May 21, 2007 12:29AM
Categories: The Sopranos
WARNING: This column contains major plot spoilers for last night's "Sopranos" episode.
Sometimes, it's not the fire that burns you. It's the juices.
Two episodes ago, in "Walk Like a Man," Tony suggested that Chris pull a steak off the barbecue because it would continue to cook in its own juices, even away from the flame. At the time, it was an apt metaphor for the growing resentment Chris and Tony were feeling for each other in the aftermath of Adriana's death. But it applies even more to last night's "The Second Coming," where nearly every character is stewing in the juices of some very old beef.
Phil is still after Tony about the ancient murder of his brother Billy; he makes a not-so-veiled reference to it when he says of Chris' widow that grief takes longer the closer the dead person was to you. A.J. botches a suicide attempt, then tries to justify it with sob stories from seasons past. Carmela finally unloads on Tony, not only for passing on "The Soprano Curse" to their son, but because she's tired of hearing about his depression: "You have any idea what it's like to spend day after day with somebody who is constantly complaining?"
When talk of A.J.'s near-fatal plunge into the Soprano family pool leads some of the other Family captains to acknowledge their own children's shaky mental health, Paulie suggests it's all the toxins these kids have been exposed to for their entire lives (in an episode where Tony's guys are still dumping asbestos into the Meadowlands). In this environment, it doesn't matter when the initial exposure or tragedy was; it stays with you for years, maybe your whole life.
A.J. tries to kill himself -- in the pool where Tony's beloved ducks once represented his desire for a happy family -- after too much time studying the W.B. Yeats poem that lends its title to the episode. It's the second time someone on the show has quoted it; in season five's "Cold Cuts," Melfi used the famous "Things fall apart" line with Tony, and Yeats' bleak outlook on the future of civilization applies to this whole season. The center of Tony's world -- the men he loved and trusted most -- is coming undone. Bacala. Junior. Paulie. Hesh. Chris. Either humiliated or marginalized or dead at Tony's hands. The week after killing his surrogate son, Tony barely gets home in time to save his actual son's life, in one of the more harrowing sequences the show's ever done.
And then there's Phil. Question: If you locked Phil and Paulie in a room together, whose air of entitlement and martyrdom would suffocate the other one first? But where Paulie's too dumb and relatively low-ranking to cause much pain and suffering through his woe-is-me routine (save to the odd civilian like Minn Matrone or Jason Barone), Phil is just clever enough and far too powerful to be dismissed. No way his man Coco feels confident enough to harass Meadow, the daughter of a boss -- even the boss of Jersey -- unless he knows he'll get Phil's backing on it.
Back in "Stage 5," Phil told Butchie he was done with compromises, and here he explains to Tony -- who's never done any significant prison time -- that in the can, "compromise" meant, at best, getting a very pale imitation of what you wanted. Phil won't compromise on the asbestos deal because he's itching for a war with Tony -- a war he's willing to wage only because of his huge manpower advantage. (Witness the way he hides from Tony and Little Carmine in the little turret of his suburban castle; he's a coward at heart.)
But the show's built up to wars before -- both within New York and between New York and New Jersey -- and always backed off at the last minute. With only two episodes left, is there still time for one?
Whatever happens over the final two hours, don't expect anyone to get out of the life. We've been told time and again over the last two years -- with Eugene and Vito and Chris -- that there's no escape from the Family, and "The Second Coming" provides even more reminders.
Midway through the episode, Melfi's own therapist, the smug Dr. Kupferberg, tells her of a study suggesting not only that sociopaths can't be helped by traditional "talk therapy," but that it can make them worse, help them justify their worst traits. As omniscient viewers of the TV show, we know that Kupferberg has a point, that Tony usually lies too much to get anything useful out of Melfi (last week's dream session where he confessed to killing Pussy and Tony B. was more productive than most of the real ones), and that he sometimes uses her to map out strategy. Most times, he's running a scam on Melfi, which is why he's able to spot A.J.'s lame excuse-making in that endless family session with Dr. Vogel.
But Tony -- who's not even bothering to hide his newfound Livia-ness with multiple "Poor you!"s -- does have the occasional moment of insight, as he does when explaining part of the meaning of his "I get it!" peyote revelation from last week. Mothers, he says, are like buses: "They're the vehicle that gets us here. They drop us off and go on their way, they continue on their journey, and our problem is we continue trying to get back on the bus instead of just let it go."
Only someone with Livia for a parent would view motherhood that way, but the Family functions as a bus, too, one that everyone's either afraid or incapable of staying off for long.
Meadow reveals that she's dating another son of a wiseguy (Patrick Parisi, whom Patsy had earlier acknowledged "can be a moody (expletive deleted) sometimes") and has now given up on med school in favor of becoming a lawyer -- two choices guaranteed to keep her involved in her father's lifestyle in some way. (Meadow being Meadow, she lets the man in her life talk her into it.)
Meadow had her chance to get off the bus for good, but instead she's inching towards a lifetime bus pass. Carmela had two chances -- first when that elderly shrink told her to leave Tony, then when she actually threw him out -- and both times she couldn't do it. Vito drove home to his own death, so great was the pull of his old life. Adriana couldn't leave Christopher and died because of him. Chris in turn couldn't leave Tony, and now he's gone to Hell for him.
Getting back to Yeats, one of the lines that transfixes A.J. is the notion that "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." On this show, "best" is a relative term -- of the regular characters, Melfi's the only genuinely good person -- but there's no lack of contenders for "worst." And they're all filled with their own stupid, destructive passionate intensity, even if what made them passionate happened so long ago that -- like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that vexes A.J. so -- they can't really remember how the fire got started. But so long as those juices keep flowing, they'll keep cooking.
Some other thoughts on "The Second Coming":
-If you're Silvio Dante, will there ever be a more useful book to read than "How to Clean Practically Everything"? Maybe he can loan it to the waitstaff at Coco's restaurant.
-Michael Imperioli remains in the opening credits, while Vince Curatola (Johnny Sack) has been gone for weeks. Show of respect to an original castmember, or hint that Chris will pop up in a dream sequence soon?
-One of the readers of the Sopranos blog reminded me last week of Tony's story from "Soprano Home Movies" about the brain dead little boy who fell into a pool, and the season has been littered with talk of dead children and babies, including all of Tony's infant car seat references last week. So what does Tony say after he gets A.J. out of the pool? "You're all right, baby. You're all right."
-What kind of finesse has to be involved in a curb-stomping like the one Tony gave Coco without actually killing him?
-As usual, the show is taking Memorial Day weekend off, so the next new episode won't air until June 3, with the series finale on June 10.
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