If Shakespeare Was a Wise Guy

THE SOPRANOS: “REMEMBER WHEN”
HBO
THE NATIONAL POST

Plot connections and religion add depth to violence

Compared with The Godfather, to which it so often pays sly homage, The Sopranos has never been that much of a bloodbath. In the first three episodes of the final series, we had been down to a whack a week, always someone minor. We have now, on two consecutive Sundays, seen the elimination of a contender for boss of New York, a story that acts as sideshow and counterpoint to the principal saga of Tony Soprano and his mostly ageing Jersey boys.

For the most part this week, we were either on the road with Tony and Paulie, taking a hurried trip to Florida prompted by an FBI investigation into a corpse they disposed of 25 years ago (Tony's first hit, we were told), or we were with senile Uncle Junior, incarcerated in a facility for criminal mental cases. The two storylines took no note of one another's existence, though we did see Tony and Paulie passing a road sign that read "hitchhikers may be escaping inmates," while Junior, who shot Tony nearly fatally at the start of the previous season, could be heard asking if his nephew had yet apologized to him.

But there were, as always, links. This show now has such a backlog of finely woven material that everything that happens in it reflects on something else. Tony remarked at one point that " 'remember when' is the lowest form of conversation." He's probably had quite enough of it talking to his shrink. But this episode had him trapped for long periods with the unstoppably reminiscent Paulie, who it seems, is not only Tony's lieutenant, but was, in earlier years, a surrogate father. I don't think the latter aspect of their relationship has been well set up in previous seasons, but having brought it on the show made the most of it. It's a connection that Paulie seems to relish and that Tony finds at the least embarrassing and at the most highly dangerous. Paulie may talk too much and to the wrong people. The tensest sequence in this instalment found them alone on a rented fishing boat (The name? Sea Vous Play), reminiscent - as we were too insistently reminded of in dreams and flashbacks - of the one on which the two guys and Silvio shot the informing Big Pussy. Tony, inspired perhaps by his nephew Christopher's chopper movie, plainly thought of doing Paulie in with an axe, and Paulie knew it.

Paulie is an unwilling solitary, one of this family show's few major figures to be childless and unmarried. The other is Corrado Junior, who has also thought of Tony as a substitute son (when he hasn't been trying to dispose of him) and who also talks a lot. But he can't reminisce much, because most of his memory has gone. What remains is the ability to tell some (very funny) jokes and the opportunity to organize illicit poker games, played for candies, with real (definitely not diet) Coke for refreshment: some comedown for a former don. He takes one inmate under his wing, an angry young Asian whom at one confused point Corrado Junior addresses as "Anthony." And here again - a Shakespearean image of disorder - the rude son comes near to killing the father dead.

There's another common factor in the two narratives: incontinence. Junior, when off his medication, can't control his bladder. Down in Florida lives - apparently rather well - Beansie, confined to a wheelchair after being viciously run over by Richie Aprile seasons ago. He excuses himself from the dinner table "to empty my bag," prompting Paulie - a survivor of prostate cancer - to murmur, "Kill me first." Junior seems to agree; he goes back on his meds, at the cost of being sedated into a living death. This inmate won't be escaping any time soon.

This was a low-key episode, after the previous week's fireworks display. (The show seems to be alternating them.) But the themes continue to develop, as Tony loses faith in one subordinate after another and as his business loses any glamour it may have had: Tony, who once trafficked in jewelry and Rolex watches at least, is now reduced to beach furniture, expired Fosomax and Black and Decker power drills. The show is great at brand names, and I doubt if it's product placement. Paulie's peace offering to the Sopranos is a deluxe espresso machine. "Who's at the door?" asks Tony, when it's delivered. "Williams-Sonoma," answers Carmela.

Fancy gifts or not, the mob and most of its members are decaying, and they know it. And this really is the answer to those who complain, as a reader did on the National Post's letters page last week, that the show glorifies crime. It certainly appeals, as fiction always has, to a human fascination with outlaws and violence. Like other such "despicable" works as Macbeth and Crime and Punishment, it takes a killer for its protagonist and tells the story largely from his point of view. Like them, too, it has a religious context. These people are all believers: Paulie has worked out exactly how much time he'll have to spend in purgatory, and he reckons he can do the time. Tony's conscience is more sophisticated. He draws lines. But he can't stop himself from crossing them. The show doesn't have to judge him for us. He judges himself.