Even hard-core “Sopranos” fans worried about the tone and tangents their favorite series indulged this season.
Too slow. Too removed from the main story line. Unrealistic in its depictions of a mobster at a gay bar, a mobster at a sushi bar.
Complaints about what creator David Chase did with “The Sopranos” this season are legion. Tonight’s season finale, “Kaisha,” at 7 p.m. on HBO, sets up the eight episodes due to wrap the series in 2007. (HBO did not make screeners available.)
As used in Japanese slang, “Uchi no kaisha” essentially means: Don’t mess with my buddies.” In other words, I’ve got my pal’s back. In keeping with a season full of viewer complaints, some will hate that episode title too.
Some hated the long, teasing wind-
up of Tony’s coma and its confusing flashbacks before the pitch of the gay Vito subplot. Some say the whole arc was flat, a way of marking time before the big finish.
But in its reversion to key themes and its determined plumbing of the psyches of Tony (James Gandolfini) and Carmela (Edie Falco), this season of “The Sopranos” was revealing and wise. Argue with the pacing, if you will, but we saw the main characters search achingly for a sense of self, often in new ways.
The selves they find are – surprise – reprehensible. And trapped. All the dream sequences in the world won’t afford them exits from beds they’ve already made. Just in case viewers were tempted to forget how deeply disturbed and despicable these funny, entertaining folks are, the season now ending was a stark reminder.
No matter how touched Carmela is by the art, architecture and history of Paris – an appreciative Carm has a big heart when it comes to statuary – we are reminded that she is touring the City of Light courtesy of her husband’s blood money.
The extended trip to a quaint gay-friendly New England town by terrified Vito (Joe Gannascoli), a peek into a dreamy what-might-have-been, is fittingly cut short by his decision to return to the Jersey environs of his real families – at home and work.
Of course he was beaten to a pulp by the rigorously homophobic thugs. Of course it had to end that way, as Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) comes out of the closet, literally, to oversee the deed. In gangster culture, apparently, men are allowed to hug and kiss and profess their love as Tony and Christopher (Michael Imperioli) did, recalling Adriana’s murder. Real (made) men consider loyalty and allegiance worth celebrating only in relation to who whacked whom.
A queer in the ranks couldn’t be tolerated, and here “The Sopranos” wallowed in more vile homophobic language than any television effort on record. Vito was destined for a violent end. (“You mean he’s not a spy?” his daughter strains to understand.) Only be thankful his erstwhile boyfriend, the small-town cook and firefighter, got to dump him and accuse him of cowardice beforehand.
Tony, the almost-lovable bear of a sociopath, this season dealt with post-hospitalization no better than he has dealt with midlife crises, the loss of his mother or his son’s doomed trajectory. Experimental glimpses of what might have been colored his hallucinations. Could he have lived the life of a law-abiding traveling salesman, checking into hotels, drinking with colleagues, without the pressure to whack the problem du jour?
It looked appealing, so much so that he awoke a mellower Tony: Forgiveness started to make sense to him. That mellowing process may be his downfall as he heads into what looks like a major turf war with the captains in New York.
More whacking may come later. This season was about what-ifs, backward glances and personal reveries – all presumably building to a major blowout. The writers remain mostly mum about the complaints regarding this sixth season. But even the harshest critics must concede “The Sopranos” is a cut above the usual TV fare even when it takes time out from an active tale to indulge a slower, more introspective vision.
This wasn’t the series’ best season – the son’s matricidal rages of the opening season are unmatched – but it doesn’t deserve the dissing, either.
TV critic Joanne Ostrow can be reached at 303-820-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com.
