Saturday 26 February 2011

2028 The real Kings Speech, The Sopranos and Mad Dogs

On Wednesday evening 23rd February 2011 I watched an excellent programme on the real Kings Speech in which three former patients spoke of their experience with two having nothing put praised for the man who had helped them. The Third individual was the son of British Fascist leader Oswald Moseley. He was interesting because his comments suggested that he had resisted opening up and that his cure had come in the second world war when as a Platoon Commander it was essential to give clear and immediate directions to his men.

The programme accurately described the stages of development from the initial contact prior to the visit to Australia. The programme did confirm that the Duchess of York had visited Logue’s consulting room in Harley Street. What impressed and enlightened was the various clips of the Duke and then as King speaking and while he developed his own pace with pauses the struggle and the pain was also evident. The was also the radio broadcast by the Archbishop in which in commented to the speech disability and mention that by the Christmas of 1944 the King had felt confident enough to undertake the Speech himself, allowing Logue to spend Christmas with his family while Logue’s wife was back in Australia. The reputation of both men was significantly enhanced by this programme. I missed the last 20 minutes having dozed through accumulated tiredness but was able to have a second and full viewing on Thursday on the Channel Four player.

The third of four episodes of Mad Dogs became more farce than thriller in the sun. In the opening sequence the quartet take the body out of the freezer and cut off the hands as well as legs to suggest this has been an Albanian Mafia killing. The police woman had arrived early morning and shown a photo of the boat owner explaining his method of death by the Albanians. She had also attempt sow seeds of dissent between the men offering one special help and providing her contact information card.

The second part of the programme concerned the arrival of height challenged man previously appearing with the Tony Blair mask. He took three of the four prisoner, the fourth had gone off in a huff and fortunately returned later. The little man wanted to know the whereabouts of the yacht and tied the hands of the three with a special device he had brought with him and then the legs of two of them together while he placed a noose on the third and threatened to throw him over the balcony. Fortunately the fourth returned and armed with a garden spade was able to disable the man and prevent the hanging. The attacker was then tied to a chair and placed in the well.

Later they find that he has been removed from the well and has been killed and placed in the Freezer with a note ! “We said do not go to the police.” The level of panic between the four increases although there is also the question of the money with three admitting they have kept back between one and three of the 500 Euro notes. When one is used to pay for drinks at a hotel bar, where they go to bribe the girl who was at the villa to keep her mouth shut about the visit, it is refused because of insufficient change with the comment that only drug traffickers use notes of this size.

The Sopranos is now well underway in the Atlantic Channel re run from the commencement. In the episodes two and three there are three series development features. The overriding is Tony’s panic attacks and his ambivalent reaction to the psychiatrist when she attempt to probe causes and make connections. In one of the visits he reacts to a picture in his waiting room and begins to project some of the life death and loss issues which has prompted him to make the first visit in the first episode. He walks out of the office in anger when she asks him to start expressing his real feelings to her and in particular his possession of negative feelings. The precipitating cause of the latest outburst is the cancerous illness and hospitalization of another Mafia gang (Di Meo) acting boss member Jackie Aprile. Tony arranges for one of the stripper whores to visit the dying man to cheer him up as a scantily dressed pretend nurse later one night.

The seniors of Tony’s gang also visit in hospital including the enforcer of Tony’s brother’s separate operations who presses “Junior” Soprano to take action against Christopher and his drug addict trigger happy associate for their second taking of a loaded transport truck. In the second series episode “46 Long” Christopher and his partner arrange with the driver to take a truck with entertainment electronics from a transport company that is paying Junior protection money Tony negotiates peace with his brother by getting Christoper to pay the requested tribute fine of £15000 of which Tony keeps a third without telling anyone.

The two then plan the taking of a truck loaded with fine suits. This is hijacked by partner Brendan high on drugs with two others and the driver is accentually killed. Tony insists that the truck is returned to the company which they do but only after Tony‘s associates help themselves to the pick of the items. Junior consults his mother after being pressed to take action by his enforcer and at the end of the epsiode 3, Denial, Anger, Acceptance, Brendan is shot dead in his bath while Christopher is badly beaten.

In the previous episode Tony wrestles over the future of his mother after the problems of living on her own mount up. Eventually she is persuaded to go to a retirement community. She plays on the rivalry between the young brother and Tony to get support for her position.

In the 3rd episode Tony is approached by a colleague to help out an Hasidic Jew whose daughter wants a divorce but the husband who is claiming 50% of the Motel Hotel business he helped to build up during the years of marriage. Tony goes against advice not to get involved and agrees to take on the case for 25% of the enterprise. However the husband says he would rather die than given in, knowing that the father in law will not agree to his being killed because of the belief that he will suffer life long religious harm if he does. As a consequence Tony agrees to a settlement which reduces the demand from 50% to 15% but insists on his 25% so his involvement has only reduced the original 50% requests to 40%. The father in law belatedly agrees with his son that it was a mistake to involve Tony and that once he has his foot in the door he will become difficult to get rid off and thereafter their future existence will be governed by the gangster boss. (It is).

Tony’s wife Camila has organised a social event to raise money of a peadiatric hospital. She works with the wife of Artie Bucco Tony’s friend and restaurant owner who provides the food for the party. Tony has arranged for the restaurant to be burnt down because he knows that brother Junior plans to assassinate a rival at the restaurant which would result in his friend losing his position. Tony offers to stake the rebuild when the insurance payment is held up. His wife feels patronised by Carmela and discloses that before they married their respective partners, she and Tony hand a fling but she is is well satisfied with the decision not to continue with Tony and go with her present husband. She remains satisfied with her decision as she believes Carmela is. The look on Carmela suggests she is not as confident about her situation.

Tony and Carmel’s daughter and her sleep over best friend are having great difficulties coping with preparing for choir concert and for pre graduation exams and their social life. They approach Christopher for drugs to enable them to study without sleep. He refuses knowing what her father will do if her finds out. When she says she will go to a certain area to buy drugs he warns her that she as likely to be robbed and raped as get the drugs. He decides to bring the stuff over to the house. Carmela, suspicious, follows Tony into the girl’s room where he says he has come on behalf of his partner to ask his cousin if she is interested in going out with him. The parents are proud of their daughter when she sings in the choir and then when she graduates. They do not know her real life and ambitions.

At the end of second episode Tony beats a bar man senseless with a telephone displacing the anger he feels but which he cannot express directly. He no longer feels in control.

In Libya the world experiences what happens when such a man is allowed unlimted power.

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