The theme of this episode seemed to be having someone there for you...or not. The illusion that you have someone there for support or you don't.
The easiest of these is Christopher. He's patting J.T. on the back with one hand, and punching him with the other. (J.T., by the way, is played by Tim Daly, who folks my age will know best as Superman from the D.C. Animated Universe.) The irony seems lost on Chris, who appears legitimately surprised that J.T. didn't call him for support when he felt tempted to return to drugs in the midst of being shaken down by Chris. Chris doesn't understand being there for someone wholly, and separates his professional life and his personal life in a fit of cognitive dissonance that J.T. is right to be baffled by. To be frank, while I appreciated the theme of this particular story, I thought it actually dragged the episode down. It was a little too blunt, too blatant in what it was going for to work as well as it needed to, and in many ways it felt like the Davey storyline being rehashed only with Chris instead of Tony.
The other instance, which is also fairly on-the-nose, is Junior. I have to admit, I was kind of annoyed by this story at first. It seemed like comic relief in an episode where it didn't fit with Junior coming up with more and more outlandish excuses to attend funerals so that he can skip out on his house arrest. It seemed pretty ghoulish after a while. But then, after the death of his cousin's husband, a mere fifteen days after his cousin, he breaks down at the funeral, and it's clear how upset he is that he has no one. As he points out, he has no children, no spouse, and hardly any friends for that matter. He talks about carrying a torch for his brother's mistress but never being able to close the deal. He's a man who feels like there's no one really there for him, and it devastates him. Surprisingly moving.
And lastly, the main story, which is what bring this episode's rating up so high for me, is the story of Tony and his father's mistress. It's clearly that Tony sees, or wants to see, or hates to see, a lot of his father in himself. His ill feelings for his mother are not nearly so repressed anymore, and so upon meeting this mistress, who seems like a nice woman, his first thought is gladness, that it was his mother's fault for pushing him into the arms of this woman.
And then, he starts to unpack some of the stories he's heard. The way this woman who Tony imagines was really there for his father in a way his mother wasn't, didn't even stop smoking for him. And he starts to think about the ways his father wasn't there for his mother. And though he never comes out and says it, he starts to think about the ways he hasn't been there for Carmela. There's a lot of powerful stuff going on under the hood of Tony's story in this episode - his resentment at realizing his father gave his dog away to another family, and his being able to step outside of his own selfishness for once and imagine what his philandering does to his own family. So much said without writing it on the screen, and in a season that's reflected marginal but meaningful growth from Tony, it's another bit of his learning just a little bit more.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2015-07-30T04:35:35Z
The theme of this episode seemed to be having someone there for you...or not. The illusion that you have someone there for support or you don't.
The easiest of these is Christopher. He's patting J.T. on the back with one hand, and punching him with the other. (J.T., by the way, is played by Tim Daly, who folks my age will know best as Superman from the D.C. Animated Universe.) The irony seems lost on Chris, who appears legitimately surprised that J.T. didn't call him for support when he felt tempted to return to drugs in the midst of being shaken down by Chris. Chris doesn't understand being there for someone wholly, and separates his professional life and his personal life in a fit of cognitive dissonance that J.T. is right to be baffled by. To be frank, while I appreciated the theme of this particular story, I thought it actually dragged the episode down. It was a little too blunt, too blatant in what it was going for to work as well as it needed to, and in many ways it felt like the Davey storyline being rehashed only with Chris instead of Tony.
The other instance, which is also fairly on-the-nose, is Junior. I have to admit, I was kind of annoyed by this story at first. It seemed like comic relief in an episode where it didn't fit with Junior coming up with more and more outlandish excuses to attend funerals so that he can skip out on his house arrest. It seemed pretty ghoulish after a while. But then, after the death of his cousin's husband, a mere fifteen days after his cousin, he breaks down at the funeral, and it's clear how upset he is that he has no one. As he points out, he has no children, no spouse, and hardly any friends for that matter. He talks about carrying a torch for his brother's mistress but never being able to close the deal. He's a man who feels like there's no one really there for him, and it devastates him. Surprisingly moving.
And lastly, the main story, which is what bring this episode's rating up so high for me, is the story of Tony and his father's mistress. It's clearly that Tony sees, or wants to see, or hates to see, a lot of his father in himself. His ill feelings for his mother are not nearly so repressed anymore, and so upon meeting this mistress, who seems like a nice woman, his first thought is gladness, that it was his mother's fault for pushing him into the arms of this woman.
And then, he starts to unpack some of the stories he's heard. The way this woman who Tony imagines was really there for his father in a way his mother wasn't, didn't even stop smoking for him. And he starts to think about the ways his father wasn't there for his mother. And though he never comes out and says it, he starts to think about the ways he hasn't been there for Carmela. There's a lot of powerful stuff going on under the hood of Tony's story in this episode - his resentment at realizing his father gave his dog away to another family, and his being able to step outside of his own selfishness for once and imagine what his philandering does to his own family. So much said without writing it on the screen, and in a season that's reflected marginal but meaningful growth from Tony, it's another bit of his learning just a little bit more.