Thursday, September 16, 2004
So, season five of The Sopranos is being shown on E4 and I've been watching it while recording it for Plums and watching season one as I got the DVD box set for my birthday at the end of August. Now season five is all well and good, Steve Buscemi is wonderful in it, but it doesn't really hold out next to the first season. I saw season two before loosing track of it on telly for a while, so didn't get to see the third or fourth season (I had a similar problem with The West Wing on telly, so it's also a show I can only follow through the DVDs) but that also wasn't as good as the first season. For me, season five seems to be a collection of character studies, very good character studies, but character studies nonetheless. Last week we had the story of Tony and Adriana, who I'm guessing haven't interacted in any meaningful way in the previous four seasons. At first it seems this is going to be a rerun of practically every other story involving Tony and a woman but stops it, instead going for a direction where Tony controls his rampant libido only for the story to go around that they had sex and that to cause him trouble with Christopher. This week it was a double header of Steve Buscemi's Tony starting his own massage business and Carmela having her first post-Tony relationship.
But each story wraps up neatly by the end of the show. Last week Adriana had serious bruising from the accident and then even worse from being beaten up by Christopher, this week she's flawless. Christopher wanted to kill Tony and, although the doctor did convince him Tony hadn't had sex with her you would have expected perhaps some residual awkwardness between them, or something coming from the fact that Christopher was a recovering alcoholic who fell off the wagon big time. Nope. Now yes, AJ's teacher was introduced in a previous week and we got the idea he might be interested in Carmela but this week had the set-up, the dates, the sex and the break-up. There's nothing in this episode to hint that we'll be seeing much more of him again.
But look at season one. Almost every character has an arc, Tony obviously has the issues around his depression, Livia keeps herself going by manipulating everyone to fight one another, AJ starts realising what his family is, Carmela with Father Phil, Uncle Junior wanting to be boss... and the way that one person's arc is used to push another's is masterful until it all comes to a crisis point. Season two had less of this, and season five seems to have nothing. The end of episode promos always show moments of violence from the next episode, making a good play of making it seem that something that turns out to be innocent is a huge crisis, but there is no real story going through this series. If I stopped watching the show after this week, there is nothing underneath it to make me regret doing so. The characters are largely walking around in independent vacuums, barely connecting with one another in any meaningful way and I think that's a shame.
When The Sopranos was created it was initially only thought to be able to run to one series tops. Now I can accept David Chase would be surprised when HBO came back and asked for more, but you'd think that three years later he'd be able to get together some writers to craft something of the intricacy and beauty of the plot for the first season?
But each story wraps up neatly by the end of the show. Last week Adriana had serious bruising from the accident and then even worse from being beaten up by Christopher, this week she's flawless. Christopher wanted to kill Tony and, although the doctor did convince him Tony hadn't had sex with her you would have expected perhaps some residual awkwardness between them, or something coming from the fact that Christopher was a recovering alcoholic who fell off the wagon big time. Nope. Now yes, AJ's teacher was introduced in a previous week and we got the idea he might be interested in Carmela but this week had the set-up, the dates, the sex and the break-up. There's nothing in this episode to hint that we'll be seeing much more of him again.
But look at season one. Almost every character has an arc, Tony obviously has the issues around his depression, Livia keeps herself going by manipulating everyone to fight one another, AJ starts realising what his family is, Carmela with Father Phil, Uncle Junior wanting to be boss... and the way that one person's arc is used to push another's is masterful until it all comes to a crisis point. Season two had less of this, and season five seems to have nothing. The end of episode promos always show moments of violence from the next episode, making a good play of making it seem that something that turns out to be innocent is a huge crisis, but there is no real story going through this series. If I stopped watching the show after this week, there is nothing underneath it to make me regret doing so. The characters are largely walking around in independent vacuums, barely connecting with one another in any meaningful way and I think that's a shame.
When The Sopranos was created it was initially only thought to be able to run to one series tops. Now I can accept David Chase would be surprised when HBO came back and asked for more, but you'd think that three years later he'd be able to get together some writers to craft something of the intricacy and beauty of the plot for the first season?
