Capo
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Post by Capo on Jan 22, 2008 10:38:13 GMT
It borrows from Italian stereotypes in a self-conscious way. Many characters themselves feel ill-at-ease with how they might be portrayed in society. It's a knowingly post-modern show, referencing The Godfather and others, with many cast members from the likes of Goodfellas, Mean Streets and Casino.
As for unlikeable characters, there are some annoying characters - but they're supposed to be annoying, they're supposed to frustrate me; the likes of Meadow (season 4), Noah (season 3), Fin (season 5), AJ (seasons 4-6), Jackie Jr. (season 3), Janice (season 2), etc. are all effectively annoying. Then there are those we're supposed to dislike, supposed to want dead (but be entertained by while they live): Richie (season 2), Ralphie (season 3), Feech (season 5), Phil (season 6). Again, they're effectively dislikeable.
As for bad acting, I went through a phase of thinking it was quite wooden beyond Gandolfini and Falco, but for me, it's top notch. Jamie-Lynn DiScala (Meadow) and Lorraine Bracco (Melfi) are probably the only regulars (regulars being those in the opening credits) who might let me down sometimes; but Bracco's difficult to judge because most of her scenes are under professional circumstances, limiting how far she can go with emotion (though her scenes at home are here-and-there). Imperioli, Curatola, Ventimiglia, Van Zandt, Sirico, Chianese, Marchand; they're all excellent; and then there are those who have come in since the start - Pantoliano, Vincent, Loggia, Buscemi, Schirripa, Turturro.
I could go on.
Anyway, it is, including all the films I've seen too, the finest thing ever.
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jrod
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Post by jrod on Jan 22, 2008 19:41:39 GMT
Are they trying to make the viewer sympathize with mafia thugs by showing the human side of them that we can relate to? Are they going for shock value by showing just how cold and inhuman these people can be? Or is it simply entertainment? Overall the show encompasses plenty of themes and treads in plenty of waters that mob classics (godfather, goodfellas, etc) never did. It is a breath of fresh air in a genre that has become for the most part derivative. Violence, death, parenthood, growing up, ethics, friendship, family, loyalty, spirituality, adultry, revenge...all interesting themes to me, and those are things that are explored on the surface. Upon second viewing where I can concentrate on more subplots I have found the show even richer.
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jrod
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Post by jrod on Jan 23, 2008 7:23:24 GMT
the second episode in 6b catapluted to one of my 5 favorites...perhaps the best with a major Chrissy-Tony theme.
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jrod
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Post by jrod on Jan 25, 2008 7:48:11 GMT
i wish i could have seen more Meadow and AJ scenes....throughout the entire series. Watching 6b i realize how interesting these scenes are.
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RNL
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Post by RNL on Feb 1, 2008 5:40:20 GMT
I saw the final scene yesterday. Very good.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Feb 2, 2008 3:19:26 GMT
!!!!! You gonna watch it all?
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DA
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Post by DA on Feb 2, 2008 23:25:37 GMT
I must say that Curatola is an absolute force. His final scenes in the series are magnificent.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Feb 3, 2008 16:40:21 GMT
Curatola and Ventimiglia are the most underrated regulars on the show; Pantoliano too, for as long as he's in it. Bracco and Sigler/DiScala are perhaps the most two-dimensional (given the potential scope of their characters; Van Zandt and Sirico might be two-dimensional, but that's because their characters aren't as broadly written).
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Feb 19, 2008 2:02:25 GMT
I just posted this on the BB: Final scene spoilersAs much as I don't think Tony dies, I can't really argue that he lives. Either way, I don't think it's reading too much into it: Chase stages everything the way he does too deliberately - everything is significant, though ultimately, the ambiguity with which he leaves us must be accepted, for that too is as significant as the pains to which he goes in order to set the whole thing up. It's all very suggestive, but in the end, as a fictional narrative, we'll never know. To be honest, it's probably best we don't (from my vantage point, anyway). To put forth my support for the "life goes on" argument, though: keep in mind the show's explorations of existentialism. Tony's sessions with Melfi go into this most prominently, with Melfi questioning why Tony does what he does (he inherited it from his father) and Tony himself questioning what life itself is. His own mother, of course, said life was all a big nothing, which in turn affects AJ, a teen going through the typical flirtatious flings with figures such as Nietzsche and Sartre ("God is dead", he quotes to Carm and Tony in season 2, influenced by what he's reading at school). Existentialism asks what it is to exist, "to be", and from it comes the eternal conflict between good faith and bad faith - the first is acting upon one's own impulses, beyond social, lawful obligations or questions of morality, while the latter is living under the delusion that we're not at the mercy of our own choice, but of some higher being that chooses our path for us. Throughout the show you've got Tony dealing with this, acting upon his impulses and getting in Shit Creek because of it - fucking Svetlana, murdering Ralphie, killing Christopher; and then the moments he has second thoughts and thinks better of it: when he shops the paedofile soccer coach to the cops and comes home drunk to Carmela, proudly claiming, "I didn't kill nobody". The pivotal point in Tony's narrative arc is his coma; that's his real life-changing experience. Or is it? The life-change is probably just temporary. Nevertheless, it invokes in him a new love for life, and the "living in the moment" feel that comes in tandem with existential philosophy. Because of the nature of his business, though, that "living in the moment" is pushed to an extreme - his life is in danger, both from New York and the increasing RICO case the Feds are building against him. Quite literally, by the end of the last season, he's living in the moment, looking behind his shoulder, and that optimism that the coma sparked is only a varnished surface to the depression underneath. In this light, I think the final scene is incredible, primarily for two reasons. The first: what better way to sum up the existential theme of living in the moment that to simply cut mid-scene, mid-life, mid-song, on a random image of Meadow (significant in choice, random in relevance). The cut-aways to Meadow parking her car invoke extreme tension (I thought she was going to crash outside while Tony, Carm and AJ led the temporarily perfect family life inside), as do the cut-aways to the guy in the Members Only jacket and the two black guys who enter just before Meadow. The tension comes simply from their inclusion - why include it if it isn't necessary to the narrative? The point is, the scene could be just as innocent as it could be grave, but ultimately, it's just the extreme opposite forces within Tony's life compressed into one scene. The second reason why I think the final scene is incredible is how the ambiguity allows not so much for the several interpretations that have popped up (as to whether or not Tony lives) as for the conflicting fates of each of the main characters: AJ finally has a job but we know fine well how prone to depression and panic attacks he is, how emotionally weak he is; Meadow is happy because she's getting married and she has a career sorted - but on the flip side, she's marrying a gangster's son and becoming a lawyer as opposed to a doctor (and we all know how Tony could do with a family lawyer he can trust); Carmela has resigned herself to be the loyal wife, as she did when first married - but we all know she'll always have to deal with goomahs; and Tony has finally got rid of Phil Leotardo, the primary threat to his life and business - but, again on the flip side, what of his depression and panic attacks? No more Melfi, his consigliere is at the very least comatosed, the two people he was grooming to be underboss are dead (one he killed himself), and his inner circle now consists of Paulie and Patsy - does Tony trust Paulie after their recent delve into "iffy" territory? Don't forget Carlo's just flipped and is working for the Feds in their building RICO case, too. There aren't any morally satisfactory ends, here, because whatever the case may be, there'll always be something dysfunctional.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 20, 2008 23:53:11 GMT
I watched an epsiode the other night where Fin is first introduced to Vito and I almost stabbed my eyes out because of how awful it was. The part where Fin was talking to Meadow about his uneasiness with the people at the construction site gave me the worst kind of diarrhea. Fin: Didn't you used to have a boyfriend that got killed or something? Meadow: He was killed by drug dealers, African Americans if it makes you feel better. *DVC changes the channel I was watching this episode the other night, and yeah, it's not the greatest of scenes. I've had trouble many times with Meadow's dialogue, or DiScala's delivery of it, but the more I watch her the more I realise that's her character; she's got the mannerisms down to a (very consistent) tee. Same with Robert Iler and AJ. Re the dialogue you quote, it's not the most eloquent, no; but it's definitely a recurring theme. Stereotypes are not so much enforced in the show as they are self-consciously explored: what it means to be Italian (in New York); Italian identity, association/disassociation; guilt/pride. Characters are constantly shifting their allegiances, depending on their company; Meadow herself criticised the whole culture when Jackie Jr. was killed, denying he was killed by the African Americans she's referring to to Finn. It pops up elsewhere, too: Melfi, whose ex-husband has some sort of obsessive self-denial regarding his Italian heritage (and his disassociation from the Mafia and the connotations "Italian" even brings as a word). In "Marco Polo" in season 5, when Hugh DeAngelis has his birthday party at Tony and Carm's: it's an entire episode exploring these notions of cultural snobbery and guilt; Carm's mother apologising to well-to-do Italians for Tony's sausage-swirling family guy, down-to-earth persona. As early as season one, even, when Tony starts to hang around with Dr. Cusamano's golfing pals. Chase and co. constantly come back to it, and I don't think they're succumbing to stereotypes at all. On another note, later in the episode you watched, I think the Meadow/Finn scenes develop very well and realistically: Meadow the insecure, naive girl whose young love is ready to override any sensible career options, and the young guy whose cold feet makes him dance around her demands before finally saying, "Let's get married" (LOL!). You'd have to admit, too, that the revelation of Vito (blowing the security guard) comes from absolutely nowhere, to shocking and hilarious effect. This comes to prominence in season 6.
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Post by Michael on Mar 22, 2008 0:55:13 GMT
Maybe if the explorations of stereotypes were delivered in a more realistic manner I'd enjoy it. The writing and the acting involved with all of that seems a bit awkward. I can almost picture Chase thinking "Oh man I'm really going to force the audience to question these things and at the same time blow their mind with the edginess of it all!" I remember in Season 1 when Meadow had a black Jewish boyfriend and Tony was in the kitchen discussing the statistics of African Americans and crime or whatever...people who are blatantly racist don't bring up things like that out of nowhere. Discussions like that are more primitive and less specific, especially when you consider who it is that's spewing the opinion. Then Meadow replies "Well why do you think that is?" and then it feels like a debate, and the issue becomes more of a center of focus than the plot.
It all just annoys the piss out of me.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 22, 2008 1:01:33 GMT
That's season 3.
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Post by Michael on Mar 22, 2008 1:11:49 GMT
Really?
I didn't even think I got that far.
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Post by Michael on Mar 22, 2008 1:17:20 GMT
Oh yeah, I saw the first three seasons, then got tired of it, skipped 4 and 5, and saw the first half of season 6. Then my parents cancelled HBO.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 23, 2008 20:00:43 GMT
Season 6A is amazing.
"Members Only" is such a fast-moving episode.
"The Fleshy Part of the Thigh" is up there with the very best of them.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 25, 2008 0:14:02 GMT
Just finished season 6A again today. Fantastic. Spoilers ahead and throughout
I love the exploration of sexuality - not so much the "Vito in exile" scenes, which are there to shed humanity on his situation (and thus the severity of his murder), but the reactions in others toward his being outed.
I'm convinced, now, of Phil's repressed homosexuality. The particular anger with which he reacts to thoughts of Vito, the haste with which he denounces it as a disgrace the family, his emergence from the closet in the scene in which his henchmen murder Vito, the lingering shot of his hands gripping the bedsheets as they beat Vito to death, the clear unease he feels when there are muscled-up, virtually-naked men on TV in the aftermath of Vito's death, that shot of him lying there awake at night after Vito has been killed (really, he should have been relieved of putting an end to the family shame, not lying awake at night thinking about it).
Also: when Tony says to a bloodthirsty Carlo, re Vito being a fanook, "Carlo, let's be honest here, we all know he ain't the first". And Tony to Melfi, about him understanding men's sexual needs when incarcerated in the can... How many years was Phil in the can? Twenty. And, for all he talks of honour and not ratting anybody out, he seems especially antsy about the time he spent in there.
Anyway...
"The Fleshy Part of the Thigh" is an amazing episode. So is the season opener, and the two consequent episodes with the whole Kevin Finnerty thing, but the one straight after, with Tony now awake but still in hospital. I like the philosophy put forth in it, a slant on pantheism, with everything made of the same particles as everything else, etc. I love the final scene, where Tony sits in his garden looking at the trees, and his POV (a shot of trees in the wind) is edited as a visually flawless transition to another scene: Paulie beating up Dick Barone's son. One scene is horrific and violent, the other relieved and tranquil, and yet both are part of the same fabric.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 25, 2008 0:25:42 GMT
Maybe if the explorations of stereotypes were delivered in a more realistic manner I'd enjoy it. The writing and the acting involved with all of that seems a bit awkward[...] In a further effort of defence, though I can see why you'd be annoyed if dipping in and out of the show, I don't think it's beneficial. I think it's worth noting that most of that clichéd, stereotypical issue-exploring is done through specific characters, namely Meadow. Meadow, Finn, her other boyfriend Noah, etc. These are students, young kids with grand ideals; I don't so much think the dialogue is clichéd as it is knowingly simplistic: students themselves are clichéd in their everyday talk. Look at AJ and his evolving concerns throughout the show: he's reading Nietzsche at school during season 2, and claims at his confirmation that God is dead, etc. In later seasons, it's the government (a burning issue amongst bored/boring teens, lol) and policies on oil, the environment, the war in Iraq, etc. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's these kinds of characters exploring these things. I think if the writing on the show was of a consistently bad level (and don't get me wrong, it's not always perfect), you'd see that sort of stuff seeping into other characters. You don't: the most philosophical or syntactically-specific the dialogue gets is in Melfi's office, where the language is full of Freudian talk... I'm sure the same arguments you're making about Meadow's racial concerns could be pointed to Melfi and Freudian concerns, but for the professional setting. As for Tony's referring to crime statistics and black people, it's funny because I don't actually think Tony's as racist as even he himself thinks he might be. He's a character who's too hypocritical to be politically fool-proof - he's certainly not a Catholic, despite pretences; he's a liberal caught in a reactionary, conservative environment; his reactions to Vito's homosexuality are frowned upon by all others, for instance, and in frank sessions with Melfi he confesses to upholding some strict outward law because of tradition and social obligation only. In the instance you mention, I think it's a knowingly reductive piece of dialogue for his character: to try and put Meadow off Noah (because it wouldn't look good for the family if she were to see a black guy) by falling back on some lousy statistic. It's far from a black-and-white show, of course; Carmela doesn't like the idea of Meadow seeing Noah, but she says to Tony at one point, "You wanna drive [Meadow] right into his arms? Keep playing the race card"; at the end of season 6A, though, Carmela shows her reluctance toward AJ seeing Blanca, saying, "She's ten years older than him with a kid and Puerto Rican?" Tony cuts AJ some slack: "Dominican, I think. And at least she's Catholic." The inherent contradictions from these two moments alone put the show way up on a higher pedestal than anything else ( for me!); Tony's cutting AJ slack because he relates to him on a father/son level; Tony was protective over Meadow with Noah because of the father/daughter thing; Carmela's more worried about AJ because of the female threat Blanca represents to her; etc., etc. It's such a well-written, finely observed drama.
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Post by Michael on Mar 25, 2008 1:21:41 GMT
The inherent contradictions from these two moments alone put the show way up on a higher pedestal than anything else ( for me!I don't understand why. It's not groundbreaking, it's not powerful, it's not well delivered (in my opinion of course). It's just very simple, and very dull. I know hundreds of people who are like Tony and Carmela, who unknowingly contradict themselves and delude themselves on a daily basis for whatever reason. They exist all around me. Tony saying "Dominican, I think. And at least she's Catholic." is about as shocking to me as someone saying "I slept in yesterday morning." The popularity of this show among both mainstream type people and art afficionados alike is unbelievable to me, and I simply fail to see the brilliance in anything this show has to offer aside from James Gandolfini and Edie Falco's acting.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 26, 2008 14:23:40 GMT
Yeah, they're all around us in the real world; but I rarely find that perceptive subtlety in fiction, in characters in drama.
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Capo
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Post by Capo on Mar 28, 2008 18:07:29 GMT
As I'm nearing the end of my current retrospective, I think season 6B cuts too many inexcusable corners to be counted as the best, most coherent corners - it certainly warrants another three or four episodes, for me. It does, however, boast some of the greatest single moments and scenes the show has ever produced: the drunken Monopoly game at Tony's birthday party ("Soprano Home Movies"); the entire sequences of scenes between Tony and Paulie in Miami, culminating on the boat with Tony frustrating himself because he has no good reason to kill Paulie ("Remember When"); Tony's further alienation of others around him, Chrissy ("Walk Like a Man" is a great episode), Carlo, Hesh and even Carmela (think of "Chasing It", and Tony's his unwarranted, cruel backlash to the first during a car ride, the humiliation and intimidation of the second over a loan, and the callous explosion of violence with the latter over a lost bet); AJ's suicide attempt and Tony's subsequent rescue; Tony almost killing Coco over the latter approaching Meadow; Phil's death (the most satisfying of the show); Agent Harris finally helping Tony; the final scene (best ever).
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