Great news: Radley Balko (damn, I love that name) is joining Blogcritics, and he will be doing a running commentary/review of The Sopranos season episode by episode. Here's the first installment from his site:
- One murder, some coke, an orgy with Icelandic flight attendants, loads of manipulation, and a capo excusing himself from dinner at the boss's place while he makes it in the upstairs bathroom with the boss's sister. All in all, a pretty uneventful — but nonetheless spectacular — premiere for the Sopranos. More than anything, David Chase laid the foundation for the season ahead, setting mulitple plotlines in motion. If we can use the first three seasons as a barometer, he'll likely follow only a few of them, and leave us to salivate over the others.
This episode really revealed Tony Soprano to be a manipulator, a guy who can't even follow the shaky moral code of a mob boss. Over the recess, Chase said to a few outlets that he was uncomfortable with the amount of sympathy audiences were showing for Tony, who is after all a murderer, philanderer and general sociopath. So Tony's in a coarse mood for the entire hour of the first episode, incensed at the lack of funds flowing up the pyramid. Seems that the recession's hit even the underworld. Chase then takes us on a quick tour of the darker corners of Tony Soprano's psyche.
First, he allows one of his more loyal (at least until Tony screwed him on the sit-down with Ralphie Cifaretto last season) lieutenants, Paulie Walnuts, to rot in a jail cell on a weapons charge. Not even a phone call. As it turns out, New York boss and Soprano rival Jonny Sack showed a little more sympathy, and Paulie's contemplating making the jump to the other family, which could spark a turf war. Another possibility: Johnny Sack planted the gun on Paulie and tipped off the cops, hoping that Paulie would pin the incident on Tony, further inspiring his leap to the New York family. Whatever the case, despite the mafioso code of loyalty — allegedly one of the trade's few redeeming qualities — Tony's done little to reward his more loyal lieutenants. He sided with the firebrand Cifaretto over Paulie. And he's apparently grooming the rebellious Christopher to take over the business, overlooking more steady hands such as Silvio Dante or Paulie.
Then there's Tony's emotional manipulation of Christopher, a nephew by blood, but more of a son within the crime family. Tony drives Christopher to a restaurant where a cop is celebrating his retirement party. Tony tells Christopher that the cop in question killed his father, then leaves Christopher to exact his revenge. Christopher waits at the cop's home, pops him on the head, then waits for the guy to come to so he can finish him off. The cop says he knows nothing of Christopher's father, or of any of the other characters Tony relays in the narrative. Chase never gives us conclusive evidence that Tony lied to Christopher, but he certainly gives us reason to believe that's the case. Christopher even says to the cop, "Well, it doesn't matter if the story's true or not, he (Tony) obviously wants you dead." If Tony was lying to Christopher, it seems like a particularly malevolent way of ordering a hit. Why tap in the emotion stirred up by the murder of the guy's father?
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