We Don’t Talk Like That Here

Saying that "The Sopranos" traffics heavily in mortality is like saying its subject is gangsters. But the obviousness of that shouldn't obscure just how consistently the show delivers anything but the expected–last night turning what at first seemed an elementary treatment on death and life into a "meditation" on the subject from entirely unexpected angles (litigious Buddhists? A Radisson as purgatory? Steve Buscemi–the cousin Tony B. whom Tony S. himself euthanized by shotgun–as an overeager party host named in the credits simply as "Man"?).

Historians say it's impossible to determine the significance of events until time has passed, and "The Sopranos" is something like that. What last week seemed merely touching and mostly corny–Carmella playing "Smoke on the Water" for her comatose husband ("It's your favorite")–takes on true significance as Tony is lured to the distantly flashing beacon out across the eternally monotonous Orange County burb-scape.

The "fire in the sky" is always there, of course, a flickering reminder for everyone. But then there are those for whom the death instinct exerts real pull. "It's your favorite" indeed: One could just as easily imagine Tony/Kevin giving up his briefcase and joining the party; it would be so simple, and preferable to yet more years of managing the incompetents on whom his worldly existence depends, a mess of his own making. Yet isn't his survival a sort of death, too? Kicking and screaming is how Tony returns (tachycardia brought on by Paulie's innane mutterings), as traumatic as actual birth by the hateful mother whose own death obsession consigned her son to a "lifetime" almost entirely devoid of the authentic emotions needed to give it meaning. It would be better to die as Kevin Finnerty (the last temptation of Tony) than to go on living as head of these families.

The difference between mortality and morality is just one letter, and it was shocking to see just how deep Carmella's hypocrisy has rooted itself.  On what seems the verge of a confession she has never managed to make to her oft-mentioned priest, she cries to Melfi that she knew from the get-go what her husband was. And what was that? "Not nearly as big a criminal as some other people," she says bitterly. Exhausted, washed-out, the very embodiment of the Italian wife whose vigil has made her the center of attention, she accepts a package of cash as if it were just another CD to put in the player. "I don't know how you do it," she says to her barely conscious husband, referring to the offering so reluctantly made by his ever-scheming lessers. A compliment, to be sure–and one Tony would rather not have to contemplate. We don't talk like that here, Man says to Tony outside the party. If only, the dead look on his face suggests, I had understood that as the invitation it was.