Certain Incidents Have Expired



The sixth season of The Sopranos was something of an enigma, starting with the question of whether or not it was actually a season. HBO would have us believe that the final eight “bonus” episodes next year are actually a continuation of S6, which is probably why they made a point of not referring to “Kaisha” as the season finale. Still, it was the last episode of the year and, judging from the general reaction on the Internets, folks were anticipating a bit more in the way of action and resolution. (Indeed, the powers that be may be wishing they’d blown up the Bada Bing as a cliffhanger, given the precarious state of certain negotiations.)

Taken as an act break rather than a finale, “Kaisha” worked for me; it had that air of gathering menace that characterizes many of my favorite episodes, even if nothing has yet come of it. But the most recent batch of episodes was admittedly flawed, hit-and-miss after getting off to a very strong start. I’m not sure where I read this, but my understanding is that the decision to add extra episodes came after the first five or so had been shot. I have no trouble believing this, as the momentum was somewhat derailed by digressions and (literal) side trips, some more successful than others. (I would rank the mid-season episode “Luxury Lounge” – which rehashed Christopher’s Hollywood dreams and Artie’s restaurant woes – at the bottom, despite a couple of killer scenes.) Herewith, kicking off the Thursday Five feature, are my top 5 episodes of season 6 (or season 6.1 or whatever it was) of The Sopranos:

5. Live Free or Die Yes, Vito’s adventures in Gay Hampshire probably ate up a bit too much screen time this year, but the episode that introduced us all to Johnnycakes was classic “Where is this going?” Sopranos. Vito flees New Jersey, blows a tire in a rainstorm and, dressed like Little Red Riding Hood, wanders into a fairytale New England town. Vito discovering his eye for antiques as X’s “Fourth of July” cranks up on the soundtrack is a neat distillation of the season-long theme of alternate lives and the road not taken.

4. Mr. and Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request An alternate title for the series might have been Four Hundred Funerals and a Wedding. We’ve come close before – Janice tried on a wedding dress and Adriana suffered through a bridal shower – but those nuptials didn’t quite come to fruition, and when Christopher did finally tie the knot this season, it was an off-screen drive-through job in Atlantic City. So it’s probably fitting that the one time we see the whole gang gather to celebrate wedded bliss, it’s for a character we’ve never seen before, Allegra Sacrimoni. (“Allegra,” says Christopher, “isn’t that a cold medicine?”) And it’s the tackiest wedding a mob boss could buy for his daughter, complete with metal detectors, clandestine plotting, a schmaltzy rendition of “Daddy’s Little Girl,” and the forced removal of a tearful Johnny Sack, who loses all his power in the blink of an eye.

3. Cold Stones As Sopranos fans are well aware, it’s generally the penultimate episode that packs the most fireworks, and such was the case again here. Vito learns that you can’t go home again, Silvio and Carlo carve up a side of beef in the back of the pork store, and Carmela has a haunting encounter with Adriana on the streets of Paris.

1. & 2. Join the Club/Mayham I’ve ranked these together as they are essentially a two-part episode depicting Coma Tony’s adventures in limbo/dreamland/Costa Mesa. Usually hearing Gandolfini speak in his real voice drives me crazy; Tony Soprano’s guttural accent is so firmly imbedded in my consciousness, the real thing sounds phony. Here is the exception, an alternate Tony as regular guy schlub and sweet-natured family man in existential crisis. His identity has been swapped with a salesman named Kevin Finnerty and he can’t find his way back home. Buddhist monks accuse him of selling them a faulty heating system. He falls down a stairwell and is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He makes his way to a Shining-like hotel, where he is greeted by a man in a tuxedo who could be his dead cousin or the grim reaper or both. For some strange reason, a lot of people hated these episodes. That’s okay. For me, they’re everything I love about The Sopranos: strange, funny and oddly moving. And if you don’t like that stuff, hey, Paulie whacks some guys, too.