How would you grade this episode on a 1-10 scale (10 being the best possible quality)

Total votes: 0

Re: Episode 6.19: The Second Coming - Grades and General Rev

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chaseisgod wrote:After watching this episode 25 times, studying the script, investigating everything from the dusty pile of asbestos (which looked curiously like the load tht Vito Jr. left on the floor of the lockerrroom) to what was playing on the television in the hospital when Carm was talking to AJ (it looked like a girl with pigtails...HEIDI??????), here is what I absolutely no for absolutely certain:

After he saved AJ, Tony walked back into the house and ate that other Lincoln Log sandwich.

Come on, you know he did.
I don't know which point was more brilliant: Comparing Vito, Jr.'s turd to the asbestos pile or knowing that Tony ate the last Lincoln Log Sandwich after saving AJ. Either way, LMFAO! :icon_mrgreen:

Re: Episode 6.19: The Second Coming - Grades and General Rev

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First time posting so just wanted to say hello to everyone....

I gave this episode a 9, awsome the way Tony handeled Coco. Butchie knew Coco was wrong and also knew he can't kill off a family boss. To go back a few episodes,did anybody notice the refrence to the solar system at the roulette table that Tony made when trying to explain the game? Any thoughts on that?
believe that AJ will play a major role in the way things end for Tony...either saving or finishing him off. Also Janice will also come into play somehow...can
just remeber before she got on the bus after killing Ritchie telling Tony she will always remeber his help. Can't wait till the end and then hate to see it end.

Re: Episode 6.19: The Second Coming - Grades and General Rev

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I gave the episode a 7..

I wanted to see some closure with what happened to Chris. But maybe that will come later.

But I was glad that Chase finally showed Tony mafia lifestyle cross over to his family life (with the insult to Meadow). I always thought this would play a major role in how the show would end...Tony's family would be hurt or somehow entangled in a mob beef.

Maybe i was expecting a bit more being that there are only two episodes left. wait and see i guess. Overall I thought it was good but not the best this season.

quick note: I thought it was quite telling that AJ used the pool to commit suicide. Throughout the series its been obviouse that Tony LOVES his pool. That was his sanctuary. Now that sanctuary is poisoned with that memory of AJ trying to kill himself.

Just like the aspestos poisoning the lake

Re: Episode 6.19: The Second Coming - Grades and General Rev

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haironmelfistwat wrote:I said burning, but I meant smoking. It looked like it was a smoldering fire. giving off whiffs of smoke. Also, the camera pulled away to reveal what I think is the NY skyline in the background. Perhaps an omen of what NY is getting ready to do to the Soprano family in NJ...
I don't think it was burning or smoking. Asbestos is easily degenerated into fine particulate matter. I think what we were seeing were clouds of dust. YMMV.

Re: Episode 6.19: The Second Coming - Grades and General Rev

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clementine wrote:Last week he helped his “first” son drown in blood, fittingly, and this week he saved his real son from drowning.
Nice observation, clementine. I'm enjoying all your posts.
FlyOnMelfisWall wrote:... on the whole issue of whether there was guilt or disgust with himself to begin with. There wasn't, IMHO. That's precisely what was hardest to take, and to reconcile, with the character we've come to know.
I agree with others who have said that Tony IS feeling guilt. I see him in deep denial. He may tell Melfi (in his dream) that he feels nothing about killing Chris, but I don't believe it. I see his annoyance with other people's grieving and his talking up the crushed car seat as trying to displace his own guilt, remorse, and grief.

It stands to reason that he is dealing so differently with Chris's death (by his own hand) than he did with the other people he killed. I would say he felt the most deeply about Chris that he can't bring himself to handle what he did. But he WILL have to face it. I'm sure of it. I'll eat my hat if I'm wrong. (I may have to buy a hat.) Ironically, I think if Tony expressed great sorrow or regret over Chris in The Second Coming, then it would have seemed trite and on the same level as all the other killings. But this one was profound, momentous. The aftereffect is building in Tony, and it will out.

That portrait of Chris that the guys put on the wall at the Bing is going to haunt Tony.

Some people have said that this ep showed Tony as doing good things. And Tony says, "I'm a good guy... basically." We know people are not black or white, that shades of grey define us, and I think the show was saying that if we do horrible things, any good things we do do not make us "good guys." I think this ep was challenging us to see that Tony may act like a loving father -- or BE a loving father -- and may be willing to compromise in his work to make nice, but those do not make him a hero. We are the sum of our actions. It cannot be boiled down to an easy "good guy" or "bad guy."

Re: Episode 6.19: The Second Coming - Grades and General Rev

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peeayebee wrote:Nice observation, clementine. I'm enjoying all your posts.


I agree with others who have said that Tony IS feeling guilt. I see him in deep denial. He may tell Melfi (in his dream) that he feels nothing about killing Chris, but I don't believe it. I see his annoyance with other people's grieving and his talking up the crushed car seat as trying to displace his own guilt, remorse, and grief.

It stands to reason that he is dealing so differently with Chris's death (by his own hand) than he did with the other people he killed. I would say he felt the most deeply about Chris that he can't bring himself to handle what he did. But he WILL have to face it. I'm sure of it. I'll eat my hat if I'm wrong. (I may have to buy a hat.) Ironically, I think if Tony expressed great sorrow or regret over Chris in The Second Coming, then it would have seemed trite and on the same level as all the other killings. But this one was profound, momentous. The aftereffect is building in Tony, and it will out.

That portrait of Chris that the guys put on the wall at the Bing is going to haunt Tony.

Some people have said that this ep showed Tony as doing good things. And Tony says, "I'm a good guy... basically." We know people are not black or white, that shades of grey define us, and I think the show was saying that if we do horrible things, any good things we do do not make us "good guys." I think this ep was challenging us to see that Tony may act like a loving father -- or BE a loving father -- and may be willing to compromise in his work to make nice, but those do not make him a hero. We are the sum of our actions. It cannot be boiled down to an easy "good guy" or "bad guy."
Peeayebee, you summed up a lot of my feelings on the last few episodes. Tony himself talked about the "yin and the yang". We try to peg Tony as being completely this or that and have him figured out, and as you can see with the discussion here, that's a frustrating exercise. It might not be the answer we all want, but that seems to be the whole point in the series.

Agree with the take on Tony towards Chris. My take right now is Tony is just emotionally exhausted when it comes to Chris. We've probably see Tony cry and worry over Chris more than any other person in the series, so maybe it got to the point where for his own sanity, he just had to shut down.

Like many of you, I would like to see more closure with his feelings regarding Chris, but I'm getting to the point where I would understand if Tony doesn't address it again.

Re: Episode 6.19: The Second Coming - Grades and General Rev

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You know, Tony was pretty close to Adrianna, too. Not as close as he was to Christopher, of course, but there were moments in which he seemed to genuinely care for her, and not just to get in her pants.

But once he found out she had crossed him by talking to the feds, that went out the window. "She's a c++t," he told Christopher. And he has not thought twice about it. In fact, when Chris showed some remorse, Tony beat the hell out of him.

Maybe it'll be the same way with Chris. Maybe Tony has decided that the recurring relapses (despite Tony's hand in them), the movie, etc., means that Christopher, like Ade, had become too big of a liability and deserved to go. After all, Christopher's drug use nearly got Tony killed in that accident, too.

I don't think this is going to be the case -- I STILL think there will be some sort of emotional price for what Tony did to Chris, and will continue to think this way until they show the credits during the final show, but it wouldn't be entirely out of character for him to move on.

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FlyOnMelfisWall wrote: Now certainly I agree that his sudden desire to take peyote, and with a former goomar of Chris' to boot, suggests that Christopher was a big part of the motivation, maybe all of it. But there is a difference between saying the killing affected him or had some impact on him and saying he experienced any remorse, self hatred, or grief over it. Perhaps he wanted to take peyote precisely to understand why he was so devoid of the emotions that he knew he should be feeling.
OK, I'm not a Freudian, but according to Freud, one way to deal with the loss of a loved one (through death or abandoment) is to incorporate that person into your own psyche, to become them in sense. That way you don't have to deal with the reality of their loss because they're not "really" gone. This form of extreme denial can be seen in Hitchcock's Psycho, for example. (If you've seen it you'll know what I mean.) So in one sense Tony's Vegas trip is like becoming Christopher, and I agree with those who say that Tony's so far in denial that he has yet to confront the loss. But the choice of peyote over heroin or some other more obvious drug does suggest the spiritual nature of the quest.

Back to Freud again, if you'll bear with me. Freud said that the opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. If you break up with someone, for example, or disown your parents, and there are no more emotional entanglements, then you genuinely do not care where they are, what they’re doing, or what they think. They really are nothing to you. Of course, it seldom works out that way. Tony is not indifferent towards Christopher and his death. I think that “Kennedy and Heidi” treated his death in an almost offhand manner, perhaps mirroring the way Tony wanted to treat it. But if he were actually indifferent, he wouldn’t be so irritated by everyone else’s displays of grief or by their unwillingness to see how “deserved” the death was or even share in his relief. And we have yet to see whether the fallout from AJ’s suicide attempt is going to lead Tony to any further reflection on his feelings toward Christopher.

And let me interject here, since the question was raised, that my personal feelings on this are in no way influenced by how Chris' death was handled in the larger sense. I essentially never liked Chris and, in fact, had grown to hate him. I was actually happy that he was gone with several episodes left so that he wouldn't usurp time from the resolution of Tony's character and personal family issues. So my criticisms of the portrayal of Tony post-murder have nothing to do with my feelings about Chris and everything to do with Tony's supposed feelings about Chris . . . and my feelings about Tony.
I'm not sure this in response to something I said, but it's interesting you feel this way. I loved Christopher as a character, and, as I said before, when he died I felt cheated that we'd never see him confront his own disloyalty to Tony (and that I wouldn't get to watch Michael Imperioli act in the last episodes, unless he comes back in a dream or something). But I agree that if we do get to the end of the series and we get nothing more out of Tony on this, I'm going to feel cheated, too. I just think it's premature to think this isn't going to come back. All in all, though, I'm far more morally outraged by Tony’s lack of concern over the asbestos dumping than his lack of remorse over getting rid of Chrissy. :icon_wink:

As far as the relief Tony feels at having Christopher out of the picture, let me share in incident. The very morning of the Sunday that “Kennedy & Hiedi” aired, I let the dogs out the back door, then toddled to the front door, a la Tony, to get the paper. I arrived just in time to see my dog get run over by a car. The paper carrier had left the front gate open somehow. As I stood on the porch screaming her name over and over again in horror and watching her be dragged and tumbled down the street by the jerk-offs, who kept going, I had a sudden flash of relief—“Well, at least now I don’t have to worry about her any more.” I love this dog, but I made the mistake of getting a second dog, and together they are holy terrors and have caused no end of expense, grief, stress, failed attempts at training, terrifying visitors, etc. So, even though I love her so much, my life would be much less nerve-wracking without her. When she leapt up and ran back to me, covered in road rash and hot motor oil and burns, I was stunned and almost disappointed somehow. How could anyone survive what I had just seen? So, I wasn’t off the hook and down to one dog after all. (After a trip to the emergency vet the dog is totally fine, now BTW.)

All these thoughts and feelings happened in the space of a few seconds, followed by horror that I could even think anything so appalling. Watching Tony’s reactions that night only made me feel worse—I’m just like Tony Soprano, wishing I could get rid of this albatross around my neck, no matter how beloved. But isn’t that often the difference between Tony and a “normal” person—we might all feel like we’d like to break Coco’s jaw or bash Ralphie’s head in, but Tony actually does it.

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