I've already shared my thoughts about the final season of The Sopranos [The Sopranos---The Final Season. Into the Western Lands.] After last night's puzzling episode, I thought I'd add a postscript.
Last night, while watching an almost unbearably tense episode of The Sopranos, it occurred to me that the final episodes have focused heavily---though as a latent and peripheral theme---on Tony's relationship with his father, Johnny, whom Tony has always idolized. Fathers have figured heavily throughout these last episodes: little Carmine dreamed his father told him to fill his life with happiness; Christopher, Tony's surrogate son, betrays Tony by showing him through "Cleaver" how he really feels; during the episode by the lake, Bobby and Tony talked about his hit man father, who never expected Bobby to follow in his footsteps and Janice told a story that fully revealed the violence underlying the relationship between Johnny and Livia, infuriating Tony, and therefore leading directly to his initiating Bobby in the cult of murder; Uncle Junior proves to be a disappointing replacement father for a young psycho who nearly murders him; we see Tony's first kill----a pathetically terrified, trembling, skinny bookie----ordered by his father; and finally, last night, the consequences of Vito Jr.'s extreme anger with his father. Last night's episode ends with what I imagine is a permanent rupture between Tony and Hesh, whom he made it clear during the episode he regarded as a father figure.
I'd like to think that before the series ends, Tony will come to terms with the real elephant in the room: his father's role in creating the life he is living, a life which he obviously no longer wants and has begun to hate. Throughout the show, Livia has consistently been portrayed as the true villain of the piece and the person most responsible for making Tony and Janice into the people they've become.
The truth is, it was Johnny, whom Tony still idolizes, who made Tony into the lost and violent soul that he is. Last week, Tony hears that the only time Johnny ever cried was on the night Tony was born. But Tony says "I never really knew where I stood with him."
We learned in a fairly brief and uneasy scene with Melfi that Tony has been missing appointments. In therapy land, this is a sign of extreme resistance. There's some sort of realization that Tony is trying to avoid. He can only talk to Melfi when he has something else to focus on. Christopher and Hesh are metaphors for all his complicated feelings about Johnny Soprano.
When he confronts Vito Junior---whose fury with his own dead father is causing him to act out in ways Tony doesn't find acceptable--- Tony tells young Vito that whatever his father was, he loved his son. When Vito Junior makes it clear that his father's love for him changes nothing, Tony becomes furious himself. His solution is the "tough love" of having young Vito sent off to an Idaho boot camp.
Tony's unraveling and loss of whatever trust he felt in the Family are of course the latent themes. The tension with Hesh arises from one of those moments when a person in Tony's confidence makes the mistake of saying what's on his mind. In the midst of a confidential chat, during which Tony tells him that he regards conversations with Hesh as an oasis, Hesh makes it clear that he had assumed that Tony was there to pay back the money he owes him. Tony's disappointment escalates until it's no longer distinguishable from rage, and it becomes clear to Hesh and to us that he is never going to forgive this slight.
When Tony and Bobby drop by Hesh's house to invite him out for a jaunt, Hesh assumes---and we assume---that they intend to cancel his debt the easy way, but their conversation afterward in the car shows (I think) that it was a genuine attempt by Tony to mend fences with Hesh and also that he knows perfectly well why Hesh refused the invitation. When Hesh's girlfriend Renata dies----and though this scene too was ambiguous, I DON'T think Tony was in any way responsible for her death---Tony finally pays off the debt in full, and offers some of the coldest consolation ever, perhaps to make the point that he's finished with Hesh. Certainly the way he shrugs his shoulders and sighs as he leaves Hesh sitting alone in his enormous house convey the feeling that it's the last visit he ever intends to pay.
The end of A.J.'s redemptive relationship with Blanca next week is bound to bring up more of Tony's issues about the appropriate role of a father with respect to his son. It will be interesting to see where that goes. Tony has always made it clear that he doesn't want A.J. to live his kind of life (which in itself, if you think about it, is a comment on Johnny Soprano). How will Tony deal with the meltdown that we know is on the way? Based on the preview, with rage and with the usual injunction for A.J. to be strong, to be a man, to be manly. But Tony is, of course, a weak man----like Paulie, like Hesh, like Junior, like all of them.
I thought it was highly significant that during the conversation with Hesh (before Hesh made it clear he wasn't interested and didn't care) that Tony described his friends as "murderers" and therefore not fit to provide him with any real support or counsel. It was a moment which showed just how far Tony's consciousness is divided, given that he is a murderer himself and that his father was one.
The most reliable of Tony's gang are changing toward him. Silvio, usually ready with his advice and counsel, had nothing to say. I found his silence particularly chilling. Bobby, sweet Bobby, has suffered an obvious sea change since "making his bones." All these men have started to see the cracks in Tony's shell.
There was a lot of breakage in the episode. Instead of talking to Tony about his problems, Silvio focused on repairing a broken vase. Later, Tony loses his temper and starts breaking everything he can get his hands on. Carmela throws a vase at his head and it smashes against the wall. And of course, A.J. got his heart broken. The show dealt throughout with irreversible damage. And it's irreversible because Tony can't break free of his past conditioning. He's stuck and he knows it.
I thought the argument with Carmela was particularly interesting. For one thing, nasty as he was, Tony didn't say a word to Carmela that wasn't true. She DID get the money from the spec house from him. She DID get her father to build it (out of substandard lumber). She DID get Tony to lean on the building inspector so it would pass inspection. She DID sell it to a cousin whose wife is pregnant. Like Tony, she is a good person who has been thoroughly corrupted by the life she's chosen (and also, it's implied, by her father).
I keep harking back to Tony's coma dream, in which he was someone else entirely. At the family (or Family reunion) he was ultimately afraid to enter the country mansion where the reunion was being held. Since the house clearly represented his death, his response showed how little the piece of him that isn't fully corrupted relishes the notion of eternity spent in the company of his family. "They're all waiting for you," says the parking valet (Tony Blundetto, the cousin Tony murdered to save him from Phil Leotardo). But in his dream, Tony approaches the house apprehensively and changes his mind when Meadow (in her childhood voice) calls him back. He turns away, repudiating his family.
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