Brian Damage
05-08-2007, 04:41 PM
With just four "Sopranos" episodes remaining, most of the remaining questions can be pretty much boiled down to one: Will the powder keg blow?
Will the show end with blood spattering every car seat and restaurant tablecloth in New Jersey, or will our Soprano friends survive into the flickering twilight limbo of Uncle Junior?
Creator David Chase is no help here. He's still littering his scripts with equal doses of valuable hints and useless dead ends.
But in this week's episode (rerun tonight at 10, HBO), one quick shot from the gun of Christopher Moltisanti serves as a reminder that the fuse is burning.
A number of recent episodes have seemed to subtly humanize the extended Soprano family. Christopher rhapsodizes about his daughter's innocent eyes. Tony talks about parents wanting to trade places with their sick children so the kids won't have to suffer.
Sure, they're all rotten parents, alternately indulging their kids and bellowing at them. But they want to do the right thing whether they know what it is or not, which would suggest they really are a lot like the rest of us.
Even when Tony noted that his adult friends are "all murderers," this cautionary phrase was tempered by our understanding that they mostly kill other bad guys.
Then Christopher had a few drinks, not a good strategy, and finished a conversation with his writer pal J.T. Dolan by shooting him between the eyes.
It was an impressive shot for a guy who was drunk and had only a microsecond to aim. Nonetheless, it was the most chilling "Sopranos" moment in many episodes, because it reminded us that these guys really are different from most of the rest of us in at least one critical way: They don't care who they shoot.
The final four episodes are likely to give us more subtly endearing moments, like when Paulie Walnuts jokes that Christopher's daughter will ask to be put up for adoption, or Tony tries to console a broken-hearted A.J. by explaining that the blues is a half-billion-dollar industry.
They do share characteristics with the outside world. But Christopher's chillingly offhanded execution of his bystander pal made it clear that whatever path the "Sopranos" characters end up taking, they punched their own tickets.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2007/05/08/2007-05-08_as_sopranos_winds_up_its_spats__spatter.html
Will the show end with blood spattering every car seat and restaurant tablecloth in New Jersey, or will our Soprano friends survive into the flickering twilight limbo of Uncle Junior?
Creator David Chase is no help here. He's still littering his scripts with equal doses of valuable hints and useless dead ends.
But in this week's episode (rerun tonight at 10, HBO), one quick shot from the gun of Christopher Moltisanti serves as a reminder that the fuse is burning.
A number of recent episodes have seemed to subtly humanize the extended Soprano family. Christopher rhapsodizes about his daughter's innocent eyes. Tony talks about parents wanting to trade places with their sick children so the kids won't have to suffer.
Sure, they're all rotten parents, alternately indulging their kids and bellowing at them. But they want to do the right thing whether they know what it is or not, which would suggest they really are a lot like the rest of us.
Even when Tony noted that his adult friends are "all murderers," this cautionary phrase was tempered by our understanding that they mostly kill other bad guys.
Then Christopher had a few drinks, not a good strategy, and finished a conversation with his writer pal J.T. Dolan by shooting him between the eyes.
It was an impressive shot for a guy who was drunk and had only a microsecond to aim. Nonetheless, it was the most chilling "Sopranos" moment in many episodes, because it reminded us that these guys really are different from most of the rest of us in at least one critical way: They don't care who they shoot.
The final four episodes are likely to give us more subtly endearing moments, like when Paulie Walnuts jokes that Christopher's daughter will ask to be put up for adoption, or Tony tries to console a broken-hearted A.J. by explaining that the blues is a half-billion-dollar industry.
They do share characteristics with the outside world. But Christopher's chillingly offhanded execution of his bystander pal made it clear that whatever path the "Sopranos" characters end up taking, they punched their own tickets.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2007/05/08/2007-05-08_as_sopranos_winds_up_its_spats__spatter.html