Will Final Sopranos Whack HBO's Identity Too?

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

It's difficult to remember now, but way back in the mid 1990s during a crazy little century called the 20th, HBO was a network far more renowned for its longform production and documentaries than its series. Sure, it had "The Larry Sanders Show," possibly the most magnificent character comedy in recorded history, but "Larry" drew abysmal ratings in appealing to something of an elitist taste.

The three shows that would come to define the quality-rich HBO brand -- "Sex and the City," "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under" -- didn't arrive on the scene until 1998, 1999 and 2001, respectively. Nothing that came before ever brought the mighty Time Warner premium cabler anything close to the consistent acclaim and cachet supplied by this threesome.

Movies, minis and docus are great for collecting Emmys, but once they've run, they've run. Series are the gift that keeps on giving. Yet it hasn't escaped notice that aside from "Entourage," HBO is pretty much fresh out of even semi-buzzworthy series product of late.

And so we find that Sunday's much-hyped "Sopranos" series capper represents far more than simply the hour that will determine Tony Soprano's ultimate fate. It's the true end of an era for the network that birthed he and his goombas. Even before HBO programming guru Chris Albrecht's troubles that led to his ouster, the network has been unable to restock its ranks with new stars. The golden touch has turned closer to silver.

This is not a new observation, of course. And particularly this week in coinciding with the "Sopranos'" permanent fish-sleeping expedition, the eulogies mourning HBO's untimely demise are sure to come in waves. It really isn't as bad as all of that, however. For one, the original series cupboard isn't barren, what with "Entourage," the polygamy primer "Big Love" returning next Monday and another season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" rolling out later in the year. As well, critics continue to sing the praises of "The Wire," though they seem to be the only ones watching it.

There's also the new stuff: the David Milch paranormal surfer fantasy "John From Cincinnati" (premiering Sunday), the comedy "Flight of the Conchords" (arriving June 17) and the psych-themed half-hour drama "In Therapy" (coming this fall) that appears to recall the brilliant but shamefully short-lived 1991 six-parter "Sessions" that Billy Crystal wrote and produced for HBO.

It all sounds just swell, though there is now the distinct sense from HBO not of a front-runner's cool confidence but a boxer who has lost the sting in his jab and is unleashing a less-effective barrage in the hope something connects. Such is the towering height of the bar this network has set.

Yes, a retooling was inevitable. They can't all be winners, and "Carnivale" and "Lucky Louie" weren't. Yet more than that, aside from "The Sopranos" and the recently departed "Deadwood," even the schedule-stickers just aren't generating the kind of hyper-awareness that befits HBO's sterling reputation. As a result, FX ("Rescue Me," "The Shield," "The Riches," "Nip/Tuck") and Showtime ("Dexter," "Weeds," "The Tudors," "Brotherhood") have been able to swoop in and virtually eliminate any perceived qualitative gap while carving out their own unique niches.

Does any of this really matter to HBO? Financially, it's probably negligible. But in terms of perception and esteem -- both essential elements in keeping subscriber churn to a minimum while maximizing water-cooler chatter -- it's huge.

Unfortunately, coolness isn't a commodity that can be purchased outright or Bill Gates would be the hippest man on Earth. HBO hasn't lost its identity, merely its groove. It's simply going to take it a while to get it back.

Thanks to Ray Richmond

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Tony Soprano: Hero and Villain

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

Director David Cronenberg once told me that back in the eighties, when he was trying to make his version of "The Fly" — the one where Jeff Goldblum turns into a gooey monster — a studio head said it wouldn't work; he said he didn't think audiences could deal with a hero who is also the villain.

Scary, huh? There goes "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." There go the most fascinating characters in literature.

Television, where fathers were supposed to know best, was even less friendly to moral ambiguity — which is why "The Sopranos" was a landmark.

When we first met James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano in 1999, he seemed to be evolving. He was seeing a psychiatrist; he was coming to terms with his life. He was a gang boss, sure, but he had a crazy narcissistic mom, he cared about his kids, he wasn't a sociopath, like his nephew Christopher. And then came the episode where he took his daughter Meadow to Maine to see a college and spied a rat, an ex-gangster relocated by the witness protection program. Tony saw the man had a wife and kids and hesitated — and we knew he wouldn't kill him.

Only he did.

No matter how much we empathized with and lived vicariously through these characters, creator David Chase made sure to slap us awake — to remind us they were terrible people. Tony ordered the murder of the one entirely sympathetic character, Drea di Matteo's Adriana.

Last season, Joseph Gannascoli's Vito was discovered to be gay, taboo in Mafia culture, and he fled to New Hampshire — how could we not be touched by the sad sack's plight? Only then, he shot a man whose car he hit while driving drunk.

Even Edie Falco's Carmela is tainted. Earlier this season, the budding realtor worried a rainstorm would ruin the sale of a house she'd had built. That shoddy edifice could stand for the Sopranos' way of life: rotted by self-interest, its collapse inevitable.

It makes you think of the ways most of us compromise, in big and little ways, for the sake of self-interest — and how our own lives, as Americans, are unsustainable.

No one knows if in the last episode Tony Soprano will die. Who could write his epitaph? Not Chase — he needed more than 80 hours to take the measure of the man. But I know this: Our perceptions, our lives, our culture is enriched by a hero who is finally a villain.

Thanks to David Edelstein

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Gambino Mobster Survives Hit Attempt

The son of one of "Dapper Don" John Gotti's trusted capos narrowly escaped an old-fashioned mob hit when a bullet grazed his head in a drive-by shooting in Brooklyn's Mafia heartland, cops said.

Robert DeCicco, whom feds identified as a 56-year-old mob associate, also was shot three times in the arm during the botched rubout in his car at Bath and 17th avenues in Bath Beach at about 10:15 a.m., cops and witnesses said.

"They didn't do it right," said a local in the neighborhood, which has been run by the DeCiccos for generations, according to law-enforcement sources. "Whoever did this, they're in a lot of trouble now."

DeCicco - who was indicted in January along with his father, George "Big Georgie" DeCicco, 78, in the last major takedown of alleged Gambino mobsters - had just gotten into his 1998 gray Cadillac Seville after shopping.

The bungled assassination came just a day after another Gambino mobster busted with DeCicco and his dad in January was moved into protective custody because of threats against his life, The Post has learned.

Joseph Orlando, who brought down the DeCicco crew down when he tried to bribe an official, was moved into solitary confinement at the Manhattan Detention Center Monday, sources said. Details of the threat were unavailable. Orlando's attorney declined to comment, as did an FBI spokesman.

Witnesses said a man wearing a ski mask pulled up in a black Lincoln next to DeCicco and shot at him four times, shattering both the front passenger and driver's windows.

DeCicco managed to drag himself out of the car and stagger into a pharmacy to call for help, witnesses said.

At Lutheran Hospital, DeCicco kept mum about the identities of his would-be killers. "I don't want to talk to anyone," he reportedly told cops from his hospital bed.

Later, as he left the 62nd Precinct, he said, "I'm all right, I feel very good."

DeCicco, who had a bandaged arm and a scratch across his face, jumped into a black Lexus. The car was registered to Mark Fappiano, who is related to Frank Fappiano, the Mafia turncoat who testified in John "Junior" Gotti's recent federal trials.

The shooting occurred just blocks from Tomasso's Restaurant, where DeCicco's cousin Frank DeCicco was blown up by a car bomb meant for the elder John Gotti in 1986. A year earlier, Frank DeCicco had lured Gambino crime boss Paul Castellano to Sparks Steakhouse on the East Side in one of the city's most famous Mafia hits. Castellano's rubout paved the way for Gotti to take the No. 1 spot in the Gambino family.

Robert DeCicco's father, George, also rose up the ranks. Until January, he was known as the last-remaining Gotti capo not behind bars or dead.

George DeCicco was finally busted on a slew of extortion, racketeering, loan-sharking and money-laundering raps after a two-year probe in which a member of his crew taped hundreds of hours of recordings.

The younger DeCicco also was charged with loan-sharking.

"Big Georgie" DeCicco, who because of heart problems is under house arrest on Staten Island, gave a thumbs-up sign to reporters after learning his son had survived. "He's all right!" he said. "I was on oxygen last night," he told The Post. "The last thing I need to do is hear [he was shot]."

Investigators theorized the attempted hit could be personal. "If it was, whoever did this is going to be in trouble because he's a captain's son," a source said.

"If it's a mob-sanctioned hit, whoever did this is in trouble because he botched it."

Thanks to Murray Weiss, Partick Gallahue and Leela de Kretser

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Soprano Ethical Lapses Debated

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

Therapists, we've long known, are among the biggest fans of The Sopranos.

So pleased were they with the credible therapy scenes between Tony Soprano, pop culture's most famous mobster/patient, and the appealing Dr. Jennifer Melfi, played by Lorraine Bracco, that the American Psychoanalytical Association once gave the show and Bracco an award. But professionally speaking, they could only scratch their heads at the latest developments on HBO's hit drama, which aired its penultimate episode last weekend.

Just as Tony Soprano's life seemed to be imploding with dangerous speed — in short, just when he needed some really good therapy — Melfi and her own therapist made some highly questionable moves. Not only therapists were distressed. Some patients were actually furious when they showed up for appointments this week, said one New York psychoanalyst.

"You wouldn't believe the outrage I am hearing," said Dr. Arnold Richards, who'd missed the episode, but was filled in by his patients. He was talking about a serious ethical lapse by Elliot Kupferberg, played by Peter Bogdanovich, at a dinner party full of therapists. Across the crowded table, the character callously revealed — over Melfi's protests — the identity of her star patient.

"Mind-boggling," pronounced Richards. "I do not recall ever being told the name of a patient in treatment."

Colleagues agreed. "That dinner party was just very upsetting to me," said Dr. Joseph Annibali, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in McLean, Va. "What he did was outrageous. He's never had control of himself, and this just fits in with that."

Why did Kupferberg commit such a sin? He didn't think Melfi should be treating Tony, whom he considered a manipulative psychopath. Be that as it may, his disclosure was "a very egregious ethical violation," said Dr. Jan Van Schaik, chair of the Ethics Committee at the Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Institute.

"A patient needs to know that what gets said in the doctor's office stays there," said Van Schaik, who's never witnessed such a violation. "I've been at gatherings where people talk about patients in a more disguised form. Even that can be inappropriate. A good therapist should do the best they can to protect the anonymity of patients."

It's a shame, Van Schaik added, because "prior to Sunday's episode, The Sopranos was the best portrayal in the popular media of a therapist-patient relationship." Annibali agreed: "We're so used to seeing therapists presented as incompetent hacks. Or as people who are more disturbed than their patients!"

What's been nice about Melfi, the Virginia therapist explained, is that she's a complex and caring figure — she's not ideal, but she tries to help Tony even as she struggles with the idea of treating him.

That is, until this last episode, when she ... dumped him.

"We're making progress," Tony protested, genuinely shocked. "It's been seven years!" But Melfi had reluctantly read a study, brought to her attention by Kupferberg, claiming that therapy doesn't actually help sociopaths — it further enables their bad behavior by sharpening their manipulative skills. Demoralized, guilt-ridden and almost speechless with hostility, Melfi literally showed Tony the door.

A tidbit that had some therapists buzzing this week: it turns out the study is a real one — albeit hardly new — from authors Samuel Yochelson and Stanton Samenow, psychiatrists specializing in the criminal mind. But the way the fictional Melfi shoved aside her patient was anything but real, therapists said.

"You don't just drop a patient like a hot potato, even if you conclude they aren't responding to therapy," Annibali protested. "She should have taken several months to do it."

For Richards, the development just didn't ring true. After seven years, "only NOW she figures this out? My sense is that there was some narrative purpose for (series creator David) Chase to end this relationship."

As in the fact that there's only an hour left to the entire story? That Tony's life is crashing down around him, and one by one, by death or rejection or his own murderous hand, he appears destined to lose everyone close to him? Maybe. But Annibali said he'd heard that Bracco may be appearing in the final episode next Sunday. Which means there may still be time to reverse her professional missteps.

"My hope," Annibali said, "is that she and Tony will get together again."

But for one certified expert on both therapy AND The Sopranos, that wouldn't make sense, dramatically speaking. Around halfway through the show's run, Tony's therapy started failing, said Dr. Glen Gabbard, professor at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and author of The Psychology of The Sopranos.

Perhaps it was because Chase himself went through years of therapy, and has publicly expressed ambivalence about its usefulness. In any case, at the busy psychiatry clinic where Gabbard works, the talk this week is about how Melfi should have ended things with Tony years ago.

"The therapy had to end," Gabbard said. "It was getting more and more futile."

"He's just not getting any better."

Thanks to Jocelyn Noveck

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Tony Soprano, Family Guy

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

In the pilot episode of “The Sopranos,” which Home Box Office first aired on January 10, 1999, a thickening son of Essex County, New Jersey, reluctantly visits Jennifer Melfi, a psychiatrist, at her office in Montclair. His name is Anthony Soprano and he has been depressed.

Tony lives in a “French provincial” McMansion in North Caldwell with his wife, Carmela, and their children, Meadow and A.J. He works as a “waste-management consultant,” as he all too modestly informs his doctor; in fact, his interests extend to the docks, “no show” construction jobs, paving and joint-fitting unions, an “executive card game,” a sports book in Roseville, loan-sharking, coffee-shop and pizza-place protection rackets, truck hijacking, HUD scams, fell-off-the-back-of-a-truck consumer goods, a strip club in Lodi, and extensive holdings in real estate, vinegar peppers, and gabagool. The New Yorker

Tony Soprano, as everyone in north Jersey and beyond has come to know, is the head of the Di Meo crime family. He has been suffering from panic attacks. Business is uneven. His associates and his children lack focus. His uncle resents his authority. His wife resents his late-night romps with yet another goomah. And his mother, the Medea of Bloomfield Avenue, never loved him (and may yet give the signal to have him whacked). The pressure is really something. Just recently, he tells Dr. Melfi, he was short of breath, tingly inside—“It felt like ginger ale in my skull.” He collapsed while grilling pork sausages on the barbecue:

TONY: The morning of the day I got sick, I been thinking. It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came in too late for that, I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.
DR. MELFI: Many Americans, I think, feel that way.
TONY: I think about my father. He never reached the heights like me. But in a lotta ways he had it better. He had his people. They had their standards. They had pride. Today, whadda we got?

And so began Tony’s quest for a renewed sense of family, heritage, coherent truths, mental health, and a prime cut of the Esplanade construction projects. “The Sopranos,” the richest achievement in the history of television, comes to an end June 10th, after eighty-six episodes. It has been with us a long time—longer than the Bush Administration (and nothing seems more interminable than that).

In his first hour onscreen, Tony, played by James Gandolfini, still had a modest shock of hair and a Gleasonesque lightness to his step. He had not yet achieved the menacing rhino plod that would come with time, anxiety, and fifteen thousand buttered bialys. We’d yet to glimpse his rages, and his accent was less mobbed up, almost refined. He sounded more Summit than Newark.

Nevertheless, to an astonishing degree the characters and the ideas––comic, dramatic, and social––in “The Sopranos” were in place from the start. Even though its creator, David Chase, never had the luxury of a novelist’s control of length and narrative destiny, he has rarely faltered. The show evolved in the manner of a sprawling social novel of the nineteenth century, constantly sprouting new plotlines, developing recurring jokes, images, and characters. Dickens would have seen a kinsman in the creator of “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri. Besides, there are fewer dull patches in “The Sopranos” than there are in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”––all due respect.

Like John Updike’s Rabbit series or Philip Roth’s novels of the past decade, “The Sopranos” teems with the mindless commerce and consumption of modern America. The drama and the comedy are rooted in the particulars of life as it is lived from the Pulaski Skyway to Bergen Avenue, and yet the larger events of the world are never completely sealed from view. There are always televisions playing in the background––the local news in offices and hospital rooms, the “Hitler channel” in Tony’s living room—and so world politics is the undercurrent rumbling beneath the ordinary nights in New Jersey. History echoes the domestic catastrophes. As Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri put it with dire resignation, “Quasimodo predicted all of this.”

No matter how funny or blatantly cartoonish some of the supporting players are (Steve Van Zandt’s Silvio Dante seems less like a human being than an animated Fellini figure), the mobsters and their families in “The Sopranos” are a recognizable reflection of all of us. The epic is peopled with every variety of twenty-first-century character imaginable: mobsters, yes, but also shadow communities of smug and equally troubled psychiatrists, disillusioned F.B.I. agents and cops, neurotic priests, immigrant “caregivers,” screen-addled teen-agers, earnestly self-indulgent Columbia students. It is an Essex County of Italians, Irish, blacks, and Jews, but also of new immigrants: Koreans, Russians, Ukrainians, and Arabs. Other television series have guests, character types who make a purposeful one-night stand and are then replaced with new types in new situations. In “The Sopranos,” characters arrive and take full human shape; children grow into adults—and sometimes, without explanation, like a Russian mobster fleeing through the snowy woods of the Pine Barrens, they inexplicably disappear and frustrate our TV-shaped need for lessons and resolution. It doesn’t matter that we come to “like” Adriana La Cerva. Chase has no use for our sentiment. He kills it off with a .38.

“The Sopranos,” like its predecessor, Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” is about the ruthlessness of petty lying crooks, but the beat-downs, strangulations, and shootings are the least of the violence. Chase is merciless with his exposure of the ordinary disappointments and tragedies. He has immersed us for years in an examination of addiction, twelve-step recoveries, teen-age depression, modern pharmacology, suicides, sexual indulgence, family betrayals, financial manipulation, accidents, heart attacks, strokes, death and dying––and always, afterward, the inability to summon a language to equal the emotion. “Whaddya gonna do?” is the shrugging motif. A young, healthy thug dies reading a magazine on the toilet. An S.U.V. flips over on a rain-slick road. “Whaddya gonna do?”

Michael Corleone almost convinces us, in his autumnal walk with Kay Adams, that he is the moral superior of a senator. Chase’s vision is darker, and as we descend into the death spiral of the final episodes it only gets worse. Just when we begin to grow too fond of Tony, when we get all gooey about his plight as a misunderstood son and overextended executive and father, Chase has him do something to undercut our sympathy. After his son, A.J., has tried to kill himself by pulling a plastic bag over his head, tying a cinder block to his foot, and jumping into the family’s back-yard swimming pool, Tony explains to Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) that A.J. survived because the rope was too long. Maybe he’s just “an idiot,” he declares offhandedly, his paternal grief mixing with loveless dismissal. “Historically, that’s been the case.” Even Tony’s clear-eyed and maternal wife, Carmela, played by Edie Falco, is willing to set aside her occasional outbursts of umbrage for the price of an Hermès scarf. “They say it’s the best,” Tony informs her, as the marital storm passes.

Everyone in “The Sopranos” has grown older (and we along with them). One after another, the made men and crew members disappear from the stage—an accelerated version of what happens naturally. “Hope comes in many forms,” Dr. Melfi tells Tony in one of their first sessions. “Well, who’s got the time for that?” he replies.

The end is a mystery, but we know one thing: “The Sopranos” defied Aristotelian conventions. It is a comedy that ends with a litany of the dead and missing. Whaddya gonna do?

Thanks to David Remnick

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