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

Total votes: 0

Re: Episode 6.18: Kennedy and Heidi - Grades and General Rev

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Hey folks: I know the movement of posts around here has been confusing . . . but so is the show! I blame the show! "Everything is connected.":icon_wink:

Anyway, we are trying to focus the discussion about Tony's motives and reactions to the Chris murder in the stand alone thread, and, for now, that includes tangents that discuss the meaning of the title of the episode. I may very well start a new thread just on the analysis of the title and move the appropriate posts to it. But lets not fragment the conversation into the general thread and the other.

Thanks!
Tony, his spirits crushed after b-lining to the fridge first thing in the morning: "Who ate the last piece of cake?"

Re: Episode 6.18: Kennedy and Heidi - Grades and General Rev

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somebody mentioned about Chris wearing a baseball hat from Cleaver. The only other time I remember Chrissy wearing a hat like that was in the episode where they briefly went back in time at Christmas when Tony was remembering Pussy wearing the Santa outfit and how he though Puss was wearing a wire underneath. I think in that scene they put a hat on him to make him look younger, like a kid that just would get Pussy an ashtray for his cigar. I think DC was also in the death scene of Chris make him look like a kid ...."the child is gone. the dream is lost." or whatever....

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I caught the tailend of a convo in this thread about Chris being, or not being, the 2nd most significant character on the show.

I think this question depends heavily on whether or not people view this as a mob show. If one believes the the "real" purpose of the show is to delve into the mind of a sociopath and his inner conflicts then Melfi would obviously play a tremendous role.

If one views the show more as the everyday life of a "fat f'n crook from New Jersey" then his no. 2 guy, nephew-cousin, and good friend Christopher would fill that 2nd role.

Carmella obviously has to be considered as Falco is a tremendous actress and she plays the main character's wife as well as being involved in many of the non-mob scenes.

IMO i've kind of always viewed Michael Imperioli/Christopher as the no. 2 actor/character on this show. As someone mentioned i believe, he's one of the few characters besides Tony where you really get a sense of what's going on in his head (mostly via talking with Adrianna). Over the years he's had a lot of screen time and separate story lines devoted to his character (moreso IMO than Carmella who plays more of a complimentary role to Tony in the homelife scenes).

He certainly had more screen time than Melfi and while i find the therapy sessions fascinating, I think the show lives and dies with character development. The therapy sessions, rather than being the backbone of the show IMO, are merely a great way to develop Tony's character i.e. Chris's convos with Adrianna.

I'm sure if you went back and analyzed certain episodes you could make a case for Carmella or Melfi as well, but Chris is the no.2 guy IMO. That is part of the reason that I'm surprised he went with 3 episodes left. It really gives one a sense that it's the end. Congrats to Michael Imperioli on 6 seasons of stellar acting.

Re: Episode 6.18: Kennedy and Heidi - Grades and General Rev

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They just said that the paramedics had called it in from the ambulance...not that he had died in the ambulance.

I just finished rewatching it again and saw what another poster (sorry, I can't recall the name) said his girlfriend pointed out to him. The bruises on Christopher's nose.

Injuries that happen after death do not bruise. Only injuries that occur before death leave bruises. As with so many other details in this series, we have to wonder if there will be any follow up.

Unless Tony broke Christopher's nose, it would be hard to explain how those came about as the result of the accident. One could imagine a broken nose as a result of the impact, but to leave those bruises, it would have to be broken, as opposed to being forcibly squeezed shut.

Carmela did seem to take note of the bruises when she went up to the casket to pray.

If this were a real crime scene analysis, it would also be noted that the blood Tony removed from his hand to Christopher's jacket, was a wiped pattern as opposed to blood spatter or drips. Tony could explain that he was looking for signs of Chrissy's breathing by placing his hand below the nostrils, blood came out, and he wiped the blood from his hand on the jacket.

I am always amazed by the attention to details.

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This season's episodes, imo, surpass everything there is or was in tv entertainment - including all previous Sopranos seasons. The stories now zero in on the series' ultimate intention, and they do so with the pure beauty of uncompromising clarity and decidedness.

Wow.

:-)

There are two aspects about the Sopranos that - imo - always seemed to be of central importance.

One is: the series transcends the genre in that it really is a story about modern life in the Western world, the world of late capitalism.

The Sopranos people really are like everybody else; they have the same aspirations, dreams, needs, or rather greeds, as (I would guess) average western consumers have: cars, money, fancy homes, loving wifes, providing husbands, worthy children, whatever. The Soprano universe is populated just like our own: there are bullies, dreamers, alphas and others, shrewd ones and dumb ones, rich and poor, everyone struggling along as best they can.

Only the means they use are outside the consensus of "law and order".

For years and years, we could always sympathise with this or that reaction, utterance, emotion: didn't these people feel and think understandably? Wasn't it easy to identify? And then there would always be that chilly shudder when we were thrown out of the identification by some atrocious act or other. A shudder both pleasant and repugnant, just like what AJ must have felt when watching his buddies torturing the other guy or beating up the African.

The point is, the Mafia world, complete with bigotry and deception, is just a finely crafted mirror of our own. And it is not even that distorting.

Another aspect of the series that has always seemed crucial to me is how people perceive the world they live in. They mostly don't, really. Instead they form their own concepts of what there is, how it should be, how they want it to be. They mostly live in their own worlds, haunted by their minds' demons, driven by their fears. A flock of ducks is not a flock of ducks, but turns into a whole world of psychological projection. The test dream, Corrado's mindset, now becoming its own caricature, Janice's or Carmela's self-deception, to name just a very few - all examples of people being completely and quite willingly locked up in their own psyche. Again, this is very close to reality, as far as I can see.
wgaryw wrote: . . . but I gotta say, it's a hell of a stretch to reconcile the guy we met in the first season with the one in the desert on a drug-induced vision quest.
I beg to differ. We've been watching a contemporaneous Mafia show all along - a show about people who make a grand living out of violence, bribery, extortion, killings, etc. The series made no misleading pretenses at all about the nature of its story and protagonists - if in doubt go rewatch ep 1. I think it was very true to its subject from start to (almost) end.

I presume your disappointment might be caused by the series not adhering to common film & tv stereotypes, the normally inevitable catharsis of the hero being one of them, especially in American tv and cinema.

The closer we get to the end, the clearer it becomes that Chase et al. do not intend - and never did - to serve the myth of redemption. The Sopranos is no Fairy Tale. It is about the Real World, and most grimly so.

Re: Episode 6.18: Kennedy and Heidi - Grades and General Rev

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FlyOnMelfisWall wrote:I also must be the only person on earth who had no problem with the murder of a beloved horse providing motivation for the retaliatory murder of a human scumbag, especially as it happened in the heat of passion. It was a living creature that Tony genuinely loved more than he loves most people, probably because he has sublimated the love he has denied and been denied to and by people into the love for what he deems truly "innocent" creatures. [..] So, to me, Ralph was by far Tony's least morally offensive homicide, the one taken strictly for reasons of passion and compassion[..].
Isn't his "love" for "innocent" creatures the prime sign of his borderline character? Just like Livia whined about babies being thrown out of windows, at the same time plotting her son's death?

I see a direct line connecting every murder Tony commited with his own hands. Suffocating Chris was also partly influenced of Tony's sight of the destroyed baby seat - another "innocent" creature, this time only virtually (potentially) killed, that triggered a typically-Tony emotional response. He, Tony, can do this in the heat of passion as with Ralph, or cold-blooded as in Chris' case. I don't see a real difference there.

Neither do I get the idea of Ralph's murder being "less morally offensive". You mean it's acceptable to chop up & dump the guy because he was a miserable pervert himself?

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Montefalco wrote:The closer we get to the end, the clearer it becomes that Chase et al. do not intend - and never did - to serve the myth of redemption. The Sopranos is no Fairy Tale. It is about the Real World, and most grimly so.
I wonder if you are correct. I had hoped to see Tony redeemed. I don't think it will happen in the traditional sense meaning that Tony abandons the mob and become a devoted husband and father.

I do think that there is hope yet for Tony to find inner peace, meaning he will be free of the conditions that led him to seek therapy. He can still come to terms with his bad upbringing. This may make him a more effective mob boss, but perhaps a happier one.

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