Well…I guess Chris wound up flipping after all.
Okay, I know – bad taste. But come on, how else would I lead this blog entry off? There have been plenty of shocking moments in TV history, but I was utterly speechless for a good five minutes tonight after Tony suffocated Chris following their car accident. The buildup surrounding Chris’ character in general and his relationship with Tony in particular had been going on for years, and it accelerated the past few episodes, so to see it all end like that was…to be honest…a little disappointing. Sure, it’s one of the biggest moments in the show’s history, but with everything that had been going on – the tension between T and Chris, the possibility that Chris was going to talk to the feds, Carmella suspecting Chris of killing Adrianna, and the ongoing feud between Chris and Paulie – this was just about the most anticlimactic way to wrap up his arc. I thought somehow, some way, that Chris was going to be right in the middle of whatever went down in the final moments of the series, but that’s obviously not the case now. Bummer.
At first, I couldn’t tell why Tony killed Chris…or helped him die, if you prefer to look at it that way. Did he think he was doing Chris a favor since he was high and would therefore lose his license? Well, I suppose it’d be better to be alive and without wheels than six feet under, so probably not. Did he think Chris was a goner anyway? He sure was messed up, coughing up blood and barely able to keep his eyes open, so that may very well have had something to do with it. But the overriding factor, we later learned, was that Tony just wanted Chris dead. And this way he didn’t even have to do the dirty work. Hell, he didn’t even need to plan anything or set it all up; just hold the guy’s nose for a few seconds and let him choke on his own blood. Problem solved.
