The Sopranos (HBO) TV Show • Page 10

The writer mentioning that Patsy contributed to Tony's demise for revenge of his brother never crossed my mind until now.

 

God damn reading that completely sold me, what a read.

 

same. it was never even a remote thought i had. or that Rhiannon was ever an important or meaningful character at all, other than just to serve as a distraction to AJ.

 

eh, i don't like this kind of analysis. i'm all for identifying story elements dramatic irony and symbolism, but approaching stories as puzzle boxes lends itself heavily to confirmation bias. for instance, he argues that "When Butch learns of Phil's fate [his head being run over], he likely will believe the mutilation was done intentionally and this belief will serve as the impetuous for Butch to go back on his word to "back off". This is a sneakily high degree of conjecture - interpreting that an off-screen and relatively unknown character will respond to a perceived injustice in such a way that fits his theory without any actual substantive information backing it. or, his interpretation of Tony's "wouldn't kick her out of bed for purging cookies" line - that it's a reference to internet tracking even though it really doesn't make any sense that it would mean anything other than a cruel and totally characteristic play on the phrase that Tony is making at Rhiannon's expense given she was hospitalized for an eating disorder.

this isn't to say that the sopranos doesn't have tons of ambiguity, symbolism, or dramatic irony - chase loves it, to be sure. and some points - such as the cat - are valid. but the concluding correlation between all these factors smacks of confirmation bias; the sopranos was always dense with meaning, but when it wanted to tell us things, it told us. more often than wanting us to sleuth our ways to its desired conclusion, i believe, it just didn't want us to ever know what that conclusion was (for instance, the Russian in Pine Barrens).

 

I thought the purging cookies explanation was a bit of a reach as well, that and the possible mythical connection to Rhiannon's name.

 

mm, and once it gets to that point i start losing interest because while conjecturing over tropes and art is totally cool, i don't care to attribute it to authorial intent unless i believe there is good reason to. his greater points about Patsy starting to lose faith are also valid, but i don't think they're meant to mean anything conclusive; i think a much more reasonable conclusion is that much like Paulie in season 4, the faith of men in the mafia is always fickle at best. this is much more in line with the themes that the Sopranos loves - that this is a "good thing coming to an end," that keeping your family/ies happy is impossible for a community so corrupt, that it all ends up with death or jail for guys like them, that there are always loose ends left untied, et cetera. but that signals to me that that conflict with Patsy is coming to a head in some vague future, not immediately.

 

We, the audience of The Sopranos, should not expect anything in the way of a reunion episode or a movie - unless, perhaps, it centers around Meadow exacting her revenge on the Lupertazzi family...
I would watch this.

 

Yeah those two points in particular seemed a little far fetched but most of it seemed to add up, especially about the transitions in the scenes, and everything about the cat.

 

On my rewatch, and I know we were all talkin about Whitecaps possibly being the best ep of the series. Man I forgot how good Whoever Did This was though. It’s jam-packed with so much story. The editing is great. We see a softer side of Ralph, and there’s some great classic Sopranos humor throughout.

Rosalie “Justin’s gonna be fine Ralph.”

“That kid’s gonna be a vegetable.”

Then Carm/her talking shit, and gossip about Arty. Right as he looks over they give him the most exaggerated smile/waves lol.

Then the exchange of Janice, and Svetlana.

“Look I’m sorry I took your leg,....but it got me closer to Go..”

“Ugh! Out of my way! You’re boring woman!”

 

Whoever wrote that didn't understand the show. The point of the Rhiannon character was to show how A.J. took the easy way out, dating a younger girl that will look up to him and his wealth rather than an older, indepedent, experienced woman like Blanca who finds him childish. The point of the episode where Patsy almost shot at Tony was that he decided he would rather forget his brother and make money.

 

I am more inclined to believe and go with your interpretation of Rhiannon over the article's version, but I think Patsy initially (in season 3?) decided to "put his grief behind him", but perhaps was swayed differently later on in the show by New York, re-kindling his revenge fire. We will never know the true motives and workings behind Tony's demise/death, but the Patsy scenario is sure an interesting one to think about, considering it takes us back to events that took place all the way in the beginning of the show. Tony put the wheels in motion of his own death in season 1 or 2 if that is the case, and that to me is definitely a Chase-like story point.

 

Patsy only cares about himself. He threatens to kill a woman at Tony's request and then picks up groceries for his wife like nothing ever happened. He probably encouraged his son to marry Tony's daughter in order to help him rise up the ranks, which he arguably deserved over Chris in season four.

Chase was very deliberate with the ending, from the conversation about not knowing about your own death to Silvio not initially registering Gerry's death to Bobby not noticing the assassins to the flashback to the Bobby conversation to the man in the Member's Only jacket to the technique of showing scenes from a first person perspective in multiple parts of the last episode. There is enough evidence to argue that Tony is killed, but the better interpretation of the ending is that even if he is not killed that night, it is a constant worry. Tony's inner circle was mostly immune to death throughout the show, but in the final season you see a complete decimation of his crime family. The last time we see everyone together is at Ray's birthday party in season five, and from that dinner table you see that Tony is left with little. Patsy and Paulie are there but he does not have full faith in them, his friendship with Hesh is broken, Silvio is likely permanently comatose, Larry is in jail, and Carlo has become an informant. In the last episodes Tony is surrounded by people most viewers can't even name.

Regarding the ending, there is another scene that is not often brought up. In an earlier season, when Tony thinks he is going to be arrested, he says that all he wants to do is make sure his wife and children are taken care of and then they can do anything they want to him. The last episode is where that finally happens; Carmela's spec house project has expanded to a second house, Meadow has a high-paying job at the law firm, and A.J. is on the path of nepotism that Little Carmine is on. It makes more poetic sense that he dies in that episode; he failed to produce a stable heir for his crime family, but he helped his real family escape the lifestyle they were always intrinsically tied to by living off his money and crime.

 

I’m on episode two of the third season. The Patsy stuff with him “putting his grief behind him” after pissing in Tony’s pool just happened.

 

Just finished Pine Barrens. Wow...

 

I love the whole Chris & Paulie dynamic throughout the series

 

Yeah it sorta reminded me of the Alec Baldwin/Anthony Hopkins dynamic from The Edge

 

Reruns of this have been playing on cable lately. Probably my favourite show ever. Can't wait to watch it with my boyfriend, he hasn't watched it at all!

 

idk about the stuff with meadow, I just rewatched the ending and it almost seems like she was supposed to be there - I think that's why they show her trying a several times to park her car and failing, delaying her actually being at the table when they all get shot.

 

i won't deny that it could have that effect, but it seems to me more being the rule of three + building suspense

 

It's a testament to the greatness of the show that people continue to discuss the finale's last moments as though it happened merely weeks ago. I for one actually was very satisfied with the ending and felt the show had, thematically, fulfilled its purpose. I never felt the need to spend more time with Tony and the others, because I knew, regardless of what actually happened in the restaurant scene, things would always remain the same. If Tony lived, he'd always choose darkness over light. That's what I took as his "I GET IT!!!" moment when he was on peyote.

 

After going through the entire season almost in front of him, my roommate has decided to start the series.

I’m not mad.

 

Season five has been really goddamn good. I just started “Long Term Parking”.

 

hoo boy

 

Are you in for a rough episode

 

Long Term Parking is probably my favorite serious episode. Pine Barrens is my favorite more light-hearted.