Also, while they were in the back of the Bada Bing, plotting out the final steps in what they wanted to do with the New Jersey crew, they showed strippers dancing to The Doors- "When The Music's Over" 'When the music's over, turn out the lights, turn out the lights, turn out the lights'
I knew it would end like this when Phil took over, he is old school and looks down on the New Jersey group. Heck Phil looked down on John Sac because he felt he was weak. Tony deserves to die, his crew is full of idiots. Why can't he send someone worth a **** to take out Phil? It is/was only the most important decision for the future of his crew. I think Phil is more organized and what a perfect way for it to end than this disfunctional group in Jersey to be taken out one by one.
I just watched this weeks episode and now I can't wait for the last episode. Is it going to be a 2 hour episode?
Well it would be stupid for someone to do a mob show on another network now. The Sopranos came to the right place at the right time, when HBO really started establishing their original programming. The show sort of staked their claim on that territory. But there's no doubt in my mind that sometime down the line another mob show will set-up shop on premium cable and be very successful. 5, 10, 20 years whatever. It'll happen. Artistic value, smartistic value. Actors are happy when they get the green. And TV writers are in much more danger of getting burned out than bored with their material. And if this stuff is going over people's heads, then doesn't that back-up my intention that viewers don't care about the deeper meaning and all that mumble jumble. And please don't say that all the deeper themes hit us at a subconscious level and that's the reason why the show is so successful. That's like the BS excuse that Star Wars was so successful because it was patterned after the Hero's Journey. Star Wars was successful because of Lightsabers, and one well done revelation/twist (Luke, I am your father). The Sopranos is successful for the same reason all of these mob movies are successful (It's intrigue mixed with violence, and honor/revenge/justice within the vacuum of the mafia). I thought we were talking about mob movies/shows. I don't know about entourage, but I'm pretty sure that in another few years, we'll have another gangster/mafia phenomenon. And yet Goodfellas is one of the most acclaimed movies of all time. It's widely hailed as a great film by critics and regular people alike. Could it be that it doesn't actually need to explore Henry Hill's relationship with his mother to be a pretty damn good film? And I'm counting a lot more successful movies that are merely cops and robbers shows, than deep psychological examinations of motives and character.
The New Jersey family is a "glorfied crew"... that is all. It was first said by Big carmine, and the more you watched them over the years, the more you saw it to be true. Tony's got his niche... much like that "Firm" had in "The Firm"... but its still paltry compared to the big boys. As far as this thread... I'm just glad that the show is still able to capture the American audience at the level it does. Other shows have come and gone and severely jumped the shark (most recently 24, desperate housewives, adn grey's anatomy), but the quality of the Sopranos (even though it may be less than what it once was) still dwarfs the competition.
You honstely think it takes 5-20 years for ideas to get repeated in the world of TV series? Try like 5 minutes. Say, let me know by the way next time yu see another episode of "the Black Donnellys" (a cheap Departed ripoff And don't give me the "well it's cable so it's different cause they can say f-k" - the first episode of that show I saw was focused around two kids trying to find a way to dismember a corpse. And TV writers are in much more danger of getting burned out than bored with their material. And if this stuff is going over people's heads, then doesn't that back-up my intention that viewers don't care about the deeper meaning and all that mumble jumble. And please don't say that all the deeper themes hit us at a subconscious level and that's the reason why the show is so successful. [/quote] Yeah, actors never leave successful TV shows - practically never, the money is too good. I mean there's no place for them to go. But anyway - it's not unsual for HBO to have a prestige project to burnish its brand among us snooty types, becuase it helps its reputation among the cash-rich, consumption happy cultural elites. That sells subscriptions. Even if people don't understand why Tony is getting beat up by a bunch of Buddhist monks, they wouldn't mind appearing as if they did, even if they say they didn't. I thought it was patterend after the HIdden Fortress but I would think that h the attraction of light sabers to kids and people under 18 as well as the ferocious merchandising tie-ins prolonged the appeal of the series as much as anything. anyway, again, if all mob tv shows and movies are successful, why are there probably hundreds of them that flame out? For every "Godfather" there's a "Cleaver", and a slew of medicore unsuccessful imitators. I mean, look at Frank Vincent's IMDB page. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0898634/ The guy has made a career out of playing in mob movies, about x whacking y whacking z. Aside from the obvous hits like Casino & Goodfellass, you tell me what you remember about his role as "Carmine Minetti" in "Gun Shy" or "Big Sal" in "Under Hellgate Bridge" - if all it takes to be successful is a brookly accent and a lot of whacking, why arent' these movies famous? Check back with me in a decade and let me know when there is another mobster show like this that is this good for this long is on the air. I would bet you a years salary that there won't be. And I'll bet you ten years salary if there is one that the critical consensus is that there is a lot more to it than x whacking y whacking z. EDIT: I should also add, in ten years most of these films will have to be period pieces because the cosa nostra-Mafia has essentially become extinct in contemporary times. It's entertainig - I said earlier that I liked the movie alot - but if it went on for 10 hours with no further character development and just endless rounds of wise guys whacking each other and pulling heists - would it have kept your attention? It certainly wouldn't have kept mine, and I know it woudlnt have ketp the directors. I don't understand your angle here. YOu seem to insist that I see the Sopranos only as pop cultural junkfood in a form of voyeurism (that's actually a theme of the show - why do you think we've been subjected to the Melfi and Eliot subplot over the last two weeks - because of the insatiable public appetite to see jewish shrinks go tete at tete? Yeah right.). I see it rather differently and I'm far from the only one. You can call it elitist if you want but again I don't get your angle here. Do you want me to admit that there's no allusion or metaphor or literary convention in the show and that there are no recurring themes? Or are you saying that there are but we are not allowed to admit that we are drawn to them, because it makes us elitist? That's a very David Chase message by itself, are you trying to imitate art?
i'll speak for him. you're the kind of viewer who eats up each and every episode made, forces yourself to love each and every one unconditionally, and are quick to tell anybody who thought it sucked that "they just didnt understand this and that and this went over their head and blah blah blah". essentially, you are completely brainwashed by david chase. you are the prototype of the elitist, pretentious viewer. i'd love to be david chase and, as a gag, create episodes with absolutely no underlying meaning whatsoever, and watch goobers like you blow up message boards pulling subtext out of your ass and explaining to people how you simply "get it" and they don't. hell, chase may have been doing just that for the past 7 years. i'd love to have seen an episode of 50 minutes of Tony sitting on the can taking a dump and then see watch you and the like rave about it. because, believe me, you would.
LOL, and you've got a populist inferiority complex that you are obviously working through. I bet you are a poor person who doesn't get Art in America like I do. You should obviously cancel your HBO subscription as it causes you great pain.
nah, i'm gonna keep HBO in hopes that they will one day bring back Lucky Louie because i loves me some dick and fart jokes! and i bet you truly believe that you are a greater human being just because you pay for a subscription to Art in America. you couldn't be any more cliched if you tried, could you? taking the wife to a wine tasting in napa valley this weekend?
No, next weekend is the Puerto Rico day parade here, I will hole up in my apartment and watch the entire Cremaster cycle on bootleg DVD, carving out an hour on Sunday at 9 EST, of course. Then I will probably troll some galleries for prints by Andres Serrano.
Mathew Barnaby's overrated. I'm flying to Bilbao, Spain to catch the Anselm Kiefer exhibition at the Guggenheim. Then hanging out in cafe with some friends debating Basque seperatism. ...in Euskara of course.
I was going to do the same but I lost my Euskara-Esperanto dictionary and none of my friends will speak english to me.
Yes sam actors leave shows, but in this situation: 1. Every single one of these actors is a character actor. I guarantee you that movie producers were not beating down any of their doors to leave the show and become the next superstar. 2. They get so much time off, that they have every chance to other projects. They do 13 episodes a season, and after the first two seasons, the show got progressively longer to write, so they had all kinds of free time to do whatever they wanted. The allure of leaving tv for movies is more free time and more money. With the sopranos, they didn't need to make a decision like that. The problem is that you're looking at this show from your perspective and getting a lot out of all the deeper themes and stuff. I'm saying that most people who watch the show don't care about that kind of stuff, and it's not the reason that the show has been wildly successful. The show gets what, 10-15 million viewers a week. You honestly think all these millions of people appreciate the deeper subtext of the Sopranos (I bet it's more like a couple hundred thousand who dissect it like you do). The world isn't that smart pal (or pretentious if you're so inclined). I mean, I consider myself to be fairly smart. Nothing special, but at least above average. I couldn't give two craps about all the allusions and psychoanalysis. Before the last 4 weeks the therapy sessions have been interminably boring for a couple years now. The dream sequence with Big p***y as a fish was cool since that actually advanced the plot, but every other dream since then has been unengaging, and Kevin Finnerty was a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. The ducks, the pool, the lighthouse, whatever. I don't care. And I bet there's way more people that see it like me than see it like you.
And 2/3 of Americans want creationism taught alongside evolution in schools. Not sure what this proves, other than that "A Bronx Tale" was a critical and box office flop, and that you have some populist bone to pick with some pretty obvious reasons for the shows longevity and success, I guess you acknowledge that they're there, but don't like them? Do you honestly think if the Sopranos shed itself of the deeper stuff and degenerated to the level of A whacks B whacks C week in, week out, it would have continued to have been noticed at all in the first place, that it would have lasted a decade and people would have continued to watch? Sorry but there is way, way, way, too much evidence to the contrary - in fact the short attention span of the american public that you raise under your populist banner works against you here. If all it took were funny accents, good actors, and a lot of whacking to hold an audiences attention, then DeNiro, Pacino, and Pesci would still be ruling the box office. EDIT: finally, I should add on the actors, in the end there is only one who is of any consequence; Gandolfini could have easily carved out a lucrative career in mainstream movies and had just as much money and free time at any point after the first few seasons. You think he would have kept up with the show if the role (i.e. chase's vision of it) was not interesting to him as an artist and that it was all about hte benjamins? I doubt it.
Finally saw it tonight. It was tough getting people to not talk about it or to not accidentally read anything. Great freakin episode. I bet Paulie gets pissed if/when he learns that he wasn't on the list to get killed. He's weird like that. No idea where this goes next week for the big finish. Everyone thinks Tony's going down. I don't. It's way too obvious. Then again, maybe that's the point. It has to happen to end properly. I'm sad it's over but man is it going out with a bang (no pun intended).
