The Sopranos - Season 4 Slump

I've watched The Sopranos through just past the midpoint of season 4 (I finished s4e8 recently). The series is hitting a slump. The pace of action has slowed way down. The past 5 episodes seem like they could have been condensed into 2 or 3 with tighter writing. Hawk has walked out of the room halfway through an episode twice, asking me to fill her in on what happened... and after finishing the episode I've said, "Uh, basically nothing." 😒

Here are Five Things:

1) Middle Movie Syndrome?

I've perused fan sites online and found that frustration with season 4 is typical. Fans claim that to some extent it's "middle movie syndrome". The show doesn't have the excitement of introducing the characters like in the first season, and can't tie things up like in the final season. We're left with moving the pieces around the board to set up for the finale.

FWIW not all movie trilogies suffer "middle movie syndrome". Star Wars— the original trilogy— did not. Back to the Future did. And some series of novels have suffered middle book(s) syndrome. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series lost its way after book 4 and stumbled for a few books.

And here's the thing: middle movie syndrome is not inevitable. The Sopranos kept things fresh in Season 3 by introducing a new antagonist (Ralphie), changing the style slightly to spend time a) following the cops who are pursing the crime gang and b) following daughter Meadow as she adjusts to college life, and running a very tight character-driven episode about "two assholes lost in the woods". Season 3 proved the series could stay strong even in the middle. Season 4 just drags.

2) Are They Juicing Us?

A few times in the series gangsters refer to "juicing" a target: encouraging a person to borrow money for something they don't really need... but only as much as they can afford the outrageous interest payments on. The gangsters don't want to put the target out of business or into bankruptcy. They know they get more money in the long run if the target keeps working and keeps paying them.

To some extent it feels like the producers of this show are juicing us in Season 4. At this point in its original broadcast the series had become critically acclaimed. It had built a strong viewership. What better way for the corporate overlords to maximize their revenue than to draw the series out slowly, lengthening the time over which they can collect subscription fees.

3) Okay, So It's Character Driven...

Dislike for season 4 is not universal, though. Some fans defend it as actually being a strong season. Their argument is that season 4's episodes are very character-driven, and the characters are so richly drawn they are fun to watch develop further.

I won't debate that these slows episodes have focused on character development— that's simply fact— but I disagree on all both the reasons why that's actually good.

4) ...But the Characters are Assholes

In some stories rich characterization is really a plus. For that to happen, though, the characters have got to be ones the audience cares about. In The Sopranos the characters are assholes. The gang members are mostly foolish and un-self aware— in addition to being liars, thieves, and murderers. I don't care to see a slow walk through these people's shitty, venal, semi clueless lives!

I don't need, for example, to see multiple lengthy scenes of Christopher getting high on heroin. It was made clear in the first two episodes of season 1 that he's got a drug problem. Quick scenes about it, or even showing him high in other scenes without actually showing him shooting up, would convey that he continues using and is getting worse.

5) The Characterization isn't Consistent

Meanwhile, the slow pace of characterization isn't even. There's so much time spent showing Christopher continuing to use drugs you might think it's a how-to video for injecting Heroin. But subplots involving Tony's kids, Meadow and A.J., jump forward skipping multiple steps.

Meadow is now in her sophomore year at Columbia University. After previously being characterized as a dilettante who railed against privilege with no awareness of the irony about how much privilege she enjoyed, and wanting to drop out of school for a year to travel (on her parents' generous dime, of course) suddenly she's back in school and is volunteering at a law clinic for poor people in a marginalized community. Where did her change of heart come from? In a fast moving story I'd accept such a jump as par for the course. In a slower moving story the audience really needs to be shown the reason for the change of heart to accept it as anything other than the writers cheaping out.

Likewise, A.J. goes from being a clueless boy-child who does dumb things and can't even explain why he does them— he simply imitates his immature male friends because he can't think of anything better to do— to having a stronger sense of himself and pursuing a physical/emotional relationship with a girl. Again, where did that come from? In a fast story I could accept it as that being the pace at which minor character development happened, but now if the show is supposed to be all slow because the characters are so richly drawn, they've got to do better.

Bottom line, I'll keep watching The Sopranos despite this slump. I know it gets better! But even if I was watching the original broadcast (i.e., didn't know future episodes/seasons improve) I'd stick with it for a bit longer. The slump isn't yet so long or so deep that I'd abandon the series.

Teeing Up for The Many Saints of Newark

Earlier today I blogged that The Sopranos has hit a slump in the middle of Season 4. Part of the reason I'm powering through it is I know it gets better (a benefit of watching it years after its original broadcast). The other part of it, and why I'm still semi-bingeing, usually watching 2 episodes at a time when I spend an evening watching TV, is I want to be able to watch The Many Saints of Newark soon.

Many Saints is, of course, the movie prequel to The Sopranos. While the movie is written so that it can stand on its own it's also written with a primary audience of Sopranos fans in mind. Reviewers have noted that to appreciate a lot of the references in the film you need to have watched the series. So why do I hurry? There's a ticking clock. Many Saints is only available on streaming through the end of October. After that I'll have to pay to see it in a theater— and risk Coronavirus exposure, too!— or wait for some kind of re-release.

Many Saints is also a play on words. One of the main characters in the series is Christopher Moltisanti, whose Italian surname means many saints. In the movie, young Tony Soprano is taken under the wing of Dickie Moltisanti, Christopher's father.

As an example of how watching the series first is relevant to understand the prequel, in the opening episode of season 4 there was a major plot point revealed about Dickie Moltisanti. He was killed when Christopher was a baby, and in that episode Tony tells Christopher who the killer was. That scene and the next have two of the most cold-blooded lines of dialogue exchanged.

( Spoiler: Tony reveals to Christopher who killed his father )

The second cold-blooded exchange of lines comes when Christopher visits the killer at Tony's behest.

( Spoiler: Christopher avenges his father's death )

Update: I don't know if Dickie Moltisanti's murder is part of the storyline in Many Saints and I don't want to know. No movie spoilers!

Show Vaccination Proof at Restaurants, Salons, etc?

There's been controversy since just before vaccines started to roll out about whether people would be required to show proof of vaccination as part of returning to normal with restaurants, concerts, etc. Given the leadership the US had late last year when it would've been the time to put a solid system in place— leadership that couldn't decide whether to pat itself on the back for the half-finished job of distributing vaccines it rushed to market or denying that Coronavirus is a serious, not made-up thing— we never got a verification system. Or even a consensus on having one. At least two states, New York and California, did create systems on their own in the absence of federal leadership.

I actually used California's system last weekend when we traveled to Los Angeles. Or rather, I was ready to use it. The City of Los Angeles has vaccine check requirements starting soon (source: LA Times article, 6 Oct 2021), and some other cities in the county, such as West Hollywood, have check requirements in place already. (Source: Eater Los Angeles article, 13 Oct 2021.) Nowhere we went was checking vaccination status, though. A museum next to the LACMA (which we visited) was checking for vax cards, but LACMA was not.

I've read that while New York City already has proof-of-vaccination requirements in place, the state reports very few people using the smartphone app it paid to create. (Source: Vox.com/Recode article, 21 Oct 2021.) Like California's system which I set up last week, it checks your name against state Department of Health vaccination records and creates a QR code (an image) you can store on your phone. The code, when scanned by someone at say, a restaurant, opens a page on the state site which verifies your name and yes-no vaccination status.

I thought about that again when I visited an old favorite restaurant close to home this week. The restaurant has set its own policy that anyone who wishes to dine inside must show proof of vaccination. The last few times I was there I didn't bother because I wanted to eat outside. The weather was nice, and outside is safer anyway. But this week the weather has been cooler so I wanted to dine in. I showed the staff my QR code from the California state app... and they had No. Freaking. Clue. what it was. I appreciate that this mom-and-pop restaurant is looking out for their staff and clientele with a proof of vaccine requirement, but it's disappointing that businesses like them are having to do it in a completely ad hoc fashion for lack of support from the government and lack of awareness of what little support there is.