Gallons of ink have been spilled hailing The Sopranos as the greatest television show ever. That’s a difficult title to hand out in a medium as populist and as varied as television; indeed that simple act of coronation will inspire the dissidents in droves. Best at what? Better than M*A*S*H? Gunsmoke? 24?
“Best” isn’t the most accurate title to award it. “Most ambitious” works much better. The Sopranos is to television what Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is to the modern novel. A towering achievement in precision – dense, hyper-literate, and laden with symbolism. In many places, it’s as frustrating as it is rewarding, and like Pynchon, Sopranos creator David Chase seems to take a sadistic pleasure in toying with audience expectations.
The final season of The Sopranos is currently airing on HBO, and perhaps after the final fade out, the debate about greatness can properly begin. Instead of waving farewell with an emotional victory lap, Chase is driving his points home with a blistering ferocity. Watching it is like being pushed out of an airplane blindfolded. The impact could happen at any moment, and every scene that buffets past without one isn’t a reprieve but another dreadful moment waiting for the inevitable.
Last season of The Sopranos was all wind-up and no delivery. Reportedly, HBO begged David Chase to extend his final season, and last season’s extended (and fruitless, pardon the pun) plot about the gay Vito Spatafore felt like distracting filler. The final episodes of last season were static letdowns. The new season is off to a roaring start, and is showing very little interest in a prolonged, sentimental farewell.
Life hasn’t gotten any easier for Tony Soprano and his crew during the series hiatus. The feds continue to ramp up their investigations, and Tony has been on edge, perpetually “waiting for the other shoe to drop.” His near-death experience did nothing to stem his growing sense of despair, or slow his growing realizations that his whole life has been a pale imitation without substance. Like the Roman Empire in its final decline, nothing can be done to stop the collapse. These final hours of the show portray a haunted Tony Soprano, cursed with the knowledge of impending doom and powerless to stand against it.
If you’re late to the game, it’s still not too late to appreciate the final episodes. The opening tag of “previously on The Sopranos” does a fairly thorough job of filling in the broad strokes background of each episode, and the powerhouse acting is engaging enough to fill in any holes.
The first episode begins with the police knocking on the door of his house, armed with search warrants. “Is this it,” a worried Carmella asks. Is this it, indeed… the only predictable thing about The Sopranos is its stubborn unpredictability. Every moment of the final season so far has been bathed in the acrid sweat of impending doom. In the first three episodes, it has felt increasingly probable that Tony Soprano would whack his brother- in-law, his favorite nephew, or Paulie Walnuts, one of his most trusted capos.
Some of the show’s considerable power comes from this unpredictability. In most television shows, A will always lead to B. David Chase has essentially invented a new language for the small screen, and the narrative rhythm of The Sopranos is what makes it one of the most distinctive shows on television. When Tony spontaneously takes Paulie Walnuts out to sea, conventional television would have those characters unflinchingly executed in the next scene. Chase and company are instead content to let the opposite happen – nothing.
But even nothing is something in The Sopranos’ universe. Paulie Walnuts might walk off that boat alive, but Tony’s toothy half-smile is a tour de force of ambiguity that keeps it compelling on a second viewing. It’s the hunter toying with his prey, deciding life or death on a whim. The ambiguity is powerful because both outcomes are equally plausible. Chase isn’t showing you nothing with Tony’s stasis; he’s forcing you to see all the possible outcomes with equal clarity. A more pedestrian show would fumble about with some forced mis-direction and throw in a pseudo-shocking choice to punch the scene closed. In lesser hands, Paulie Walnuts would have been either unceremoniously dumped into the ocean, or deposited back on the dock with a warm pat on the cheek.
This can get frustrating to watch because audiences generally like closure and The Sopranos has never been much for providing it. Like much of David Lynch’s hypnotic film work, the power of The Sopranos comes from the threat that it will never make any pat narrative sense. Instead the show is sharp enough to create a fantastic set of possibilities, but deliver you to a completely unseen conclusion. In some sly ways, much of the series is about that disillusionment. Life never seems to work out the way you think it should, and if anyone can testify to that, it’s Tony Soprano.
The Sopranos might have originated on television, but at this point it has transcended it. Perhaps the only sure bet is that Tony won’t go out in a hail of bullets like the typical Hollywood gangster. His fate is likely to be much grimmer, one of collapsed potential. I half expect the final image to be of a once proud Tony, caged like a circus lion. Once a symbol of power, now defanged and caged, brought low by the insurmountable march of time.
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