D'oh! My Back, part 2

Late yesterday morning my back gave out. When I saw my my doctor in the afternoon she said it's likely a pinched nerve in a muscle— which, while painful, is less bad than other things it could be, such a herniated disc. We won't know for sure, though, until scans come back.

Getting those scans is more of a process than it ought to be. First, I waited a few hours to see my doctor. That was partly by my choice. I figured I could go to the emergency care clinic right away... and have to wait there who-knows-how long, easily an hour or two, sitting in a room with people choking and gasping with Covid-19 symptoms. As if being in a room with people with a contagious disease wouldn't be bad enough, just sitting there would be painful. Instead I was able to get an appointment at 2pm with my own doctor, which meant I could stay at home, lying down, until time to drive over to the clinic 2.5 miles away, then wait a few minutes at worst without being surrounded by unvaccinated plague sufferers.

The next step was getting x-rays. It was really a bullshit next step; the kind of soft-tissue injury I likely have will not show up on an x-ray. It needs an MRI. But health insurance companies routinely require pre-authorization for MRI, and part of that pre-authorization is demanding that an x-ray come back inconclusive first.

Getting an x-ray meant going to a different clinic. And that meant another hour or so wait in line before getting the scans. Then the x-ray itself was a ridiculously process, involving a 5-axis scanner in a huge room. Whatever happened to, "Okay, stand here, ZAP!, done"? It probably costs 20x this way, which is sadly part of the reason why they do it.

It'll take another 1-2 days for my doctor to get the results, then she'll have to order an MRI... which may require a few days to schedule, then a few days to get results back. With any luck I might be better by the time they figure out what's wrong with me!

Anyway, after the ridiculously thorough x-ray I picked up a few prescriptions at the pharmacy. I've got a muscle relaxant and a prescription strength pain pill (naproxen). Starting on those loosened my back enough and lessened the pain enough that I could walk around the house at slow speed and do things like occasionally sit and stand without falling over in pain.

New Characters Join The Sopranos. Jumping the Shark?

Season 5 of The Sopranos opens with news that several new characters will join the show. In-show the reason is that a bunch of convicted mobsters have just gotten out of jail, their paroles happening around the same time many years after a justice spree of organized crime convictions. Seeing a raft of new characters coming into the story, moreover with flimsy justification, made me wonder: is this where The Sopranos jumps the shark?

For those who don't know, Jumping the Shark is a storytelling trope named for the 1977 episode of TV series Happy Days in which the iconic Fonzie (played by Henry Winkler) ski-jumps over a shark. The meaning of Jumping the Shark is that a series has lost its way and has to resort to gimmicks to shore up its declining viewership. As the pages on Jumping the shark on Wikipedia and Jumping the Shark at TV Tropes, explain, the gimmick doesn't have to involve water skiing or shark jumping. There's actually quite a long list of disruptive tropes writers can engage in that may signal the show is going downhill creatively. One of the more common ones is introducing a bunch of new characters.

As I've mentioned a few times before I have the benefit of hindisght when it comes to questions about whether The Sopranos holds together or falls apart. The show wrapped more than 15 years ago. It was acclaimed all the way through, and it ends just one season later (6 seasons total).

Watching the first half of Season 5 has satisfied me that this is not a case of Jumping the Shark. The four new characters are well integrated in the narrative. The story remains centered around Tony instead of being changed from that core premise.

Two of the new characters become minor characters. We see them on camera infrequently, and their function is mainly to show that the world Tony Soprano inhabits is not standing still. He's got to deal with changes and challenges that come from new people who might be his friends, his enemies, or both.

The other two characters, Feech LaManna and Tony Blundetto (played by accomplish film character actor Steve Buscemi), become on-screen regulars (at least through the first several episodes of season 5). They, too, are well integrated into story. There are character sub-plots about each of them, but these ultimately center around Tony and how he deals with differences of opinion and unwanted behavior under his leadership of the organization. Plus, the Tony B. character arc is just fun. He's a person you feel good rooting for because while he was a criminal in the past he's trying really hard in the present to go 100% legit... with some slips and falls along the way.