Having watched the last four episodes of the penultimate season of the Sopranos I was pleased that I remembered the main outcomes. As the in past I commence with relationship between Tony and his wife Carmela, his son and daughter, his uncle and his cousins, Christopher and Tony B.
Tony continued to live at the home of his mother but appears to have established a regular and satisfy relationship with a young woman Valentina with the ability to cook and book keep. She catches her kimono on fire when cooking him some food after having sex. She is burned especially on one arm, losing her hair but not secondary degree and will fully recover in time without the need for skin grafts.
While she is in hospital Tony hires a stateroom with Butler in a top hotel overlooking Central Park. Although he spots Dr Melfi also staying there on a trip tot he city he keeps out of her way and everybody, During this time he has a young woman call to his room, has meals in his room and relaxes but the sense of being in a bubble away from the world in particular, without a woman and family is also highlighted. This I suspect is a frequent feeling of men alone away from their families, friends and regular work environments in hotel rooms all over the world; He makes a decision which is to change his life once more.
In Cold Cuts one of the main subjects in anger, at first the anger of his sister Janice when she beats up the aggressive abusive mother of a child playing against her step daughter in a football (British)game at school. She is arrested and charged and Tony insists she goes on an anger management course. It is the reaction of her husband which causes her to accept the course after the step daughter explains how embarrassed she is by what has happened and puts his foot down saying either she takes action or their relationship will end. She finds the group therapy sessions difficult at first but typical of Janice she appears to respond well after deciding it is good for her. In the past she has thrown herself into everything and every one with disastrous consequences.
Tony beats up and sends into hospital an employee just for saying a word out of turn
Tony discusses the situation with Dr Melfi who points out his own similar tendencies suggesting they link back to their background and their mother. When Tony visits his sister and her new family for a meal he goads her about her son and his lack of contact with her. Previously he has reminded her of the temper which led to the death of her previous lover and which he had to sort out for her. He is successful in driving her into a rage thus demonstrating the shallowness of her conversion. It could also demonstrate the effectiveness of his own therapy in gaining him insight, at one level helping him to function more normally as a human being however it is also being used to help him become a more effective and powerful, murdering, terrorising and thieving maniac. The humour of the series sometimes creates the atmosphere in which the unthinking or casual viewer can like this monster of a human being.
In The Test Dream while is in the hotel Tony he calls the wife of his friend and restaurant owner Tony Bucco. He does not speak and the scene suggests he has done this before, phone and not make the next move. This can be interpreted as another indication of his insight that attempting to have a serious relationship with a woman other than his wife always ends disastrously. It is as this point he arrange the call girl, although it is also odd that he does this given the previous availability of the Bada Bada girls and that such an organisation will also have a financial involvement in the whole range of sex industry interests without needing to use a public offered service.
It is after having sex with girl (which is Tony’s instance always appears successful) that the rest of this episode takes the form of protracted series of dream sequences. It begins with meeting the dead Carmine Senior who dies of natural causes and who tells him how lonely he is on the other side missing being with his wife. This is what is at the root of Tony’s personal life predicament now that his mother is dead and having gone over and over with Dr Melfi his relationship with his mother and its impact on his relationship with other women, and the way he has treated his wife yet was able to sustain the relationship over two decades despite his continuous adultery.
His sense of having a family yet separated from it is then covered in a conversation between himself and his previous relationship with Gloria Trillo who plays the part of Dr Melfi and who confides that she dies too young to have children of her own. She asks if he is ready to do what he has to do.
He is in a car driven by his father and among those in the vehicle with him are several of those who we know he killed or had killed or was involved in their killing, Pussy Bonspiero, Ralph Cifaretto and Mikey Palmice. When Tony asks where they are going he is told he is bring driven to his job, task in hand, and they pull into his home drive which open every episode and where at the beginning of each season he has gone out for the delivered newspaper, or driven over it.
Some sequences I did not understanding including one which involved Annette Benning playing a mother of someone his daughter (?) is dating at a restaurant dinner party. Throughout this episode and the previous Tony’s fascination with old films, particularly those involving fictional gangsters is constantly brought to our attention as is the influence these films have on his behaviour. Small human beings, pathetic human beings, uneducated human being all trying to be what they are not and seeing slights when none are intends aspiring to be regarded as the tough and powerful people being portrayed. It all reminds of those I encountered among the criminal classes in those six traumatic months in 1960.
In another sequence we learn perhaps what we already knew that Tony had a sexual relationship back in High school with Artie Bucco’s wife and then in a contemporary set sequence he is having passionate sex with her while Artie is close at hand coaching him. The coach aspect is also part of another dream when he goes to kill his former football (American) Molinaro who advises that he does not have to be a criminal with all the conflicts and the stress this involves. When he goes to kills the man the gun slips from him with the bullets falling out and then disintegrating when he attempts to put them back.
Tony phones his wife after waking with a start and tells her about his latest dream with the coach and she guesses correctly from previous experience that the advice given is that same as before. What would be interesting to know is if he had the dream and the advice before his session with Dr Melfi in which she has attempted to provide him with the insight that his life threatening panic attacks relate to the conflicts and stresses of his criminal activities and if he gives them up he can live a more normal life. “One cannot undo the past but one can learn to live with it in a positive and constructive way.”
In Long Term Parking Tony realises what he has been running away from. He needs Carmela and his home and calls her and they have dinner at the Nuovo Vesuvio. He promises to be faithful. Carmela who is the eternal optimist and would be devout Catholic is however realistic about the reality of this. She wants Tony to provide the funds to build a new home on some land she has acquired with a view to selling for profit. He agrees. His live in at his mother’s house girlfriend is ready to leave hospital and Tony gores to the hospital to take her back to the house, saying that he will continue to meet all her private health bills and to provide for her, but he is not staying with her and returning to his wife. She is understandably devastated and angry at the development, especially as we know Tony had told others of his intention to settle with the woman who ticked all his boxes in and out bed. When Tony arrives at the house with his luggage AJ his son greets him and asks where it should go indicating he has not been told his parents have got back together.
There has been little about the children during the latter part of the series season. Carmela is frustrated with AJ’s lack of application to get into a good college or about anything. Tony comments that Meadow has done well and takes after her mother, He observes that his son is taking after him. Carmela draws attention that he is her son as well. During the final episode All Due Respect A J organises a party for High School friends which is a success and makes a profit. Tony notes that his son is watching a film about a man who make a good living as an event planner and he and his wife comment that perhaps their son has find something which interests and can build a life on, especially when they find out he has been making inquiries about a college course which would for the basis for such a career.
The situation of his young cousin’s Christopher and his live in partner about to marry, Adriana, now reaches its climax. It will be recalled that she was blackmailed into spying on Christopher and his associates after being trapped through a drugs offence which would have given her a jail sentences of five years. The situation begins with the FBI viewing CCTV tapes of the rear of the road house club Christopher arranged for her to manage which features live bands. She places something in the dumpster and then changes her mind moving it into the boot of her car.
They bring her in for questioning over the finding of the stabbed body of someone who disappeared after visiting the club. Under instructions of Christopher and in order to ensure the club is a safe venue for members of the crew to meet and use her office area, drugs has to be sold out the venue although Adriana has a soft spot for the main seller. It was odd that in the previous episode when she and Tony were on the verge of having an affair and needed drugs they needed to take a long drive which led to the accident rather than turn to this contact, albeit the situation occurred very late after the club had closed.
I digress, on the night in question, the drug dealer asked if she would make the exception and let him use the phone in her office and cell and packed up and she agreed. When going through the club he is spotted by someone with a genuine beef about the impact of the drug on young people and threatens with a knife. The man is killed and she helps in the cover up. The Feds now give her an ultimatum. She must bring Christopher to them or face a life sentence as an accessory to murder. When she tells Christopher the predicament his reaction is to beat her but after calming down he appears to agree to their going into the witness protection programme to give up Tony and his associates.
Just when she is ready and packed one of his associates arrives to say he has been involved in a suicide attempt and will drive her to him. As the journey progresses she senses what is to happen before turning off the min road through the forest which has been the subject of several previous episodes. She is killed. We see Christopher later dispose of her case and leave in car in along term car park hence the title of the episode. He then goes into hiding. Later Tony talks to him in effort to satisfy that their position has not been compromised. Christopher appears OK about the killing of his woman and tells Carmela that they have broken up and she has left him. He also tells Tony of his disappointment that although he was convinced she loved him she was not prepared to take the initial jail sentence for him rather than spy on them.
Tony has become uncertain about Christopher and his crew became of him. The cause of this has been the simmering problems with the Carmine Crew and the feud between the Miami based Little Carmine with whom Tony has had a good close association and Johnny Sacks the former under boss who lives within Tony territory. Tony intervenes when he learns that a smuggled consignment of Vespas has been taken by Sacks when it should have been divided. Sacks denies the action and reminds that he still not convinced that Tony’s cousin, Tony B was not involved in the murder of Joey Peeps.
Tony decides to get his cousin out of the way by asking him to go and live with the elderly brother of his father to has lived in an upstate farm with his wife and there three bodies have been buried over the years, The farm has a new owner and the decision has been taken to move the bodies if their bones can be found. The uncle was a soldier in Uncle Junior’s crew who was allowed to be retired because of health problems.
On top of this outstanding problem and the murder of Johnny Peeps, his cousin Tony B has learned of the murder of one his former prison cell mates. We learn that the cell mate was gunned down by Phil and Billy Leotardo brothers and members of Johnny Sacks crew and where one of the brothers has just been brought into operations, In the following episode Christopher visits Tony when he is in Central Park overlooking hotel to report that Tony B has gone missing and is believed to be after the Leotardo brothers killing one and wounding the other. In part of the dream sequence of this episode, Tony is warned that he needs to have his cousin killed.
The death of the crew member results in Little Carmine deciding to withdraw from the battle with Johnny Sacks but to the dismay of Carmines associates. This leads to Tony having a formal sit-down with Sacks and the family of the dead crew member. They are not satisfied that Tony does not know the whereabouts of cousin. The suggestion is made that he should offer Christopher as the alternative and that unless he resolves the issue all out war will break out.
Tony arranges via a contact in the phone company to put a trace on the phone in the building where his cousin is camping out enjoying the services of calls girls. Tony visits and explains why he has protected his cousin over the year because of why he dropped out of the crime for which his cousin was sentenced. His cousin asks Tony to protect his two sons.
After an attack on a former driver of Tony which leaves the man badly injured in hospital and dissensions among his crew that he is sacrificing them for his cousin. Among these is Paulie who Tony visits for the first time since the problems when the man was released from prison. Tony sees the painting of the horse he had commissioned up on wall and not destroyed as he had ordered. Paulie tries to explain that he admired the way Tony looked in the painting as a commander and that the painting was valuable and of gallery standard. Tony takes in down and to a dumpster but before departing thinks further about what had been said to him about being a general.
Tony realises that the future of everyone is at stake. He visits and kills his cousin. He advises Sacks about the location of his cousin but on finding the man dead Phil Leotardo is upset at not being able to exact revenge and Sacks advises Tony that the death did not solve anything. He arranges a meet with Sacks at his home and offers to cut Leotardo into percentages of financial actions as compensation. Sacks invites Tony in for coffee but Tony sees armed men approaching a makes a hasty retreat, getting wet and cold as he travels cross country in the heavy snow wintry conditions. He arrives home and Carmela expresses concerns at his condition. We have seen Johnny Sachs being arrested by Fed agents. Tony calls his lawyer to find out what has been happening and is pleasantly surprised to learn that one of Sacks men has been cooperating with the Feds of year and now been able to five up the whole crew. Tony is not mentioned in the indictment and the season ends with everything appearing to be going for him once more.
Tony continued to live at the home of his mother but appears to have established a regular and satisfy relationship with a young woman Valentina with the ability to cook and book keep. She catches her kimono on fire when cooking him some food after having sex. She is burned especially on one arm, losing her hair but not secondary degree and will fully recover in time without the need for skin grafts.
While she is in hospital Tony hires a stateroom with Butler in a top hotel overlooking Central Park. Although he spots Dr Melfi also staying there on a trip tot he city he keeps out of her way and everybody, During this time he has a young woman call to his room, has meals in his room and relaxes but the sense of being in a bubble away from the world in particular, without a woman and family is also highlighted. This I suspect is a frequent feeling of men alone away from their families, friends and regular work environments in hotel rooms all over the world; He makes a decision which is to change his life once more.
In Cold Cuts one of the main subjects in anger, at first the anger of his sister Janice when she beats up the aggressive abusive mother of a child playing against her step daughter in a football (British)game at school. She is arrested and charged and Tony insists she goes on an anger management course. It is the reaction of her husband which causes her to accept the course after the step daughter explains how embarrassed she is by what has happened and puts his foot down saying either she takes action or their relationship will end. She finds the group therapy sessions difficult at first but typical of Janice she appears to respond well after deciding it is good for her. In the past she has thrown herself into everything and every one with disastrous consequences.
Tony beats up and sends into hospital an employee just for saying a word out of turn
Tony discusses the situation with Dr Melfi who points out his own similar tendencies suggesting they link back to their background and their mother. When Tony visits his sister and her new family for a meal he goads her about her son and his lack of contact with her. Previously he has reminded her of the temper which led to the death of her previous lover and which he had to sort out for her. He is successful in driving her into a rage thus demonstrating the shallowness of her conversion. It could also demonstrate the effectiveness of his own therapy in gaining him insight, at one level helping him to function more normally as a human being however it is also being used to help him become a more effective and powerful, murdering, terrorising and thieving maniac. The humour of the series sometimes creates the atmosphere in which the unthinking or casual viewer can like this monster of a human being.
In The Test Dream while is in the hotel Tony he calls the wife of his friend and restaurant owner Tony Bucco. He does not speak and the scene suggests he has done this before, phone and not make the next move. This can be interpreted as another indication of his insight that attempting to have a serious relationship with a woman other than his wife always ends disastrously. It is as this point he arrange the call girl, although it is also odd that he does this given the previous availability of the Bada Bada girls and that such an organisation will also have a financial involvement in the whole range of sex industry interests without needing to use a public offered service.
It is after having sex with girl (which is Tony’s instance always appears successful) that the rest of this episode takes the form of protracted series of dream sequences. It begins with meeting the dead Carmine Senior who dies of natural causes and who tells him how lonely he is on the other side missing being with his wife. This is what is at the root of Tony’s personal life predicament now that his mother is dead and having gone over and over with Dr Melfi his relationship with his mother and its impact on his relationship with other women, and the way he has treated his wife yet was able to sustain the relationship over two decades despite his continuous adultery.
His sense of having a family yet separated from it is then covered in a conversation between himself and his previous relationship with Gloria Trillo who plays the part of Dr Melfi and who confides that she dies too young to have children of her own. She asks if he is ready to do what he has to do.
He is in a car driven by his father and among those in the vehicle with him are several of those who we know he killed or had killed or was involved in their killing, Pussy Bonspiero, Ralph Cifaretto and Mikey Palmice. When Tony asks where they are going he is told he is bring driven to his job, task in hand, and they pull into his home drive which open every episode and where at the beginning of each season he has gone out for the delivered newspaper, or driven over it.
Some sequences I did not understanding including one which involved Annette Benning playing a mother of someone his daughter (?) is dating at a restaurant dinner party. Throughout this episode and the previous Tony’s fascination with old films, particularly those involving fictional gangsters is constantly brought to our attention as is the influence these films have on his behaviour. Small human beings, pathetic human beings, uneducated human being all trying to be what they are not and seeing slights when none are intends aspiring to be regarded as the tough and powerful people being portrayed. It all reminds of those I encountered among the criminal classes in those six traumatic months in 1960.
In another sequence we learn perhaps what we already knew that Tony had a sexual relationship back in High school with Artie Bucco’s wife and then in a contemporary set sequence he is having passionate sex with her while Artie is close at hand coaching him. The coach aspect is also part of another dream when he goes to kill his former football (American) Molinaro who advises that he does not have to be a criminal with all the conflicts and the stress this involves. When he goes to kills the man the gun slips from him with the bullets falling out and then disintegrating when he attempts to put them back.
Tony phones his wife after waking with a start and tells her about his latest dream with the coach and she guesses correctly from previous experience that the advice given is that same as before. What would be interesting to know is if he had the dream and the advice before his session with Dr Melfi in which she has attempted to provide him with the insight that his life threatening panic attacks relate to the conflicts and stresses of his criminal activities and if he gives them up he can live a more normal life. “One cannot undo the past but one can learn to live with it in a positive and constructive way.”
In Long Term Parking Tony realises what he has been running away from. He needs Carmela and his home and calls her and they have dinner at the Nuovo Vesuvio. He promises to be faithful. Carmela who is the eternal optimist and would be devout Catholic is however realistic about the reality of this. She wants Tony to provide the funds to build a new home on some land she has acquired with a view to selling for profit. He agrees. His live in at his mother’s house girlfriend is ready to leave hospital and Tony gores to the hospital to take her back to the house, saying that he will continue to meet all her private health bills and to provide for her, but he is not staying with her and returning to his wife. She is understandably devastated and angry at the development, especially as we know Tony had told others of his intention to settle with the woman who ticked all his boxes in and out bed. When Tony arrives at the house with his luggage AJ his son greets him and asks where it should go indicating he has not been told his parents have got back together.
There has been little about the children during the latter part of the series season. Carmela is frustrated with AJ’s lack of application to get into a good college or about anything. Tony comments that Meadow has done well and takes after her mother, He observes that his son is taking after him. Carmela draws attention that he is her son as well. During the final episode All Due Respect A J organises a party for High School friends which is a success and makes a profit. Tony notes that his son is watching a film about a man who make a good living as an event planner and he and his wife comment that perhaps their son has find something which interests and can build a life on, especially when they find out he has been making inquiries about a college course which would for the basis for such a career.
The situation of his young cousin’s Christopher and his live in partner about to marry, Adriana, now reaches its climax. It will be recalled that she was blackmailed into spying on Christopher and his associates after being trapped through a drugs offence which would have given her a jail sentences of five years. The situation begins with the FBI viewing CCTV tapes of the rear of the road house club Christopher arranged for her to manage which features live bands. She places something in the dumpster and then changes her mind moving it into the boot of her car.
They bring her in for questioning over the finding of the stabbed body of someone who disappeared after visiting the club. Under instructions of Christopher and in order to ensure the club is a safe venue for members of the crew to meet and use her office area, drugs has to be sold out the venue although Adriana has a soft spot for the main seller. It was odd that in the previous episode when she and Tony were on the verge of having an affair and needed drugs they needed to take a long drive which led to the accident rather than turn to this contact, albeit the situation occurred very late after the club had closed.
I digress, on the night in question, the drug dealer asked if she would make the exception and let him use the phone in her office and cell and packed up and she agreed. When going through the club he is spotted by someone with a genuine beef about the impact of the drug on young people and threatens with a knife. The man is killed and she helps in the cover up. The Feds now give her an ultimatum. She must bring Christopher to them or face a life sentence as an accessory to murder. When she tells Christopher the predicament his reaction is to beat her but after calming down he appears to agree to their going into the witness protection programme to give up Tony and his associates.
Just when she is ready and packed one of his associates arrives to say he has been involved in a suicide attempt and will drive her to him. As the journey progresses she senses what is to happen before turning off the min road through the forest which has been the subject of several previous episodes. She is killed. We see Christopher later dispose of her case and leave in car in along term car park hence the title of the episode. He then goes into hiding. Later Tony talks to him in effort to satisfy that their position has not been compromised. Christopher appears OK about the killing of his woman and tells Carmela that they have broken up and she has left him. He also tells Tony of his disappointment that although he was convinced she loved him she was not prepared to take the initial jail sentence for him rather than spy on them.
Tony has become uncertain about Christopher and his crew became of him. The cause of this has been the simmering problems with the Carmine Crew and the feud between the Miami based Little Carmine with whom Tony has had a good close association and Johnny Sacks the former under boss who lives within Tony territory. Tony intervenes when he learns that a smuggled consignment of Vespas has been taken by Sacks when it should have been divided. Sacks denies the action and reminds that he still not convinced that Tony’s cousin, Tony B was not involved in the murder of Joey Peeps.
Tony decides to get his cousin out of the way by asking him to go and live with the elderly brother of his father to has lived in an upstate farm with his wife and there three bodies have been buried over the years, The farm has a new owner and the decision has been taken to move the bodies if their bones can be found. The uncle was a soldier in Uncle Junior’s crew who was allowed to be retired because of health problems.
On top of this outstanding problem and the murder of Johnny Peeps, his cousin Tony B has learned of the murder of one his former prison cell mates. We learn that the cell mate was gunned down by Phil and Billy Leotardo brothers and members of Johnny Sacks crew and where one of the brothers has just been brought into operations, In the following episode Christopher visits Tony when he is in Central Park overlooking hotel to report that Tony B has gone missing and is believed to be after the Leotardo brothers killing one and wounding the other. In part of the dream sequence of this episode, Tony is warned that he needs to have his cousin killed.
The death of the crew member results in Little Carmine deciding to withdraw from the battle with Johnny Sacks but to the dismay of Carmines associates. This leads to Tony having a formal sit-down with Sacks and the family of the dead crew member. They are not satisfied that Tony does not know the whereabouts of cousin. The suggestion is made that he should offer Christopher as the alternative and that unless he resolves the issue all out war will break out.
Tony arranges via a contact in the phone company to put a trace on the phone in the building where his cousin is camping out enjoying the services of calls girls. Tony visits and explains why he has protected his cousin over the year because of why he dropped out of the crime for which his cousin was sentenced. His cousin asks Tony to protect his two sons.
After an attack on a former driver of Tony which leaves the man badly injured in hospital and dissensions among his crew that he is sacrificing them for his cousin. Among these is Paulie who Tony visits for the first time since the problems when the man was released from prison. Tony sees the painting of the horse he had commissioned up on wall and not destroyed as he had ordered. Paulie tries to explain that he admired the way Tony looked in the painting as a commander and that the painting was valuable and of gallery standard. Tony takes in down and to a dumpster but before departing thinks further about what had been said to him about being a general.
Tony realises that the future of everyone is at stake. He visits and kills his cousin. He advises Sacks about the location of his cousin but on finding the man dead Phil Leotardo is upset at not being able to exact revenge and Sacks advises Tony that the death did not solve anything. He arranges a meet with Sacks at his home and offers to cut Leotardo into percentages of financial actions as compensation. Sacks invites Tony in for coffee but Tony sees armed men approaching a makes a hasty retreat, getting wet and cold as he travels cross country in the heavy snow wintry conditions. He arrives home and Carmela expresses concerns at his condition. We have seen Johnny Sachs being arrested by Fed agents. Tony calls his lawyer to find out what has been happening and is pleasantly surprised to learn that one of Sacks men has been cooperating with the Feds of year and now been able to five up the whole crew. Tony is not mentioned in the indictment and the season ends with everything appearing to be going for him once more.
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