Monday, April 24, 2006

Surfing Through "The Sopranos"

Blogger is taking forever to post, today.And "The Sopranos" is taking forever to grind its way to the finale. Last week we watched a closeted Mafioso go antiquing. This week, we wasted a lot of time on the restaurant owner. Even more boringly, we wasted time with a new, even minor character -- his Albanian hostess who flirts with a mobster, rips off Amex card numbers for a scam, seems ashamed when found out and then lashes out. Who cares? We've never spent two minutes before with her. Just like last week we watched the gaf Mafia guy presumably consider suicide (though the actor is so weak it's hard to tell), this week we watched the restaurant guy melt down. But how many shots of an empty restauarant do we need to see to get the idea? And the dialogue! I paraphrase, but "We lead the world in data collection!" and the wife's comment about his swearing, "When you swear you give them the moral high ground" or whatever. Good God. Also, Michael's trip to LA was a waste of time. Fine, he nastily confronts Ben Kingsley over the swag he gets -- but since Kingsley was never going to make his movie anyway, it wasn't a scene with any consequence, just a time killer. (Though it was admittedly fun to see Lauren Bacall get clocked by Michael so he could steal her gift basket.) Finally, in a depressing echo of last week's final moment, this week ended with the two least important characters of all -- the two Italian hitmen who are seen sitting in a plane heading home and comparing the gifts they'd bought. How is this interesting or important in any way? Why are we even spending another moment with these guys, much less watching them look at the watches and pens they bought and discussing the exchange rate? Ridiculous.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is getting more and more difficult to defend Soprano's as it crawls along to it's finale (I think 4-5 episodes left this season and another 6-8 episodes in the final season). But, I am still loving the show. I must put my faith in Chase and believe that he is building up a number of storylines preping us for whomever is going to become the snitch. I loved some of the lines you noted, a bit campy but I thought within character. One of my fav's is from Arnie, "another fun fact from the Balkans".
I think the guy Christopher used to meet the two Italian hit guys is more than he seems to be right now as hinted at when they asked where he was from. Maybe the airplane scene in the end was included cause David Chase wanted to be in the show. Wasn't that him in the seat across from them?

Michael in New York said...

Damn, I already erased my DVR of the show. I'll have to check someone's VOD to see if that was Chase. He does have a talent for building up to satisfying finales, so I hold out hope the final episodes will kick in. But it's usually not so tiresome getting there.

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