Better snuggle up wherever you are coz this is going to be a long one - due entirely to the fact that this episode was one of the most sterling hours of TV I have ever witnessed.
I’m sure I’m not the only person who watched the last few minutes of The Sopranos last week with shock and disbelief. I had to ask the room aloud, “This is the first episode and not the finale, right? Surely e.tv couldn’t have made such a huge screw up, could they?” Well, er, thankfully they didn’t coz the force of nature that is Tony Soprano was indeed shot point blank in the chest by his not-all-there Uncle Junior. Tony looked properly fu…. (oh, I do wish we could do expletives here) ok, he looked not-so-good and I was very interested to see if some sort of Grey’s Anatomy-style miracle would be performed on him and he’d be back home, chilling by the pool with a cigar and big plaster covering the wound on his chest, or at least recovering in the hospital, where e.tv’s delicious promos put him.
But no, we instead see another Tony. One who’s lying on a bed in an anonymous hotel room (with a rather stunning view of the city, may I add) and later wears sad-sack business suits and shiny loafers and lugs around complicated luggage. It appears this Tony is in a place called Costa Mesa (that's in California) to attend a conference on what, I didn’t catch. He hands over his ID to the nice lady so she can admit him into the conference centre, but oops, his driver’s licence isn’t his. The picture of the bloke on it looks very much like Tone, but this guy’s name is Kevin Finnerty and it appears Tony has not only Kevin’s ID, but also his wallet and briefcase. Whatever could this mean?Now we kinda saw this at the start of season 3 of Six Feet Under. Nate Fisher went in for risky brain surgery at the end of s2 and returned in s3 either dead or with a whole new life – a cloying, annoying wife, a baby and a sense of domestic peace we couldn’t quite associate with him. Was Nate dreaming his new idyllic life. Is Tony?
Kevin/Tony is just a guy who is miles away from home, attending a conference he never wanted to and feeling rather homesick. His many calls to his family back home reveal that he is in fact not married to Carmella nor are his kids a couple of greasy teenagers, but a pair of playful, baggage-free tykes. So, is this the life Tony is imagining for himself outside of his “waste management" business? If so, why is he still cheating on his wife with a pretty brunette? And why does a helicopter searchlight keep finding him?Back in the real world, we should really be getting a clearer idea of just what the flipping hell is going on in this David Lynch movie that’s suddenly popped onto our screens. But weirdness still prevails and I’m getting more and more intrigued. The Tony in hospital back in New Jersey is in a bad way. There’s bubble wrap covering his right calf, a really gross bloodstain and other yellow gunk on his gown and so many tubes and wires coming out of his body, he just doesn’t have the energy to pull them all out, and goes for the ventilator so he can mumble a few pressing questions: Where am I? Where am I going? A philosopher even when he’s in a coma, you gotta love the guy.The family, Carmella especially, are in a state (particularly great performance from Edie Falco) and the word from the doctors leave no doubt whatsoever – Tony is going to die, and if he somehow pulls through, he’s going to be brain-damaged.But really, things in the Twilight Zone are far more interesting. Kevin/Tony has a super-surreal encounter with a pair of Buddhist monks who mistake him for the real Kevin Finnerty and threaten to sue him for faulty heating he supplied them, before the younger one boshes Kevin/Tony one in the nose. But, alas, this is not the tough Tony we all know. This guy has none of that hardness in his voice, he even greets people with a sunny “Good Morning” as he passes them in the hallways and doesnt curse - once! So to see him react with such shock as he did to being assaulted by a couple of Buddhist monks is reason enough for this show’s existence! Poor Kevin/Tony just cannot catch a break.
Its as if he doesn’t exist in this world without his ID at hand. In post-9/11 America, he is unable to book a hotel room, board a plane home or attend a crummy conference without it. This also becomes a factor back in New Jersey where Christopher is told by the ex-mafia Feds (now fighting The War on Terror) that he should keep an eye out for certain suspected terrorists who are regulars at Bada Bing.
AJ, looking scary and mean after shedding his kiddie fat, is making all sorts of excuses to avoid seeing his dad looking so weak and defeated. Not only that, but to pile on the sheer surreality of all this, Tone’s gunshot wound is shown to be a cavernous, septic crater wide and deep enough to fit both his powerful fists in – and its wrapped in layers of plastic. I’m no doctor, but I don't see how it's helping him. Cool visual effect though. There’s only one remedy for AJ’s pain – and that’s revenge on nutty Uncle Junior.At the hospital, Carm is taking the doc’s advice and engaging with her comatose husband to help bring him back. She plays him some Deep Purple, talks about the good times, their weird twisted relationship, how sorry she is for damning him to hell, how much she loves him and wants him back. Beautiful, crushing scene. In the parallel world, Kevin/Tony falls down a flight of stairs and gets a mighty knock on the noggin. This is clearly not his week.
In yet another hospital room, the ER doctor tells him he sustained a mild concussion, but brain scans revealed something else – he has Alzheimer’s Disease. Well, I guess parallels don’t get clearer than that. Oh, they do, coz as Carm is calling Tone back to her, Kevin/Tony is back in his hotel room and looking more lost than ever. He heads over to the telephone to call his wife but hesitates, changes his mind, and goes back to forlornly looking out the window at that vast, frightful world out there.I shudder to think where we’ll find Tony next week, coz he’s already in purgatory.
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