Disorganized Crime
Dear Jeff,
OK, you fuckin' mook. I deserved exactly half of that butt-kicking. But only
half. So watch it. The first rule of mob movies is, never give someone a bigger
beating than they deserve in the first act if you don't want to get your ass
thrashed in the third.
You're right about the writing being better than the acting, but only
because the writing is so good. You're right about
Goodfellas --"laugh-fest" was too strong. Scorsese is not a belly-laugh
kinda guy. You're right about expectations having been blown out of proportion.
And you are so right that David Chase should have killed off Livia
Soprano, whose acid tongue is starting to remind me of the monster drool in the
Alien movies--it eats away at the infrastructure.
I'll get back to Livia in a minute, but first I have to get up on my
Culturebox and pontificate on where you're wrong. You are wrong, sir, to say
that television criticism is about profound meaning. Most of it is critics
trying to explain how they think things work, and why they like them. The
audience has a right to figure stuff out, and to read people who might help
them do that. The boob tube is powerful. Millions of people watch this show and
talk about it every week. Mobsters in fact do take their cues from it, at least
according to Time and Newsweek this week. The Sopranos
will probably do more than any of Tipper Gore's mental-health initiatives to
get insurance companies to change their policy on psychotherapy reimbursements.
So don't shut down the entire discussion just because you've started hanging
out with the producer and presumably swallowed his artsy-fartsy,
faux -modest, we're-just-making-TV-here crap.
Now, back to the second season. Cards on the table: I think next Sunday's
episode is a letdown, although that was probably inevitable. It's an
advertisement for psychotherapy, only this time in reverse. Without Melfi, the
psychiatrist, around to draw out Tony's human side, he and his buddies just
seem angry and sour. Thugs are thugs and their wives are idiots to stick around
and mob business is greasy and seedy, instead of greasy and seedy and
fun . There was a sweetness to Tony when he was discovering his inner
mensch that made his and everyone else's brutality come off as ironic
and incongruous, rather than just brutal.
Now stroke-victim Livia is a stringy-haired vision of evil, instead of an
amusingly tart-tongued old bitch. Her daughter and Tony's sister, a sleazy
ex-hippie named Pavarti, nee Janice, has shown up from Seattle, ostensibly to
take care of her mother but more likely to scam off her brother. Christopher,
Tony's protégé, has a new gig as an SEC compliance officer involving some
complicated scheme to dump crummy stock on unsuspecting widows and shut-ins,
but basically he's the same asshole junkie he always was, and has taken to
fighting in bars with Ariana, his girlfriend. Carmela is more long-suffering
than ever. She is reduced in this episode to smiling sadly a lot and cooking
ziti. Melfi sees patients in a roadside motel, and when Tony finally tracks her
down in a diner, she spits in his face: "Fuck you!"
And Tony, my god. He has turned into a huge drag, stomping around, crashing
his SUV, and throwing hissy fits at the world. The only really great moment in
the entire hour is the look on his face when the male shrink he goes to in
desperation says he can't take on a patient in Tony's line of work. After all,
quoth the shrink, "I saw Analyze This !" "Analyze This ?" says
Tony, with that inimitable Gandolfini I-can't-believe-I'm-hearing-this-shit
double take. "It's a fuckin' comedy !"
Oh yeah. Analyze This. Do we have to? What's there to say?
Are mob movies played out? Who knows? As Melfi's son said last season,
they're our national epic, or something like that. But one thing's for sure:
They're all going to have to refer to The Sopranos now, the way The
Sopranos has to refer to The Godfather.
I want to know what happens next with the mob--in real life--if, as you say,
the smarter ones realize that the Bada-Bing lifestyle is dead.
And, um, Jeffrey? Little Herring ? What the hell kind of moniker is
that?
Yours most critically,
Judith "De Man" Shulevitz
