THE SOPRANOS: “Stage 5”
HBO
THE NATIONAL POST

Even now, the show retains its ability to surprise

Actors from The Sopranos routinely pay tribute to the astonishing quality of the scripts they receive. I don't recall reading as many testimonials from the writers to the performers, but I imagine that the feeling is mutual. We, the viewers, are as likely to think in terms of casting as of acting; every character seems exactly right, and who can tell how much is skill and how much is judgment. In a long-running series, the mechanism becomes self-perpetuating. The more we get to know these characters, the more we can believe in them. And the likelier even the most repulsive are to arouse our sympathy.

Last night's episode, written by Terence Winter and one of the best there's ever been, gave us this full-strength. It had two main plot threads. One concerns the making and initial screening of Christopher's long-promised movie; the made man has finally made it, coming up with a gangster-slasher flick called Cleaver. (As in axe, though we're told there have been rumblings from Eldridge Cleaver's estate.) The other treats of Johnny Sack (Vincent Curatola), the imprisoned New York boss who is now not only orange-suited but distressingly wired-up. He's been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and over the next hour, he and his wife and daughters will move us close to tears. In his coolness and intelligence, Johnny has always been an attractive character, but he has never been what you'd call admirable. But dignity, mortality and family devotion go a long way, and not just with Johnny. Little Carmine (Ray Abruzzo), the ineffectual malapropping New York heir-apparent who describes Chris' movie as blending "the sacred and the propane," sounded very sensible (and still funny) when heeding his wife's desire not to end up "the wealthiest widow on Long Island." Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent), his putative successor whom I had pegged last week as "exceptionally loathsome," turned our feelings around when gently telling his grandchildren about their family's humiliating arrival at Ellis Island when an immigration officer unfamiliar with their real name Leonardo "named us after a ballet costume." One of the kids pipes up that "leotards are for modern, not ballet," but as Phil insists, the principle's the same: "Leotardo: That's my f- -- in' legacy."

Legacy, and the cares of office, held this episode together, more tightly than most. Johnny asks how he'll be remembered and pronounces with ashen authority that being numero uno is "a thankless job." Over in the other storyline Tony congratulates his nephew Chris on having made a movie that will survive long after they've all been forgotten; later, he's on the verge of crying when, having recognized himself in the film's brutish protagonist, he laments, "All these memories and for what?" and concludes, "I think [Christopher] despises me. He wants to see me dead."

A word about casting. The Sopranos often uses actors, Curatola and Vincent among them, who came to acting through other things: most famously Steven Van Zandt, now so identified with his role as Silvio that he looks incongruous when reverting to his previous identity as a Springsteen guitarist. The casting directors seem especially fond of casting directors. There's Peter Bogdanovich in his recurring role of shrink's shrink (one line last night, and it was a killer), while this episode was virtually stolen by Sydney Pollack as a former oncologist turned prison-hospital orderly (he killed his wife and her aunt and the mailman). He was wonderfully wise and philosophical. The one-offs on this show can be as rich as the regulars or the in-betweens. It has such texture, the result of familiarity reinforced by continuing invention. James Gandolfini's Tony gives a knowing nod to the FBI guys who surprise him as, in a moment we've come to know and love, he collects his newspaper in the driveway, then complains to Carmela "that's the last time I'm going down for the paper. It's too dangerous, has been for years." We laugh; he doesn't. At other times, he's very aware; indeed the thing that sets Tony apart from his colleagues, making him both more human and more dangerous, is that he has empathy. He can see someone else's point of view; and he can use it. One of the things that Gandolfini does best is to shake his head and smile, when he knows what's going down and no one knows he knows. This episode's final shot shows Tony and Chris, at the latter's daughter's christening, looking over one another's shoulders in an embrace that's half-loving, half-fearful. It's as powerful and prophetic as the door that shuts out Diane Keaton from the men's counsels at the end of The Godfather. Even now, entering its home stretch, The Sopranos surprises.