The Sopranos

The Beloved Spouse and I recently finished a trip through all 86 episodes of The Sopranos. This is our third trip through most of them, the first since the series went off the air, and it's interesting to see how our perceptions have changed.

First, I remembered Seasons Five and Part One of Season Six as not being as good as the rest. I didn't see that at all this time. The stories were consistently tight, and the pacing was solid throughout each season. Yes, Tony's coma dreams after Uncle Junior shot him went on a bit long, but my memory of things dragging when Vito's homosexuality drove him out of Jersey didn't hold up. True, that wasn't their best sub-plot, but it wasn't dead weight, either.

The greatest accomplishment of David Chase and his writers has to be making us care for seven years about people who are, frankly, bad people. Not evil; that implies two dimensions. Everyone in the show had their virtues, but they didn't make up for being duplicitous, whining, conniving bastards the rest of the time. James Gandolfini is brilliant week in and week out, but Tony is, as he describes himself more than once, a malevolent prick. Yes, he loves his kids and animals, and does occasionally go out of his way to be nice. Not to get all Biblical, but were he to be weighed in the balance, he'd be found wanting.

Carmela is worse than a whore in her way. At least with a whore you know it's a cash transaction. AJ sets new standards for being a whiny little pussy. Meadow had her snotty bitch period as a teen, but in the end is probably the most likable character. She grows and matures while everyone else revels in their dysfunction. Of the hoods, Bobby Baccalieri is the most sympathetic. He's a violent criminal, too, but his loyalty--to his dead wife, his children, to Janice, and to Tony--is touching.

I've had almost four years to think about the famous last episode and its ending. Time to place it in context, use what I've learned about story in the interim to better appreciate it, so i was looking forward to it again. It's still a chickenshit cop-out. Chase didn't know what to do, so he did nothing. Granted, after seven years of being relentlessly non-judgmental about his characters, he didn't want to turn the ending into a morality play. Fine. He owed his audience better. Even Deadwood had a more satisfying ending, and David Milch didn't know that show was going to end when it did. (Though it was Milch's fault it did end, the selfish bastard.)

Now Tony and Paulie and Sil go back on the shelf until we've worked our way through Lonesome Dove, Generation Kill, Deadwood, and The Wire again. (Plus whatever else strikes our fancy in the interim. Justified? Terriers, even though it was canceled?) We'll be back to visit with The Sopranos in a couple of years. I'm sure we'll see different things again when we do. It's that good a show.

Looking Below the Line

The Beloved Spouse and I are working our way through The Sopranos again, finished Season 5 last night. At one point, Tony’s sitting in his office at The Bing and Corky mentions, “I have that tape dispenser.” I immediately looked around him and thought, “Someone dressed that set,” and all the minutiae that are involved.

The whole set dressing thing would not have occurred to me had I not read Below the Line, by John McFetridge and Scott Albert. It’s a pastiche of stories—some related, some not—of the goings-on at a Toronto movie set, where an American movie is being made. The book gets into the friction between the Canadian and American sides (the Americans make films in Canada because it’s cheaper, then look down on the Canadians; the Canadians are happy for the business, but frustrated because the American 800-pound gorilla makes it harder to get good Canadian films made), but mostly it’s about all the stuff that has to happen for a move to get made that the audience never sees. (“Below the Line,” in movie parlance.)

It’s a fun book to read—the scene where the transport captain takes the star to a hockey game is laugh out loud funny---and also educational, without hitting you over the head about it. It’s full of conversations about finding locations, the frustrations of being a Production Assistant, dressing sets, and half a dozen other things that have to occur for you to see even a piece of shit at the local multiplex. (The book is, unfortunately, out of print, and not available on Kindle. I found my copy at an online used bookstore.)

Back to The Sopranos. Once TBS points out the tape dispenser, I’m watching for everything. Tony slides down a snowy hill outside Johnny Sack’s yard to escape the feds, and I think “Location scout. MoGib.” Johnny Sack slips and falls in the snow. “Stunt man.” Watch some of the fine work turned in by people who were under the radar as actors when the show was made, and I'm thinking, "Casting Director."

I even caught a goof. Tony meets Johnny outside his house, a foot of snow on the ground. Johnny said to be there at 6:30 AM, he had a plane to catch, and I’m thinking “No way is there that much sunlight at 6:30 that time of year in New Jersey. (I think that’s Continuity, but I’m not sure.)

I love that kind of thing. Some people would ask how I can enjoy the movie, seeing all the wires and engines that make its illusion work. I say it’s the cost of being a writer and wondering how things work under the hood. When I was a musician, one of my best teachers told a class I was in that we had chosen to devote our lives to music, we no longer had the luxury of listening purely for enjoyment; we had to think, “How did he do that? Why was that choice made?” The same holds true for writers, I think. Certainly so far as writing technique goes, and for cinematic choices, as well, since it’s still storytelling. What I’m noticing now is just another level, and it’s fun.

Also, I’m just curious. I see anything, and I want to know how it works, why it’s made that way. This means I’m rarely bored, and sometimes frustrated. That has “writer” pasted all over it, too.