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This was the main selling point of "The Sopranos" when it debuted in 1999 -- mob boss meets therapist, reveals vulnerabilities. If it seemed like a trend ("Analyze This" came out around the same time), "The Sopranos" has burrowed much deeper into the nature of the therapy relationship. Tony's stasis (crushing family obligation mixed with unresolved childhood mixed with guttural grabbing of earthly pleasures) is at the show's narrative heart.
Sunday's musical sequence ends with Tony and his Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) digging up what Junior, in his increasingly Alzheimer's-addled state, thinks is his cut of an old mob deal buried in his backyard. And there is Tony in his loafers digging, having a nonsense conversation with his feeble relative.
This is pretty much where Chase began his story, Tony trying to get his gruesomely overbearing mother Livia (Nancy Marchand) into a nursing home against her will and suffering panic attacks as a result of that and other life stresses (including the minor development that Livia had put out a hit on him). Only now it's Tony, encouraged by his sister to put Junior away, who insists nursing homes are deathtraps, unable to bear that same guilt trip again.
" ... you still, after all this time, cannot accept you had a mother who didn't love you," Melfi tells him.
The plot turn at the end of Sunday's episode precipitates a reckoning, which Chase and his writers render in a multi-episode, bathed-in-metaphor dream sequence. In "Sopranos" dream land, limbo is some identity-less, Costa Mesa office park sort of place, your wallet and briefcase mysteriously not yours, your hotel elevator broken, a stuffed animal sitting in a chair.
"Please bear with us," the sign on its chest reads.
It's a stunning construct, producing the best work from Gandolfini and the equally formidable Falco since, well, since the last time we saw them.
`The Sopranos'
Where: HBO
When: 9 to 10 p.m. ET Sunday
Ratings: TV-MA (unsuitable for children under the age of 17, with advisories for violence and coarse language)
Sunday's musical sequence ends with Tony and his Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) digging up what Junior, in his increasingly Alzheimer's-addled state, thinks is his cut of an old mob deal buried in his backyard. And there is Tony in his loafers digging, having a nonsense conversation with his feeble relative.
" ... you still, after all this time, cannot accept you had a mother who didn't love you," Melfi tells him.
The plot turn at the end of Sunday's episode precipitates a reckoning, which Chase and his writers render in a multi-episode, bathed-in-metaphor dream sequence. In "Sopranos" dream land, limbo is some identity-less, Costa Mesa office park sort of place, your wallet and briefcase mysteriously not yours, your hotel elevator broken, a stuffed animal sitting in a chair.
"Please bear with us," the sign on its chest reads.
It's a stunning construct, producing the best work from Gandolfini and the equally formidable Falco since, well, since the last time we saw them.
`The Sopranos'
Where: HBO
When: 9 to 10 p.m. ET Sunday
Ratings: TV-MA (unsuitable for children under the age of 17, with advisories for violence and coarse language)
