Full disclosure, I knew what happened in this episode before I went in. Sometimes you just pick things up through cultural osmosis. But it took some of the oomph out of this one for me. It was still tragic to see what Adrianna went through, to see her tentative hopefulness and dreams of getting away from all this dashed completely. But I can only imagine what the impact would be if you didn't know it was coming.
One of the things I find interesting about The Sopranos is that, contrary to a lot of movies and shows about the mob, it's never really on the mobsters' side. Sure, the show invites you to be allured by Tony Soprano and his brood, but at the same time wants to chastise you for being allured by him. The beleaguered gardener throughout the season is a persistent reminder that these are not good men, and most of what they do involves stepping on the little guy.
But at the same time, it doesn't make the FBI agents who are plotting against the mob looking any more righteous by comparison. They gossip casually about why Adriana hooking up with Tony would be good for business. They casually discuss how a woman marrying her abuser could be good for them. They treat Adriana, a woman who is clearly out of her depth with this stuff, like a tool, almost like cattle, rather than a person. Sure, the FBI are on the side of good, to the extent it exists in a show like this, but they're just as dehumanizing and dismissive of anyone who doesn't help them achieve their goals as the mobsters are.
And that's the tragedy. Chris claims to have loved Adriana. His recurring beatings of her don't seem to lend credence to that, but he does seem broken up by it at the end of the episode. And Tony too, though he is allegedly supposed to be an unrepentant monster, has at least a moment's pause there on the lot at the end of the episode, which is more than can be said for the frosty FBI agent who's been Adriana's contact over these years.
At base, Adriana was someone reaching out for a person who cared about her, a real friend. Danielle halfway promised and provided that and then betrayed Adriana's trust. Chris seems entirely dismissive about Adriana's feelings and her stress. Her newer FBI contact bristles at any of Adriana's moments of reaching out for kinship. And Tony Soprano, the only one on the show who seems to actually connect with her, is the one who orders her killed. Adriana is, to the extent anyone on this show is, an innocent. She's dumb and naive and while she knows what's up to some degree, it's easy to see her swept up it at a level over her head. When people like that suffer or get killed, through the actions of both sides of the good guy/bad guy divide, it shows that this "war" has civilian casualties like any other.
There 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.
