Re: Melfi's session with Carmela

12
DarngoodCoffee, darngood post.:-) And, if I may say, you sound like a mighty wise 24 year-old.

I was very intent as well on the aspects of Carm's quandry that concerned her children. It was with respect to that quandry that she remained almost completely honest throughout.

But the more fascinating part of the session for me was how Melfi repeatedly saw the unintentional but fairly transparent admissions of Carmela's OWN quandry through what she said about her kids. The thing about "having to face all these years of facading" Melfi turned around on her lickity split. AJ is 20, Meadow about 23. They haven't had "all these years" to face. Only Carmela has.

And every single time Melfi confronted her, Carm admitted, either by copious tears or stunned silence, the correctness of Melfi's assertions. I think Carm's few defenses ("it was all bullshit") were her way of saying, "look, I've come to terms with my guilt and my choices, I just can't live with what this means for my kids." Well, in fact, it appears she HASN'T come to terms with her choices, partly because of what those choices did to her children. You can't really separate the two.


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Re: Melfi's session with Carmela

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FOWM, Darngood, OE, all....

Love this thread...

As a previous poster wrote on this thread or another, the same characteristics that attracted Carmela to Tony attract Melfi to Tony--the power (physical, social)--Henry Kissinger wasn't just whistlin' Dixie when he said that Power was the ultimate aphrodisiac.

I'd be interested to see more of the Carm-Melfi interaction. I'd also like to see what Melfi has to say to Eliot about that, and--though I doubt we'll see it--a flashback to Carmela's mother's early reactions to Tony when they were courting (ala Tony's recollections of his youth). I can't imagine she'd have anything nice to say!

Off topic---it's interesting to note that Meadow chose a rather feminine man as a fiance...the polar opposite of Tony in every way.

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Re: Melfi's session with Carmela

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Sofia:

Great thoughts, and I don't think you are as off-topic as you seem to think you are with the Meadow and Finn observation. It is said that women are attracted to men who remind them of their fathers, and while I can't offer any insight on that personally, I do note that Carmela, much like Meadow, chose someone very different from her own father.

Carm's father, while occasionally gruff in an old-fart kind of way, is not a particular strong or dominant man. I always get the impression that Carm's mother runs the show in that household.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, I thing more informed minds like OE and FOMW might have some thoughts, but your post definitely started me thinking a little. I'll have to mull that one over a little.

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Re: Melfi's session with Carmela

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SofiaG, I see Finn as a "compromise" mate, if you will, one that represents her own compromise in loving Tony yet rejecting (or wanting to reject) his way of life.

Her first significant boyfriend was what I would consider Tony's polar opposite. Black/Jewish mixed race, very small in stature and physique, entirely cerebral, very wealthy background. He looked like the kind of guy that's never been under the hood of a car, never mowed a lawn, never done "guy" things. And we all know there was a certain amount of "take that!" directed to her father in dating him in the first place. In the end, however, even if Noah hadn't dumped her, I don't think she would have been able to withstand the rejection of her choice that she felt from BOTH Tony and Carm.

Her next boyfried essentially WAS her father. Italian, a decent build (rather like teen Tony in the flashbacks), high school football standout, disinterested in/poor at academics, college flunkout, mob ambitions, mob pedigree. Yet Tony and Carm were both less than thrilled with this choice, too, although not advertising the fact too much in front of Meadow.

Finn I see as a happy compromise between these extremes. He's Italian, lanky but not the diminutive guy that Noah was. He's smart and a scholastic success but relates to her family without the intellectual pretense that Noah displayed in his first few minutes around Tony. He's definitely headed on a much different life path than Tony yet is still "man" enough to work a construction job. His background seems very middle class, so there's no elitism there like with Noah. Not surprisingly, both Tony and Carm seem very pleased with Finn as a prospective son in law.

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Re: Melfi's session with Carmela

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<blockquote>Quote:<hr>It is said that women are attracted to men who remind them of their fathers, and while I can't offer any insight on that personally, I do note that Carmela, much like Meadow, chose someone very different from her own father.

Carm's father, while occasionally gruff in an old-fart kind of way, is not a particular strong or dominant man. I always get the impression that Carm's mother runs the show in that household.<hr></blockquote>

Excellent observations. I always noted the dichotomy between Carm's dad and Tony. Very, very different men physically (and in terms of general command). I concur about the power distribution in the household of Carm's parents.

Melfi told Tony in season 4 that he is "the father, the template for all future lovers" for Meadow. Perhaps that would have made more sense if she'd amplified it, but it flies in the face of so many real life examples I can think of that it scarcely seems appropriate to even call it a "general" rule.

I concur about Melfi having a visceral attraction to Tony for the same reason that Carm does -- his imposing masculine power. But I think -- and maybe I'm just totally projecting my own attraction to the character here -- it's the contradictions of power and vulnerability, of brutality yet sentimentality in him.

He beats the crap out of a guy that owes him money and doesn't bat an eyelash. Yet he talks to ducks in his pool and tells him he'll build them another ramp if they don't like the first one he provided. He is entirely dispassionate about dispensing his guys to commit all manner of "mayham", yet cries uncontrollably at the thoughts of the ducks flying out of his pool. He is a man among men, a man whose alpha status is so obvious that even the testosterone drenched men of the mob (usually) willingly follow. Yet women have a power and control of him (his mother, Carm, Meadow, and even Melfi) that his male cronies will never, ever have. He seems completely formed and jaded yet at the same time there's still a "little boy" quality in him that cries out to, dare I say it, be "mothered". I certainly think that there's always been a maternal, nurturing quality to Carm's love for Tony. And I think Melfi feels that too (even once commenting along those lines to Elliot).

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Re: Melfi's session with Carmela

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<blockquote>Quote:<hr>He seems completely formed and jaded yet at the same time there's still a "little boy" quality in him that cries out to, dare I say it, be "mothered". I certainly think that there's always been a maternal, nurturing quality to Carm's love for Tony. And I think Melfi feels that too (even once commenting along those lines to Elliot).<hr></blockquote>

I think this is more of Tonys doing then Carms and Melfi's.
As we have learned from Tonys sessions with Melfi, he did not have a loving mother as a child and it caused him to become attracted to women who could provide him the love and mothering that he never got from Livia. He is drawn to these types of women, and the one relationship he had with a woman who did treat him like his mother(Gloria) did not end well.
Tony needs this type of figure in his life or else he cant not survive. Melfi Told Tony that Carm is the best choice he has ever made when it comes to women, and she was exactly right.

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Re: Melfi's session with Carmela

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Clarance I agree completely. I was only viewing it from the reverse perspective, since there has to be something about Tony that attracts these women as well. And I feel that it's not just the supreme masculine power he projects but the little boy vulnerability that is juxtaposed to it. There is something in these women that wants to mother him as much as there is a desire in Tony to be mothered.

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