For the last 2 months I have been mostly watching The Sopranos. Last night I finished the final episode (season 6, ep 21).
How good was it ? Pretty damn good. The Wire beats it, just. But like the Wire it ended in the nick of time.
It is often said that the Sopranos is about the family; Tony is the average working guy, with the mafia used as a device to raise the pitch of his life to create a show worth watching. But regardless, Tony Soprano is a psychopath; and I've been I rooting for him to get some kind of justice ('natural' or otherwise) since the beginning. But in the final scenes the balance of my emotions were somewhat upset. The tension and ambiguity of that final scene were simply perfect for me. I thought I knew where I was in the show and then it confounded me, not just by Tony's fate but the place where the ending left me. This is what made The Sopranos the 2nd greatest ever show on TV - it pushed the boundaries of what you expect from TV. It broke rules and played with the viewers expectations. It toyed with us and in the process changed TV and thus, in some small way, made things better.
One of the most perfect things about the show was the relationship between Christopher and Adrianna. I loved the way it was clear they were the 'soul mates' they naively referred to each other as. Their fates were sealed the moment they met. Doomed from the start.
The violence and the implications of Christopher's relationship to Tony Soprano closed in on them. And the moment it came with Adrianna taken to the woods by Silv you knew Christopher was also damned.
One of Christopher's last scenes is of him at a fairground out of his head on smack and as he slides into oblivion he is joined by a stray dog. With his arms around the dog Fred Neil's 'Dolphins' is played on the soundtrack. As the sentiment of the song implies Christopher is looking for something out of reach. This was undoubtedly Adrianna and the dog a metaphor for either his own death and/ or his true love of Adrianna. Stirring stuff and a fantastic song now made even greater.
Download Dolphins by Fred Neil here - http://www.mediafire.com/?v4wjzdmiuyc
2 comments:
Nice to hear from you and glad to see that you are running again.
My email is spamcopeart@gmail.com
without the ham reference in obviously.
Cheers paul
The english language is not my primary language, however I can comprehend it when using the google translator. Terrific post, have them coming! With thanks!
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