Customer Reviews

The Sopranos: Season 6, Part 1

5 star:		(64)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

It's lonely in the ranks that believe that season 6 of The Sopranos was as good, if not better, than the seasons before it, but I am convinced that the first 12 episodes of season 6 are amongst the bravest, best written, and most telling episodes of the series. The Sopranos has long been a show with the most complex, multi-layered characters on television, but by using the mantra of "Who am I, where am I going" as a rallying point, season 6 probed the nature of what drives its family, and gets in intense focus of who each of them is. The problem, I think, was that it did its job TOO well this season - it's not that there wasn't action (the death count this year was as high as any other, and Tony does, after all, nearly die himself), but that because the show wanted so much to get the specifics of the ordinary right, it's easy to overlook the rather consternated implications of their everyday events. What I mean is that in showing each character at his/her essence, we get what really drives them, but we don't necessarily get that explained to us - we, for example, identify with Carmela's sense of longing and uncertainty staring off at the Eiffel Tower, or we register that Paulie is adrift in guilt and anxiety over his actions in life, but we get it in the details of their everyday action and, these characters experiencing these implications alone, get little of that wrapped up for us. To me, that speaks to a level of characterization and examination that doesn't exist in television and barely exists in film - it probes the specifics of its fictional characters so precisely, it winds up speaking to the heart of what drives Americans and the materialism of American culture that makes things like mobs possible. In that, it brings forth insurance agent, real estate claimsmen and salesmen, actors, and (in one unforgettable shout-out) Dick Cheney - comparisons of the same urges. Yet this season does more than critique the impulses, it allows them to exist, allows all of their very real virtues to be present, and lets them arise from its characters distinct, full-bodied personalities - money helps keep AJ out of jail, gets him laid, repairs Tony's relationship with his sister, keeps Carmela from probing too deeply into Adriana's murder, gets Tony reasonable health care, and nearly spares Vito's life and stops a cross-river gang war. I may be alone in the level to which the Sopranos makes me think, but I do think David Chase's intentions are to use his astonishingly vivid characters to go into depth about the American mentality (or, they're not, and it's just a product of three dimensional writing). However, even if it weren't, the season gives you extraordinary moments to savor - Paulie's confrontation with mortality ("The Ride"), Carmela crying at Tony's bedside ("Join The Club"), Christopher's gut-shaking relapse ("Kaisha," with a fearless guest turn by Juliana Marguilles), AJ's inability to carry out his "big plan" against Junior ("Johnny Cakes"), and, unforgettably, Philly's cold stare as his machinations to kill Vito are achieved ("Cold Stones"). They're moments of magnificent acting that fulfill characters even as it surprises you with their humanity and personality. And, in the premiere, "Members Only," it gives you it all in an hour - a suicide, heart attack, and gun shot that seem to tell you everything you've ever needed to know about the mob life, about why they - if not you - do what they do.

I seem to have a different opinion from so many other viewers, since I really enjoyed the first half of season six. Seeing Tony get shot, not by season one's physically and mentally vigorous Uncle Junior, as I had kept anticipating that season, but by the toothless demented Uncle Junior, believing he was shooting someone else entirely was priceless irony. I loved the part with Tony in the coma in our world, while -wherever he was - he was exactly what he had always dreaded being - a nobody. Worse, he's a traveling salesman who is "trapped" and unable to get home. When Tony comes out of his coma, he vows to change and take every day as a gift, but later he is gradually pulled back into his old ways, since his position as boss really gives him no alternative.

Lots of people didn't like the Vito mini-arc, but I loved it. After being outed in the most conspicuous and non-ambiguous way imaginable, Vito finds it necessary to leave town to avoid Phil's wrath. He arrives in small-town New Hampshire, and there he winds up luckier than he deserves to be. He finds love in the Morgan Spurlock look-alike cook "Johnny Cakes" at the local diner, and the two move in together. Vito's new love is even able to overlook Vito's obvious moral failings, such as his lies about his true occupation. Johnny Cakes hooks him up with a job, and Vito has escaped the death sentence that awaits him back home, with a pretty Norman Rockwell-ish life in his current situation and a shot at genuine happiness. The problem is - Vito is still Vito. To him what 99% of people face every day - rising early to go to a job that is genuine hard work for average pay - is purgatory to him. He misses the all-night card games, the big city life, and the fact that making a living there just involves sitting around a construction site and making collections. Thus Vito runs out on Johnny Cakes and goes back to New Jersey, thinking he can make things right and get back into "the life". Just in case we have any doubt Vito has changed, there is a little incident on his way back home that lays our doubts to rest.

I think the Vito arc superimposed on Tony's shooting and recovery just drive home the fact that even though these guys think they're king of all they survey, "the life" really owns them all, not vice versa. They're kidding themselves to think otherwise. Tony believed he could make things different, and Vito believed he could make things the way they had been before. Both were wrong.

There are also lighter moments. The scene with Christopher brainstorming his movie project with the "help" of his kidnapped and beaten AA sponsor is hilarious, as is his mugging Lauren Bacall just to get her gift basket. Then there's the matter of Paulie finding out he is not who he thought he was. All-in-all a worthwhile and thought-provoking 12 episodes.

However, I still think I'll wait until after season six has completed airing to buy. The series will definitely be over by then, and I am anticipating some kind of "Collector's Edition" for the whole series. I just don't want to wind up with buyer's remorse like I did with the separate seasons of "Homicide" that I bought, only to have the entire series come out in a collector's edition that was much cheaper than the individual seasons with all kinds of bonus footage to boot.

This set contains 12 episodes, just like all the previous seasons. Season 6 was always meant to have two parts, part 1 with 12 episodes, part 2 with 8 episodes. It remains to be seen how much the part 2 DVD will cost, but for now, you are really not getting ripped off.

The first part of the final season, for me, was slow-moving and had a lot of uninteresting storylines. Examples of slow-moving storylines include Tony's time in the hospital (three episodes) and Vito's homosexuality (six episodes). Examples of uninteresting storylines include Tony's mistaken identity while he's in a coma, Bobby's help on a rapper's career (kind of funny when he's shot), Christopher and Little Carmine's film project, Julianna Skiff's relationship with both Tony and Christopher and Carmela's trip to Paris. Although a lot of people are killed this season (four from the DiMeo Family [Soprano family]), I, somewhat, don't really care if people are killed or not and it annoys me that other people like this show only because of the violence. All I need are fast-moving, interesting, important, funny stories, with reasonable violence and I'm happy. My least favorite episodes from this season include Join the Club, Johnny Cakes and Kaisha. My favorite episodes from this season include Members Only, Mr. and Mrs. Sacramoni's Request and The Ride. Even though Kaisha was a weak episode, I understand (and everyone else should too) that it is an episode in the middle of a 20 episode season. People still don't understand but Kaisha was not a season finale but a mid-season episode. Although the first part of the sixth season had good and bad in it, I, and a lot of other people, expected great episodes. I really hope that the final nine episodes (April, 2007) will bring back the greatness The Sopranos once had.

Season Six is one of the most underrated of all of the Sopraons seasons. Setting us up for the show's final eight episodes, the producers do subordinate plot to character study, but with stunning results. One of the central themes of the season--how, for all their mysoginistic bluster, the mafia men are so dependent on the women in their lives, and how they must come to face up to this--is fascinating and bold. From the beginning there's Eugene and his wife, Tony, Carm, and Meadow, Paulie and his mother, Bobby and Janice, Jonny and his soon-to-be-married daughter, the meanacing Phil and his wife and, yes, Chris and Ade (dead though she may be, her ghost is all throghout). Here the mafiosi have to face up to their own limitations and mortality in the starkest and, sometimes, cruelest ways. There are episodes that are as close to perfect as any in the series: the brilliantly hitchcokian Kiaisha among them. The time given to the "gay mobster" Vito for all the commotion it caused, is to be commended, since it sharply captures yet another of the seasons themes: the possibility of getting out of the life and material draw right back into it. Those who trash this season have missed the boat: Season Six greatly rewards careful and intelligent viewing.

Having watched the Sopranos now six seasons on, one begins to feel that all good things--even a series like this--needs to come to dignified and inevitable end. The cracks in Tony's crime empire have now become all the more apparent as we begin to witness the nadir of the series.

With the "accidental" shooting of Tony by Uncle Junior (suffering from progressive dementia) is offered as a fait accompli, Paulie's discovery that Aunt Dottie is his real mother, and the execution of Tony's captain, Vito, for his homosexuality, The Sopranos seems to expound more melodrama akin to a daytime soap opera than the hard hitting, nail-biting, dramatic series about a mob boss, his family, and his lieutanants we have grown accustomed to over the last several years.

So what is the problem with this season? For one thing, it would appear that the majority of characters don't seem to have much to do. For example, Meadow and Tony Jr. are now reduced to set pieces and, unfortunately, really bring nothing of value to the series or the story as a whole--Meadow, now a quasi-law-cum-quasi-medical student, interning in a public law firm, is merely a mouthpiece to expound writer David Chase's tiresome protestations against President Bush and the Administration's policies toward middle easterners and the War on Terror ad nauseam. Have we not seen this all before? As for Tony Jr., he has nothing better to do other than drop out of college or respond with a four letter expletive when asked by Carmella to bring something from home to the hospital. Dull.

With Johnny Sack in prison, the tension between Tony and the families on the opposite sides of the fence is clearly missing and we begin to see the these mobsters as mere ciphers of their former selves--Christopher wants to pursue screenwriting, Tony, out of a coma, contemplates Evangelical Christianity, forgiveness, and a life without the mob, and Bobby offers to shoot a rap star for five thousand dollars--non-fatally of course--so that the rapper can capitalize on the publicity like Tu Pac. One wonders if The Sopranos will make a debut in later seasons as a situation-comedy. It would all be interesting, if it actually helped to move or accelerate the story forward; unfortunately it doesn't.

Even Tony's sessions with the insightful Dr. Melfi lack the typical critical banter and insight that were once a window into Tony's true character and soul. The episode, "Luxury Lounge" is, more or less, played for laughs with guest appearances by Ben Kingsley and Lauren Bacall, and more of a social commentary on the cult of celebrity and begs the question how advertisers compensate and shower award presenters with lavish gifts. Christopher, expressing our own sentiment and, perhaps some envy, says blankly to Kingsley, "You mean like all this stuff is f****** free?"

The series still has the capacity to deliver the dramatic moments we have come to expect, but these are now too far and few between. Some sequences, like Tony's "dream" during his coma and the guest appearance of Hal Holbrook as a cancer patient who opens Tony's mind to the philosophical mysteries of life is a thoughtful and creative touch. But now the series begins to feel like an assemblage of our favorite relatives and friends at our table over for a traditional Italian feast, only they have overstayed their welcome and we wished they would go home.

The bad news is that this is only part of season six, so the payoff to all the plot lines isn't there, and the set just sort of ... ends.

The good news is that there's been a ton of great set-up for the end of the season and if the payoff is half as good as the set-up, season six, in its entirety, will definitely be a series high water mark.

And it's not that there aren't great stories told in this half of the season, either. In particular, Vito finally takes center stage and the Soprano family's relationship with the New York mob takes several violent twists.

As an incomplete season, this DVD set is unsatisfying in that so many plot threads are left dangling. If this is the kind of thing that will bother you (it seems to bother a lot of people), wait on the next DVD set being released before picking this up.

Many people are complaining about the purchase price of this collection of 12 episodes (with 8 episodes on the way). People are whinning because every season has been 13 episodes in length. Also, keep in mind that the series is not yet finished; 8 more episodes will debut in 2007. Season 6 will be 20 episodes total (in case you can't count... 12 + 8 = 20).

Consider the total running time of this collection: 12 episodes at 720 minutes. This is signifficant...

Here's the breakdown:

Season 1: 680 minutes in 13 episodes
Season 2: 780 minutes in 13 episodes
Season 3: 780 minutes in 13 episodes
Season 4: 800 minutes in 13 episodes
Season 5: 780 Minutes in 13 episodes
Season 6, Part 1: 720 minutes in 12 episodes
Season 6, Part 2: --- Minutes in 8 episodes

Stop complaining about this pricetag on this set! The price is well worth the cost when you consider the running time! Season 6, Part 1 was just as good as Seasons 2,3,4, and 5.

The show had me laughing aloud even though I was the only person watching at my home. The show imroves with age; The Sopranos are here to stay (even IF the series is drawing to a close).

ONE COMPLAINT (bases on my opinion): Not enough Uncle Junior! Corado Soprano is one of my favorite characters and we didn't see him enough! Hopefully, Uncle Junior will play a bigger role in the upcoming year...

...so says the striking voice of William S. Burroughs, reading his philisophical poem of death & beyond ("Seven Souls") to begin this rich & twisting 12 episode narrative, part one of two. The poem is an appropriate choice, and attentive viewers will be rewarded by keeping it in mind while watching this final season.

This DVD, including Part-One only, puts our now very familiar hero on the road to transformation. Where exactly we find him at the end, celebrating Christmas wearing a French beret & witnessing his own son's transformation, each viewer must conclude for themselves.

The season begins, after a fast-paced hour ("Member's Only") involving a disturbing and comically miserable suicide, with Tony shot by his arch enemy and falling into a deep coma. There he finds himself stuck in a Southern California airport hotel, slowly loosing his identity and memory to become mixed up with a (imaginary?) solar heating systems salesman from Arizona named Kevin Finnerty. He awakes from his coma, returned to New Jersey, but feeling "not myself."

In the wake of the Boss's shooting, the men around Tony seem at first to be reenergized, but suddenly begin to face a painfully comic series of challenges to their crumbling facades of masculine strength, and subsequent crisis of identities. The linchpin here is the secretly homosexual Vito, who, exposed, flees to a gay paradise in a New Hampshire hamlet ("Live Free or Die"), surrounded by handsome, rugged motorcycle riding, gay volunteer fireman.

Here Vito too slips his skin before our eyes to become a happy, almost different person...only to sabotage himself, fleeing NH after enduring one honest day's work, shooting a poor homeowner on his drive back to NJ. We also witness Jonny Sack's public tears at his daughter's wedding, Silvio's hospitalizing asthma, Bobby submission to his wife and retreat to his toy train set, Paulie "You're doing a heck of a job" Walnuts, & "drop the knife" A.J. are all examples of this masculine projection collapsing. But Vito's outing is the most public and embarrassing for everyone.

This well worth the price 6th season DVD, with a very revealing audio commentary from Creator David Chase, continues The Sopranos' dramatization of a creeping sense of decline in modern American life. "Things are trendin' downward..." Tony observed to Dr. Melfi in the series 1999 premier. He said that while we see him read a newspaper headline, "Clinton Warns Medicare Could Be Bust By 2001." The character's dilemma here in 2006 resembles the very public collapse of the current White House administration's projections of unbending masculine strength, authority, and competence. I'm thinking specifically about the type of male character personified in the former secretary of defense, the vice president, and the president himself. Attempted personification, I guess I should say.

The current weak American dollar is mocked in the episode "Luxury Lounge." While Chris goes uncomprehendingly bananas for the free "swag" he sees being given away in Hollywood, the Italian assassins are flying home (in the final scene) laughing about the loot they have purchased cheap, taking advantage of the weak U.S. currency. David Chase is pointedly sitting across the aisle in this scene, going oversees himself.

But the real story remains Tony and his emotional reaction to the shooting. Whether his trauma has brought him real spiritual or moral insight, or the wisdom to avoid disaster for himself and his family, Part 2 should answer. But so far, Season 6 is probobly the best season since #3, and essential viewing for fans who have been following Tony Soprano's emotional life from the beginning...

I NEVER buy TV shows on DVD - but in this case I had to, I don't have HBO and I couldn't bear missing a season. The episodes are more violent and bloody and although I hated that part, I feel I received a true picture of the coldhearted people that the Mafia had in their ranks, it's amazing that killers are also human and in this series it is evident that sociopaths can function in a normal world. I am still in love with the first 3 seasons, that was some awesome writing and I would love to own them so I can watch it again. I feel I belong to the Soprano family by inviting them into my livingroom for the past 4-5 months (or however long it took me to finsih all the seasons), my 22 year old son got me hooked and I must say that even though I am not a TV watcher - this program hooked me from the very start.