THE SOPRANOS Reviewed by Brad Meltzer (These reviews originally appeared on e.findlaw.com, and the best part of the deal was, Brad got to watch each episode a week early!) Go to Episode Review: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 April 9, 2000 EPISODE 13: Tony McBeal I don't believe in democracy when it comes to art, but in honor of the last episode of the season, I took a poll about what people thought of this week's show. Here are the results (broken down by age and gender for purposes of clarity): Cori (my wife): "It was okay." Dale (my mother-in-law): "It was okay." Noah (my friend): "It was .... (super-long pause).... interesting." After inputting all that polling data into my bat-computer, I was able to glean one recurring theme: it didn't blow anyone away, but it certainly didn't suck. The crazy part? This was the big season ender! The one where they take out the full page ad in the New York Times! The one where they show quick-cut clips from the entire season and then—BOOM!—the TV screen bursts into flames and an HBO-announcer's deep voice says something imposing like, "The Sopranos season finale—you've never seen anything.... like this!" Shot of Tony.... BOOM! (second explosion). Did it live up to the hype? Quick answer: nothing ever lives up to the hype—not the Super Bowl, not Star Wars, not the return of the Smurfs, not anything (okay, maybe the return of the Smurfs....)—so stop asking unfair questions. Over the course of an hour, the final episode wrapped up the final dangling plot lines (don't read further if you don't want to know how it ends): Meadow decided to go to Columbia (shocker), sports-store-owner David decided to move away, and Pussy, one of the original, main characters of the show (with easily the best name on television) got sent to that big strip bar in the sky. Throughout the season, we've watched while Pussy become an informant for the FBI. We watched him turn on his best friends and (if you exclude last episode's shameless miscasting of Pussy as super-cop) we've watched him pay the emotional price that goes along with betrayal. The only thing we didn't know was how Tony was going to find out. And so, it came as quite a surprise when half of the final episode was dedicated to Tony's food-poisoning-induced fever dreams. In the first one, he douses himself in gasoline, lights himself on fire, and explodes (thus fulfilling the promise of the HBO promos mentioned above); in the second, he sees Uncle Junior staring out a window, listens to Silvio do another Pacino impression ("Our enemy has yet to reveal himself."), then plays cards with Paulie and shoots him in the chest. In the third dream, he gets into a clown car with Christopher and asks if anyone's seen Pussy. Throughout all of them, everyone plays their usual roles (Paulie = annoying, Silvio = joking, Uncle Joon = threatening, Christopher = aiding). But Pussy.... Pussy's either silent or missing throughout. Naturally, it takes Dr. Melfi to hit the big breakthrough, and so, in the fourth dream, Tony encounters the doctor herself. "So where's your friend, Pussy?" Melfi asks. "I'm confused," Tony says. "Isn't Pussy your friend?" The conversation continues, but the breakthrough doesn't come until Tony asks the question everyone in America has thought at least once while watching the show: "When you say 'Pussy,' do you mean my friend, Pussy, or.... pussy?" The answer comes with an on-the-desk sex scene between Tony and Melfi—all of it a dream (and therefore none of it incredibly controversial). So what's the message? And how does Tony find out about the betrayal? Well, in the final dream, according to Pussy (whose voice is now coming out of a talking frozen fish (don't ask—it's a dream, right?)), Tony knows deep down that his friend was an FBI informant all along. It was one of the best, most restrained parts of the show: to reveal Pussy as the traitor, the writers don't use a snitch or someone finding a wire glued to his chest—they go with the basics—a good friend just knows when something's wrong. Of course, "restrained" is hardly the word that comes to mind when said scene happens while one of the characters is a talking fish. Thus, the traitor is revealed. We know it, Tony knows it, Pussy knows it. So what's a mob boss to do? Well, according to Pussy (again, he's a fish—eyes wide, unable to blink), all you have to do is look at the other two fish on his left and right. "These guys, on the other sides of me, they're asleep," he tells Tony. It's a semi-cheesy metaphor (sleeping with the fishes.... get it? Get it? Get it?), but it tells Tony, and seemingly absolves him from, what he has to do. Sleeping with the fishes.... Pussy asked for it, right? And those other fish didn't look like they were in pain.... As the third respondent to the above poll said, it is "interesting," but I couldn't shake the feeling that the whole scene was less Sopranos and more Ally McBeal. Sure, there's a time and a place for dream sequences, and the Sopranos has done some of the best (remember when Tony imagined that sexy next door neighbor for a whole episode?), but this one somehow seemed a bit.... well.... fishy. Of course, that said, the biggest payoff (and one of the best moments of the season) soon followed. The actual death of Pussy was one of those mob moments only the pros can pull off. On Tony's new boat, and surrounded by his buddies (who he's spent the past season screwing over), Pussy and the boys drink a toast with some tequila. Sure, they know he's a traitor, but these guys have history.... This isn't just any lowlife.... this is one of ours.... Still, these are the big leagues, and Pussy knows how this one has to end. His shoulders sag and he turns to Paulie. "Not in the face, okay? Give me that. Keep my eyes?" Paulie shrugs a whattya-think-I'm-nuts kinda shrug (even though he's about to kill the man!) "You were like a brudda to me," Paulie says. In the next few moments we see Pussy filled with bullets and tossed into the choppy waves of the ocean—but it's the exchange between Paulie and Pussy that makes the whole scene real (Keep my eyes?!). All that's left is.... you guessed it.... the obligatory talk with Dr. Melfi. As she says, "Rage, Anthony, is a big, loud, flaming self-distraction from something even more frightening." It's good advice, but by now.... with Richie dead, Janice gone, and Pussy in the ocean.... Tony's feeling good. Sure, it's all wrapped up a bit too neatly, but that's what season finales are about (okay, so they're usually about cliffhangers, but this isn't TV. It's HBO. "And you've never seen anything.... like this. BOOM!"). As Tony says about his wire fraud charges, "I'm gonna beat this s**t, you kidding me? And with that...." He waves goodbye to Melfi and starts singing, "Maybe baby, I'll have yoooou...." I doubt it, Tony-boy, but we'll have to wait till next season for that one. As a year in retrospective, this one ends the same way it began—with the all-time crowd-pleaser—the ever-reliable montage set to music. Although the season opened with Sinatra belting out, "It was a very good year....," I had trouble with the closing song (something about "Waiting on a call from you...."). Still, we got the picture: The happy family at Meadow's graduation.... cut to the back of a garbage truck.... cut to an "Adult Films" sign.... cut to the Sopranos taking smiling photos at the graduation party.... cut to the empty remains of the cleaned-out stockbroker room.... cut to toasting Meadow.... cut to selling illegal calling cards.... cut to Furio, Christopher and everyone smiling at the party. In the end, the montage cuts to Tony, lighting a new cigar and letting the smoke surround him.... final cut to crashing waves on the beach (symbol of Pussy, death, and everything else you wanna throw in to make yourself sound like a knowledgeable, well-read reviewer). Pshaw, I say to it all. I don't care if there wasn't a cliffhanger. I don't care if it wrapped up too neatly. I don't even care if there're no more good enemies. From where I was sitting, these mobsters went to the mall (Sharper Image!), did yoga, watched Godfather, Part II on DVD, went to Italy, took an acting class, won 45 boxes of ziti in The Executive Game, visited a psychic, got infatuated with Hollywood, watched soap operas, watched Diagnosis Murder(!), read New Jersey Bride magazine, and best of all, sang the song from the Charlie perfume commercial (".... and they call it.... Charlie!"). C'mon, godfather, don't be a sourpuss.... it was a very good year.... LAW-BREAKING MOMENT OF THE WEEK: First Runner-Up: Giving your Mom stolen airline tickets (just 'cause you're so sick of talking to her), then getting busted for wire and mail fraud when she's nabbed with them. Winner: Killing one of your best friends. FAVORITE SONGS OF THE WEEK (all set around Pussy's death): Tony singing the theme to Gilligan's Island (".... the millionaire and his wife....") right before his eye-opening dream in which Pussy is a fish. Tom Petty's Free Falling (playing during the scene after Tony finds the wires in Pussy's cigar box). Frank Sinatra's Baubles, Bangles and Beads (playing on the boat right before Pussy's killed). The Temptations' Ain't Too Proud To Beg (playing on the TV Tony's watching right after he kills Pussy—who was indeed begging for his life). What's it all mean? That's why he's seeing a shrink, baby! As you may or may not know, this was the last episode of the Sopranos' second season, and thus, my last t.v. review for this great bastion of free law on the Internet and other legalish things. I owe a thank-you, a huge mob hug and a stolen fur coat to my wife, Cori, who gave up her entire season of normal viewership so that I could repeatedly hit the pause button to write down such memorable moments as, "Bada-Bing girls shake it in the background." © Brad Meltzer Previous Episode | First Episode