Say what you will about The Sopranos's major strengths and weaknesses as a television show, but it does scenes of intense family drama and quiet family heartbreak incredibly well. The blow up between Tony and Janice, with years of history and bad blood spilling out, was a thing of beauty, and the final scene with Tony asking his uncle if he loves him, and their mutual, pained responses, was incredibly sad. Great work from all involved.
Janice may be one of the worst people on television. She somehow manages to seem worse than Tony. I don't mean she's a bad character; she's great as someone who stirs the pot on the show and fills the shoes of Livia, but my god, it seems like each major storyline she gets, she finds new ways to be awful and selfish and harsh. But it's still easy to see how, as awful as she is, Tony's anger toward her is directed at his mother, not her, and that the attempted choking was meant to be done with a pillow to a different woman four years earlier.
The Paulie/Feech stuff was amusing when it came to Paulie's usual ridiculousness, and was a great example of how (1) tensions are bubbling with the Class of '04 and the current crew and (2) the mob thinks they're everyone's friend, but they're really just taking a bite out of the little guys they claim to be helping.
And the New York power vacuum business keeps simmering. Shows like The Sopranos deal in anticlimax, but it certainly feels like we're building to a slow but steady break point there.
Of course then there's Junior's little jaunt. Is it just me or did his dementia turn from mild to terrible pretty quickly? I know that some time is supposed to have passed between last season and this one, and I'm not a doctor so I'm totally unqualified to say whether the "mini-strokes" described work this way, but it still feels fast. Sadly, I can say from personal experience that this depiction of Junior was, in many ways, spot on as to the grief and pain of seeing an elderly relative who is slowly losing their capacity, from the resentfulness of help to the moments of worry. I'm curious to see where the show is going with the story.
(As a side note, at this point in the story, is there much that distinguishes Feech's trajectory from Richie Aprille? I mean, the characters certainly have different personalities--one is gregarious and loud, and the other is kind of reserved and weasely--but they both seem like a pair of older guys who make it out of the can, try to reclaim what they once had, and are surprised at the friction they get and how things have changed. I'll be interested to see if his storyline develops differently.)
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2015-07-27T03:57:31Z
Say what you will about The Sopranos's major strengths and weaknesses as a television show, but it does scenes of intense family drama and quiet family heartbreak incredibly well. The blow up between Tony and Janice, with years of history and bad blood spilling out, was a thing of beauty, and the final scene with Tony asking his uncle if he loves him, and their mutual, pained responses, was incredibly sad. Great work from all involved.
Janice may be one of the worst people on television. She somehow manages to seem worse than Tony. I don't mean she's a bad character; she's great as someone who stirs the pot on the show and fills the shoes of Livia, but my god, it seems like each major storyline she gets, she finds new ways to be awful and selfish and harsh. But it's still easy to see how, as awful as she is, Tony's anger toward her is directed at his mother, not her, and that the attempted choking was meant to be done with a pillow to a different woman four years earlier.
The Paulie/Feech stuff was amusing when it came to Paulie's usual ridiculousness, and was a great example of how (1) tensions are bubbling with the Class of '04 and the current crew and (2) the mob thinks they're everyone's friend, but they're really just taking a bite out of the little guys they claim to be helping.
And the New York power vacuum business keeps simmering. Shows like The Sopranos deal in anticlimax, but it certainly feels like we're building to a slow but steady break point there.
Of course then there's Junior's little jaunt. Is it just me or did his dementia turn from mild to terrible pretty quickly? I know that some time is supposed to have passed between last season and this one, and I'm not a doctor so I'm totally unqualified to say whether the "mini-strokes" described work this way, but it still feels fast. Sadly, I can say from personal experience that this depiction of Junior was, in many ways, spot on as to the grief and pain of seeing an elderly relative who is slowly losing their capacity, from the resentfulness of help to the moments of worry. I'm curious to see where the show is going with the story.
(As a side note, at this point in the story, is there much that distinguishes Feech's trajectory from Richie Aprille? I mean, the characters certainly have different personalities--one is gregarious and loud, and the other is kind of reserved and weasely--but they both seem like a pair of older guys who make it out of the can, try to reclaim what they once had, and are surprised at the friction they get and how things have changed. I'll be interested to see if his storyline develops differently.)