Confusions of an Unmarried Couple

Confusions of an Unmarried Couple is a snappy indie film made by the Butler brothers, who split writing, directing, editing, cinematographing and starring duties between them. The film is structured around a lengthy conversation between Dan and Lisa, a couple that were engaged until he walked in on her with another woman. It’s full of crackling, funny dialogue and fairly insightful observations about people and relationships.

I’m sure the filmmakers have heard this from countless viewers, but the film fits in the same stylistic and thematic universe as early 90s indies like Richard Linklater’s work and, in particular, Kevin Smith. From Linklater we’ve got the dialogue based film, echoing something like Before Sunset. The Butlers clearly love the way people talk and take great pleasure in crafting literate, but profane banter for the two lead characters. In that respect, there’s a lot of Kevin Smith in here. He’s become the target of a lot of haters, and certainly his recent films have their flaws, but I still really like Clerks and love Chasing Amy. Confusions exists in the same universe as these films, and is perhaps even more professional looking and certainly better acted than Clerks.

The film centers almost exclusively on a real time conversation between Dan and Lisa, which is occasionally interrupted by talking head video of Dan and Lisa reflecting on the relationship. The talking head segments keep things from getting tedious, it’s not easy to keep an audience interested when your film has only one setting and two characters, but the fairly consistent hit ratio on jokes made it work. The film uses slightly stylized dialogue, the characters speaking the way we’d all want to speak, in witty, literate sentences, rather than the halting, um interrupted way that most of us actually speak. I like this kind of dialogue, it helps to keep things a bit lighter.

The film works best when it remains in an emotionally real universe, and allows the characters to go to a darker place. Dan vacillates between likeability and douchebaggery in a way that makes us understand why she could like him, but also sympathize when she rejects him. In the way that a lot of male filmmakers do, our point of view character is the male, we understand what he’s doing, but Lisa remains more enigmatic. She seems like an artsy person with larger concerns, why was she attracted to Dan in the first place? The film does a good job of showing how he can be charming at moments, and that the two of them can work well together. Because we’re coming in after the relationship is over, the two of them focus on the bad times, but there’s still that rapport and connection that draws them together.

Not to dwell on Smith, but the emotional arc of their relationship is reminiscent of Chasing Amy, with a less experienced male letting his insecurity destroy the relationship. It’s a relatable arc, and I think it works here by giving Dan a motivation for some of his hurtful moments. Not that Lisa is devoid of negative characteristics, there’s a balance in the relationship, but I feel like we’re given less access to her internal motivations, or perhaps they’re just less relatable to me. Either way, the characters work fairly well.

While I liked the dialogue, I had an issue with the way it was filmed. A lot of the scenes were shot in lengthy singles, with the camera panning from character to character as they spoke. The problem is, the characters would always pause as the camera panned, then start when it was on them. This made things feel a bit unnatural. It would have been better to keep the conversation flowing naturally and just catch up as they panned. There’s not that much to do with this film visually, but there are some interesting shots, the final scene is really well staged, definitely the visual highlight of the film.

In terms of acting, the film’s got its on and off moments. Naomi Johnson, who plays Lisa, is great in the talking head scenes, but not as believable in the real world scenes. Brett Butler as Dan is really funny, but not always believable on an emotional level.

But, ultimately, the film has enough to entertain. I love snappy banter, and this film provides that in spades. There’s a lot of really funny stuff here, and also a believable emotional story. That’s more than you’ll get out of virtually all Hollywood comedies. It’s a bit reductive to say, if you enjoy Kevin Smith movies, you’ll enjoy this, but really, that’s the best thing I can say. It’s that same style and the same satisfaction.

IMDB
Substance Productions

John From Cincinnati: 'His Visit: Day One' (1x01)

After coming home from college, I subscribed to HBO. The primary reason for this was the need to see the last episode of The Sopranos as it aired, in a controlled environment. But, the channel has consistently produced the most challenging, exciting shows on TV, so I’m keeping the subscription even after the departure of its signature show, and that means I get the chance to check out their new shows, the most prominent of which is John From Cincinnati, a drama about three generations in a family of surfers and a mysterious visitor who intervenes in their lives.

Most reviews have focused on the show’s impenetrability, presenting it as a baffling, enigmatic narrative that’s hard to latch on to. Certainly there are odd pieces, but I think there’s a fairly standard hook for viewers. Like a lot of HBO shows, this is a family drama with a twist. The twist is a bit less obvious than a family that’s in the mob of a family that runs a funeral home, but it’s the same basic structure. The Yosts are a bit more abrasive than the Fishers, but we’ve got that same basic structure of a family divided that has to learn to live together.

But, the twist is unclear. John is a mysterious character, but I’ve got no problem with not understanding who or what he is just yet. There’s nothing wrong with mystery and I don’t think we need to find out soon. He is the catalyst that sets the series into motion and I’m sure his true nature will become apparent in time. For now, he provides a mix of humor and prophecy, implying that the show is part of some larger cosmic narrative. The supernatural events, Mitch’s levitation, the resurrected bird all portend something spiritual and important down the line.

In its odd events and supernatural periphery, the show resembles Carnivale, and I fear this show will follow that show’s journey to an early cancellation. I think people like supernatural stuff, but aren’t comfortable with real ambiguity. Look at the way people view Lost, constantly wanting answers, ignoring the fact that it’s the mystery that is most intriguing, the unknown, not any answers. Part of the reason for this is that any answer is arbitrary, the creation of writers who may or may not have even intended anything concrete at the beginning. David Milch might have just thought it was cool to have a guy levitating, so he threw it in there. As writers, the story tells itself, and in the best shows, the characters take on a life of their own and guide the narrative. Trying to artificially impose answers on mysteries can destroy what makes a show special.

But, the supernatural elements aren’t the core of this show. I like the way they’re placed into an otherwise very real environment. The show is primarily about the family’s struggle to reunite. I like Mitch and Bill, but many of the characters aren’t quite fully realized yet. It’s obviously early, but I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to feel for these characters in the way I do for the people on Buffy and Six Feet Under. Those characters were flawed, but they felt a bit more open than these do. It’s a very abrasive bunch, a colder attitude that on those shows.

But, it’ll take another episode to see how everything fits together. What does the hotel have to do with the Yosts? Is there some kind of larger supernatural plan, or is the show more just a series of personal issues? I really enjoyed the pilot, and I’ll definitely be back for a second episode. I think the show has just enough weird to make it more than a typical family drama, without going into overly quirkly territory. There’s a lot of potential here, but I really have no idea what the show will be like on a weekly basis. One thing I’m pretty sure of is that the show isn’t likely to be embraced by a wide audience. But, we shall see.

The Sopranos: 'Made in America' (6x21)

“Made in America” wasn’t exactly an epic conclusion, but, like a lot of series finales, it’s a perfect summation of the series’ message, and as such, we shouldn’t have expected anything else. It’s at times frustrating, but in the end, I was satisfied by the episode, particularly the haunting mix of safety and menace in the final moments. It wasn’t the best episode of the season, in fact, it was one of the weaker ones, but the series ended in a good place and I don’t feel like I need any more.

The central conceit of the series was the idea that Tony is just like you, a family man with a wife and kids living in suburbia, only he’s also in the mafia. An ordinary person plus something special is usually the best way to make a TV show work. You need that other element as a hook, to lend some life and death stakes to the drama, but at the same time, drifting too far into a different world strips the show of relatability. I find this show more true to my life than any other in TV history, it perfectly captures the world of suburban New York in the early twenty-first century, the rhythms of everyday life.

So, in this episode, we retreat from the epic sweep of the recent run of episodes back to a more subdued status quo that’s actually pretty nice for Tony. Looking at the series in light of this episode, it’s clear that the operatic violence of “The Blue Comet” was an anomaly, this kind of war isn’t standard for the mob today. Phil was one of the last remnants of a dying age, something he made explicit in his speech last episode. He is the one who instigates this war by refusing to compromise on the asbestos dumping, and he’s the one who instigates violence by attacking Tony’s crew.

Thematically, it makes sense for him to die because his worldview just isn’t viable anymore. Even his own crew recognizes that what they’re doing doesn’t make business sense, Tony was right in “Kaisha” when he tried to smooth things over with Phil. They have lost all the higher principles of “this thing of ours,” and are left with just another business. Phil endangers the lifestyles they’ve all created, turning them back into soldiers, but even then, Tony leaves the safehouse to check in on his family. Carmela wants to return to their house, not ready to live the fugitive lifestyle. It’s just a matter of removing the threat and getting back to normal.

I think one of the most important scenes of the series was Little Carmine’s speech in “Stage 5,” in which he talked about how he backed off being boss when his wife told him she didn’t want to be the richest widow in Jersey. With so many characters dying over something as trivial as an asbestos dumping, the absurd incongruity of what they’re doing falls into place. The organization has no meaning beyond money, so they’re not really dying for anything. Phil is so frustrated at his prison stay because he gave us twenty years of his life for something he believed in and when he got out, he found out that no one believed in it anymore. What they’re doing is just like any job, would you put your life at risk for a promotion? Here, Carmine seems eager to stay out of the fray, he knows that one wrong word could lead to his death, so he just stays in the back and hopes that things will work themselves out. He has more important things that this war.

Tracking back a little, the episode opens with a lot of foreboding, heavy music on the soundtrack, snow swirling around and Paulie and Tony drive out to meet with Agent Harris. Most people talk about Melfi as the viewers’ stand in, but over the course of the series, and in this episode in particular, Agent Harris serves the same role, infatuated with Tony and secretly helping despite knowing that he’s a bad man. I read one review of the finale that said Harris was in a relationship with a Brooklyn cop, and that brought a lot of things together. The whole arc makes a lot more sense if that woman is the one Phil set up to be beaten and raped, and Harris is now using Tony to get revenge for his girlfriend. I’m not sure where in the series we saw she was a Brooklyn cop, but it works for me, and is a nice counterpoint to Melfi’s rape storyline. There, we saw her refuse to go outside the law to get what was quite justifiable justice. However, the actual law officers feel free to use the mob when it’s to their advantage.

Even without that connection, the arc works. Harris gets vicarious thrills from being in Tony’s world, and after spending so much time observing him, he pays Tony back for the intelligence about the Arabs. On a thematic level, the arc is indicative of the declining power of the mafia. They aren’t a real threat to national security, they’ve been replaced by something much larger. So, the government doesn’t have a big problem working with Tony to help stop the chaos.

From the time the series began, the world has gone through a lot of changes. 9/11 caused a seismic shift in the country’s political landscape, and few shows have engaged with post 9/11 life in the way that this season did. The mob isn’t as much of a threat anymore, and, as a quintessentially American entity, they’ve gained the tacit acceptance of the government. Last episode, Harris told Tony how the mob protected the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II. Now, Tony is serving the same role, they’re a part of the defense strategy, and are tolerated for that reason.

I would argue that the episode’s central theme is engagement with the American dream, and this is contained most notably in the resolution of AJ’s arc. At Bobby’s funeral, AJ talks about the fact that people still come to America with hope, in search of a better life, but, according to him, you can’t find it here anymore. Disillusioned by his experience with how the other half lives, he has stopped believing in the myth of America and is obsessed with the hypocrisies of the war in Iraq and the way that the American people just go about like sheep when so much is wrong with the world. He says it’s ridiculous to talk about the Oscars when people are dying in Iraq, ignoring the fact that you need some lies to live with the world. Part of coping with problems is just accepting that there’s going to be some bad stuff in the world we can’t deal with, and just letting it go.

AJ felt an inability to change anything in the world, and that’s what drove him to his suicide attempt. However, his growing relationship with Rhiannon, who he would love to love, helps set him on the right path. The car explosion helps jar him out of his funk and make him realize that he does want to live. Ultimately, what happens to him is that he learns to accept the lie again. He seeks to enlist in the army as a way to make a difference in the world, if he did that, then he could feel good about his place in the world. However, soon enough, he doesn’t even need that, moving away from his moment of pain, he buys back fully into the lie. AJ gets a BMW, that has good gas mileage, and takes an entry level job with Carmine because he doesn’t need to change the world anymore, just helping himself is enough.

I think it’s notable that AJ takes over for Christopher as Carmine’s partner. Tony has replaced one surrogate son with the other, ironically the thing he viewed as a distraction for Christopher becomes a salvation for AJ. Christopher does linger in the episode, with the cat, who incarnates all the people they’ve killed over the years. They’re still there, and even after Paulie drowns the cat, he returns. The conscience doesn’t clean that easy. But, it’s possible to live with the guilt, it’s there, but not actively bothering the characters.

I know people are going to talk about all the loose ends left open by the episode, but I think everything was resolved to a satisfactory level, as much as is possible without being contrived. Very few lives reach a real end point, things just go on, you could do a Six Feet Under style hop through time, but other than that, there’s really no ending you can give a TV show other than we’ve reached a momentary stasis point and things will go in the future. In that respect, this reminds me of the end of Buffy, some characters die, others go on to do new stuff, it’s not an ending so much as a stopping point.

To that end, almost all the long running characters get a nice farewell. We see Janice becoming her mother, something that’s made literal in the great scene where Junior calls Janice Livia and her daughter, Janice. Janice already resents Bobby’s children and will likely be so overprotective of her own daughter that Nica will rebel in the same way that Janice did as a child.

Junior is left in a haze, remembering only vaguely the days when he and Johnny Boy were part of “this thing of ours.” The final scene with Tony is the closest you’ll get to a glimpse of Tony’s future, he could one day end up a prisoner of the federal government, out of his mind, staring at some birds on a windowsill. It’s tough to see a character we’ve known for so long, who was once so fierce and lively turned into a vegetable, but that’s what the passage of time does.

The reason TV is such a powerful storytelling medium is that we have watched these people get older in a natural way. Movies usually feel constructed, a story designed to make a specific point, whereas great TV shows are more like just dropping into a world and checking in with the characters every year to see what they’re up to. While the delays between seasons were frustrating, they allowed the cast to age and grow in unexpected ways. If the show had ended in 2005, there’s no way we would have gotten the great stuff with AJ that we did this year. This show is a testament to what TV can do, and while it’s not my favorite show of all time, I think it is the best made.

Paulie ends pretty much where he began, sitting outside Satriale’s, looking back on some old times and getting ready to move to the future. The final scene with him and Tony is great, they’re the last two members of the old guard, the only ones with memories of Sil and Ralphie and Pussy. Tony’s generation is dying off, replaced by the Jasons and the random members of the crew. The faces change, but things are still basically the same.

Meadow, like her brother, buys into the lies necessary to believe in their family’s version of the American dream. One of the notable things about both kids is the way that they’ve each just accepted what their father does without any questioning or real moral trouble. AJ couldn’t stand the violence in Iraq, but never questioned the fact that everything he has comes from violence. Breaking down that lie would destroy his entire world and that’s why both he and Meadow ultimately choose to embrace their existence rather than run from it. While Tony succeeded in keeping them both out of the “Family” proper, they’re both involved in peripheral ways. AJ is working with Carmine, and if he was to have a club, he would certainly be involved with some of the criminal element.

Meadow’s arc is somewhat implicit. Over the course of the show we see her interrogate her father about his work, in the legendary “College,” move away from the family while dating Noah, then move back towards them when she was with Jackie Jr. At the end of season three, she has an outburst and disrupts the family order, and over the next couple of seasons, moves gradually away from her family. However, starting with last season, she and Finn become divided over her family’s criminal involvement, and ultimately she sides with her family rather than Finn. She could have stayed in California, but instead she moves back to Jersey.

Now, Meadow is a smart girl, she went to Columbia, she knows what her father does, but still, she expresses outrage at the way her father is treated by the government. She has bought into the myth, that they’re being persecuted because they’re Italian Americans, not because they’re criminals. This is absurd, but when you listen to her at the sushi restaurant, she fully believes it, and when Patrick is talking about his case, he says he’s defending a judge involved in some kind of corruption scandal, which Tony seems to be a part of.

By the time we reach the end of the episode, all the chaos of the past few episodes has essentially resolved itself and we’re back to as close to normal as we can get. I think one of the key things to understanding Chase’s work in the later seasons of the series, 6A in particular, is that he works based on the rules of real life, not of TV. So, exciting stuff isn’t always going to be happening to the characters, he’s not going to invent a lot of artificial drama that can resolve itself in a single hour, or give characters simple, easy to resolve arcs. Instead, in the style of real life, people will slip into patterns of trouble that repeat, most notably AJ and Christopher across the course of this two part season.

Christopher’s constant relapses and recoveries from addiction make no sense from a dramatic point of view, shouldn’t his arc lead him somewhere? It does, but in a less obvious way. All that slipping and reversals are critical to bringing him to the place he is in “Walk Like a Man,” where he nearly turns on Tony and the crew. Similarly, AJ’s depression works so well because we saw the seeds of it in 6A then it got fully paid off in 6B. Most TV characters don’t really grow, but face a constantly rotating set of problems. The characters on The Sopranos change, but always have the same core issues, and I think that’s true of real people. I can’t relate to constantly being caught up in love triangles, but I can relate to AJ’s issues with the world or Christopher’s troubles with Tony. The beauty of the show is that the characters aren’t likable in traditional ways, but are always completely relatable.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that the last few episodes were something of an anomaly. Everybody’s life got thrown into chaos, as it appropriate at the climax of the story, but Chase chose to include this episode to show that this isn’t the status quo. Our lives don’t build to a big ending then stop, big stuff happens and people go on. Bobby dies, Janice moves on. The events echo, but they will gradually fade, and by the end of the episode, everything seems to be back to normal.

This brings us to the simultaneously brilliant and frustrating final scene. When the episode stopped, I, like many viewers, thought the cable had gone out and was incredibly frustrated. But, I realized it was past 10, so we had probably reached the end of things. It was tough to take in that moment, but I think the jarring nature of the cut out was a great choice, and a really bold one.

The scene directly follows Tony leaving Satriale’s, where he always gathered with the mob family. It used to be a bustling place, now it’s just Paulie left. Tony has lost a lot of friends, but ultimately, he never cared about the mob family as much as he did about his real family. He always claimed that everything he did, he did for them, and sitting there at the table, everything seems to have worked out pretty well for him.

There’s a number of critical things to look at in this scene. Let me start with the setting. This is a restaurant that’s not the cutting edge, sleek place where Tony and Meadow ate sushi, it’s an old style, classic family restaurant. Looking around him, we see a boy scout troop, a couple of teenagers and a guy with a USA hat on. These are ordinary people who seem more Midwest than Jersey, all American people, out enjoying a meal with their families. Putting the Sopranos in this setting reinforces what I’d argue is the central point of the episode, that they are just one more piece of the lie that is America. As AJ makes clear, there’s all this awful stuff happening in the world, and even right next door, but does it matter?

That’s where the music comes in. Again, Chase doesn’t go for what’s cool, instead it’s a track that just says guy sitting in a pickup truck with a mullet, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’” Music is always carefully chosen on the show and this track sums up the core theme of the episode. America is a dream we all have, it’s built on blood and hate, but if we’re happy, does that matter? In this moment, Tony watches his family come together, AJ’s happy, Carmela is happy, things are good.

But, simmering under the surface are a myriad of threats. He may be indicted for the gun charge, Carlo has flipped and there could still be gunmen out there. He’ll never be completely safe, but they can’t dwell on that. What AJ’s arc is telling us is that it’s not possible to fully engage with our world, there’s too much awful stuff. We just have to accept the lie, and we can’t stop believing in it. I absolutely love the way that song works in the scene, the cheesy, but great build as Carmela sits down. This is the kind of song she’d love, the kind of song they’d have played when they were younger together. They have a dream that they can hold on as long as they believe in it.

Watching the scene, I realized that Tony was going to get a happy ending, everything he really cares about is still there and he’s gotten pretty much everything he wants. Yet, hanging over all this was an inescapable sense of menace. A mysterious guy hovers at the bar, and Meadow struggles to parallel park. Tension is building under the serenity, a device that lets us understand how Tony views the world. Particularly after the hits on Bobby and Sil, everything around him is a potential threat. This is how he’ll always live, trying to believe in the lie, but fearing what’s around him.

The final moment of the show is extremely jarring, and I think that’s the point. Most of the seasons end with some kind of family tableau, and we seemed to be building to that, but just as Meadow is walking in, we cut in what’s probably the most jarring end of a series since the final moment of Twin Peaks. I read this ending as basically saying life goes on. The real world has no fade outs and music over the credits, things just happen and eventually we die. The show died in that moment, but the world carries on.

Will Meadow get to the table? Was the guy in the bathroom a killer? Will Tony be arrested? I think the answer is yes only to one of these questions. People are already talking about the way that Chase screwed them on the ending, but seriously, what do we need to know? Tony might be killed or might be arrested at any moment in the show, we don’t any sort of definitive closure at the ending. It would have been easier to end on Meadow sitting at the table, but he wanted to go out on a moment of tension, and that’s what we got, in a spectacular fashion. The lack of music over the credits was particularly jarring, just silence, no more from these characters. I don’t think we’ll ever see a movie, and I don’t think we need one, I am fully satisfied with how all the characters’ stories were resolved.

The series has always been about lies, the ones Tony tells himself to justify his actions, and the ones Carmela tells herself to justify her marriage. The characters who couldn’t accept the lie anymore, like Christopher, all ended up dead. You can’t challenge the world and you can’t leave the world. Instead, you simply need to believe in the myth that what they’re doing is meaningful and worthwhile, that it’s more than simple extortion and violence.

What this episode brings home is the way that Tony Soprano is no different than you or I. We all buy into this myth of America, the shared past and the uncertain future. We all think that the new generation’s going downhill, but really, things just go on. The generations cycle and people change, that is life in America. Tony has been a success because he’s found his place and he hasn’t challenged the status quo. He may be living in denial about all the bad things he’d one, but it doesn’t matter because all of us are. Sitting in that diner, he’s no different from you or I. We’re all a product of a culture that pushes the bad things below the surface so we can live in the dream. Watching his kids grow and surpass him, he’s living the American dream, going from criminal to lawyer in one generation. And, if you believe this series, there’s no real difference, it’s all a part of this one huge mosaic of lies and dreams that is America.

All Star Superman #3: 'Sweet Dreams, Superwoman'

“Sweet Dreams, Superwoman” is another really fun issue that manages to seamlessly mix over the top Silver Age craziness with real, emotional impact. That’s the series’ greatest strength, and it comes out of Morrison’s love for the material. He truly believes in what this version of Superman stands for, and is able to extrapolate from his existence what the universe would be like. If Superman is a regular presence in your world, the appearance of an evolved lizard from the Earth’s core would just be a minor inconvenience, and that’s an exciting world to live in.

The first page of the issue is incredible, Morrison sums up the issue’s premise quickly so we can get right to the action, and does so it in a way that lets Quitely do some phenomenal work. I like that Superman color coordinates the box with his costume, in the previous issue, we saw a more domestic Superman, and this kind of design work fits with his interests. I love the way Quitely draws Lois, particularly the bottom panel, which is just dripping with sex. Is there any significance to that? I’m not sure, but it works well, she is clearly excited by the idea of being like Superman and that final panel shows her taking control of things.

My one major problem with this issue is that Lois gets powers, but doesn’t really get to do anything. She flies around at first, but then spends most of the issue standing around while Superman, Samson and Hercules fight over her. I think you could do something interesting where Superman transfers his powers to her, so that he is forced to be human and let her do the heroics. Alternatively, you could just have the two of them going around together and helping people, but I guess it was not to be.

But, I think Morrison’s primary interest in the issue isn’t showing what Lois would do with superpowers, it’s more about showing why Superman is different than other heroes. It’s interesting that he chose two figures out of older cultural mythology. Morrison has always equated Superman with the Greek gods, referring to the JLA as the pantheon when he was writing that book. In the same way that the Greek gods served as a model to aspire to for people at the time, Morrison wants Superman to be a model for humanity. I think that’s a major reason he takes issue with Moore’s deconstructionist superhero writing, to Morrison, superheroes aren’t juvenile power fantasies, they are models for humanity to aspire to. A work like Miracleman shows what an ordinary person would do when presented with huge power, the ways that it would corrupt him and lead to an almost Aryan society. This work is more about showing what the ultimate hero is, and how humanity struggles to live up to his example.

Anyway, it’s notable that Superman is presented as the only mythological character who’s actually more than human. The others are petty and jealous, hoping to impress Lois with absurd feats of strength. Superman is so confident in himself that he doesn’t need to engage in their juvenile antics, he just chills for a while, then ultimately wins using his mind. Morrison presents an evolution of mythological figures, we don’t need the violence and pettiness of our old models, Superman is above that. In addition to commenting on mythology in general, it also fits as a meta commentary on superhero comics themselves. Superman doesn’t need to lower himself to the pointless violence of other characters, he is beyond that, something that most writers of the character don’t get.

On the page where they first meet, I love how Quitely has the subtle background action of Superman retrieving Krull from space. That’s one of the best things about Quitely’s art, and the way Morrison writes for him. It’s not just an illustrated story, you have the “read” the images to understand the story and there’s a ton of details in each issue to catch on repeat reads.

I like how Lois is so confident in Superman, she goes along with the feats. For her, it’s fun to watch these other guys put so much effort in, knowing that they’ll get shown up soon. They can talk about having drinks at the crucifixion or riding a chariot drawn by gods, that can’t compare to hanging out with Superman. The funniest thing here is when Lois says she’s trying to teach him a lesson “after the creepy and ridiculous impersonation of Clark Kent that started all this.” He just can’t convince her that he can the bumbling journalist as well as the Superman.

Superman ultimately shows up Samson and Herclues through his intelligence, not his strength, answering the riddle of the Sphinx. It’s notable that his answer is to surrender, a non-violent approach. We all just accept that superhero comics have to have violence and fights to be sustainable. That’s what a hero does, someone who literally fights for what’s right. But, this book presents a different approach, and it’s exciting to see it in action. This is a whole new paradigm for the sort of stories that can be told with the character, and superheroes in general.

Superman goes out to a beach to finally shut up Samson and Hercules and does so in a spectacular arm wrestling competition. My favorite part here is Lois’s total relaxation as she sits and watches, as well as Superman’s whistle as he defeats them. Visually, it’s pretty fantastic too, emerging into the gorgeous blue sky and ocean after our time in the cave.

From there, Superman and Lois head up to the moon to do something he’s wanted to do since the very first day they met. What exactly is that? Clearly they have sex, but wouldn’t they have done that before? Perhaps it’s sex with the superpowers, they do look pretty spectacular on the full page splash up on the moon, another amazing Quitely image. That moment, and the closing scene makes us understand what it’s like to have a relationship that’s so far beyond what humans can have. Superman feels everything more, so much so that Lois is exhausted by her day and drifts off to sleep.

The final page is very sweet. Quitely has an unmatched ability for framing a panel. The top panel on the final page shows us exactly what we need to know, but in a more dynamic way than a full body shot of Superman carrying Lois would. Here, we have the strength of his arms, the iconic symbol, juxtaposed against the quiet sleep of a now human woman. That’s what the series is all about the blend of super and man, over the top craziness and relatable emotion.

This is another great issue, again proving that Morrison has the definitive take on the character. I feel like with every book he writes does everything the characters need to do. We don’t need any more X-Men after the end of his run, no more Doom Patrol, no more Animal Man. He takes the concepts to their logical ends, incorporating everything important from the mythos and condenses it into one great run. That’s certainly what he’s doing here.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: 'The Long Way Home: Part IV' (8x04)

This issue brings the initial arc to a close in a less than spectacular fashion. At this point, the novelty of having new Buffy in comics form has worn off a bit, so the problems with the storytelling are more apparent. It’s not bad, it’s just that this doesn’t feel like the show I loved. Admittedly, most of the problems are holdovers from season seven, magnified by the limited space that monthly comics allow for storytelling.

My major issue with this issue, and the series in general, is the premise, Buffy as leader of a gang of slayers. For me, the interesting part of the show was rarely the vampire slaying, or Buffy’s issues with her role as slayer, that was all just a hook to get people interested in the characters. The reason I love season six more than any other is that it strips back the action trappings and lets us focus exclusively on the characters and their issues. Season seven, and this comic, go in the exact opposite direction looking at Buffy only as a slayer, not as a person.

What this issue does is basically retread the exact thematic points we already saw in season four and seven, with the initiative and Caleb arcs. I never liked the initiative because it just didn’t fit into the world the show had created. I like the more street level slaying, what happens to the characters in seasons five and six is relatable, Buffy’s involvement with the initiative in season four, not so much. The show could do fantastical things and still be emotionally real, but the initiative stuff just didn’t make me feel anything. And, this arc hits the exact same points, Buffy vs. entrenched patriarchal military industrial complex.

The series’ hook was a girl who had a lot of power, but really wanted to live a normal teenage life. As she grew up, that remained the central conflict, could Buffy be a slayer and still live a normal life? The end of the show seems to resolve the conflict by making her no longer the chosen one, instead she’s just one of many chosen. That’s why the setup of this comic bothers me, Buffy isn’t particularly interesting when she is in control of her life. It’s when things are spinning away from her that the character was best, here she’s got so much power, such a large operation, there’s no real tension.

The most grating moment in the issue is when Buffy goes on a rant about how the military guy doesn’t want women and power in the same sentence. It doesn’t work for the same reason that the Caleb arc in season seven fails, you never want to make what was thematically implicit explicit in such an obvious manner. We know that Buffy is powerful, we know that people are out to get her, you don’t need to go into such obvious speechifying mode. It’s the equivalent of having someone come out and call Tony Soprano a bad man, we know that already, we don’t need to be told. We know that the military is out to keep women down, we don’t need Buffy to say it. It just took me out of the moment of the story.

The series ends by setting up an X-Men style war between slayers and normal humans. This is an interesting route to go in theory, but I don’t think it works with what Buffy was doing during the series. For me, Buffy isn’t particularly interesting as a leader of troops, that’s why season seven fails on a lot of levels, we lose the sense of her as a person. Now, she’s an icon, not an individual and we either have to see behind her façade or not put her in this position. I feel like we really need Spike here, to keep her in touch with her dark side. Now, she’s got no one to play off of and it’s only through the interior monologues that we get any sense of the conflict she feels. But, let’s show, not tell on that.

Ultimately, I think the reason I have issues with the book is that Buffy was one of the least interesting characters on the show. I love her during season two, five and six, when she’s got all kinds of troubles facing her, but during the comparatively stable years, she wasn’t particularly interesting. Willow, Anya, Tara, Xander and Spike were all much more interesting than her, and I’d rather spend more time with them than with Buffy. That’s where the problem with comics come in. On the show, there was time to give the other characters their own meaningful subplots, here they just do a couple of pages supporting Buffy. Perhaps that will change in future arcs, we’ll see.

Looking ahead, I’m curious how this storyline will play into the Faith storyline. Will it really be six months before we return to these characters, or will Faith eventually meet up with them? I have to say, I’ll be happy to leave Buffy for a while to focus on someone else. The setup she’s got now, she’s just not that interesting. There were some more interesting, human moments in the last couple of issues, but not here. I’m sticking with the comic, it’s still cool to see the gang back together, but I think the premise they’ve chosen was really misguided. Hopefully things will right themselves on future storylines.

The Sopranos: Top Ten Episodes

By way of summarizing the series, I’m going to go through my top ten Sopranos episodes. It’s a lot tougher to do that with this show than with a lot of others, say Buffy or even Six Feet Under, since every episode is at such a consistently high level, and the show doesn’t usually use the build to a big mythology/finale episode structure of a lot of series. Every episode is so good that it’s only the weaker ones that stand out. But, there’s still better and worse episodes, and I shall delve into them.

Notably, there are no season one episodes. A lot of people will tell you season one is the show’s best season, and it is fantastic, but I don’t think it’s as layered and complex as the later years. Looking at that season now, none of the characters are as developed as they are in the later years. Adrianna is just a pretty girl, Chase didn’t know at this point what she’d become, and the same is true of Paulie and Pussy. From a plot level, it’s probably the tightest season, but it’s also the most “TV” in the sense that it’s got more obvious standalone stories and a clear arc throughout the season.

While the later seasons are messier, they feel more real and more character centered. It’s the character hooks that make the series so wonderful, and that’s the reason that season five is my favorite season of the entire series. There, they used less serial plotting than in the previous seasons, instead focusing in depth on one or two characters each episode. This meant that each episode gave us a ton of development and much to ponder and discuss.

Also, I watched the first four seasons on DVD, then watched the fifth and sixth as they aired. So, it’s harder for me to separate those early seasons into individual episodes, they all sort of bleed together, while the latter are separated in my mind. I’d stand by these picks regardless, but it’s possible if I’d watched those earlier seasons separately, they’d be more distinguished.

Anyway, on to the top ten, in chronological order…

D-Girl (2x07) – This episode is the culmination of Christopher’s first flirtation with the film business, putting him and Pussy at a crossroads between serving Tony and pursing their own best interest. I loved Christopher’s interest in film because it was a dream, a way out of the world. In him and Adrianna, I always saw hope, the chance to escape this world and not become like Tony. This episode plays that conflict, for a moment it seems that he can be successful and move on to something better, but, as with the Vito storyline, he finds out that it’s tough to play by civilian rules, to actually have to work for what you want, not just get it. It’s a prescient episode because it contains all the central themes of season six, the way that these people will give up what they really want for the easy life of the mafia.

We not only get this, we also get some of the most emotional scenes in the series, as Pussy is forced to restore AJ’s faith in his father even as he’s betraying him to the FBI. The best scene is Pussy upstairs in the bathroom, crying, aware that he will either have to leave this world or eventually die. On top of this, we get some really funny stuff with Jon Favreau, one of the few celebrity playing themselves cameos that doesn’t feel self indulgent or too inside.



Funhouse (2x13) – There’s a lot of good stuff in season two, the fantastic Robert Patrick arc, Christopher’s acting class, but this episode’s surreal journey to inevitability is the moment when the series established its rich dream mythology that would infuriate some fans and enrapture others, like myself. I love that they spend so much time with the weird dreams as a device to get Tony to face what he already knows, that Pussy is working for the feds. It’s crazy, exciting stuff with some of the series best visual moments.

And then we get the sad resolution of Pussy’s story as he’s gunned down and dumped in the ocean. This is a major turning point for Tony, and the series as a whole. We’d seen Tony kill before, but to kill a friend? It’s cast a shadow over the entire series, echoed in this season’s “Remember When.”



Pine Barrens (3x11) – If this episode wasn’t so good, I’d be mad it even existed because it’s led to five years of people asking when the Russian’s coming back. To that, I can only say you’re an idiot. People who consider the Russian a loose end completely miss the point, it’s like saying Pulp Fiction sucked because we never found out what was in the briefcase. The entire point of the character was the uncertainty of whether he was dead or alive, a menace out in the forest. To resolve that would strip the episode of a lot of its power, and particularly three seasons later, it’s not going to happen. Reading some online postings, you’d think it was satire, but people apparently really are furious he hasn’t come back and even spinning elaborate theories that involve the Russian coming back for the final episodes. Let it go.

Anyway, that aside, this is a brilliant episode. It’s the show’s funniest, as we witness Chris and Paulie go through all kinds of indignities in the woods, eating ketchup packets and making shoes out of rubber. Visually, it’s one of the show’s best, with the gorgeous snowscapes and seemingly endless woods. If nothing else, this episode is testament to the fact that the show can be incredibly funny when it wants to be.



Amour Fou (3x12) – The resolution of the Gloria Trillo arc is fantastic stuff, tying the season back to Tony’s now absent mother. While I’m obviously not happy that Nancy Marchand died, losing the character when they did worked in the show’s favor. They had pretty much exhausted Livia herself by the end of the second season and she becomes more interesting as a specter hanging over everyone. In this episode, Tony finally realizes the similarities between Gloria and Livia and, in an incredible, intense scene, leaves her. Earlier in the episode, we also get the great scene where Gloria drives Carmela home from the car dealership. The show can do tension like no other, and this episode was full of it. While I like the mob stuff, it’s really the personal drama that interests me, and where normally we’d get the season’s death in the penultimate episode, here we get the death of a relationship.



Whitecaps (4x13) – The long simmering drama surrounding Tony and Carmela’s marriage comes to a head here, as she finally rejects him and his philandering. The episode is full of incredible scenes between the two of them, moments that were building for four years and finally come spilling out here. Falco and Gandolfini have never been better. The episode is the series’ longest, at 75 minutes, and that extra time helps give things an epic scope as they march towards the separation, taking the family’s broken dreams in their wake, and setting up the brilliance of season five.




Irregular Around the Margins (5x05) – A brilliant episode at the time, and in retrospect, the critical turning point in Tony and Christopher’s relationship. This is what inspires Cleaver and starts the rift that will eventually lead to Christopher’s death. That accident is a replication of what happens here. Adrianna’s arc over the last couple of seasons was some of the best stuff the show ever did and this episode takes it to emotional, excruciating places. One thing you won’t see on another show, probably ever, is a character getting IBS, but they went there and it provided the impetus for Tony and Adrianna’s flirtation. There’s so much tension here, so much pettiness among the crew. I love the way their pettiness threatens to spill over into violence.




Long Term Parking (5x12) – Adrianna’s murder was something the series could never come back from. Writing abut the first part of season six, I said that the show had lost something when she died, the hope that maybe someone could get out and live a better life. When she died, that possibility disappeared. But, that was the whole point. As we see in season six, her death has forced everyone to either commit to the life or die. Those are the only options.

What happens here destroys Tony and Christopher’s relationship, largely because of Christopher’s own weakness. In a devastating scene, he is all set to run away with Adrianna, or at least I think he is, until he sees a white trash family at a gas station. Faced with the possibility of living a normal life, he decides to turn Adrianna over to Tony and Silvio, who kill her in the woods. The tension of this episode comes from the juxtaposition of the inevitable ending and the glimmer of hope we cling on to. Even when she’s in the car, I’m hoping that maybe they weren’t lying, that she’s off to a new life somewhere. But, she’s not and by episode’s end, she’s dead



Join the Club (6x02) – I love the series’ forays into metaphysical weirdness, and few were more satisfying than this trip to a parallel universe where Tony becomes Kevin Finnerty, businessman. The basic conceit of this episode, a man who switches briefcases and becomes someone else, is fascinating and could be a feature right there, but wrapped up in what we know about Tony, it becomes an exciting way to view the man he could have been. Few episode endings are as haunting as Tony sitting alone in his hotel room, looking out at the revolving lighthouse as Moby plays.

On top of that, we get the phenomenal hospital scenes, a showcase for Edie Falco. And, the episode’s importance to the series as a whole was confirmed during Tony’s peyote trip, at which point he realizes that there are other world than just this one. Did he remember the Kevin Finnerty experience in that moment? I think he did. The intensity and power of this episode wasn’t matched until the next episode on the top ten list.




Walk Like a Man (6x17) – Before this episode, we’d been in something of a holding pattern for eight or nine episodes. There were great moments, but there wasn’t any sense of urgency. I was thinking that the show would end in a leisurely manner, maybe some people would die, but things would go on as they always had. Then this episode happened and everything changed. As you’ve probably gathered, I’m a big Christopher fan and this is the episode that essentially seals his fate. He has struggled to be what Tony wants him to be, but he just can’t do it. If he’s with them and drinking, then he’s a disgrace, if he’s not, he’s also letting Tony down. It’s a conundrum and there really is no answer. There’s so many brilliant scenes with him here, including the shocking death of JT. Chris is going off the rails and it’s pretty clear he doesn’t have long to live by the end.

At the same time, we get the first major focus on AJ, who will come to dominate the rest of the season. He’s drawn into the world of the mob and for a moment it seems like he will follow his path. The happy family tableau at the end of the episode is all the more striking for the fact that after this, they can never be together in the same way again.



Kennedy and Heidi (6x18) – Any episode of this final run could easily be on this list, but I went with “Kennedy” for the ambition and sheer audacity of making an entire episode about Tony trying to make other people feel that Christopher’s death was a good thing. The pageantry of mourning seems so hollow to him, and we’re placed right there, disregarding common human decency, sadness at Chris’s death, to instead share Tony’s detached view. There’s not much emotion at Christopher’s death, that came in the previous episode, this is all about Tony and his struggle.

The peyote trip is the capper, as Tony tries to relive his Kevin Finnerty existence and winds up stumbling dazed through a casino, a virtual zombie. I love the way they depicted the trip, a strange emotional capper to a really surprising journey. It’s a fantastic hour that shows the series is much more than just a mob story.



Again, “The Second Coming” and “The Blue Comet” could both easily have made it on the list, but I wanted to give some variety. Perhaps I’m just enchanted by the new, but those episodes seemed as good as anything the show has ever done. Either way, hopefully the series finale will find a place on the list and be as strong as the past few episodes have been.

The Sopranos - 'The Blue Comet' (6x20)

“The Blue Comet” is an interesting episode because it’s simultaneously exactly what you’d expect and totally unexpected. After Tony was shot I concluded that the show was not likely to go out with a bang, more likely we’d see Tony fade away, life go on. After the slow fade of last season’s finale, and even through the first couple of episodes of this season, I was still feeling that way, but starting with “Walk Like a Man,” everything changed and since that episode, we’ve been on a march to this point, with everything falling apart, to the point that this episode leaves Tony alone in a safehouse, all his close friends dead, separated from his family. It’s an apocalyptic episode and another masterpiece from Chase and his team.

The show has teased a New York/New Jersey war for a long time, from Tony’s betrayal of Johnny Sack in “Whitecaps” to the near war in last season’s “Kaisha,” and after the buildup last week, I was hoping that he wouldn’t stop things before they started again. This entire season has had a feeling of dread, and this episode took it to almost unbearable levels. The opening scene, with Silvio murdering Burt Gervasi set up that this was going to be a big episode, though I was a bit unclear who he was murdering.

Being near the end of a series makes every threat a bit more real. Last season, you’d never have thought that Phil really might take out the top guys in Tony’s crew, now, it’s a real possibility, and as Bobby walked into that train store, he was already dead, it was just about waiting for it to happen. Things were so bad after Silvio died that I legitimately thought Tony might go.

On a thematic level, the episode integrates a lot of things that have been going on under the surface for a while. Phil says that he needs to take out Tony Soprano’s “glorified crew” because they don’t really believe in the mythology of the mafia. It is the ritual that makes them more than gangsters, the ritual is the reason Phil spent time in prison, and if that’s meaningless, then so is his time in prison. That’s also why Tony isn’t a “real” gangster, Phil mentions his lack of jail time here and shut Tony down with it last episode with his already classic speech about compromising.

The entire show has been about Tony’s inability to live up to his father and cinema’s image of what a mobster should be. Now, Phil cracks on his team, marveling at the fact that Bobby is one of the top three guys. After the death of Sil and Bobby, Paulie is Tony’s only ally, and he’s constantly shown himself to be selfish, oblivious to the needs of others. Tony is left with basically no one, sitting alone in a room, holding a machine gun.

It’s almost surreal to have these murders actually happening. While I think Chase needed to pay off all this buildup, I do think it’s a bit of a resignation to go down this road. I had come to terms with the fact that the show wasn’t going to have a big ending, and it’s a surprise to see this happen. I would have liked to see Chase screw with people one final time and throw out a big dream sequence or something like that at the close, but this payoff is certainly better than something like “Kaisha.”

The dissolution of Tony’s crew fits with one of the central themes of the series, the decline of the mafia. Even if Tony survives and either kills Phil or negotiates a peace settlement, he’s got no one left. All his successors are dead. It’s just a bunch of random thugs left, no one to carry the legacy. Can Tony run things like this, how will it work? The only person I could see stepping up to follow him would be Meadow, but I don’t think protocol would allow that.

On a familial level, we see Tony pushing away from him. He’s too much of a target, and now the only way to protect his family is to leave them. It felt final when they left the house, like they’ll never be back there. I do like the implications of him abandoning his suburban mansion to go back to an old neighborhood style house.

This episode also sees AJ fail another test. I’m perhaps most curious to see how his story resolves. He seems completely incapable of dealing with the world, will this latest outburst from Tony get him back on track or push him completely away? His arc this season has been phenomenal, here we see Tony finally treating AJ like his parents treated him, harsh, stripping him of his autonomy. He clearly blames Carmela for what happened to him and he’s trying to reverse some of that now.

This comes up in the fantastic Melfi scene, where she finishes his sentences as he goes through a rote list of complaints. She’s so cold there, I was fearing for her. Tony respects her too much to hurt her, but he is hurt by her abandonment of him at such a low point. It is questionable of her to dump him so suddenly, but that study clearly pointed out what was always apparent, that her work was helping him be a better criminal. Does someone like Tony deserve to be helped? Wouldn’t ‘progress’ only make him worse? Melfi never seemed to think that she could save him, and she must have known that much of what she said led to violence. I always thought she was complicit in that, maybe she didn’t realize how much she was until Elliot told her.

I’m guessing that’s the last time we’ll see Melfi, barring some kind of closing montage with all the characters, and it’s a great way to go out. She realizes that her work isn’t going anywhere, and that by treating him, she is in some ways complicit in what he’s doing. She tried to help him, but he wound up saying the same things and not facing up to the basic morality of his life. Unable to do that, she has a right to let him go.

The scene with Janice and Bobby’s kids was heartbreaking because Janice wasn’t reacting how we’d expect her to. It was just quiet sadness, driving home that for all the over the top cool of his murder, what’s left is three kids who will be raised by someone who will resent them and hurt them. Bobby’s kids in particular will be scarred by these next few years. We’ve already seen Janice turning into her mother in “Soprano Home Movies,” this will only make things worse.

While that scene really got to me, the deaths themselves were curiously lacking in emotion. I think it’s because we were so aware of the impending death, it was almost a relief when it happened. Particularly in Bobby’s scene, the minute he walked into train shop, I knew he was gone, and it was excruciating sitting there, wondering when it would come. Christopher’s death was like that as well, he was on such a downward spiral, the death felt like an inevitability, not a surprise. There were moments of sadness surrounding all the deaths, but never in the traditional sappy way most TV shows do it.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about this episode is that it feels like a second to last episode. There’s a lot still up in the air, but this was the 84th piece of an 85 piece story. Ever since “Walk Like a Man,” the show has been as good as anything to ever air on TV or in the movies. It’s incredibly tense and perfectly focused on what matters. It’s hard to believe, but AJ has become one of the best characters on the show and Tony remains intensely fascinating. I really can’t wait to see what Chase does with the final chapter.

All Star Superman #2: 'Superman's Forbidden Room'

After reading three issues, what strikes me most about the series is the way Grant simultaneously manages to make it goofy fun and smart and emotional, all at the same time. It’s largely because he’s never condescending or giving a wink to the audience, he loves this material in all its ridiculousness and that makes it infectious. We get just as caught up in the world and totally believe in it.

One of the funniest running gags in the series is the fact that Lois just won’t believe that Superman is Clark Kent. It was always hard to buy that people wouldn’t recognize the similarity between the two characters, and you’d think playing off that would make it more believable. So, it’s ironic that her total disbelief actually makes you believe people could buy them as separate people. His acting as Clark so thoroughly sells people on this persona that it seems like there’s no way they could be the same.

I love Quitely’s Lois, you usually don’t think of Quitely’s people as being pretty, but she is, in a really modern way. I think there’s a tendency to stick to classic designs for these characters, but the update on Lois works great. I also really like the way he dresses her, very stylish clothes. Morrison and Quitely always place great emphasis on style and glamour, we saw it in New X-Men and we see it again here. There’s not much you can do with Superman’s outfit, but Quitely runs with it on the characters he can design.

I like how Superman walks into the Fortress with the greeting “Afternoon, robots.” Throughout the issue, we get the sense that Superman really enjoys showing Lois all his stuff, he’s proud of what he’s done and is happy to share it with someone. I particularly like the moment where he brings her the flowers from Alpha Centauri.

Superman describes the Fortress as a time capsule, capturing “how it felt to live at the dawn of the age of superheroes.” Morrison’s best superhero work taps into our own feelings about the future. In X-Men or Flex Mentallo, superheroes are presented as the next step in human evolution, a guide to move humanity forward. That concept is made literal here, with Superman offering this place as a guide and memorial of what humanity is and could be. It’s notable that so far in the series, Superman hasn’t done any violence, he’s just helped people.

I love the gritty deconstructionist superhero work Alan Moore did, and I’ve always been annoyed when he said stuff like all superhero books since are based on one bad mood he had twenty years ago. But, reading this book shows that you can do mature, smart superhero books without resorting to violence and deconstruction. This is just a straight ahead embrace of the Superman myth, that this is a guy who offers humanity a vision of what they could be, and our goal is to try to live up to that, to reach his level.

I had read that the series consisted entirely of standalones, and that’s true to some extent, but the overarching Superman is dying thread provides a great structural backbone and urgency to the tales. In this case, the entire tension of the issues comes from the fact that Superman can’t tell Lois what’s going on with him, leading to her paranoia. Why doesn’t he just come out and say it? I feel like it’s largely because he doesn’t want to admit it, that he has flaws, that he is, on some level human. Lois says she doesn’t want to believe that a part of him could be Clark Kent. So, one of the central questions of the series seems to be, if Superman is everything humanity could ever hope to be, what does it mean that he too is flawed?

The issue ends with Superman giving Lois the super serum, setting up the next issue. I like the way the issues flow into each other, so that even if they are essentially standalone tales, things seem to build and flow into each other. This issue also sets up some interesting future stories, during Lois’s encounter with the Unknown Superman. Some of the future Superman stuff seems like a retread of what Morrison did during JLA, but it was great then, so it’s ok to bring it back.

So, this issue works as a great fusion of crazy silver age fun with some real emotional stuff. The sequence where Lois’s typing is intercut with Superman looking at himself in the mirror reaches a real emotional place, and the ending is great. I just love spending time with Morrison’s Superman, he’s the coolest guy around, and I guess that’s the point.

All Star Superman #1: 'Faster'

Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely have arguably the best partnership in the history of comics, perfectly complimenting each other and producing consistently brilliant comics. Coming off the amazing We3, they dove into All Star Superman. I have to say, I wasn’t thrilled to hear that Quitely would be spending two years drawing the adventures of Superman. I’m glad that he’s working with Morrison, but the amount of time it takes Quitely to draw means each project he does must be amazing to justify the time spent. He is a precious resource and should not be wasted.

After two issues, my initial reluctance to the project has largely dissipated. While I’d still prefer to see them doing something original, this is a fantastic book, fun, exciting and the only book I’ve read that really understands Superman and is able to make him work in stories. The very nature of the character makes it nigh impossible to do ordinary stories with him. You can deconstruct him, as in Miracleman, mythologize him, as in Supreme, but is it possible to just do straight up Superman stories? Here, Morrison proves that it is, managing to fuse massive stories and personal drama to create something really special.

Morrison has previously written Superman during his run on JLA, and there he treated the character as the idol of all the superheroes, the model they aspire to, a pure, goodhearted true hero. The entire series was about treating the heroes as gods, battling the largest foes on an intergalactic stage. That made for some great storylines, but only in the stories of the lower level heroes did we get any really meaningful character development. Here, Morrison manages to make Superman a viable character, and the end of the first issue sets him off on a potentially very interesting arc.

The issue begins with a page that almost has to be read as a big middle finger to the Brian Bendis style endless retreading of a hero’s origin story. We all know the Superman myth, do we need to spend seven months getting off Krypton? While I liked Bendis’s take on Ultimate Spider-Man, in fact, the extended origin is easily the best arc in the book’s run, I love the jump right into the action style that Morrison takes. The All Star label is perfect for him because it allows him to pick all the best elements of the mythology, what people know about the character, and leave behind the excessive complication that can come from long term continuity. I really do feel this is a book you could confidently show a new reader, certainly a better take on the mythos than the generally unsuccessful Superman Returns.

So, Superman’s origin’s wrapped up in a page and we’re introduced to the man himself in a glorious two page spread. A lot of what makes Quitely’s Superman work is the facial expressions, you get the sense this is a guy who’s just on an entirely different mental plane than everyone else, he just loves what he does, and that’s great to see. I’ve frequently said that one of the primary differences between Moore and Morrison is that when Moore sets out to make a tribute to Silver Age comics, he tries to literally replicate them in all their datedness, what Morrison tries to do is replicate the impact they had on him as a child, recapture that pure excitement of seeing heroes in action in crazy universes. Moore doesn’t have the same love for this material that Morrison does, and in every page of this book, you can see his glee at having the chance to write Superman.

I love the odd look of green haired lady who speaks about Superman’s progress. I’m not sure who she is, but it doesn’t matter. I think that’s one of the great things about this book, I’m not that familiar with the Superman mythos, but I can still appreciate the vast weirdness of everything that’s happening. We know about the man himself, and that’s enough.

Morrison plays with the repeat conventions of superhero stories, having Lois write the headlines before they happen. They have that much confidence in Superman. A similar concept occurs in Luthor’s operation of the machine, sending all his directions to the sun nine minutes ahead of time. Luthor’s mission is to kill Superman, and he realizes that you can’t do that in the present, what he does to Superman here is more subtle, overcharging him to take away his immortality.

Superman’s appearance in the ship, saying “Not if I can help it” is another great moment. Quitely renders him as a guy who’s totally confident, he knows he can beat the exploding man, he’s just that powerful. That power is what makes it nearly impossible to write compelling Superman stories. This opening sequence isn’t tense in the traditional sense because we know that Superman will win, Lois has already written the headline.

By bringing in Superman’s imminent death, we change the nature of the stories. He’s forced to reassess his role in the world, he’s no longer above humanity, he too will eventually join them in death. I’m guessing that much of this arc will be about Superman becoming more human as a result of his imminent mortality. This is all told to us in a visually dazzling manner, with the Technicolor dreamcoat wearing Doctor Quantam operating in a cool floating blood void. What Quantum makes clear is that Superman is as important as an idea as he is as a man. He inspired Quantum to work harder because he wants to prepare for what the world would have to be without Superman.

One of Morrison’s central thematic ideas is that superheroes are the blueprint for our future. As we evolve, they are the myth we will turn to to understand our new abilities, and Superman is the ultimate model for humanity, what we one day hope we can be. We saw this at the end of Morrison’s JLA run, in the World War III arc, and also in Flex Mentallo. The logical end of this series would be for Superman to die, but in having lived, create a world where everyone can be like him.

Morrison’s Clark Kent is a guy who’s having fun pulling one over on the world, presenting this jokey parody of what he thinks humans are. Reading this page, it is hard to believe that he’s Superman, and the intercutting of him saving the kid with Clark’s goofiness is great.

Things end with Clark telling Lois he’s Superman, a revelation that’s not that powerful because we didn’t know if she already knew this. But, it’s an essential moment of the Superman mythos, and allows Morrison to go in a more personal direction for the next issue. I think Morrison’s goal with the series is to do the greatest hits of the mythos, create a twelve issue series that tells you everything you need to know about Superman, and this moment is a big part of that.

So, I was very impressed by this first issue. It makes Superman work, and that’s not an easy thing to do. The character feels mythic, but still human and accessible. Quitely’s art is phenomenal, and together, the two of them become something so much more. I go back on who the best artist in comics is, Quitely or JH Williams. The most reliable answer is the one I’ve read most recently. JH has incredible versatility, but Quitely has a singular elegance and emotion. We shouldn’t have to choose, and luckily they both spend most of their time working with Morrison and Moore, so we get the best writers and best artists creating the best comics.

!!! @ Studio B

I go to a lot of shows and most of them are entertaining enough, but a lot of the time, the audience seems disinterested in the goings on, standing in place and barely getting involved with what's going on. It's annoying to have more people taking pictures than getting into music. So, it was a relief to go to !!! and find a band that put on an incredible, high energy show, and an audience that was totally into it right from the start.

Setlist:
Myth Takes//All My Heroes Are Weirdos//Pardon My Freedom//Dear Can//A New Name//Yadnus//Must Be The Moon//Coke//Heart of Hearts//Intensify

The show opened with 'Myth Takes,' then kicked into high gear with 'All My Heroes Are Weirdos.' After the incendiary opening of the song, they abruptly cut for a moment, then brought things back. At this point, the audience was going nuts, the entire center of the floor was moving and dancing. I got shoved around in there, and it was a lot of fun to just jump around and get really into the show. I haven't seen this level of enthusiasm at a show since my younger days when I'd go to ska punk shows from bands like Goldfinger and Reel Big Fish. There, the show seemed to be an excuse to go and push people around. Here, there was the same level of energy, but it was less violent. People were just really into it.

After the first couple of songs, I was covered in sweat, most of it not my own, and wasn't sure if people would be able to keep going at this level for the entire show. I'm only really familiar with their new album, Myth Takes, so some of the songs in the middle bled together, until they got to the new stuff. But, the energy was so high, it didn't really matter. I love that they didn't play any slow songs or spend a long time talking, it was just consistently up tempo dance songs.

The highlight of the show was 'Weirdos' just because the crowd had so much energy, but 'Must Be the Moon' was pretty close. That's their best song, and they tore it up. There was a song, I believe it was 'Coke,' that went into a rave/trance style, and that worked great too. 'Heart of Hearts' was another great performance, featuring a crazy stage dive by their backup singer.

I'd heard that !!! were a band whose live shows far outdid their recorded work, and I found that hard to believe after listening to Myth Takes, but after seeing this concert, it's definitely true. There would be no way to capture the energy of what was happening on record, the experience was as much being a part of the crowd as it was about their playing. They were great, and Nic Offer had some fun rock star posturing, but they didn't any frills, the music alone was enough to make this a great show. It was really fun to go to a show where the crowd got completely absorbed, and at the end, I was almost relieved there wasn't an encore since there was really nowhere left to go.

Crusade: 'The Path of Sorrows' and 'Appearances and Other Deceits' (1x12-1x13)

The series comes to an end with its best episode and a decent one. 'The Path of Sorrows' is the first episode that really hints at a larger world of possibility within the show, an overarching narrative that extends beyond standalone episodes. The show always had elements of that, since it drew on the mythology built up over five years of Babylon 5. That's the show's greatest asset in a lot of respects, we know the details of the Shadows and the Psi Corps, and we can understand references that would just be cryptic babble on other sci-fi shows.

A work like Babylon 5 almost demands a plethora of spinoffs and ancillary material since the universe is so richly detailed. Right from the first episode, JMS seemed to know everything that was going on with the characters and their universe, and over the course of the five years, we learned a wealth of material. I know more about the history of the Centauri Republic than I do about a lot of real nations.

But, the fully developed nature of the universe can present difficulty when making a spinoff. How much can he rely on what already exists, and how much should be new, so that new viewers can pick up the show? Ultimately, I think he finds a workable balance, new viewers could easily watch this and not miss anything. Yet, as someone who's watched B5, I did find myself wishing for more ties to the mother show.

But, before getting into musings on the series as a whole, let me go through these last two episodes. 'Sorrows' wasn't quite at the level of 'Signs and Portents' in terms of redefining what the series could do, but it did give us some much appreciated character background and set up what would likely have been a major theme of the series, the search for forgiveness. All the characters here have some bad deeds in their background, something they need to atone for, and the creature they find tries to help them come to terms with those past trangressions. The episode reminded me a bit of the Firefly episode where we flashback to where all the characters were before they came to the ship. That was a great episode, the brief snippets told us all we needed to know in a more efficient way than Lost's neverending flashback parade.

I liked the way they used the text captions to communicate the creature's pure feeling in a way that couldn't be represented by speech. It reinforces the idea that this thing is just giving the people what they want, like the cave in Empire Strikes Back, you only see what you bring with you. My favorite flashback was Mathison's, which gave us a glimpse of the telepath war. That's a piece of history we skipped over and it was great to fill it in. I would have loved to see a Lyta Alexander cameo, or at least mention, but what we got was great. Galen and Gideon's flashback were a bit more expected, but still well done. In general, I love devices like this, that force the characters to assess themselves in some way. Buffy's 'gimmick' episodes were all on some level about forcing the characters to examine themselves, be it in dreams, music or conversations with dead people. Taking the characters to a more subjective mental place is a great way to get to know them better, to understand the facade they present to the world.

'Appearances' was a less successful episode, one that, while entertaining, contains a lot of JMS's consistent writing problems. For one, the episode didn't have much tension. No one we actually knew was infected, and it was fairly obvious they'd find a way to resolve things in an easy way. That's because JMS almost always gives his characters, at least the heroes, an easy way out. People like Sheridan and Gideon always find some trick or tactic that will let them save the day without hurting anyone. Only occasionally will he force characters to make hard choices, and those are the most memorable moments of the series, the Londo arc or even the standalone in B5's first season where the kid dies. That was a bold call, this is the obvious ending. Because it's so easy, we don't get any satisfaction from the victory. It just goes by as expected. It would have been a more powerful ending to have to kill all the infected people to save the ship.

Another thing that bothered me about this episode was the use of the guy who played Neroon on B5. He looked similar and talked the same way, how can we buy him as a different character? This problem cropped up on B5 too, when they used Wayne Alexander in countless roles. That's fine if he's random alien every week, but once he played Lorien, he became too recognizable to be believable in a different role. I can understand wanting to be loyal to your actors, but it was distracting.

The biggest problem with this episode, and countless others, is that it's tough to make the audience get invested in a standalone hour of TV. The thing I love about the medium is the possibility to tell massive stories, developing characters' lives over years and years. That's what JMS did in the later years of Babylon 5, and even though you do need to set the groundwork, it's possible to have arcs right from the first year. The Sopranos managed to keep running plots going over the first season, and even if there were more standalone stories, they didn't feel as disconnected as these do. JMS should have learned from the first year of B5, that standalones just don't work as well. Even if you're doing a five year arc, put a mini arc in the front of the series to hook people.

Ultimately, the series, while entertaining, is futile viewing. It doesn't lead anywhere, and the characters don't go through much growth. While it's more rewarding on an episode by episode basis than early B5, that doesn't make it particularly worthwhile. I thought Dureena was a great character, and Galen had a lot of potential, but that's pretty much all the show was, potential. It works best as a dessert after B5, giving you a final jaunt through the universe before moving on.

That said, the Lost Tales film could change that. Some of the elements here will likely return there, and maybe that film will tie this series closer to the mythology. I'm eager to see Galen back, and I'd love to see Dureena or Gideon appear in a future film. Though, there's a bunch of B5 characters I'd prefer to see first.

B5 succeeded because of its scope, watching all the pieces of this elaborately constructed narrative fall into place. It was never a show that was about the moment, it was all about the big picture. Yet, with Crusade, all we have is moments, and that's not enough to satisfy.

Next up, I'll finally reach the end of the Babylon 5 universe, with Legend of the Rangers, leaving me all caught up for the imminent arrival of new material. Look for that review soon.

Summer Movie Preview 2007

You may say, the three biggest films of summer have already been released, isn't it a little late for a preview? Well, yes, but I forgot about it and didn't realize until yesterday that I should do one, so here it is: the 2007 Summer Movie Preview.

May 4
Spider-Man 3 - I saw this and it was alright. The script had too many elements to cohere into a satisfying whole, but I still think it was a stronger film than the first one, and some of the odd emo Spider-Man stuff worked well. If they had cut out Sandman, it would have been a much stronger and tighter film. I would have also liked more Gwen Stacey since Bryce Dallas Howard was really hot and had a great energy, certainly more than Kirsten Dunst, who should only act in Sofia Coppola films.

Away From Her - Julie Christie always does interesting stuff, and Sarah Polley's been great at choosing interesting projects, so her direction should be worth seeing. I don't know if I'll make it to this in the theater, but it'll certainly be DVDed.

Paris, je t'aime - Anthology films are rarely satisfying, usually the uneven nature results in you leaving not particularly satisfied. But, the talent involved here is unparalleled and from what I hear, it's worth your time for the Tom Tykwer film alone.

Civic Duty - I saw this a while back, and reviewed it for Blog Critics. While I wanted to like it for Peter Krause's sake, it's just not a very good film. It's got a totally cliched thriller video style and the characters aren't particularly likable, so it's not worth your time. Just watch Six Feet Under instead.

May 11
28 Weeks Later - Another one I've already seen. While it lacks the digital grit of the original, it's still a wonderfully constructued, tense and exciting zombie film. The score is phenomenal and it manages to keep the feel of the original without feeling like a retread. I'd be up for the threequel hinted at by this film's finale.

May 18
Fay Grim - I'm not a huge Hal Hartley fan, and I haven't seen Henry Fool, but Parker Posey as a spy in his quirky universe sounds like a perfect match. I believe this is already out on DVD, so I'll be checking it out soon. This image sold me on the film, the glove, the coat, the boots, so stylish:



Once - A modern day indie musical set to the music of The Frames? Sounds good. I love musicals, for me, film is about the fusion of visuals and music, and no genre does that on a purer level than the musical. The trailer was so good, I stopped watching it halfway through because I didn't want to spoil the film. I'll be seeing this one soon.

May 25
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End - I'm hearing mixed things, but I like Dead Man's Chest well enough. You got to the film for the Johnny Depp, and considering it's three hours, we should get plenty of that in this film. However, it's not something I'm rushing out to see, and I could see this one slipping to DVD.

Angel-A - The new Luc Besson hasn't been getting great reviews, but I've been looking forward to this one a long time. Leon is one of the greatest movies ever made, and I loved Besson's Joan of Arc, so I at least owe him a viewing on this.

The Boss of It All - New Lars Von Trier is always worth a look, though this one doesn't have me as intrigued as Manderlay or Dogville. Again, I'd guess this will get a DVD viewing down the line.

June 1
Knocked Up - Apatow's Freaks and Geeks is one of the all time great TV series and The 40 Year Old Virgin was one of the best comedies to come out of Hollywood in a long time. Rogen was great in F&G and the buzz on this one is really strong, making it a must see.

June 8
Ocean's Thirteen - Unlike a lot of people, I think Ocean's Twelve was a superior film to the original. Soderbergh may have been picking up the check, but he still had enough energy in the cinematography and editing to keep things interesting. There was no need for this film to exist, but it will probably still be fun.

June 20
Sunshine - I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Boyle's made some great films and intelligent sci-fi is always welcome. It's a top notch cast and buzz coming out of England is pretty strong. I'm curious to see how this one turns out.

August 10
Stardust - It's based on a Neil Gaiman story, and the trailer has some of the wonderful fantasy vibe of his best work. However, it also seems to have a bunch of annoying fantasy cliches. But, it's a great cast and should be worth a look.

August 17
The Invasion - This is a troubled film, but the premise is strong and the cast is great. Craig owned as Bond and Kidman has done a good job of choosing interesting, challeging projects. Hopefully this isn't just a check pick up for the two of them. Even if it is a trainwreck, there will probably be a lot of interesting stuff.

Superbad - Seth Rogen writing, Judd Apatow producing and Michael Cera starring, that is a nasty combination. Cera gave one of the all time great comedy performances as George Michael on Arrested Development and the trailer looks like it's funny and smart enough to avoid teen movie cliches. That said, the Cera film I'm really looking forward to is Juno.

So, there's a lot of interesting stuff out this month, after that, not so much. Hopefully some good indie films will turn up. I'll be working in New York so there's no longer the annoyingness of having to travel to go see an indie movie in the city. Perhaps I can finally move on from bad blockbuster movies and really embrace quality stuff in the theater.

Meeting Joss

I graduated from college yesterday, and as part of the festivities, they had a series of talks from alumni and such, including one by Joss Whedon on "The Importance of Being Keanu." His basic point with this talk was that Keanu had chosen roles that presented a specific agenda, one of nonviolent problem solving. I'm not sure how this jives with the shootouts of The Matrix and such, but he sold it well and told a bunch of interesting anecdotes about working with Keanu on Speed. I saw Keanu speak last year at a screening of A Scanner Darkly and he seemed like a smart, thoughtful guy. He said that Neo was the perfect role for Keanu because he has a kind of inhuman beauty, a perfect mix of racial characteristics to be the sort of generic ideal of humanity. So, he could serve as the BuddhaChrist in The Matrix. I'd be curious to see what Joss would say about the possible casting of Keanu as Dr. Manhattan in the Watchmen film.

After that, there was a Q&A where he talked a lot about the subjugation of women in Hollywood, similar themes as his recent Whedonesque blog posting. His points are definitely valid, and I try to bring out females who aren't defined by their relationship to men in my work. It's weird to watch people make films where all the women are girlfriends or wives.

He talked about his experience directing The Office, how they shoot double the amount they use in an episode, and will frequently try five or six different versions of a joke, and do an improv take, then use the best one. He said that Veronica Mars was the first show he was happy to have called "The next Buffy." Charmed, not so much. He also said that Battlestar Galactica was the best thing ever on TV, and The Matrix was the best movie ever. Also, The Body was the best thing he ever did.

My favorite thing he talked about was a meeting with Eliza Dushku where he asked her "Why do you keep making these shitty movies?" And, she replied they don't try to make them shitty. This was in reference to finding good roles for women, and he said that she needed to seek out the best directors and try to work with them.

This was a good event, after I walked down, and the line for signings was ridiculous, so I left and went on with my day. Later, I went over and watched some fireworks then wandered down towards this party in a tent for alumni and graduates, and who should be milling about but Joss himself.

He went over to talk to some people and I went over to my friend Vanessa and was like “It’s Joss!” So, we went over to talk to him, and talked for 15 minutes or so about a bunch of things. I asked him why he couldn’t get the Buffy movies made, considering studios are all about creating branded franchises they can go back to time after time. He said that the studios felt he could get people to work cheap because they’re his friends, and they refused to budge on the funding. He said they didn’t see a precedent for what he was trying to do, so I mentioned that perhaps the new Babylon 5 movies would do that. He hadn’t seen any of the show. During the Q&A, he said he hasn't seen Heroes and has only seen the first episode of The Sopranos, but thought it was one of the best things he'd ever seen on TV.

Vanessa asked him if he’d seen the thesis films this year, and he said no. I told him about mine, the nature of the plot and how it was inspired by him and Grant Morrison. He said that Morrison was great, the reason that he decided to write X-Men, but sometimes Grant had issues with story structure. I asked if he’d read The Invisibles, and he said that, like a lot of people, he had read some and really liked it, but never finished the series.

I asked him if he’d ever want to do an original musical, and he said that’s his dream project. He talked about how the Buffy musical was so easy to write because he tailored it to what he knew his people could do, and it’d be tougher to do something original. I told him that season six was my favorite season, and he said there was a small group of people who felt that way. I asked him if he ever thought of doing some kind of coda episode after ‘Chosen,’ but he said that the show was always going to end with the slayers being activated, because that was the thematic finale he wanted. I’d still argue that a little more character time was needed, but I guess we’re getting that with the comic. He said that by the end of season seven they knew it was time to go and were feeling a bit burnt out, but they were thinking about doing either a Faith or Slayers show, but that didn’t happen.

Then, I asked him if I could send him my thesis film to get his reaction to it and he said he could do that, but to give it to the head of the film department and say he really said yes because she gets people who want to send him 900 page fanfic. Vanessa asked him how he felt about people writing fanfic with the characters he made in his head, and he said that it was weird because they were writing about people he knew, like Willow wasn’t just Willow, it was Aly. But, he was happy that people were writing it, even if it was erotic fanfiction, since he wanted to inspire passion, and sexual passion was just as good as any other kind.

So, this was an amazing chance to talk to one of my idols one on one, and hopefully he'll send me a critique of the film at some point in the future. That would be just incredibly cool.

The Sopranos: 'The Second Coming' (6x19)

I’m running a bit behind with this review, but that’s in no way a comment on the episode’s quality. This was another amazing episode, each week I feel privileged to have work of this quality. I don’t think there’s been a run this good since Six Feet Under post Nate’s death. In each case, the death of a major character has forced the others to reevaluate their attitudes towards life. This week was just an incredible hour, as the series narrows its thematic focus for this final run.

I take issue with people who have nothing but bad things to say about the show’s last season. There were some issues with the first half of season six, but the Kevin Finnerty episodes were among the most imaginative and challenging things the show has done. After that, there was a somewhat meandering narrative, but once you’re aware of what Chase is trying to do on a thematic level, it makes a lot more sense. The entire season is about addiction, not so much to drugs, though that does figure in, rather to the lifestyle that has all these people hooked on an easy life outside the bounds of traditional work.

It’s difficult to watch the show sometimes because the characters constantly make inexplicable choices, the first time through the Vito arc, I was so frustrated when he abandoned his life up in New Hampshire to go back to Jersey. On some level, he knew he was going to be killed, but he’d rather take that fate than actually do a day’s labor. The sequence where he tries to work and gives up by 10:30 AM is both funny and deeply sad, the best demonstration of what failures these people are at working within the rules. They cannot escape this life, even if they want to, largely because everyone around them are enablers. That’s what we saw made literal in Christopher’s arc, he was unable to break out of the addiction cycle because the world he lived in required the use of substance. Yes, it’s something of a narrative dead end to show a character try to quit then relapse again and again, but it’s also realistic.

This last season has been all about puncturing the fantasies that the show unconsciously perpetuated during the earlier seasons. Much could be written about the relationship between Chase and his audience, a relationship in which each side frequently seems to hate the other, but they’re still caught up in a cycle of dependence. There’s so many attacks on the fanbase, or at least one segment of it, within the show, and Chase’s comments in the media add more. The show began as kind of a fantasy for middle aged men, that you could have a loving wife and great kids, yet still be able to sleep with anyone you want, hurt people who disagree with you and work out of a strip club. I think Chase began to recognize that people were identifying too strongly with the characters, looking at them as role models, and put a series of increasingly violent incidents in to try to break the fantasy. A notable example of this is Ralphie killing Tracee in “University.” Paulie killing Min Matrone in season four is another example, but nothing he did could break the fact that people still admired these characters.

So, he spent the first half of the season trying to show the ways their world is losing the allure it once had, as boredom sets in around Tony. This year, he’s been bringing to the fore Tony’s total lack of morality, creating a really interesting juxtaposition between our lingering affection for the character and the fact that he’s doing really awful stuff. For the first time, people really seem to be recognizing just how much of a bastard he is.

Yet, the brilliance of the show is that we always understand why he does what he does, and are still able to remain sympathetic. I generally prefer characters who are fascinating to ones who are likable in traditional ways, characters like Spike or Magneto, and Tony is one of the greatest antiheroes ever created, a mess of contradictions and lax morality.

Anyway, this episode sees Tony struggling with the aftermath of his peyote trip, and his son’s suicide trip. The first four episodes of this season were strong, but starting with “Walk Like a Man,” there’s been an intense focus on very specific themes, and it’s produced one of the best runs of the entire series. The focus has been on Tony and his two sons, AJ, his real son, and Christopher, the man he’s treated as a son and who was groomed to be his successor. Last week saw the end of Christopher’s journey, as Tony killed him. Tony remained completely unrepentant about what he did this week, enraptured more with what was going on back at home.

I love the scene where Tony talks about taking peyote with his crew. He’s always had more intelligence and intellectual curiosity than any of them. They joke about it, but don’t understand how deeply meaningful the experience was for him.

But, the core of the episode’s first half was the final steps in AJ’s descent into depression. AJ has deep issues with the world he comes from, unable to deal with all his privilege after being made aware of just how poor other people are. A lot of this ties in to what happened with Blanca, but it’s also symptomatic of the expansion of his worldview. He doesn’t fit in anywhere, making his suicide feel inevitable.

Yet, it’s still surprising. If you’d told me that Tony would kill Christopher one week and AJ would try to kill himself the next, I wouldn’t have believed you because it sounds like the kind of over the top melodramatic storytelling Chase usually avoids. However, he does it in such a way that it feels totally organic to the universe. AJ’s suicide is played cold, you observe it and can do nothing. His inability to actually do the deed is both a relief and darkly funny. Tony rescues him in a gutwrenching scene that lets us see Tony totally unguarded for perhaps the first time in the series. In this moment, he just wants AJ to live and it almost feels like we shouldn’t be watching this, it’s too intimate a moment.

The cut from the pool to AJ in the wheelchair, looking completely braindead, is one of the most powerful in the entire series. That jump tells us everything we need to know. Robert Iler has kicked up his game this season, having become essentially the second lead of the series. While the lengthy hiatuses between seasons may have hurt the series in some respects, it did give us the opportunity to see AJ go through this, he’s been brought to an age when he can have a legitimate crossroads in his life, and that’s riveting to watch.

There is no escape from the family, and AJ is the only character who seems to have faced up to the morality of what they’re doing. Meadow always seemed to be the smarter one, but in this episode we see her slipping back, dating Patrick Parisi, who may be a lawyer, but is still part of the world she belongs to. We haven’t seen much of her this season, but this development was a great way of subtly drawing her back in. We’ve always seen that she has a deep love for her family and places that above any objective moral judgments of what they do.

AJ’s suicide attempt brings up a lot of bad feelings. Tony, on some level, hates his son and feels that Carmela is the one who messed him up, made him soft. We see that come out in the Melfi scene, which also features Tony’s revelation about what he realized on the peyote, that our mothers are the bus drivers and we spend all our lives trying to get back on the bus. This is an interesting tie in to what Janice said back in “Soprano Home Movies,” that their mother was unable to accept the fact that her children were growing up and away from her. It’s a mess of trouble that is a perfect conundrum for Tony. He simultaneously hated what his mother was and hates Carmela for not being like her with AJ. And, with all his repeating of “poor you,” he’s becoming Livia.

This episode was really intense, and emotionally wrenching. The show is so tightly focused, pondering Tony’s legacy as he ends his reign. Things seem to be going to hell all around, Phil is out to get him, AJ is not doing well and Tony himself continues to burn his bridges. Two episodes out, I still have no idea how it’s going to end. Will AJ be Tony’s salvation, or just another failure? Will they actually war with New York or will it be averted yet again? Only one more week to get some answers.