There was a certain optimism, if you can call it that, in the early-to-mid points of the season. Guys were getting out of jail and coming home. Money didn't seem to be the lurking specter it was in Season 4. Tony being apart from Carmela seemed to give him the little bit of a push he needed to examine aspects of how he is, of how he acts toward the important people in his life. He seemed to be remembering why Carmela is important to him, and in a peculiar way, vice versa as well.
And then that all faded away. Then, it started to feel like a mutual ransom. Tony would poison every divorce lawyer in town so that Carmela couldn't find a good one, and scare off any forensic accountants so that she couldn't get her fair share. He had to have what he wanted -- he always does -- and block any and every of Carmela's attempts to escape. It's a trap, and a certain point, Tony knows it and Carmela is a resigned to it. But knowing that, Carmela still extracts her price, her compensation for giving into something that's clearly against her wishes. That price turns out to be a half-hearted promise that Tony's daliance won't intrude into their lives. (Carmela seems resistant at first but then knows that's the best she's going to get.) And it's also a $600,000 lot to build on. AJ's right that it is "fucking weird" when they get back together because it's a business deal, an exchange of value, of two people realizing that they're stuck in each other's gravitational pull, not that they truly love each other.
There's a lot of questioning of love in this episode. Christopher questions whether Tony loves him. Tony S. is forced to confront how much of his affection for Tony B. is love and how much of it is guilt. (I really enjoyed Buscemi's delivery when Tony S. confesses and he asks if all of the casino and other perks he'd received were because of that. He didn't really care and had moved past it long ago in a way Tony S. hadn't.) And the New Jersey mob captains question the extent to which Tony loves his cousins at the expense of his own crew.
I have to admit, I was a little underwhelmed by this finale. Sure, the FBI getting Johnny Sack right after he and Tony S. had patched things up was kind of an interesting twist, but I don't know. The show trades in anticlimax, and I enjoyed Tony's elegant solution to the Tony B. problem at the end of the day, of swallowing his feelings and doing what had to be done, but it all felt sort of inevitable. So much on this show is inevitable and yet wrings more out of the process of getting from the beginning to end. Here is one of the few people in the world who could talk to Tony like a peer instead of an underling, at least to a degree, and somehow his death and that loss didn't feel as impactful as it might have.
I'm not demanding mob violence fireworks or anything (though we did get some of those), but like the Sopranos' marriage, it just felt like falling back into something rather than cutting new territory. Maybe that's the point -- the stasis of this way of life persists despite the numerous events that threaten to jostle it. Carmela can kick Tony out. Tony B. can get out of jail. New York can have a civil war. But that bear in black will still come lumbering into the backyard no matter what happens.
(As an aside, the comedy of Carmela and Tony's reaction to AJ's potential career in "event planning" was amazing.)
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2015-08-01T18:30:09Z
There was a certain optimism, if you can call it that, in the early-to-mid points of the season. Guys were getting out of jail and coming home. Money didn't seem to be the lurking specter it was in Season 4. Tony being apart from Carmela seemed to give him the little bit of a push he needed to examine aspects of how he is, of how he acts toward the important people in his life. He seemed to be remembering why Carmela is important to him, and in a peculiar way, vice versa as well.
And then that all faded away. Then, it started to feel like a mutual ransom. Tony would poison every divorce lawyer in town so that Carmela couldn't find a good one, and scare off any forensic accountants so that she couldn't get her fair share. He had to have what he wanted -- he always does -- and block any and every of Carmela's attempts to escape. It's a trap, and a certain point, Tony knows it and Carmela is a resigned to it. But knowing that, Carmela still extracts her price, her compensation for giving into something that's clearly against her wishes. That price turns out to be a half-hearted promise that Tony's daliance won't intrude into their lives. (Carmela seems resistant at first but then knows that's the best she's going to get.) And it's also a $600,000 lot to build on. AJ's right that it is "fucking weird" when they get back together because it's a business deal, an exchange of value, of two people realizing that they're stuck in each other's gravitational pull, not that they truly love each other.
There's a lot of questioning of love in this episode. Christopher questions whether Tony loves him. Tony S. is forced to confront how much of his affection for Tony B. is love and how much of it is guilt. (I really enjoyed Buscemi's delivery when Tony S. confesses and he asks if all of the casino and other perks he'd received were because of that. He didn't really care and had moved past it long ago in a way Tony S. hadn't.) And the New Jersey mob captains question the extent to which Tony loves his cousins at the expense of his own crew.
I have to admit, I was a little underwhelmed by this finale. Sure, the FBI getting Johnny Sack right after he and Tony S. had patched things up was kind of an interesting twist, but I don't know. The show trades in anticlimax, and I enjoyed Tony's elegant solution to the Tony B. problem at the end of the day, of swallowing his feelings and doing what had to be done, but it all felt sort of inevitable. So much on this show is inevitable and yet wrings more out of the process of getting from the beginning to end. Here is one of the few people in the world who could talk to Tony like a peer instead of an underling, at least to a degree, and somehow his death and that loss didn't feel as impactful as it might have.
I'm not demanding mob violence fireworks or anything (though we did get some of those), but like the Sopranos' marriage, it just felt like falling back into something rather than cutting new territory. Maybe that's the point -- the stasis of this way of life persists despite the numerous events that threaten to jostle it. Carmela can kick Tony out. Tony B. can get out of jail. New York can have a civil war. But that bear in black will still come lumbering into the backyard no matter what happens.
(As an aside, the comedy of Carmela and Tony's reaction to AJ's potential career in "event planning" was amazing.)