Lap of Honour: The Legend of Tennessee Moltesanti
One of the things no one tells you about The Sopranos is how much new value you can extract from revisiting the series every few years. I was already in my mid-20s when satellite TV aired reruns out here at ungodly hours, and then callously cut the lights halfway through season 5. So I’m pretty sure I’ve already seen the first season — but episode after episode produces notes of such subtlety that it’s easy to see why and how this is the show that not only built the house of HBO; but went on to usher in the era of TV’s ‘dangerous man’.
Tony Soprano, played by the late James Gandolfini, is a ‘capo’ rising up the ranks of the New York/New Jersey mob scene. When we first meet him he’s experiencing debilitating anxiety attacks that cause him to black out, shortly after strange, life-questioning seances: the loudest of which is a flock of ducks that keeps happening by his swimming pool. At the behest of his wife Carmela (the equally sensational Edie Falco) he agrees to enter therapy — where the line is not so much towed as it is tightrope-walked, the deeper down his soul Tony escorts Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco). If you want to explain things very simply to your grandkids someday, (and believe me, I’m trying here), The Sopranos is the greatest television show in American history because it mines countless jewels from a simple concern: what if mobsters wonder anywhere as much as we do about the meaning of life?
By the time we get to episode 8, we’ve established oil-fills of information. Tony has reluctantly but respectfully ceded leadership of the local ‘business’ to his Uncle Junior — Carmela has a more powerful hold over Tony than even he realises — Tony’s nephew Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) could perhaps learn to fuck around a lot less — and Tony really does worry about the impact his legacy will have on his inquisitive kids. It’s absolutely delicious how well this episode typifies the entire show within 51 minutes; but even more impressive is the array of angles, and a storytelling technique or two, that it uses to do so.
The Feds have recently made out the network of mobsters operating in and just out of New York, and have Tony and Uncle Junior (and several others) in their crosshairs. This development is not helped by some internal squabbling, largely motivated by the informality of Tony’s approach to business (“Christopherrrr!”) and Uncle Junior’s egotistic need to feel followed. Carmela visits Tony’ mother, an unlikable sorceress of a lady, at the nursing home she has very reluctantly settled into. The offer is brunch, as it’s a beautiful day out and all. As soon as his mother’s coaxed into one vehicle Tony hops out of another, and proceeds to stash a bunch of cash and firearms in her old hat boxes, in her wardrobe — ‘cause what Fed would think to look there? The moment affirms what a team he and Carmela can make, when they’re not searching each other’s bodies for the odours of other people.
Meanwhile Christopher veers from “I’ve got it, Tony,” to veering off the bend, from one episode to the next. We know that he’s recently began to work on a screenplay, and that he thinks Windows, or Microsoft Word, is terrible software. Paulie Walnuts, one of Tony’s best men, pays him a visit to ask what’s the matter. (The local grapevine reports the cashier at a local bagel shop has recently had his toe blown off, for no apparent reason.) Christopher tells him about a vivid dream we witnessed at the start of the episode, one of many containing a Polish hit vanquished long ago. Christopher is struggling for purpose. He doesn’t have Tony’s respect, for being more impetuous than he’s willing to admit, and he resents that his runner (offed by Uncle Junior’s men) has made the news while he continues to drown in obscurity — as a mere errand boy for the mob.
Chris’s a long way from being ‘made’, and tells Paulie that writing a screenplay has introduced him to the concept of narrative arcs. “What’s mine?” he wonders, not so much breaking the fourth wall as hammering a juicy crack in it. It’s a touching moment, swiftly outdone by Tony’s temper erupting and then simmering in a rolling Lexus. After dressing him down, Tony asks Christopher if it’s possible he’s depressed and whether he’s ever considered suicide. The moment is uneasy — really Tony’s asking for himself — and when Christopher dismisses such talk as unmanly, you can almost hear several more seasons’ bodies roll.
I was chuckling at this cat video just now, because the algorithms know me a little bit maybe, in which the cat in question basically hisses fuck the world but doesn’t object to belly rubs. This reminds me of The Sopranos: how foolish men, especially, do their damnedest to wander away from their mortality, only to circle right back.
