Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini
The center of the show, Tony heads the DiMeo family, the most powerful crime organization in New Jersey. He was born in 1959 and grew up in North Jersey. Violence was prevalent in Tony's childhood; he witnessed his father, Johnny Boy, brutalizing victims, while his mother, Livia, was emotionally abusive. Johnny Boy brought Tony into the family crime business.
As the acting head of the "family," Tony has been responsible for many deaths, including his close associate Big Pussy, his cousin Tony B. and his associate Ralph Cifaretto. Meanwhile, his personal life has had its share of complications, with his marriage almost breaking up because of his infidelity, tension with his children and his own struggle with anxiety.
Dr. Jennifer Melfi, played by Lorraine Bracco
Dr. Melfi, Tony Soprano's psychiatrist, arguably knows the mob boss better than anyone else. She is a respected doctor in private practice to whom Tony was referred by a neighbor.
Dr. Melfi hasn't had an easy time with Tony as a patient. She has self-medicated her stress with alcohol, and her own therapist prescribed medication for Melfi's obsessive-compulsive disorder. Tony has made multiple attempts to woo Dr. Melfi, but she has always refused his advances.
Carmela Soprano, played by Edie Falco
Carmela DeAngelis met Tony Soprano in high school and eventually quit her studies at Montclair State University to marry him. While she enjoys the material perks of being married to a mobster, she finds it harder to deal with the constant threat of losing her husband to business.
Tony and Carmela separated once because of his infidelity. While Tony has had numerous extramarital affairs over the years, Carmela also had a flirtation with Tony's business associate Furio Giunta and, during their separation, an affair with their son's guidance counselor. Ultimately, however, Carmela and Tony reunited.
Christopher Moltisanti, played by Michael Imperioli
Christopher is Carmela's first cousin but as Tony's protégé, Tony adopts him as his own nephew. Christopher was a baby when his father was killed and Tony became a father figure to him.
Christopher has an impulsive and sometimes violent nature, which has made for obstacles as the heroin addict has risen in the ranks of the family business. His flirtations with Hollywood have been a constant annoyance to Tony, and he also was not always sure it was the life for him. He did, however, prove his devotion to the Sopranos when he informed on his fiancée, Adriana, who was killed after she tried to convince Christopher to help the Feds.
Uncle Junior, played by Dominic Chianese
Carrado Soprano, Jr., better known as Uncle Junior, is Tony Soprano's paternal uncle.
Junior briefly headed the New Jersey crime family, but because his leadership was perceived as selfish and overbearing, Tony took over. Capitalizing on Junior's vulnerability, Tony's mother, Livia, manipulated Junior into ordering an unsuccessful hit on her son. Junior was also placed under house arrest on federal racketeering charges but his case ended in a mistrial. He has been diagnosed with cancer and has suffered a series of strokes. While awaiting his re-trial, he mistook Tony for an old acquaintance and shot him, nearly to death. He now lives in a mental health facility.
Silvio Dante, played by Steven Van Zandt
Silvio, one of Tony Soprano's associates, owns the Bada Bing club, the topless club where they do business.
Silvio has been around mobsters his entire life. While he is even-tempered and reasonable, he is no stranger to violence. He has recommended Tony to eliminate rivals by having them killed and he personally took part in the murder of Big Pussy. Silvio ran the crew while Tony was in a coma, but he found the stress of being the boss more than he could handle.
Paulie Walnuts, played by Tony Sirico
Peter Paul Gualtieri, aka Paulie Walnuts, has been a part of the business since age 17, under Johnny Boy Soprano, Tony's father.
Paulie has a violent temper, but perhaps what sets him apart from Tony's other associates are his issues with women. He has never been married, but has a strong bond with his "mother," Nucci, whom he discovered was actually his aunt; his real mother was a nun. Paulie considered leaving Tony's organization to become part of a New York crime operation after some of Tony's decisions led to a decreased income for Paulie. But when the leader of the New York organization did not recognize him, Paulie returned to Tony - with a wad of cash for the mob boss.
Anthony Soprano Jr., played by Robert Iler
Tony Soprano's younger child, Anthony Jr., or A.J., is a troubled teenager whose rap sheet includes crashing his mother's car while driving without a license and getting caught smoking marijuana at his confirmation party. He was expelled from high school for cheating on a test.
After his expulsion, A.J. was sent to a tough-as-nails military school, but his enrollment was cancelled when it was discovered he, like his father and grandfather, suffered from anxiety attacks. A.J. set out to kill Uncle Junior for shooting Tony but found himself incapable when he came face to face with his great-uncle. A.J. has been changing his aimless ways since becoming involved with Blanca Selgada, a single mother.
Meadow Soprano, played by Jamie-Lynn Sigler
Meadow Mariangela Soprano is the older of Tony and Carmela's two children.
She excelled in high school and at Columbia University, but her relationship with her parents has been rocky through the years. Her parents disapproved of her boyfriend Tony, who was of mixed race, and her next boyfriend, Jackie Aprile, Jr., whose father was Tony's late boss and friend. And even though Jackie cheated on Meadow and failed out of college, she was devastated when he was found shot to death, and she blamed her father and the mob lifestyle. She is now engaged to Finn DeTriolio and living in California. She seems to have distanced herself from the family's criminal connections.
Janice Soprano, played by Aida Turturro
Tony Soprano's older sister Janice disappeared from family interaction from high school graduation until her mother, Livia's, stroke -- and the promised inheritance -- prompted her return to New Jersey. Back home, she got engaged to her old boyfriend, Richie Aprile, whom she shot to death after he hit her in the mouth. Tony sent her to Seattle, Washington, but she returned home for good after Livia's death.
Janice's trouble with her Russian housekeeper landed her in the hospital, where she found religion. She had an intense affair with Ralph Cifaretto, but that ended in favor of a relationship with widower Bobby Baccilieri. She became a soccer mom, and after being arrested for assaulting the mother of a peewee soccer player, she enrolled in counseling.
Johnny Sack, played by Vince Curatola
Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni is the head of the New York operation and an ally of Tony Soprano.
Johnny is known for his cool, calm and collected demeanor. However, a disparaging remark about his wife can trigger rage, as was the case when Ralph Cifaretto repeated a comment about her backside and Johnny ordered a hit on Ralph (which was eventually called off). The Feds busted Johnny, but while imprisoned he received permission to attend to his daughter's wedding. He openly cried there, losing the respect of many of his associates and essentially control of the family.
Phil Leotardo, played by Frank Vincent
Tony Soprano's rival, Phil Leotardo, is the head of the New York crime family.
Hostility brewed between Tony and Phil when Tony Soprano took out Tony B. before Phil could get his hands on Tony B. for torturing and killing Phil's brother in front of Phil. The animosity continued with Phil's disrespect toward Tony until Phil suffered a heart attack and Tony made a bedside appeal for reconciliation.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Season by Season Guide to "The Sopranos"
HBO's Emmy-winning TV series "The Sopranos" pushed the envelope in its frank depiction of organized crime by inviting viewers into the world of Tony Soprano, his family -- wife Carmela and their children Meadow and Anthony Jr. -- and his "Family." Millions of loyal followers have been tuning in since 1999, and beginning Sunday, April 8th, the show will premiere the first of its final nine episodes.
Season 1
# Tony Soprano begins visiting psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi after anxiety attacks; eventually he hires a detective to investigate her
# Tony moves his mother into a retirement home against her wishes
# Jackie Aprile dies, Uncle Junior Soprano becomes the new boss of the New Jersey family
# Meadow Soprano reveals to her brother Anthony Jr. their father's true line of work
# Tony's mother Livia persuades Uncle Junior to put a hit out on Tony, which fails
# The crew kills Jimmy Altieri for being an FBI informant
# The FBI arrests Uncle Junior
Season 2
# With Uncle Junior locked up, Tony is the new mob boss
# Tony's long-lost sister, Janice, returns to tend to Livia
# Former boss Jackie Aprile's brother, Richie, gets out of jail, challenges Tony's leadership
# Tony resumes therapy with Dr. Melfi after she refuses to see him; she resorts to drinking vodka before their sessions
# Christopher Moltisanto, Tony's "nephew" but really Carmela's cousin -- survives being shot
# Janice kills Richie Aprile after he hits her
# Tony discovers "Big Pussy" is a federal informant, so consigliere Silvio Dante and capo Paulie Walnuts whack him
Season 3
# Tony's mother, Livia, dies
# Janice steals the prosthetic leg of her Russian housekeeper, Svetlana; Russian thugs retaliate by breaking three of Janice's ribs
# Dr. Melfi is raped
# New York crime boss Johnny Sack moves to New Jersey
# Uncle Junior undergoes chemotherapy for stomach cancer
# Tony dates Gloria Trillo, whom he met in Dr. Melfi's office
# Meadow's ex-boyfriend Jackie Aprile Jr. is shot to death because of a card game robbery
Season 4
# Christopher's fiance Adriana La Cerva unwittingly befriends an undercover agent; she is faced with an ultimatum of getting arrested or informing
# Janice and Ralph Cifaretto develop a relationship; she breaks it off by shoving him down stairs
# A distraught Tony learns his ex-girlfriend Gloria committed suicide
# Tony grows fond of the racehorse Pie-O-My; when the horse dies in a suspicious fire, Tony suspects Ralph and kills him. Christopher helps Tony dismember the body
# The family stages an intervention for heroin addict Christopher
# Carmela and Furio Giunta -- recruited from an Italian gang -- become attracted to one another, leading to Furio's return to Italy
# The judge declares a mistrial in Uncle Junior's case
# With Tony and Carmela's marriage strained, Tony moves into a hotel
Season 5
# Tony's cousin, Tony Blundetto, is released after 15 years behind bars; he tries and fails to work legitimately
# Uncle Junior's behavior seems odd; it develops he suffered several small strokes
# Tony B. takes things into his own hands to revenge a friend's killing by New York's Leotardos. He kills the New York operation's Billy
Leotardo, little brother of the powerful capo Phil. Johnny Sack wants Tony B. dead
# Tony and Carmela reconcile on the condition that Tony funds her spec house project
# Adriana, threatened by the FBI with jail, tries to get Christopher to escape with her; Christopher rats on her; Silvio kills Adriana in the woods
# With a heavy heart, Tony kills Tony B. -- saving him from a torturous murder by Phil Leotardo
Season 6
# A paranoid and unbalanced Uncle Junior shoots Tony, leaving him in a coma
# Tony recovers and is released from the hospital
# Johnny Sack, arrested by the Feds, is sentenced to 15 years
# Johnny, in prison, petitions to attend his daughter's wedding; he openly cries there and loses the respect of his crew
# A.J. (Anthony Jr.) vows revenge on Junior for shooting Tony but cannot go through with it
# Christopher, once again abusing drugs, marries his pregnant girlfriend Kelli
# Word gets out that Vito Spatafore, one of Tony's associates, is gay. Vito's wife is related to Phil -- who's furious and goes behind Tony's back to have Vito whacked
# Phil has a heart attack; Tony visits him in the hospital and pleads for peace
Thanks to CNN.
Season 1
# Tony Soprano begins visiting psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi after anxiety attacks; eventually he hires a detective to investigate her
# Tony moves his mother into a retirement home against her wishes
# Jackie Aprile dies, Uncle Junior Soprano becomes the new boss of the New Jersey family
# Meadow Soprano reveals to her brother Anthony Jr. their father's true line of work
# Tony's mother Livia persuades Uncle Junior to put a hit out on Tony, which fails
# The crew kills Jimmy Altieri for being an FBI informant
# The FBI arrests Uncle Junior
Season 2
# With Uncle Junior locked up, Tony is the new mob boss
# Tony's long-lost sister, Janice, returns to tend to Livia
# Former boss Jackie Aprile's brother, Richie, gets out of jail, challenges Tony's leadership
# Tony resumes therapy with Dr. Melfi after she refuses to see him; she resorts to drinking vodka before their sessions
# Christopher Moltisanto, Tony's "nephew" but really Carmela's cousin -- survives being shot
# Janice kills Richie Aprile after he hits her
# Tony discovers "Big Pussy" is a federal informant, so consigliere Silvio Dante and capo Paulie Walnuts whack him
Season 3
# Tony's mother, Livia, dies
# Janice steals the prosthetic leg of her Russian housekeeper, Svetlana; Russian thugs retaliate by breaking three of Janice's ribs
# Dr. Melfi is raped
# New York crime boss Johnny Sack moves to New Jersey
# Uncle Junior undergoes chemotherapy for stomach cancer
# Tony dates Gloria Trillo, whom he met in Dr. Melfi's office
# Meadow's ex-boyfriend Jackie Aprile Jr. is shot to death because of a card game robbery
Season 4
# Christopher's fiance Adriana La Cerva unwittingly befriends an undercover agent; she is faced with an ultimatum of getting arrested or informing
# Janice and Ralph Cifaretto develop a relationship; she breaks it off by shoving him down stairs
# A distraught Tony learns his ex-girlfriend Gloria committed suicide
# Tony grows fond of the racehorse Pie-O-My; when the horse dies in a suspicious fire, Tony suspects Ralph and kills him. Christopher helps Tony dismember the body
# The family stages an intervention for heroin addict Christopher
# Carmela and Furio Giunta -- recruited from an Italian gang -- become attracted to one another, leading to Furio's return to Italy
# The judge declares a mistrial in Uncle Junior's case
# With Tony and Carmela's marriage strained, Tony moves into a hotel
Season 5
# Tony's cousin, Tony Blundetto, is released after 15 years behind bars; he tries and fails to work legitimately
# Uncle Junior's behavior seems odd; it develops he suffered several small strokes
# Tony B. takes things into his own hands to revenge a friend's killing by New York's Leotardos. He kills the New York operation's Billy
Leotardo, little brother of the powerful capo Phil. Johnny Sack wants Tony B. dead
# Tony and Carmela reconcile on the condition that Tony funds her spec house project
# Adriana, threatened by the FBI with jail, tries to get Christopher to escape with her; Christopher rats on her; Silvio kills Adriana in the woods
# With a heavy heart, Tony kills Tony B. -- saving him from a torturous murder by Phil Leotardo
Season 6
# A paranoid and unbalanced Uncle Junior shoots Tony, leaving him in a coma
# Tony recovers and is released from the hospital
# Johnny Sack, arrested by the Feds, is sentenced to 15 years
# Johnny, in prison, petitions to attend his daughter's wedding; he openly cries there and loses the respect of his crew
# A.J. (Anthony Jr.) vows revenge on Junior for shooting Tony but cannot go through with it
# Christopher, once again abusing drugs, marries his pregnant girlfriend Kelli
# Word gets out that Vito Spatafore, one of Tony's associates, is gay. Vito's wife is related to Phil -- who's furious and goes behind Tony's back to have Vito whacked
# Phil has a heart attack; Tony visits him in the hospital and pleads for peace
Thanks to CNN.
Sopranos Ready for Final Whacks
Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family
They're all gone now.
Big Pussy: Gone. Richie Aprile: Gone. Ralph Cifaretto: Gone.
Gloria, Adriana, Vito, Tony Blundetto: Gone, gone, brutally gone.
But not, in the mixed-up mob-family world of "The Sopranos," forgotten. Like Shakespearean ghosts, the departed haunt the living, a reminder of the thin line between their desperate, shifty lives and a place six feet under -- or 60 feet under water, or buried in the woods, or decapitated and inserted in a bowling bag.
So the survivors smile over the anger and violence that lurks just beneath the surface, and cover it up with pretty suburban estates and snappy clothes and money -- always wads of money -- and try to stay one step ahead of the ghosts. But death awaits us all, and for "The Sopranos," the moment of reckoning has arrived. The HBO series about a mob boss, his family, his crew and his therapist -- widely hailed as one of the finest shows in television history -- begins its final season of nine episodes Sunday. (HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Time Warner.)
The stars have mixed feelings about the series' end.
"This is really hard. I've never had a job for 10 years before," Edie Falco, who plays Carmela Soprano -- wife of mob boss Tony (James Gandolfini) -- told CNN at the show's New York premiere last week. "It is really not easy."
"The Sopranos" made lots of reputations during its seven-season, nine-year run.
Creator David Chase, a TV veteran who had written for "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and "The Rockford Files" and produced "Northern Exposure," can now write his own ticket in Hollywood.
Gandolfini, a beefy character actor, became a star -- as have many of his co-stars, some with such unorthodox backgrounds as guitarist (Steve Van Zandt, the longtime Bruce Springsteen sideman who plays Tony's pal Silvio Dante) and ex-con (Tony Sirico, who served time for some stick-ups before turning to acting, and now plays mobster Paulie Walnuts).
And HBO, which had had only mild success with original programming before "The Sopranos," became the go-to place for water-cooler TV series, including "Big Love," "Six Feet Under" and "Sex and the City" (which, although it predated "The Sopranos," caught fire after the mob drama began).
The series was an unusual smash: as intricate as a novel, with flashes of fierce violence and equally uncomfortable humor. The four major broadcast networks all had their shots before Chase took the show to HBO, but all turned it down.
With the scope, the pacing, the language and the darkness of the show, the rejections were for the best, said Sirico. "It could have never happened on network," he told CNN.
Producer Brad Grey, who shopped "The Sopranos" around, agrees. "I believed that the net[work]s would be open to taking some risks at that time," he told Vanity Fair. "I was foolish. ... It was basically a waste of time, really bad judgment on my part, because even if they had taken it, it wouldn't have been 'The Sopranos.' "
The show pushed the limits of television -- and HBO's patience. It was expensive from the outset, it was full of unknown performers (probably the best known at its debut was Lorraine Bracco, who plays Dr. Jennifer Melfi, Tony's therapist) and HBO didn't like the name, believing people would think it was about opera. And nobody was safe in Chase's underworld. Characters died -- and they died suddenly, with the risk of alienating viewers. The actors who played them also walked a tightrope of emotion, knowing they could be whacked at any time. "I was really, really sad," said Steve Buscemi (Tony Blundetto) at a gathering of performers who played killed-off characters. "That's really just about missing the greatest job I've ever had."
But the show also had many moments of humor -- often directly contrasted with the violence -- and was willing to be as brutally honest in dissecting family relationships as it was in showing a mobster's corrupt world. Some of the show's most dramatic moments have come between Tony and Carmela, arguing in their kitchen.
"It really pushed the envelope. I think people were expecting it to be just a mob show, but it's really not," Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who plays Soprano daughter Meadow, told CNN. "David uses it as a vehicle to express a lot of his opinions on social issues and family issues and political issues. ... I think people were afraid to do that for awhile. 'Sopranos' sort of broke the mold with that."
Naturally, the show's performers -- adhering to the mob code of omerta -- have been tight-lipped as to what's in store for the final run. "Everything you were waiting for, you're gonna see. Everything you've been waiting to feel, you're gonna feel. Trust me. Trust me," was all Sirico would tell CNN.
The series may have peaked a few years ago; ratings, which began strongly and have stayed high for HBO, topped out at 11 million viewers per episode in the fourth season; last season the numbers were closer to 8.5 million. With Chase sometimes unsure of whether to continue, there were huge gaps between some seasons. And in recent years, "The Sopranos" has been attacked for not always measuring up to its own high standards. But, even with the show available on DVD and in (expurgated) reruns on A&E, it will haunt -- like a ghost.
"It's been such a big part of my life -- it's been almost 10 years. I was 16 when we started and I've been through so much through this whole ride," said Sigler. "I only hope to do something half as good."
Thanks to CNN
They're all gone now.
Big Pussy: Gone. Richie Aprile: Gone. Ralph Cifaretto: Gone.
Gloria, Adriana, Vito, Tony Blundetto: Gone, gone, brutally gone.
But not, in the mixed-up mob-family world of "The Sopranos," forgotten. Like Shakespearean ghosts, the departed haunt the living, a reminder of the thin line between their desperate, shifty lives and a place six feet under -- or 60 feet under water, or buried in the woods, or decapitated and inserted in a bowling bag.
So the survivors smile over the anger and violence that lurks just beneath the surface, and cover it up with pretty suburban estates and snappy clothes and money -- always wads of money -- and try to stay one step ahead of the ghosts. But death awaits us all, and for "The Sopranos," the moment of reckoning has arrived. The HBO series about a mob boss, his family, his crew and his therapist -- widely hailed as one of the finest shows in television history -- begins its final season of nine episodes Sunday. (HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Time Warner.)
The stars have mixed feelings about the series' end.
"This is really hard. I've never had a job for 10 years before," Edie Falco, who plays Carmela Soprano -- wife of mob boss Tony (James Gandolfini) -- told CNN at the show's New York premiere last week. "It is really not easy."
"The Sopranos" made lots of reputations during its seven-season, nine-year run.
Creator David Chase, a TV veteran who had written for "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and "The Rockford Files" and produced "Northern Exposure," can now write his own ticket in Hollywood.
Gandolfini, a beefy character actor, became a star -- as have many of his co-stars, some with such unorthodox backgrounds as guitarist (Steve Van Zandt, the longtime Bruce Springsteen sideman who plays Tony's pal Silvio Dante) and ex-con (Tony Sirico, who served time for some stick-ups before turning to acting, and now plays mobster Paulie Walnuts).
And HBO, which had had only mild success with original programming before "The Sopranos," became the go-to place for water-cooler TV series, including "Big Love," "Six Feet Under" and "Sex and the City" (which, although it predated "The Sopranos," caught fire after the mob drama began).
The series was an unusual smash: as intricate as a novel, with flashes of fierce violence and equally uncomfortable humor. The four major broadcast networks all had their shots before Chase took the show to HBO, but all turned it down.
With the scope, the pacing, the language and the darkness of the show, the rejections were for the best, said Sirico. "It could have never happened on network," he told CNN.
Producer Brad Grey, who shopped "The Sopranos" around, agrees. "I believed that the net[work]s would be open to taking some risks at that time," he told Vanity Fair. "I was foolish. ... It was basically a waste of time, really bad judgment on my part, because even if they had taken it, it wouldn't have been 'The Sopranos.' "
The show pushed the limits of television -- and HBO's patience. It was expensive from the outset, it was full of unknown performers (probably the best known at its debut was Lorraine Bracco, who plays Dr. Jennifer Melfi, Tony's therapist) and HBO didn't like the name, believing people would think it was about opera. And nobody was safe in Chase's underworld. Characters died -- and they died suddenly, with the risk of alienating viewers. The actors who played them also walked a tightrope of emotion, knowing they could be whacked at any time. "I was really, really sad," said Steve Buscemi (Tony Blundetto) at a gathering of performers who played killed-off characters. "That's really just about missing the greatest job I've ever had."
But the show also had many moments of humor -- often directly contrasted with the violence -- and was willing to be as brutally honest in dissecting family relationships as it was in showing a mobster's corrupt world. Some of the show's most dramatic moments have come between Tony and Carmela, arguing in their kitchen.
"It really pushed the envelope. I think people were expecting it to be just a mob show, but it's really not," Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who plays Soprano daughter Meadow, told CNN. "David uses it as a vehicle to express a lot of his opinions on social issues and family issues and political issues. ... I think people were afraid to do that for awhile. 'Sopranos' sort of broke the mold with that."
Naturally, the show's performers -- adhering to the mob code of omerta -- have been tight-lipped as to what's in store for the final run. "Everything you were waiting for, you're gonna see. Everything you've been waiting to feel, you're gonna feel. Trust me. Trust me," was all Sirico would tell CNN.
The series may have peaked a few years ago; ratings, which began strongly and have stayed high for HBO, topped out at 11 million viewers per episode in the fourth season; last season the numbers were closer to 8.5 million. With Chase sometimes unsure of whether to continue, there were huge gaps between some seasons. And in recent years, "The Sopranos" has been attacked for not always measuring up to its own high standards. But, even with the show available on DVD and in (expurgated) reruns on A&E, it will haunt -- like a ghost.
"It's been such a big part of my life -- it's been almost 10 years. I was 16 when we started and I've been through so much through this whole ride," said Sigler. "I only hope to do something half as good."
Thanks to CNN
Ray Ryan Book Still Under Development
Friends of ours: Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo
It's been nearly two years ago since we first wrote in this column about a book that was to be published about Ray Ryan, one of the biggest names connected with Watertown's rich history.
It was back in May of 2005 that Herb Marynell, a freelance writer and photographer from Newburgh, Ind., stopped by our office at the Daily Times to discuss Ryan as part of his information gathering process which is to lead up to a biography of Ryan.
Herb has been fascinated with Ryan for many years and has collected a vast amount of information about his life. Herb's fascination with this “larger than life” personality came about while he was a reporter for the Evansville Courier & Press in Evansville, Ind. It was back in October of 1977 when Ryan was killed when a bomb went off in his car in Evansville. The explosion and Ryan's death were widely speculated to have been the work of the mob, which had been intertwined in Ryan's life for a long time. (Joey the Clown Lombardo has been widely regarded as the top suspect by law enforcement authorities.)
Herb's visit to Watertown included a number of stops and interviews with people, and he said he learned a great deal.
Back when he visited two years ago, Herb had hopes the book would be in print by this time, but that hasn't been the case. A number of our readers have been asking us about the book and when it might be available, and as a result, we visited with Herb recently, and he said he continues to gather information on Ryan and that he has a fair amount of work to do before the book is published.
At the present time he has over 100,000 words in the initial draft of the book, and plans to add thousands more before it's ready for editing and final proofing. His estimate is that the book could still be a year away from publication.
Herb told us in recent days, “Last fall I visited Hot Springs, Ark., and two important oil towns of Tyler and Snyder, Texas, to get the feel of those places. Just before the end of the year we visited Las Vegas and Palm Springs, Calif. to learn more. I didn't think much of Las Vegas but Palm Springs is a wonderful place. If only we had the money to live there permanently - I can see why Ray Ryan loved that place.”
Herb told us one of the best parts of those trips was meeting the old-timers, the folks in their 80s and 90s with great stories about life in those communities back in the 1950s and 1960s when Ryan was around.
He said, “Through the folks I ran into in Las Vegas I got to meet Tony Montana, a Chicago guy who grew up in The Patch and knew the important guys in the Chicago Mob in the 1940s and 1950s. Tony is a hoot! He lives in Vegas and will be working in Chicago this year doing a movie about the 42 Gang from which several of The Outfit's later top mob guys started their ‘careers.'”
Herb said he's still looking for more information on when Ryan testified in 1964 against two mob guys who tried to extort money from him. That chapter will likely lead Herb to Washington, D.C., where he wants to take a peak at some U.S. Tax Court documents from when the Feds went after Ryan in the late 1960s.
Herb also appealed to me to see if anyone in Watertown could help fill in a few more blanks about his years in this community. Questions Herb raised included:
Did Ryan attend college in the area after high school and did he graduate from Watertown High School? (The indications are he did not.)
Did he play sports in high school or college?
Was he a “ladies man” as a youth?
When did he become interested in horseback riding?
He was also interested in the time when Joe Davies came to Watertown to announce his plans to form the scholarship foundation that has been so big here in Watertown. Herb believes Ryan was one of the speakers when the announcement was made and we're checking into that for him.
Herb said he still doesn't have a publisher for the book but because it's not quite ready for publication, he has not been looking for one. He said Tony Montana is affiliated with a publishing company and would help to make it happen if that becomes necessary.
Herb also said he would be e-mailing to us some sections of the book that pertain to Watertown to check on accuracy and to see if there is anything more local residents can add to the story.
He's excited about the book, and we told him there will probably be some good sales of it right here in Watertown. Old-timers remember Ryan well. He was a pretty “flashy” person and he was always dealing with huge projects, and that often kept him in the news, not only in Watertown but throughout the country. As a result, there is a lot of interest in this Watertown man who made it big and made news even in the way he died - probably at the hands of some disgruntled mob boss. But, we'll never know that for sure.
If any of our readers have more information they can share on the life of Ray Ryan, and especially his years in Watertown and his return visits here, drop a note to us here at the Daily Times. We'll be sure to pass everything along to Herb as soon as we receive it.
So, we hope this update helps our readers to know just where Herb is with publishing the biography of Ray Ryan. From what Herb told us in our recent conversation, we shouldn't get overly anxious about the book any time soon. It will likely be at least a year before it makes it in print and it's actually available for purchase. We'll keep you posted if there are any other new developments on the quest to get this book published.
Thanks to WDT
It's been nearly two years ago since we first wrote in this column about a book that was to be published about Ray Ryan, one of the biggest names connected with Watertown's rich history.
It was back in May of 2005 that Herb Marynell, a freelance writer and photographer from Newburgh, Ind., stopped by our office at the Daily Times to discuss Ryan as part of his information gathering process which is to lead up to a biography of Ryan.
Herb has been fascinated with Ryan for many years and has collected a vast amount of information about his life. Herb's fascination with this “larger than life” personality came about while he was a reporter for the Evansville Courier & Press in Evansville, Ind. It was back in October of 1977 when Ryan was killed when a bomb went off in his car in Evansville. The explosion and Ryan's death were widely speculated to have been the work of the mob, which had been intertwined in Ryan's life for a long time. (Joey the Clown Lombardo has been widely regarded as the top suspect by law enforcement authorities.)
Herb's visit to Watertown included a number of stops and interviews with people, and he said he learned a great deal.
Back when he visited two years ago, Herb had hopes the book would be in print by this time, but that hasn't been the case. A number of our readers have been asking us about the book and when it might be available, and as a result, we visited with Herb recently, and he said he continues to gather information on Ryan and that he has a fair amount of work to do before the book is published.
At the present time he has over 100,000 words in the initial draft of the book, and plans to add thousands more before it's ready for editing and final proofing. His estimate is that the book could still be a year away from publication.
Herb told us in recent days, “Last fall I visited Hot Springs, Ark., and two important oil towns of Tyler and Snyder, Texas, to get the feel of those places. Just before the end of the year we visited Las Vegas and Palm Springs, Calif. to learn more. I didn't think much of Las Vegas but Palm Springs is a wonderful place. If only we had the money to live there permanently - I can see why Ray Ryan loved that place.”
Herb told us one of the best parts of those trips was meeting the old-timers, the folks in their 80s and 90s with great stories about life in those communities back in the 1950s and 1960s when Ryan was around.
He said, “Through the folks I ran into in Las Vegas I got to meet Tony Montana, a Chicago guy who grew up in The Patch and knew the important guys in the Chicago Mob in the 1940s and 1950s. Tony is a hoot! He lives in Vegas and will be working in Chicago this year doing a movie about the 42 Gang from which several of The Outfit's later top mob guys started their ‘careers.'”
Herb said he's still looking for more information on when Ryan testified in 1964 against two mob guys who tried to extort money from him. That chapter will likely lead Herb to Washington, D.C., where he wants to take a peak at some U.S. Tax Court documents from when the Feds went after Ryan in the late 1960s.
Herb also appealed to me to see if anyone in Watertown could help fill in a few more blanks about his years in this community. Questions Herb raised included:
Did Ryan attend college in the area after high school and did he graduate from Watertown High School? (The indications are he did not.)
Did he play sports in high school or college?
Was he a “ladies man” as a youth?
When did he become interested in horseback riding?
He was also interested in the time when Joe Davies came to Watertown to announce his plans to form the scholarship foundation that has been so big here in Watertown. Herb believes Ryan was one of the speakers when the announcement was made and we're checking into that for him.
Herb said he still doesn't have a publisher for the book but because it's not quite ready for publication, he has not been looking for one. He said Tony Montana is affiliated with a publishing company and would help to make it happen if that becomes necessary.
Herb also said he would be e-mailing to us some sections of the book that pertain to Watertown to check on accuracy and to see if there is anything more local residents can add to the story.
He's excited about the book, and we told him there will probably be some good sales of it right here in Watertown. Old-timers remember Ryan well. He was a pretty “flashy” person and he was always dealing with huge projects, and that often kept him in the news, not only in Watertown but throughout the country. As a result, there is a lot of interest in this Watertown man who made it big and made news even in the way he died - probably at the hands of some disgruntled mob boss. But, we'll never know that for sure.
If any of our readers have more information they can share on the life of Ray Ryan, and especially his years in Watertown and his return visits here, drop a note to us here at the Daily Times. We'll be sure to pass everything along to Herb as soon as we receive it.
So, we hope this update helps our readers to know just where Herb is with publishing the biography of Ray Ryan. From what Herb told us in our recent conversation, we shouldn't get overly anxious about the book any time soon. It will likely be at least a year before it makes it in print and it's actually available for purchase. We'll keep you posted if there are any other new developments on the quest to get this book published.
Thanks to WDT
Friday, April 06, 2007
The Sopranos Day of Reckoning
Friends of mine: Soprano Crime Family
As "The Sopranos" enters its final chapter, Tony reluctantly faces his past -- and we reluctantly face the end of this brilliant series.
SPOILER ALERT! Includes spoilers from the first two episodes of the final season of "The Sopranos." Don't read this if you don't want to know what happens in these episodes.
"All those memories are for what? All I am to him is some asshole bully." -- Tony Soprano
As the curtain rises on the final season of HBO's "The Sopranos," Tony is considering his legacy more than ever before, even more than he did after his brush with death. He's wondering not just how he's seen by Christopher, who portrays him as an aggressive thug in his new mob-horror movie, but how his other associates and his wife and kids see him. How will he be remembered? What will he leave behind? With all of the unrealistic expectations we each have of our lives, the big goals we want to accomplish, the hopes we have for those we love, how can we not be a little disappointed in the end?
The same questions apply as we near the end of this epic mob drama, a TV series that redefined our understanding of the Italian mob and explored the fragile nature of family -- the kind we have with blood relatives, and the business relationships that are sometimes just as intimate and as complicated. Expectations were enormous at the start of the first half of this final season. A two-year hiatus didn't help, of course, nor did the fact that television dramas in general were improving, following in the path cleared by "The Sopranos" itself, which brought a smart, imaginative, dark sensibility to the small screen and broadened people's perspectives on what a drama could be. The show set the bar so high that the low stakes of Vito's disappearance and Christopher's falling on and off the wagon felt downright anticlimactic after such a long wait.
What could we do? We expected a lot. For eight years now, Tony Soprano has been so much more to us than "some asshole bully." He's been this big, bearish patriarchal figure with a soft, vulnerable center, an angry, violent man who also loves little ducklings and frets over doing right by his men. We've watched Tony growl and sigh and snicker and gorge himself and quarrel and get drunk and tell bad jokes and become depressed. We've watched him lust after women and order hits on old friends. After years of seeing this man glower and chuckle and mope, he's become such an archetype, such a larger-than-life fixture, that it's hard to imagine him suddenly disappearing. More than anything else, Tony has captured our sympathies over the years. He may hang out with self-serving thugs and aggressive, one-trick ponies, his wife may be self-righteous and hypocritical, his son may be a shortsighted, shallow dummy, his daughter may be wishy-washy and overly dependent, but Tony, even at his most merciless, dodges our harshest judgments. We forgive him for his countless crimes and mistakes, for his recklessness and his rage. The man is full of sadness and longing and we can't turn away from him, no matter how depraved or unfair he becomes.
As the first of nine final episodes opens, we find that Tony (James Gandolfini) may not be looking back as fondly as we are. Most memories aren't welcome for him. When he and Carmela (Edie Falco) join Bobby (Steven R. Schirripa) and Janice (Aida Turturro) and their daughter Nica at Bobby's lake house to celebrate Tony's 47th birthday, Tony seems relatively calm and happy, but there's a feeling of dread hanging over the man. While the other three adults laugh and bring up old times, Tony glares out onto the lake. He doesn't want to talk about Bobby's father, because it reminds him of his own dad. He doesn't want to talk about the house at the shore that he and Carmela almost bought, because it reminds him that they almost got divorced, or it reminds him of old friends he's dumped into the waves -- the past is so littered with emotional potholes and tragic turns, it's hard to tell which one he's avoiding. He doesn't want Janice to tell crazy anecdotes about his dad "because it makes us look like a fucking dysfunctional family" -- as if anyone is under the illusion that they aren't dysfunctional. And when Janice gives Tony a DVD of home movies of their childhood, he struggles to act grateful, but you can see an uneasy look spread over his face. His childhood is the last thing in the world he wants to think about; it feels dangerous to even consider it, particularly when he's been drinking.
"I'm old, Carm. And my body has suffered a trauma that it will probably never fully recover from," Tony later says to his wife, but it's hard to tell if he's talking about his gunshot wound or the burden of so many gloomy recollections and regrets he carries with him. While it might seem odd that the final episodes would begin with a trip to the lake, for a man who works hard to distract himself from the heaviness of his past and the weight of his mistakes, vacations can be more harrowing than day-to-day life.
Meanwhile, Carmela is up to her usual tricks, battling to keep things on an even keel, busying herself with her real estate work, turning a blind eye to Tony's doubts and dark moods, and putting on a happy face. When Tony indulges in some bad behavior, Carmela is the first to scold him, but she's not about to admit his most troubling flaws to the outside world, least of all to someone as untrustworthy as his sister. "Tony is not a vindictive man," Carmela tells her, willfully ignoring the past 20-odd years with the man. The doubting, wishy-washy Carmela of the first few seasons is gone; buoyed by a streak of warmth and relative peace in her marriage, she's determined to convince herself of her husband's solid character. Even so, we see hints in the second episode that she continues to be plagued by Adriana's death, suggesting that this murder, which Tony and Christopher and the rest of the men have clearly put behind them, could prove devastating to Carmela if she discovers the truth.
For the moment, the family is united in support of their patriarch. Even Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), the only vaguely ethical family member and the one who's always been skeptical of Tony's behavior, has taken her place at her father's side as one of his fiercest defenders. As it was last season, it's unclear where Meadow is headed or what exactly she wants from her life, but we can see that she's closer to the fold than ever, as is A.J. (Robert Iler), who looms around the Soprano residence with his wife and kid, looking like a teenager playing house. In contrast, Christopher (Michael Imperioli), who's always seemed like more of a son to Tony than A.J., is lost in his Hollywood fantasy, putting the final touches on his movie, which looks just awful enough to become a huge hit. In a few artful scenes, we're shown Tony's ambivalence toward Christopher: He's glad to see the kid doing something with himself, safe from drugs, but there's a tinge of jealousy over the attention Christopher's getting, particularly when it looks like he's leaving Tony and the mob behind.
Like Tony, the heads of the New York family are struggling to make peace with aging, death and what they'll leave behind when they're gone. Johnny Sack (Vince Curatola) has grown sick in prison and seems to be questioning every decision he ever made. "I got here, I quit smoking after 38 years. Exercised. Ate right. And for what?" he asks, but no one can give him an answer. Later, Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) stares at old pictures of relatives on the wall and echoes Johnny Sack's sentiments. "I'd like to do it over, boy, let me tell you. I fucking compromised everything. Twenty years inside, and not a fucking peep. And for what?" The repetition of this question "For what?" is clearly intentional, as it connects these aging mob leaders, wrestling with the meaning of their past decisions. The question also serves as an omen of big changes to come: When the patriarchs of a family start questioning the basic fabric that holds the chaotic mess together -- to stay the course, no matter what, and never, ever rat on your brothers -- it seems clear that a catastrophic shift may be in the works.
The future is so uncertain for the New York crime family that Tony actually wants Little Carmine (Ray Abruzzo), a man whose power he's undermined for years, to step up and run things. Little Carmine tells Tony about a dream he had in which his dead father gives him an empty box and says "Fill it." Tony assumes the dream means that Little Carmine should finally take over and become the New York don. But Little Carmine has a different interpretation: "That dream with my father, the empty box? It wasn't about being boss. It was about being happy."
Much as "The Sopranos" explores the absurdities and ugly realities of mob life, the show has focused, above all else, on the struggle for happiness. At the start of this last chapter in the family's history, we can see that, as they age, Tony and his family may seem more at peace than ever, but they also have to work harder than ever to keep a grip on their happiness. And unlike the first half of this final season, in which peripheral stories like Vito's murder distracted from the bigger picture of Tony's ultimate fate, the ominous mood is hard to miss in the show's final run. At every turn, characters refer to the meaning of family and the haunting lure of memories, looking back and laughing at old scars while trying to make fresh wounds disappear overnight. "We're family! Jesus, these things happen!" they tell each other, as if trying to convince themselves. "The whole thing's already forgotten!" But the troubled history of this family seeps into every detail of the landscape, and Tony, for one, can't escape it.
The first two episodes mark a return to "The Sopranos" we fell in love with, every scene rich with humor and sadness, every moment heavy with echoes of the past and omens of things to come. Creator David Chase and the other writers have always done an exceptional job of coloring each scene with the vivid palette of distant memories, and this skill comes into play now more than ever. Even as Tony sits, staring blankly out onto the water at the lake, we hear Nica in the background, singing with her nanny: "Four little ducks went off one day, over the hills and far away..." The doleful memory of those ducks in Tony's pool in the show's first episode sneaks into the edges of our consciousness. We're invested in Tony as a character, for better and for worse.
Viewers have predicted countless twists and tragedies that might await Tony and his clan, and expectations are running impossibly high. Even so, the engrossing details and resonance of these first two of nine final episodes make it clear that, no matter what happens, if the events that unfold have a profound impact on Tony -- and it's hard to see how they won't -- then they'll have a profound impact on us as an audience as well. Like the ducks in his pool, the smallest symbols and relics from Tony's past have the power to move us. His darkest fears and nightmares feel like our own. Recognizing this, Chase signals in these episodes that we'd better hold on tight, because we're in for a breathtaking, bittersweet ride.
Thanks to Heather Havrilesky
As "The Sopranos" enters its final chapter, Tony reluctantly faces his past -- and we reluctantly face the end of this brilliant series.
SPOILER ALERT! Includes spoilers from the first two episodes of the final season of "The Sopranos." Don't read this if you don't want to know what happens in these episodes.
"All those memories are for what? All I am to him is some asshole bully." -- Tony Soprano
As the curtain rises on the final season of HBO's "The Sopranos," Tony is considering his legacy more than ever before, even more than he did after his brush with death. He's wondering not just how he's seen by Christopher, who portrays him as an aggressive thug in his new mob-horror movie, but how his other associates and his wife and kids see him. How will he be remembered? What will he leave behind? With all of the unrealistic expectations we each have of our lives, the big goals we want to accomplish, the hopes we have for those we love, how can we not be a little disappointed in the end?
The same questions apply as we near the end of this epic mob drama, a TV series that redefined our understanding of the Italian mob and explored the fragile nature of family -- the kind we have with blood relatives, and the business relationships that are sometimes just as intimate and as complicated. Expectations were enormous at the start of the first half of this final season. A two-year hiatus didn't help, of course, nor did the fact that television dramas in general were improving, following in the path cleared by "The Sopranos" itself, which brought a smart, imaginative, dark sensibility to the small screen and broadened people's perspectives on what a drama could be. The show set the bar so high that the low stakes of Vito's disappearance and Christopher's falling on and off the wagon felt downright anticlimactic after such a long wait.
What could we do? We expected a lot. For eight years now, Tony Soprano has been so much more to us than "some asshole bully." He's been this big, bearish patriarchal figure with a soft, vulnerable center, an angry, violent man who also loves little ducklings and frets over doing right by his men. We've watched Tony growl and sigh and snicker and gorge himself and quarrel and get drunk and tell bad jokes and become depressed. We've watched him lust after women and order hits on old friends. After years of seeing this man glower and chuckle and mope, he's become such an archetype, such a larger-than-life fixture, that it's hard to imagine him suddenly disappearing. More than anything else, Tony has captured our sympathies over the years. He may hang out with self-serving thugs and aggressive, one-trick ponies, his wife may be self-righteous and hypocritical, his son may be a shortsighted, shallow dummy, his daughter may be wishy-washy and overly dependent, but Tony, even at his most merciless, dodges our harshest judgments. We forgive him for his countless crimes and mistakes, for his recklessness and his rage. The man is full of sadness and longing and we can't turn away from him, no matter how depraved or unfair he becomes.
As the first of nine final episodes opens, we find that Tony (James Gandolfini) may not be looking back as fondly as we are. Most memories aren't welcome for him. When he and Carmela (Edie Falco) join Bobby (Steven R. Schirripa) and Janice (Aida Turturro) and their daughter Nica at Bobby's lake house to celebrate Tony's 47th birthday, Tony seems relatively calm and happy, but there's a feeling of dread hanging over the man. While the other three adults laugh and bring up old times, Tony glares out onto the lake. He doesn't want to talk about Bobby's father, because it reminds him of his own dad. He doesn't want to talk about the house at the shore that he and Carmela almost bought, because it reminds him that they almost got divorced, or it reminds him of old friends he's dumped into the waves -- the past is so littered with emotional potholes and tragic turns, it's hard to tell which one he's avoiding. He doesn't want Janice to tell crazy anecdotes about his dad "because it makes us look like a fucking dysfunctional family" -- as if anyone is under the illusion that they aren't dysfunctional. And when Janice gives Tony a DVD of home movies of their childhood, he struggles to act grateful, but you can see an uneasy look spread over his face. His childhood is the last thing in the world he wants to think about; it feels dangerous to even consider it, particularly when he's been drinking.
"I'm old, Carm. And my body has suffered a trauma that it will probably never fully recover from," Tony later says to his wife, but it's hard to tell if he's talking about his gunshot wound or the burden of so many gloomy recollections and regrets he carries with him. While it might seem odd that the final episodes would begin with a trip to the lake, for a man who works hard to distract himself from the heaviness of his past and the weight of his mistakes, vacations can be more harrowing than day-to-day life.
Meanwhile, Carmela is up to her usual tricks, battling to keep things on an even keel, busying herself with her real estate work, turning a blind eye to Tony's doubts and dark moods, and putting on a happy face. When Tony indulges in some bad behavior, Carmela is the first to scold him, but she's not about to admit his most troubling flaws to the outside world, least of all to someone as untrustworthy as his sister. "Tony is not a vindictive man," Carmela tells her, willfully ignoring the past 20-odd years with the man. The doubting, wishy-washy Carmela of the first few seasons is gone; buoyed by a streak of warmth and relative peace in her marriage, she's determined to convince herself of her husband's solid character. Even so, we see hints in the second episode that she continues to be plagued by Adriana's death, suggesting that this murder, which Tony and Christopher and the rest of the men have clearly put behind them, could prove devastating to Carmela if she discovers the truth.
For the moment, the family is united in support of their patriarch. Even Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), the only vaguely ethical family member and the one who's always been skeptical of Tony's behavior, has taken her place at her father's side as one of his fiercest defenders. As it was last season, it's unclear where Meadow is headed or what exactly she wants from her life, but we can see that she's closer to the fold than ever, as is A.J. (Robert Iler), who looms around the Soprano residence with his wife and kid, looking like a teenager playing house. In contrast, Christopher (Michael Imperioli), who's always seemed like more of a son to Tony than A.J., is lost in his Hollywood fantasy, putting the final touches on his movie, which looks just awful enough to become a huge hit. In a few artful scenes, we're shown Tony's ambivalence toward Christopher: He's glad to see the kid doing something with himself, safe from drugs, but there's a tinge of jealousy over the attention Christopher's getting, particularly when it looks like he's leaving Tony and the mob behind.
Like Tony, the heads of the New York family are struggling to make peace with aging, death and what they'll leave behind when they're gone. Johnny Sack (Vince Curatola) has grown sick in prison and seems to be questioning every decision he ever made. "I got here, I quit smoking after 38 years. Exercised. Ate right. And for what?" he asks, but no one can give him an answer. Later, Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) stares at old pictures of relatives on the wall and echoes Johnny Sack's sentiments. "I'd like to do it over, boy, let me tell you. I fucking compromised everything. Twenty years inside, and not a fucking peep. And for what?" The repetition of this question "For what?" is clearly intentional, as it connects these aging mob leaders, wrestling with the meaning of their past decisions. The question also serves as an omen of big changes to come: When the patriarchs of a family start questioning the basic fabric that holds the chaotic mess together -- to stay the course, no matter what, and never, ever rat on your brothers -- it seems clear that a catastrophic shift may be in the works.
The future is so uncertain for the New York crime family that Tony actually wants Little Carmine (Ray Abruzzo), a man whose power he's undermined for years, to step up and run things. Little Carmine tells Tony about a dream he had in which his dead father gives him an empty box and says "Fill it." Tony assumes the dream means that Little Carmine should finally take over and become the New York don. But Little Carmine has a different interpretation: "That dream with my father, the empty box? It wasn't about being boss. It was about being happy."
Much as "The Sopranos" explores the absurdities and ugly realities of mob life, the show has focused, above all else, on the struggle for happiness. At the start of this last chapter in the family's history, we can see that, as they age, Tony and his family may seem more at peace than ever, but they also have to work harder than ever to keep a grip on their happiness. And unlike the first half of this final season, in which peripheral stories like Vito's murder distracted from the bigger picture of Tony's ultimate fate, the ominous mood is hard to miss in the show's final run. At every turn, characters refer to the meaning of family and the haunting lure of memories, looking back and laughing at old scars while trying to make fresh wounds disappear overnight. "We're family! Jesus, these things happen!" they tell each other, as if trying to convince themselves. "The whole thing's already forgotten!" But the troubled history of this family seeps into every detail of the landscape, and Tony, for one, can't escape it.
The first two episodes mark a return to "The Sopranos" we fell in love with, every scene rich with humor and sadness, every moment heavy with echoes of the past and omens of things to come. Creator David Chase and the other writers have always done an exceptional job of coloring each scene with the vivid palette of distant memories, and this skill comes into play now more than ever. Even as Tony sits, staring blankly out onto the water at the lake, we hear Nica in the background, singing with her nanny: "Four little ducks went off one day, over the hills and far away..." The doleful memory of those ducks in Tony's pool in the show's first episode sneaks into the edges of our consciousness. We're invested in Tony as a character, for better and for worse.
Viewers have predicted countless twists and tragedies that might await Tony and his clan, and expectations are running impossibly high. Even so, the engrossing details and resonance of these first two of nine final episodes make it clear that, no matter what happens, if the events that unfold have a profound impact on Tony -- and it's hard to see how they won't -- then they'll have a profound impact on us as an audience as well. Like the ducks in his pool, the smallest symbols and relics from Tony's past have the power to move us. His darkest fears and nightmares feel like our own. Recognizing this, Chase signals in these episodes that we'd better hold on tight, because we're in for a breathtaking, bittersweet ride.
Thanks to Heather Havrilesky
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