2008 Woodie Awards
Weekly column: 'The Sopranos'
Dilan Brown
Issue date: 4/5/06 Section: Life
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Captain Vito, getting unexpected mucho face-time this season, is now slithering around filling others' heads like a conspirator on Survivor. He's grumbling about kicking up to near-widow Carmella, he's all in a hissy about rulings handed down by acting boss Silvio, and is now clacking horns over percentages with Paulie from a million-plus score in the episode-three opening plunder of a Columbian hideout.
Meanwhile there are other unsettling stirrings. Bobby, now with considerable standing upon the family rungs, is the other hefty-half with Vito in the said rulings of Silvio. Having come for answers, he's turned away one night when Silvio tells him: "mornings are better." Bobby says: "I'm liable to do something drastic." Let us all say together: "foreshadowing".
But that's not to say I'm expecting Bobby to go postal in episode four, or in the entire season for that matter. The clever creators have always enjoyed a little flexibility of possibility, and make no qualms about blazing deceptive trails, and besides, there are too many characters right now with just beefs to have an OK corral type fiasco.
One slow-building whirlpool I suggest we all keep neighborhood-watchful eye on is Chris's. The last time we heard from him in season five was when he made the nauseating but very loyal decision to tell Tony that fiancee Adriana was an informant to the Feds, the result of which was Adriana's disposal via Sil's gat in the woods. And though within the mafia realm it was a very necessary call, the man must be tormented by it. In episode three we first see his scorched innards exposed in the car-scene with his old rehab chum. And the framework in which this unveiling takes place may be the largest cause for worry in itself.
Chris again has the Coppola itch and calls on his writer rehab partner to assist him and others in the production of his golden egg: a slasher flick Chris describes as Saw meets The Godfather. In his furiously sputtering sell to rehab chum, who of course owes Chris a favor, his inner-tumult is blatant when he comes to the part in the film when the screwed-over wise-guy protagonist wields revenge on his cheating fiancee. In the expletive dense explanation the curtains are momentarily pulled back on future troubles-to-be. In this instance, I do expect for something major to happen, the good folks at Sopranos, now in its final lap, have let build the Adriana problem for too long to let it simply end with her physical life. And Chris is too large and important a character to let him go silently into the night, it be on!