The Sopranos - Season 1 Ep. 2
Sep. 16th, 2021 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerI'm writing this blog to share a few thoughts from watching Season 1, Episode 2 of The Sopranos, "46 Long". After watching the pilot I wrote a "5 things" blog yesterday. Today I have just 3 things, and I don't think I'm going to keep up the pace of writing about every individual episode in the future.
This post contains minor spoilers for the episode.
1) Brendan is bad news. Christopher Moltisantii's best friend, Brendan, is a danger to everyone around him. I wrote yesterday about how I see Christopher is headed for a crisis of faith with boss Tony. Christopher will hit that crisis a lot faster keeping company with Brendan. He's a heavy drug user who encourages Christopher to use drugs more than he would otherwise. Brendan's also a risk-taking dipshit. While high on crank he talks Christopher into robbing a truck protected by a rival crime boss. After their hand in the robbery is discovered Christopher is in hot water with Tony and is forced to make restitution. Dipshit Brendan is outraged at the punishment and wants to go rob another truck from the same company. Christopher has the wits to opt out, but Brendan does it, and things go awry. Brendan's likely to get whacked— by his own gang if not the rival gang—and Christopher will be in jeopardy if he doesn't get away from Brendan, fast. I could even see a plot twist where Christopher is asked to whack his own friend to become a made man.
2) People are merely bemused by organized crime. One of the subplots in this episode is that a school teacher's car is stolen. Tony instructs his crew to recover it. I won't spoil details about how that happens except to note that the car "returned" to the teacher is actually not his car. "New keys," the teacher remarks, only half-surprised, as he unlocks it. "And it's a different color, too," one of his colleagues dead-pans. It's like people who live in places wracked with organized crime aren't too surprised by it— and know not to make a deal out of it when they see it.
3) Elders fear nursing homes. A running subplot across the episodes so far is that Tony wants his mother, Livia, to move into a retirement home, but she refuses. Tony emphasizes how a retirement home is different from a nursing home, but Livia won't have it. This is a familiar situation to me from experiences between my parents and their elderly mothers. Both grandmothers badly needed to leave their old family homes as they were unable to take care of them and even themselves, but fear of nursing homes kept them away. One grandmother moved in with my parents for her last year or so of life; the other did finally agree to enter a retirement home.
What helped my Grandma G change her mind was seeing that the retirement home was not a stereotypical old-people-warehouse.... You know, the kind of place with long corridors reeking of ammonia, old people shuffling up and down the halls wheeling their IV trees along, and bitter roommates who watch their TV on high volume 20 hours a day because they have nothing else to do. Instead she had her own private apartment, she moved her own, familiar furniture into it, and there was even space for her pull-out sofa for her family from distant locations to sleep on when visiting. (The fucking cheapskates who make a big deal out of this could easily afford a nice hotel, but that's a different issue.) Once at the care home her life improved immensely— not just through better diet and medical care, but her social life too. "I haven't had this many friends in 20 years!" she gushed a month after moving in.
This post contains minor spoilers for the episode.
1) Brendan is bad news. Christopher Moltisantii's best friend, Brendan, is a danger to everyone around him. I wrote yesterday about how I see Christopher is headed for a crisis of faith with boss Tony. Christopher will hit that crisis a lot faster keeping company with Brendan. He's a heavy drug user who encourages Christopher to use drugs more than he would otherwise. Brendan's also a risk-taking dipshit. While high on crank he talks Christopher into robbing a truck protected by a rival crime boss. After their hand in the robbery is discovered Christopher is in hot water with Tony and is forced to make restitution. Dipshit Brendan is outraged at the punishment and wants to go rob another truck from the same company. Christopher has the wits to opt out, but Brendan does it, and things go awry. Brendan's likely to get whacked— by his own gang if not the rival gang—and Christopher will be in jeopardy if he doesn't get away from Brendan, fast. I could even see a plot twist where Christopher is asked to whack his own friend to become a made man.
2) People are merely bemused by organized crime. One of the subplots in this episode is that a school teacher's car is stolen. Tony instructs his crew to recover it. I won't spoil details about how that happens except to note that the car "returned" to the teacher is actually not his car. "New keys," the teacher remarks, only half-surprised, as he unlocks it. "And it's a different color, too," one of his colleagues dead-pans. It's like people who live in places wracked with organized crime aren't too surprised by it— and know not to make a deal out of it when they see it.
3) Elders fear nursing homes. A running subplot across the episodes so far is that Tony wants his mother, Livia, to move into a retirement home, but she refuses. Tony emphasizes how a retirement home is different from a nursing home, but Livia won't have it. This is a familiar situation to me from experiences between my parents and their elderly mothers. Both grandmothers badly needed to leave their old family homes as they were unable to take care of them and even themselves, but fear of nursing homes kept them away. One grandmother moved in with my parents for her last year or so of life; the other did finally agree to enter a retirement home.
What helped my Grandma G change her mind was seeing that the retirement home was not a stereotypical old-people-warehouse.... You know, the kind of place with long corridors reeking of ammonia, old people shuffling up and down the halls wheeling their IV trees along, and bitter roommates who watch their TV on high volume 20 hours a day because they have nothing else to do. Instead she had her own private apartment, she moved her own, familiar furniture into it, and there was even space for her pull-out sofa for her family from distant locations to sleep on when visiting. (The fucking cheapskates who make a big deal out of this could easily afford a nice hotel, but that's a different issue.) Once at the care home her life improved immensely— not just through better diet and medical care, but her social life too. "I haven't had this many friends in 20 years!" she gushed a month after moving in.
