead.) ___________________
During that long, beautiful, sad moment in the car where Tony looked over at Christopher -- perhaps realizing that Christopher was high, or maybe fearing he was a rat; who knows what he was thinking, the show won't tell us, and like I said, it doesn't matter -- Chris' stereo was playing Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb." That's the second time in two episodes that the writers have invoked that title (Tony quoted the lyrics at the start of "Walk Like a Man," coming down the stairs to find his depressed son sprawled out before the television). The most important word in that title isn't "numb," but "comfortably."
Numbness is the means by which comfort is attained; if you're numb to morality, to empathy, you can do whatever you want and feel little or no guilt. Comfortable numbness pervaded "Heidi and Kennedy." It was there in the scene at the hospital where Tony was informed that Chris had died and could not muster the energy to feign shock or anger. It's tempting to rationalize Tony's non-response as a reaction his physical trauma, but he was quite lucid after the accident -- lucid enough to abort his initial 911 call and kill his surrogate son -- and he later mentioned (incredulously, and perhaps with a glimmer of deep guilt) that he'd escaped
the wreck with no serious injuries (except for some damage to his knee -- the same knee he damaged while playing baseball in college). As the episode unfolded, Tony could not even muster a lame facsimile of authentic shock and grief; the best he could manage was paranoid touchiness about the fact that he wasn't dead, and occasional Tourette's-like anecdotal nuggets. At Chris' wake, he told an apparent stranger about seeing the tree branch juxtaposed with Chris' daughter's car seat; his affable deliver was so alarmingly inappropriate -- along with the rest of his autopilot responses throughout the episode -- that ironically, it could have been interpreted as the behavior of a man in shock over a close friend's death.
Tony's expression as he killed Chris was horrifying because it was devoid of conscious intent. It was the face of a predator acting on instinct. It was frightening because it was inscrutable, masklike, blank: comfortably numb. (AJ had a similar close-up in "Walk Like a Man," in the scene where he and the two Jasons pour acid on a debtor's toe. It was the most animated AJ had seemed in quite some time -- and the most disconnected from his own emotions.) The Sopranos is Comfortably Numbland. Only a comfortably numb person could begin a condolence call on the survivor of a car wreck as Paulie did, by noting that the deceased had a lead foot. Carmela betrayed her comfortable numbness by deflecting Paulie's anger over the fact that she and Tony arrived late to his mother's/aunt's funeral; in that same scene, Tony betrayed his CN-ness in a small way, by cutting off Paulie's legitimate outrage over Da Family's non-attendance ("It's a fundamental lack of respect and I'm never gonna fucking forget it") by reminding him that Tony's the boss and a very busy man, and Paulie should be grateful that he showed up. Comfortable numbness allows men to kill again and again to protect money, property or reputation. Comfortable numbness allows women like Carmela to live with deep knowledge of their husbands' viciousness while reassuring themselves that a disinterest in details equals a lack of complicity. Carmela knows Adriana didn't just "disappear," but she chooses not to think about it because thinking about it would make her uncomfortable.
The Time-Warner cable summary of this episode promised, "Tony has a revelation." That sounds like a joke, and that's how it will probably play out in the end. Regular readers of these post-Sopranos columns know that a part of me wants to see Tony and the rest of his criminal gang suffer tangible earthly punishment for their viciousness. There are suggestions that Chase, in his typically roundabout way, might be headed in this direction: that the series would confound our expectations in the most spectacular fashion yet by having Tony actually change -- to realize the error of his ways, probably with help from Melfi, and try to save his own soul by confessing not to law enforcement, but to his therapist, who would be well within her rights to report a man who had killed people and was almost certain to do it again.
But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that these intimations of impending moral reversal will remain just that. If Tony brings down the family, he'll do it without realizing why he did it; he'll do it by amping up the same behavior we've seen throughout Season Six: the self-destructive, "Take me out of the game, coach" impulses, manifested in his heedless gambling and his willingness to hang personal dirty laundry out to dry in front of employees who should view him as strong and in control. If justice is finally done to Tony Soprano and his various relatives and associates as a result of Tony's actions, it won't be intentional. Tony's flirted with a moral awakening many times without embracing it. (He had a dream -- a revelatory dream -- in which he confessed his numb viciousness to Melfi, but when he got the chance to make the dream real, he couched the same statements in euphemisms.) A person as numb as Tony can't have a moral awakening. He's been too comfortable and too numb for too long. (His family and "Family" are numb, too; there must have been three or four dozen verbal expressions of condolence in last night's episode, and none of them seemed authentically felt.)
It's no accident that this episode contained so many echoes of previous Sopranos dream sequences, including the Season One dream about the ducks (obliquely references in images of asbestos being dumped into marshlands, an image suggesting how Tony's business pollutes his domestic fantasies) to the image of Chris' wife nursing their orphaned baby daughter (reminiscent of Tony's breast-feeding dream from Season One) and the extended purgatory dream that occurred in the second and third episodes of Season Six. In the latter dream -- analyzed in detail here last fall; click here and here for links -- Tony impersonated Kevin Finnerty, a solar heating salesman who, as far as we could tell, was a self-interested bastard; then he fell down some stairs and was incidentally diagnosed with Alzheimers', declined to tell his wife back home, or to return home at all (an interesting touch in light of Tony's Vegas trip, during which he contacted his family zero times). Then he found himself standing outside of a palatial woodland home on the night of a party where the other Tony, Tony B., served as gatekeeper. He was told that his family was in there -- including a fleetingly-glimpsed Livia figure -- but that he could not enter unless he dropped the briefcase, a symbol of his professional identity (his professional baggage).
There's a sense in which Tony's trip to Vegas seems a conscious attempt to revisit his tour of Coma Land in the real world, with the peyote trip substituting for the actual out-of-body-experience he had after Junior shot him. Tony's subconscious presented him with a series of complexly interwoven but fairly clear instructions on how to change his life and be happy, as well as a warning of the consequences if he did not; after he awakened from the coma, he went through an uncharacteristically gentle period, then reverted more or less to type. Without consciously meaning to, he goes to Vegas to revisit the critical moment in his development as an adult human being (a dream detailing the two competing Tonys and the stakes in their struggle) and get it right this time. He goes to Vegas hoping to see the light. And he did see the light twice in the episode, literally -- first by looking up at the lamp on the ceiling of his hotel bathroom, then by watching the sunset with Christopher's former stripper girlfriend and erupting with joy at the sight of a solar flare that resembled the helicopter searchlights/operating table lamp from his coma experience. "I get it!" he bellows. "I get it!"
But he doesn't. Any righting of this universe's moral scales will be purely coincidental. Tony's been too comfortable and too numb for too long; if he was going to change, he would have done it already. He's been going down this road forever, and he's had too many close calls to count, and each time, he hears some version of Heidi and Kennedy in his head, Kennedy saying, "Let's go back," and Heidi saying, "No."
As much as I love The Sopranos, this whole thing were people (usually on the Net) sit around analyzing hidden meanings of the show is getting stale. I know there's a lot of symbolism in this program, but DAMN...
(Chris) was wearing a goddamn "Cleaver" hat. (As Sars pointed out to me, Chris is not a hat man.)
At least once before, I've seen Chris wear a hat - I forget the episode, but he and someone else came straight from a fishing trip to a "family" meeting. He's not his usual dapper self, and I think this may have been pre-heroin. He's got on one of those beat-up fisherman's hats with all sorts of tackle sticking out of it, and already Silvio is busting his balls, as they say, about it.
As much as I love The Sopranos, this whole thing were people (usually on the Net) sit around analyzing hidden meanings of the show is getting stale. I know there's a lot of symbolism in this program, but DAMN...
(Chris) was wearing a goddamn "Cleaver" hat. (As Sars pointed out to me, Chris is not a hat man.)
At least once before, I've seen Chris wear a hat - I forget the episode, but he and someone else came straight from a fishing trip to a "family" meeting. He's not his usual dapper self, and I think this may have been pre-heroin. He's got on one of those beat-up fisherman's hats with all sorts of tackle sticking out of it, and already Silvio is busting his balls, as they say, about it.
If the hat was any indication of Chris possibly being a rat, there would have surely been a close-up of it, showing that Tony payed particular attention to it.
Anyway, i'm very curious to know what happens in the next episode.
BTW, did Tony actually say "fuckin' James Brown over here" after Chrissy's mom fell on her knees screaming in front of his casket??
Comments
was that playing in the strip club?
really though? he looked real shook when the frat boys were pouring acid on dude. I don't see him taking the helm of shit.
BTW I was behind a couple weeks but now I'm back on track. the smart nerdy Asian with the overbearing parents was the lamest stereotype ever. REAL weak way of disposing of Jr. I thought.
and Hesh's wife's death was similarly lame.
When EVEN HE started laughing at Chris for talking about his newborn child, I knew right then that Chris had to find himself a new circle of friends.
Although we know that won't happen. He's too much of a made man by now, and everytime he attempts to interact with the outside world, he reverts back to his gangsta ways and flips out.
thanks, that was one of the episodes i put my most contributions into. i was happy especially with "walk on by."
i agree with goatboy that the scene with tony tearing up about his son's "wretched fucking genes" was very emotional and some of gandolfini's best acting work i can remember recently. he shines most this season in the scenes with AJ.
also this was one of my favorite episodes this season (so far). The Jasons crack me up.
I mostly agree.
He seemed pretty fucked up by the experience and a little shocked by what he was involved in.
On the other hand, the existential bleakness of his current mood may just make him say, "what the fuck?"
I have to admit that I usually hate AJ scenes, but this week's ep sort of changed my perception.
And Mandrew's right - the scenes where Tony is dealing with AJ and his effect on his son are pretty wrenching.
It seemed they were gonna follow a line like this a few seasons ago when they had Anthony Jr. presiding over the "kegger fight" at the party he threw.
Nor do I...at least in any significant way.
The whole series Tony has kept AJ away from "that side of the family" but in his haste to see him "Walk Like a Man" he unwittingly pushed him into that.
Dude, are you kidding? That Ken Leung shit was fucking great.
I appreciate you looking out for my brethren and all, but seriously, his character was so far ahead of the curve on "media representations" compared to the norm.
Niiiice.
he was better in "Sucka Free City".
First off, what an episode, so much to process. This episode definitely threw off the normal balance on this show between Tony being sympathetic and completely vicious. I'm not even going to wager a guess on whats coming, I have no idea where they are going with this, but Tony definitely was a heartless bastard in this one...
MAJOR SPOILER ALERT FOR THOSE WHO DIDNT SEE TODAYS 5/13 EPISODE...
i think that (with the "aid" of the peyote) tony realized (in is own private mind garden) that Christopher - unreliable, never really kicking, caught up in whats apparing to not be a very profitable movie venture (at the expense of his other earning) Christopher - was like a bad luck albatross to tony's own life. And with Chissys death (a terrible yet convienient accident, then completed with the 'Tony assist' of course - i am sure tony would never have just straight up capped him or whatever - he took a perfect opportunity here), Tony was "free", or felt free again. He suddenly started winning at roulette - without ven trying, and then went on the peyote bender with the hot mama, mystical experience out in the desert etc, and determined that he had shaken the bad mojo.
now... of course meanwhile, theres hell of problems piling up - with the NY crew, garbage thing, and AJ etc... but Tony is all about the immediate gratification and rationalizing in the present moment.
i for one am sad about christophers death. you really felt like you knew the guy!
I'm prostate with grief
AJ coming full circle on his road to becoming his father - in the shrinks office (ala Melfi), crying his eyes out over guilt and a lot of other bullshit.
He is his father's son but he doesn't have stomach/balls to deal with it either.
Not good.
Dude, if 95% of us knew Chris in real life, we woulda wished we never met!
Christopher's JOB was being a dick. It's hard to show compassion for someone who gets paid to kill people, so he had his coming, ya know what I mean? Live by the sword, die by the sword, and there ain't but three episodes left anyway...THAT SAID, it was a bit of a shock to the system to see Chris take himself out (with a little help from his fake father Tony).
Are you saying you think Chris tried to kill himself with Tony in the truck?
anyways, the peyote trip was awesome
but what's up with AJ's new friends, ugh, I'd rather see him hanging out with Paulie and Sil.
Chris' death was confusing -- you mean to say he *wanted* to take himself out so Tony gave him an assist? After the accident, I thought he told Tony he was drunk and it would show up in a blood test... but I didn't get the impression that he actually wanted to die. Tony saw his opportunity to eliminate a potential problem, and he did, in cold blood. A pretty shocking scene to say the least. but I get the distinct impression this is going to come back to haunt Tony in a big way.
yea, a.j.'s crew is straight out of "A Bronx Tale". i'm also not really buying the whole idea of aj turning into tony.
exactly what I thought.
I believe he said he wouldn't pass a drug test, but either way, Tony could have been instantly pissed that he wrecked the car cuz he was fucked up, when he was supposed to be clean (lying about being clean, endangering Tony's life). It was just the right opportunity for Tony to get rid of him, he's been itching over it all season so far. Ever since seeing Cleaver.
I don't know if he meant to off himself, but that little choke hold that Tony did on Chris' face sure didn't help matters. At least that's the way it looked from where I stood.
Tony thought he did Chrissy a big favor by taking out Ade *for* Chris.
Chris was obviously way fucked up while driving home. Straight tweakin. Tony is not one to let an opportunity slip by....
At least AJ is smart enough to realize what douchebags his new buddies are, and he might save his own life in the process.
Never ever thought I'd see Tony smokin dope and droppin buttons of peyote.
What an insane episode.
I guess the conclusion we're rushing towards is what we've always known: Tony is all about TONY and he will devour or crush anything in his path.
SPOILER ALERT:
I'm suprised that people are suprised Tony killed Christopher. As a matter of fact, during the awkward silent moments before the crash, I was thinking Tony was thinking about killing Chris.
Tony is a mob boss, you don't get there by being a nice.
By Matt Zoller Seitz
The most significant scene in the entire run of The Sopranos occurred in last night's episode, "Heidi and Kennedy." It wasn't the bloody car wreck or its disturbing aftermath. It wasn't Tony's trip (in any sense of the word "trip"). It wasn't either of Tony's two therapy scenes, and it wasn't any of the scenes of mourning (or not mourning). It wasn't even a scene really. It was a five-second cutaway to the two title characters, Heidi and Kennedy -- the teenage girls in the car Chris Moltisanti swerved to avoid.
"Maybe we should go back, Heidi," says Kennedy.
Heidi's reply: "Kennedy, I'm on my learner's permit after dark."
We all know David Chase's view of human nature is profoundly cynical. The Sopranos is set in a universe where good and evil have renamed themselves principle and instinct. Animals are not known for their inclination to act on principle. Nearly significant scene enacts the same basic struggle, pitting the instinct toward self-preservation against the influence what Abraham Lincoln called "The better angels of our nature." The angels have glass jaws.
That cutaway to the girls in the car made Chase's central, recurring point more bluntly than six season's worth of beatdowns, strangulations and shootings, because the girls seemed so "ordinary" -- just a couple of students driving on the highway late at night, maybe thinking that when they got back home they might sneak a couple of glasses of wine and watch some TV (Six Feet Under, maybe). The difference between Heidi and Kennedy and Tony and Christopher is one of degree, not kind. The young women had a chance to do the right thing but didn't. The exact reason for their decision not to help -- by driving back to the scene or calling the cops -- doesn't matter in the end. What's important -- for Chase's purposes -- is that they were presented with a moral test and they not only failed it, they didn't seem terribly aware that it was a test. Tony Soprano and Christopher Moltisanti have failed too many moral tests to count.
Besides mirroring Tony and Chris at various stages of their lives, Kennedy and Heidi also represent the two identities inside so many Sopranos characters -- especially Tony, whose deeply submerged true self (the guy who dotes on his kids, banters with his wife and idealizes young mothers and innocent animals) rarely breaks the surface of his toxic cesspool of a personality. There have always been two Tonys, and in case we hadn't figured that out, Chase gave Tony a cousin named Tony Blundetto, a convicted gangster who'd gone straight, and introduced him in an episode titled "Two Tonys," and then, near the end of the season, had Tony B. impulsively revert to his gangster self and go on a rampage. Kennedy is the voice inside Tony's head that says, "Do the right thing," and Heidi is the voice that says, "Protect yourself."
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As I sit here writing this in the wee hours of May 14 -- and grinding my teeth over a hard drive problem that made it impossible to post episode screenshots tonight -- I am already dreading morning-after discussions that focus on whether Chris, who spontaneously killed his screenwriter and AA mate JT at the end of last week's "Walk Like a Man," had already turned state's witness when we saw him at that meeting on the ferry.
True, there were a lot of clues suggesting as much, from Chris' nervous glancing around during the meeting with Phil Leotardo on the Staten Island ferry to his incessant fiddling with the radio while driving with Tony to the fact that he was wearing a goddamn "Cleaver" hat. (As Sars pointed out to me, Chris is not a hat man.) And I'm sure that in the last three hours of The Sopranos, Tony and various associates of Tony's will discuss the matter, obliquely or directly, with each other and perhaps with representatives of law enforcement; Tony already brought it up this week in the "dream" therapy session, telling Melfi that he'd killed friends and relatives but that you get used to it, and that was relieved to be presented with an opportunity to kill Chris cleanly and quietly, because Chris fit the description of a guy who might turn state's witness and he was tired of waking up every morning wondering if this would be the day that Chris flipped. (I don't think there was any indication that Tony or anyone else in the crew knew about JT's murder.) In the end, the question of whether Chris flipped or was just acting strangely because he was coked up is not central to the show's concerns. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the show ended without definitively answering the question of whether Chris flipped or not, because I have a strong feeling that it's the ultimate example of a Sopranos specialty: a characterization catalyst posing as a big plot twist.
The disappearing "Pine Barrens" Russian has never reappeared because he was just an amusingly brutal catalyst for a bleak comedy revealing how helpless and whiny Paulie and Christopher could be when they were denied creature comforts and the home turf advantage. Ralphie's savage murder of his pregnant girlfriend -- the stripper and single mom, Tracee -- was never "resolved" in the law enforcement sense (i.e., scenes where cops snoop and gangsters cover for each other); it was the catalyst for a nearly two-season arc that saw Tony trying to punish, or at least control, Ralphie while concurrently demonstrating his deeply buried capacity for tenderness by doting on the racehorse Pie-O-My. Tony snapped after Ralphie killed the horse (an innocent animal) in a fire for insurance money, fought Ralphie and killed him, then dismembered the body (with help from Christopher) and made the pieces disappear, just as Tony's mob family must have made Tracee's pieces disappear months earlier. The show never came out and said that Tony snapped because on some subconscious level, he associated the horse with Tracee (whom he described to Silvio in "University" as "a thoroughbred"), and belatedly did what he'd wanted and needed to do on the night that Ralphie killed Tracee months later, for an outwardly different set of reasons. The Sopranos never spelled this out because if it did, it wouldn't be The Sopranos . Tony's murder of Christopher isn't about Tony's murder of Christopher: it's about the human impulse towards cold self-protection, illustrated with Macbeth-like viciousness in the scene where Tony silenced his potential rat of a surrogate son, and in the cut-away to Kennedy telling Heidi they should go back, and Heidi saying they couldn't because she'd get in trouble. (Tony started to dial 911 but stopped himself, punching all three digits only after Chris was safely dead.)
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During that long, beautiful, sad moment in the car where Tony looked over at Christopher -- perhaps realizing that Christopher was high, or maybe fearing he was a rat; who knows what he was thinking, the show won't tell us, and like I said, it doesn't matter -- Chris' stereo was playing Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb." That's the second time in two episodes that the writers have invoked that title (Tony quoted the lyrics at the start of "Walk Like a Man," coming down the stairs to find his depressed son sprawled out before the television). The most important word in that title isn't "numb," but "comfortably."
Numbness is the means by which comfort is attained; if you're numb to morality, to empathy, you can do whatever you want and feel little or no guilt. Comfortable numbness pervaded "Heidi and Kennedy." It was there in the scene at the hospital where Tony was informed that Chris had died and could not muster the energy to feign shock or anger. It's tempting to rationalize Tony's non-response as a reaction his physical trauma, but he was quite lucid after the accident -- lucid enough to abort his initial 911 call and kill his surrogate son -- and he later mentioned (incredulously, and perhaps with a glimmer of deep guilt) that he'd escaped the wreck with no serious injuries (except for some damage to his knee -- the same knee he damaged while playing baseball in college). As the episode unfolded, Tony could not even muster a lame facsimile of authentic shock and grief; the best he could manage was paranoid touchiness about the fact that he wasn't dead, and occasional Tourette's-like anecdotal nuggets. At Chris' wake, he told an apparent stranger about seeing the tree branch juxtaposed with Chris' daughter's car seat; his affable deliver was so alarmingly inappropriate -- along with the rest of his autopilot responses throughout the episode -- that ironically, it could have been interpreted as the behavior of a man in shock over a close friend's death.
Tony's expression as he killed Chris was horrifying because it was devoid of conscious intent. It was the face of a predator acting on instinct. It was frightening because it was inscrutable, masklike, blank: comfortably numb. (AJ had a similar close-up in "Walk Like a Man," in the scene where he and the two Jasons pour acid on a debtor's toe. It was the most animated AJ had seemed in quite some time -- and the most disconnected from his own emotions.) The Sopranos is Comfortably Numbland. Only a comfortably numb person could begin a condolence call on the survivor of a car wreck as Paulie did, by noting that the deceased had a lead foot. Carmela betrayed her comfortable numbness by deflecting Paulie's anger over the fact that she and Tony arrived late to his mother's/aunt's funeral; in that same scene, Tony betrayed his CN-ness in a small way, by cutting off Paulie's legitimate outrage over Da Family's non-attendance ("It's a fundamental lack of respect and I'm never gonna fucking forget it") by reminding him that Tony's the boss and a very busy man, and Paulie should be grateful that he showed up. Comfortable numbness allows men to kill again and again to protect money, property or reputation. Comfortable numbness allows women like Carmela to live with deep knowledge of their husbands' viciousness while reassuring themselves that a disinterest in details equals a lack of complicity. Carmela knows Adriana didn't just "disappear," but she chooses not to think about it because thinking about it would make her uncomfortable.
The Time-Warner cable summary of this episode promised, "Tony has a revelation." That sounds like a joke, and that's how it will probably play out in the end. Regular readers of these post-Sopranos columns know that a part of me wants to see Tony and the rest of his criminal gang suffer tangible earthly punishment for their viciousness. There are suggestions that Chase, in his typically roundabout way, might be headed in this direction: that the series would confound our expectations in the most spectacular fashion yet by having Tony actually change -- to realize the error of his ways, probably with help from Melfi, and try to save his own soul by confessing not to law enforcement, but to his therapist, who would be well within her rights to report a man who had killed people and was almost certain to do it again.
But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that these intimations of impending moral reversal will remain just that. If Tony brings down the family, he'll do it without realizing why he did it; he'll do it by amping up the same behavior we've seen throughout Season Six: the self-destructive, "Take me out of the game, coach" impulses, manifested in his heedless gambling and his willingness to hang personal dirty laundry out to dry in front of employees who should view him as strong and in control. If justice is finally done to Tony Soprano and his various relatives and associates as a result of Tony's actions, it won't be intentional. Tony's flirted with a moral awakening many times without embracing it. (He had a dream -- a revelatory dream -- in which he confessed his numb viciousness to Melfi, but when he got the chance to make the dream real, he couched the same statements in euphemisms.) A person as numb as Tony can't have a moral awakening. He's been too comfortable and too numb for too long. (His family and "Family" are numb, too; there must have been three or four dozen verbal expressions of condolence in last night's episode, and none of them seemed authentically felt.)
It's no accident that this episode contained so many echoes of previous Sopranos dream sequences, including the Season One dream about the ducks (obliquely references in images of asbestos being dumped into marshlands, an image suggesting how Tony's business pollutes his domestic fantasies) to the image of Chris' wife nursing their orphaned baby daughter (reminiscent of Tony's breast-feeding dream from Season One) and the extended purgatory dream that occurred in the second and third episodes of Season Six. In the latter dream -- analyzed in detail here last fall; click here and here for links -- Tony impersonated Kevin Finnerty, a solar heating salesman who, as far as we could tell, was a self-interested bastard; then he fell down some stairs and was incidentally diagnosed with Alzheimers', declined to tell his wife back home, or to return home at all (an interesting touch in light of Tony's Vegas trip, during which he contacted his family zero times). Then he found himself standing outside of a palatial woodland home on the night of a party where the other Tony, Tony B., served as gatekeeper. He was told that his family was in there -- including a fleetingly-glimpsed Livia figure -- but that he could not enter unless he dropped the briefcase, a symbol of his professional identity (his professional baggage).
There's a sense in which Tony's trip to Vegas seems a conscious attempt to revisit his tour of Coma Land in the real world, with the peyote trip substituting for the actual out-of-body-experience he had after Junior shot him. Tony's subconscious presented him with a series of complexly interwoven but fairly clear instructions on how to change his life and be happy, as well as a warning of the consequences if he did not; after he awakened from the coma, he went through an uncharacteristically gentle period, then reverted more or less to type. Without consciously meaning to, he goes to Vegas to revisit the critical moment in his development as an adult human being (a dream detailing the two competing Tonys and the stakes in their struggle) and get it right this time. He goes to Vegas hoping to see the light. And he did see the light twice in the episode, literally -- first by looking up at the lamp on the ceiling of his hotel bathroom, then by watching the sunset with Christopher's former stripper girlfriend and erupting with joy at the sight of a solar flare that resembled the helicopter searchlights/operating table lamp from his coma experience. "I get it!" he bellows. "I get it!"
But he doesn't. Any righting of this universe's moral scales will be purely coincidental. Tony's been too comfortable and too numb for too long; if he was going to change, he would have done it already. He's been going down this road forever, and he's had too many close calls to count, and each time, he hears some version of Heidi and Kennedy in his head, Kennedy saying, "Let's go back," and Heidi saying, "No."
Heidi is driving.
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At least once before, I've seen Chris wear a hat - I forget the episode, but he and someone else came straight from a fishing trip to a "family" meeting. He's not his usual dapper self, and I think this may have been pre-heroin. He's got on one of those beat-up fisherman's hats with all sorts of tackle sticking out of it, and already Silvio is busting his balls, as they say, about it.
Anyway, i'm very curious to know what happens in the next episode.
BTW, did Tony actually say "fuckin' James Brown over here" after Chrissy's mom fell on her knees screaming in front of his casket??