Firstly, apologies to regular readers for not posting a recap of last week's episode "Kennedy and Heidi". Lack of time and a lingering devastation after watching the episode probably led to my oversight. Hopefully I can make up for it here.
Christopher’s demise Just to bring things up to speed, the biggest development last week was... I cannot even bring myself to type these words... Christopher met a ghastly end when he and Tony were in a car accident after a clearly intoxicated Chris tried to avoid an oncoming car with two teenage girls in it (the Kennedy and Heidi in the title) and lost control as the car went rolling down an embankment. Tony suffered no more than a busted knee while Chris suffered a punctured lung and was struggling to breathe.
Both would likely have survived the crash but Tony saw this as a golden opportunity time to rid himself of a drug addict who despised him and would potentially turn against him if the Feds ever came knocking again. So Tony suffocated Chris and apparently didn't feel a twinge of remorse.
He was rather relieved by this murderous act and went off to Las Vegas for a bit of gambling, random sex and peyote (a hallucinogenic grug) to celebrate his newfound "freedom". At least Tony remembered Carmela on his trip when he buys her an expensive gold watch. His excuse for taking the Las Vegas trip was to settle some "business" Chris had over there.
AJ attempts suicide In "The Second Coming" Tony's chickens seem to be coming home to roost, especially with regards to AJ. Last week, AJ's happy pills appeared to be doing the trick: he enrolled at college and started taking courses in English and the Arab-Israeli conflict, while hanging out with his thug friends. But his friends' racist and malicious attack on a Somali student put AJ into a deep depression once again. It didn't help that the dense subjects he was studying at school began to weigh heavily on his mind. During a therapy session he asked, "Why can't we all just get along?"
His condition appears to have worsened as he immerses himself in "The Second Coming" by WB Yeats, a poem they're studying at school and he talks pessimistically of pesticides being used on meat while Chris's widow, Kelli, is over for dinner. AJ's newfound literariness irritates Tony, but Carmela is just happy he has taken to reading at all.
Later, Meadow comes to see AJ in his room and enthuses over the Borat movie, but AJ is disgusted by it, telling her "it wasn't fair to the people involved". He then tells her that he's dropped out of college and can't compete with her in their parents' eyes, but Meadow tells her that as the son of an Italian family, he'll always be more important.
Watching that scene I was reminded of a hilarious scene in Desperate Housewives when Bree's son Andrew has just told his parents he was gay and Bree responded with "I'd love you even if you were a murderer". Ha! Ha!
Not so funny for AJ though who claims that the US is on the brink of bombing Iran and bemoans the morally empty and materialistic nature of the world. During a therapy session he recalls watching a CNN story about a children's hospital in Iraq that struggled to treat all its burn victims and how it was then followed by a story set in a US shopping mall, showing "fat" Americans gorging on the spoils of their wealth. He also voices dismay over his own family's materialistic wealth.
Inevitably (it has to be said) AJ attempts to kill himself by slipping into the family pool with a brick tied to his leg and a plastic bag fastened over his head. As he struggles for air underwater, he resurfaces because the rope tying the brick to his leg is long enough, and he begins to call for help after removing the bag from his head.
Its not clear how long AJ thrashed about like this until Tony arrives home and sees his son desperately holding onto the pool's springboard with the whitest, palest hands I've ever seen. Tony jumps into the pool and pulls a hysterical AJ out of the pool. The desperate, animal-like heaving sounds AJ made as he was consoled by his father was some of the most traumatic sounds I've ever heard an actor make. Heart-wrenchingly brilliant performance by the under-rated Robert Iler.
At Bada Bing, all the guys commiserate with Tony’s plight by recalling the various ills their own kids have undergone but none strike Tony as devastating as a suicide attempt. They also unveil a framed photograph of Christopher taken on the set of Cleaver which now hangs on the wall of the back office.
The Soprano “curse” A ghastly pale AJ is then admitted to the psych ward of a hospital and the suicide attempt causes a major blow out between Tony and Carmela, who blames Tony and the depressive "Sopranos curse" for her son's illness. She brings up the incident Janice mentioned in "Sopranos Home Movies" where Tony's father shot their mother through her beehive hairdo.
Since Tony hates that anecdote so much and the blame game never gets anyone anywhere, Carmela loses it and throws her new gold watch at Tony and storms off. The idea of "The Second Coming" and Tony's major comedown of a mother, Livia, crops up again during Tony's sessions with Melfi and AJ's sessions with his therapist and parents. AJ blames his parents for making him visit his grandmother at the nursing home where she would bring him down by saying things like, "in the end you die in your own arms" back in season 1.
Melfi suggests to Tony that AJ didn't really want to die and that's why the rope around his leg was too long to keep him underwater. Tony responds that perhaps, but "he could just be a *bleep!* idiot. Historically, that's been the case." Despite lamenting his genetic heritage for depression in previous visits, Tony still refuses to shoulder the blame for AJ's suicide attempt and says that Carmela coddled AJ too much. Melfi asks Tony if he is ashamed of AJ, but its clear that he wishes he had a son who had inherited his toughness, rather than his depressive tendencies.
New York business takes a bad turn Away from the home fires, business relations between the New Jersey and New York families take yet another turn for the worse as Phil refuses to back down from his demand of a 25% cut from a Jersey construction job that is haemorrhaging asbestos waste. At a meeting in New York, Tony attempts placating Phil Leotardo by recalling the understanding they reached while Phil was in hospital after his coronary.
But Phil is steely in his resolve and refuses to compromise, recalling his 20-year compromise in jail, "making grilled cheese sandwiches on a radiator and jacking off into a tissue because I couldn't get a woman".
In retaliation for this snub, Tony pulls two of Phil's goons, Butch (him with the creepy dead eye) and Coco off the payroll for some other construction job. Angry with Tony, the two mercilessly assault the site’s foreman. Later, Coco spots Meadow on a date in New York with Patsy Parisi's son and starts to make lewd sexual threats at her. The next day, Meadow grudgingly tells her father what happened and Tony hides his rage.
But of course he needs to avenge this affront and tracks Coco down at the restaurant where he beats the living crap out of him in a truly horrific attack, breaking off a number of Coco's teeth and threatening to kill Butch if he interferes. Argh, I really wanted Tony to just kill Butch anyway. He's a malicious little leprachaun who deserves to be shot in the damn head.
This attack, while called for, only deepens the already crater-sized rift between the families and Little Carmine Lupertazzi takes it upon himself to broker peace between the bosses. But when Tony and Little Carmine arrive at Phil's house to talk, Phil refuses to see them and hurls abuse at them from behind the curtain of a top-floor window, like some crazy witch character from a Bronte novel.
Where to for Tony and Melfi? In an interesting aside, and heaven knows The Sopranos is fond of these, Melfi has another session with Dr Elliott Kupferberg where Kupferberg tells her of a recent study he'd read which concluded that talk therapy for sociopaths ultimately did not work as it only enabled the patients to "further sharpen their skills as con men" and find solace for their crimes as they talk to their therapists.
This was quite enlightening since this is precisely the type of behavoiur we've seen from Tony throughout his lengthy relationship with Melfi. He's used these sessions to make himself feel better for his many many misdeeds over the years and has also used tender "breakthrough" moments between them to make sexual advances towards her. Hmm, very fascinating aside indeed I thought.
Although, after all the crap he's pulled recently, Tony said something incredibly powerful and insightful to Melfi during a session - something like, "mothers are like buses who drop you off and continue on, but we keep trying to get back on the bus." You have to wonder where a meat-headed thug like Tony can pull pearls like that from, but he figured this out while he was strung out on peyote in Vegas, so go figure.
Ok, maybe I'm being a bit harsh but Tony has gotten very little sympathy from me after killing Christopher and I've grown steadily annoyed and angry at many of these characters, particularly Carmela whose hypocrisy is blinding her, and Phil whose freakishly straight, white teeth and evil streak is beginning to make me fear the worst for the human race. And I'm despairing over the way women are being treated in this show - mothers or whores - that's about the extent of their use in this world.
Ok, rant over. Only two episodesof The Sopranos left – ever - and all I can say is that I hope that they bring Janice back for the final stretch coz I've really missed her these past few weeks and everyone else is starting to piss me off.