There’s a part of me that doesn’t even want to blog about this episode. I don’t want to ruin it. I don’t want to overanalyze it. I don’t want to pick it apart. It was a brilliant 50-plus minutes of television, setting things up for what looks to be one helluva memorable finale next week, and that’s really all that needs to be said. The episode speaks for itself.
But what kind of blog would this be if we didn’t actually blog? So let’s start by saying: Here we go. Seems the bloody, shoot-em-up ending that so many viewers wanted has come to be. That early scene with Phil and his two cronies was one of the best scenes of the season, maybe the series. “The Sopranos are nothing more than a glorified crew,” Phil says, quoting Carmine. “We decapitate and do business with whatever’s left.” Seems Phil doesn’t think all that much of his NJ counterparts, or at least, that’s what I gathered when he called them a “Pigmy tribe.” He wants the top three guys gone: Sil, Bobby and, of course, Tony.
A couple of interesting notes here, the first coming from one of the guys from the NY group. Bobby is Tony’s #3. We’ve kinda known it for a while but, as the NY guy pointed out, Bobby used to be Junior’s driver. Then he marries Janice and a couple years later he’s T’s #3? That always seemed strange to me. Turns out they promote everybody, as Phil says, and Bobby’s a very large piece of evidence. But would Bobby be in that position if Chris had still been around? Probably not. Or, at least, you can bet Phil would’ve made Chris a priority over Bobby because he understood that Chris would’ve hurt T more. But Tony gives Chris a friendly push toward his dirt nap a few episodes ago and poor Bobby pays for it. In a hobby store buying an $8,000 train, no less.
Did anyone really think that AJ’s suicide attempt would be successful? Since we lost Chris last week, the odds were against another main character dying so quickly, and honestly, AJ hasn’t been able to follow through on anything. Once the cement block hit the pool floor, he freaked out, and it looked for a moment that he might somehow die accidentally at his own suicide attempt. Tony’s just-in-time arrival made for a very powerful scene. It’s obvious that he loves his kid, but at the same time AJ’s troubles are a giant pain in his ass, both at home and on the job.
