Watching The Sopranos After All These Years
One of the benefits of streaming services like Hulu or Amazon Prime is being able to binge-watch older series. I think most of the time that The Sopranos originally aired, I didn't even subscribe to cable, never mind premium channels like HBO, which ran the series. I stumbled across the series on a streaming service.
I don't have an active interest in mystery or mobster flicks, but some characters are compelling and complex, like All in the Family's Archie Bunker and Dallas' JR Ewing: without the character, the series doesn't work. You know that Archie isn't going to have a stroke yelling at Meathead and JR isn't going to waste the rest of his life in a Cuban prison. If Archie was just a crude bigot, we wouldn't care about him. Archie and JR are examples of an anti-hero.
Tony Soprano is such a richly-layered character. (Spoiler alert: if you haven't watched the series, the following discusses some elements of the storyline.) He's a mobster street boss who is seeing a female psychiatrist in an effort to deal with his panic attacks. He's a devoted family man with a troubled son and daughter but who compulsively cheats on his wife, even after they've reconciled and he's nearly killed by his paternal uncle, a higher-ranking boss. He makes repeated spurned passes at his therapist; she knows about his shady living and at one point is violently raped in a parking garage. The charges are dropped over chain of custody involving evidence of the rape (a legal technicality), and she struggles over whether to tell Tony, who she realizes could have him killed (if not do it himself). Tony himself is physically dominant and brutal; he not only ruthlessly guns down opponents--he can physically kill a man with his fists. You have the expected plots of rival families/gangs wanting to take Tony and his crime tribe out or battle over territories, of the FBI perpetually targeting him for prosecution.
I recall hearing some discussion of the final scene of the series at the time, with the family seated at a NJ diner and the Journey signature song "Don't Stop Believing" playing, although I don't recall the discussion of the scene abruptly ending in sudden darkness, which may have been a desire not to spoil viewing the series down the road. (I should not write blog posts while watching the series.) I don't even think I was aware I was watching the series finale (I knew I was watching one of the final episodes). The last scene is somewhat anomalous because most times they ate out, it was at an Italian or other restaurants serving wine. The director certainly made it seem the diner was a regular thing, e.g., discussing ordering onion rings as an appetizer. In fact, in the closing episodes, there was a clash between crime families, serious enough for Soprano to put his family in hiding. We saw a meeting of Soprano negotiating a settlement with the other mobsters and the family coming out of hiding. I do recall in the final scene that there were numerous shots of one other diner patron and Tony seems somewhat apprehensive, constantly looking around the diner and who's entering the diner. Most of that final scene seems to reflect what Tony is seeing, while other shots seem to focus on Tony himself (inferred, from someone else's perspective). Usually there is no wasted motion in a final scene: why focus on one other diner patron? We see fleeting glances of others in the diner, but the camera seems to linger over Members Only Guy (MOG). So I immediately focused on the scene when I heard Tony select "Don't Stop Believing". I'm not sure of the symbolism of the song, other than the word "stop" in the title. We see in the closing moments the diner another scene from Tony's perspective when everything goes black and silent in the middle of the song chorus for several seconds. It's fairly clear this isn't your typical fade out, life-goes-on final scene.
The only logical conclusion is that Tony is murdered by MOG, with black screen silence reflecting his death. As the cited source points out, MOG had an unobstructed view of Tony's head from the bathroom entrance. I don't recall hearing something obvious like a gunshot (in fact, there seems to be a debate over that final scene and its meaning, although the darkness is unambiguous, and Tony's murder is a logical climax to the series). Plus,Chase had been foreshadowing Tony's demise: one by one his closest relatives/subordinates have been eliminated (in particular, his nephew Chris and his brother-in-law); the other mob boss vows to chop off the head of Soprano's crime family; Tony's psychiatrist has dropped him as a client (feeling professionally responsible for Tony's ongoing violent crimes).
As someone whose hobbies include creative writing, I now appreciate why the show had such a wide following. It might have been interesting to see Tony go up on racketeering and/or other charges or Tony grooming his son to be his successor (which could have been a jump point for a sequel series). Of course, Gandolfini's 2013 passing pretty well killed off any possibility of a series resurrection. (It's not easy to see how that could happen without something like an unlikely Bobby Ewing dream storyline.) I don't think some of the violence or gratuitous topless/sex scenes were necessary, and there were weird storylines like wife Carmella's flirtations with her priest. But overall, Chase did do an excellent job making us care about his characters and their story.
More Reflections on the "Civil War"
Poor Robert E. Lee is becoming a victim of political correctness in Virginia. Truth be told, he's getting it on all sides, including libertarians, not happy with his activities in the war in Mexico. And as others point out, Lee was not nostalgic after the war and was not someone who wanted things like statues erected in his honor. Others will point that many statues and monuments were constructed decades after the war.Me, I dislike a fetish for memorializing military or political leaders; if the private sector wants to do it, fine. That being said, I don't like cultural Marxists trying to impose their intolerant presentist bias onto local jurisdictions.
During this anti-Confederate attack, I have been repulsed in reviewing hashtags by progressives using terms like "treason"; even the term "Civil War" is polemical. Let's be clear: the North invaded the South, and it was a war of aggression (don't even try to use Ft. Sumter to justify an invasion).
The Confederacy viewed secession as a natural extension to the War of Independence. They were not insurgents looking to overthrow the Union government. So the "Civil War" seems to suggest a dispute over the US government with the South looking to impose its will over the US. That is the context for treason or insurrection, not a bloodless secession of the Confederacy. The Confederacy simply wanted to be left alone; it had no territorial ambitions to conquer and annex the North. Let's point out secession was not just a Southern construct; in fact, some Abolitionists wanted the North to secede from the South.
So like others, I'll probably start using another, more fitting name like the War Between the States.
Finally, libertarians are split on the war. I don't accept that author's distinctions.
First, let's be clear: we libertarians who support secession of the South do not deny the evil of slavery or the fact that preservation of the institution was a motive for secession. But let's point out slavery was constitutional at the time of secession, that some slave-owning states remained in the Union, that slavery was abolished months AFTER the end of the war. The right to secede is based on the same right to join the Union. For those of us who defend secession. this is a consequence of the principle of voluntary association, and the Confederacy had a natural right to defend itself from Northern aggressors.
Nobody is denying the abomination of slavery. There are reasons to believe that the South would have eliminated it eventually for a number of reasons, including the dampening effect of slavery on local wages and the high costs of dealing with fugitive slaves, not to mention the uncooperative North, not to mention eventual industrialization of the South and economic diversity.
