Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9Three men, three bosses, three legacies. Johnny Sack asks what kind of name he'll leave behind, and his brother-in-law tells him he'll be remembered as a great husband and father. Johnny says no, how will he be known as a mobster. The brother-in-law explains that he'll be remembered well, except that once he took on the responsibility of being boss, he became a hothead. And Johnny, as he slowly fades away, begins to feel like it was all for nothing. When he dies, some his closest colleagues in the mob toast to him, and then life goes on.
Tony is someone who always worried about legacy to begin with -- carrying on his father's, passing on Dickie Moltasanti's, and ensuring its survival with Chris. Now he looks at 'Cleaver' and he too wonders if it was all for nothing, if the degree to which he tried to bring Chris up as his own left him to be seen as a rude bully by his protege. Melfi asks if he's reading into something there, and though he's not, as the final scene with Chris and Tony's eyes as they embrace shows, it is revealing of Tony's insecurities, of his concerns about what he's leaving behind.
A Phil Leotardo has the same worry. He looks back at twenty years in jail, has the same sentiment about lost honor that's been expressed by Tony, Big Pussy, Chris, and many others on the show, and wonders if it was all worth it. He worries that all he'll leave behind is a name that he feels has been mangled, that he's sees as symbolic as his family having taken other people's shit for too long. And he seems to vow to do something about it.
It was a little more out in the open than The Sopranos usually is, not as subtle, but as usual it was well-acted (Tony's scene with Melfi especially) and looks interesting as a harbinger of things to come, and as the show itself looking back at what kind of legacy it'll leave as it closes out its run. Not my favorite episode, but an interesting one.
(7.5/10)
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how many years did phil spend in the can again? i wish they’d make that more clear
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9There was some interesting stuff in this episode. The scene with Tony and Meadow in particular was a good outing for both where there was a lot unsaid. Meadow can get kind of grating in her petulance, but I think she's supposed to be. She has to deal with the usual teenage angst and rebelliousness and at the same time she has to struggle with the fact that her dad commits crimes and kills people for a living, including, she suspects, or at least can't rule out, her ex-boyfriend.She's clearly affected by where she comes from, in a way that she was once able to partition away in her mind. There's an odd tendency from her in this episode to use 5-dollar words, and there's a clear sense that she's starting to want to distance herself from her family, to rise above them, but she struggles with giving up the familiar and comfortable. She's also one of the "no-shows" referenced in the title by her not wanting to go back to college.
Chris is the other of Tony's (surrogate) kids who gets some major time in this episode. His quick rise to the top is giving everyone from Patsy to Silvio some heartburn after they feel passed over. And while the two of them conspire to get Chris in trouble when, by all accounts, he was doing fine even if he was getting a big head, is an interesting poke at the bulges in the new power dynamic. But his drug-addled ways and attempted threesome suggest that he's closer to crumbling and being unreliable than Tony or anyone else knows.
And boy, the Danielle storyline wrapped up fast, huh? I kind of expected that to play out a bit longer before things fell apart, to where I kind of wondered what the point was. Aid being forced to work for the feds certainly seems interesting, and her throwing up was a great visual reminder of how shaken she was by everything, but still, it made me wonder where they were going with everything. I did appreciate the moment where Adrianna seems like she's going to open up about Chris's mob connections, and instead reveals a painful fact about her potential inability to have kids. Same sort of bait and switch, though obviously a much funnier one, when Chris says there's something off about Danielle, and you think he might be wise to her, and then it turns out that he thinks she's a lesbian.
Tony's kind of a no-show as well. He spends a lot of time listening to his wife and daughter argue before he gets involved. (Come to think of it, Ralphie kind of does the same thing when Tony shows up at Janice's house.
Paulie's still in jail. Carmella's still flirting with Furio. Meadow's psychiatrist (predictably) gives her Jane Lane's Mom-type advice. Danielle is married to GOB! And last, but certainly not least: "You were saying she had a nice ass." "I was trying to say something positive because she's your friend!" is the lamest, funniest excuse in the world.
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respect to GOB. ceo, magician, fbi agent, deadbeat dad. man can truly do it all. come on!
