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canyonwalkerHawk and I recently finished watching season 5 of The Sopranos. The 11th episode (out of 13), "The Test Dream", left us wondering if the season was going to run off the rails.
"The Test Dream" is dominated by a 20 minute dream sequence. Well, the episode's Wikipedia page says 20 minutes, but to us it felt a lot longer because it was unfocused. Tony is having a feverish dream that involves elements of flashback to childhood experience as well as omniscient understanding (or imagining?) of recent events he did not witness. There's also a vision of something he'd like to happen.
Look, I get it that IRL people do have dreams, and flashbacks are a common enough storytelling device. This exercise in using flashbacks has multiple problems, though.
After this episode Hawk uttered the Seven Deadly Words.
"I don't care about these characters anymore."
"The Test Dream" is dominated by a 20 minute dream sequence. Well, the episode's Wikipedia page says 20 minutes, but to us it felt a lot longer because it was unfocused. Tony is having a feverish dream that involves elements of flashback to childhood experience as well as omniscient understanding (or imagining?) of recent events he did not witness. There's also a vision of something he'd like to happen.
Look, I get it that IRL people do have dreams, and flashbacks are a common enough storytelling device. This exercise in using flashbacks has multiple problems, though.
- For one, it runs too long. It makes the episode dangerously like a "clips episode"— one of the major tells for when a show has jumped the shark. And this is not the first tell that The Sopranos is at risk of jumping the shark.
- Two, this prolonged dream sequence is confusing to viewers. After every cut we're left unsure if the next scene is real or a hallucination. Done once, maybe twice, it's fun. Done 7 times in a row it's just tedious.
- Three, the prolonged dream sequence does little to add to Tony's character or advance the plot. When Tony had a fever dream in the season 2 finale it was a) shorter and b) was the point where he connected the dots of evidence to recognize that one of the guys in his squad was a rat.
After this episode Hawk uttered the Seven Deadly Words.
"I don't care about these characters anymore."
