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<h1 id="so-much-for-suspense">So Much for Suspense</h1>
<ul class="post-metadata">
<li><time datetime="2006-03-20">20 March 2006</time></li>
<li><a href="/tags/watching/" class="post-tag">watching</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Over the last 24 hours, Ive gotten hundreds of hits off of a pack of googlers looking for spoilers for the current season of <a href="/the_sopranos_season_6/">The Sopranos</a>. Which is odd. Here I was trying to be all scrupulous about not giving away the big thing that happened at the end of episode 1, and everybody else in the world seems to be looking for the scoop on the rest of the season.</p>
<p>This is a phenomenon that kinda baffles me. Do you guys read the end of a novel first? I know there are folks who do; I know people who cant bear the suspense, and so have to know how it turns out before they begin. But the suspense is the majority of the pleasure for me — wondering if I can work out the puzzle before its solved, and, in fact, really hating it when I can. Finding out from an outside source how something turns out can entirely destroy the pleasure in the text for me.</p>
<p>That said, I do love to speculate about a text-in-progress; speculation below the fold.</p>
<p>This weeks episode was a vast improvement on the last; it had an actual structure and coherence, it allowed its characters to do things other than say “hi, what have you been up to?”, and it took us back into Tonys psychic terrain, the most fruitful arena for the shows exploration. The episode wasnt quite as evocative as some of the dream-sequence episodes in earlier seasons, but nonetheless, theres something fascinating about it. Its not just that Tony-in-a-coma has lost his identity, becoming, however unwillingly, “Kevin Finnerty” (and was it really necessary for the writers to telegraph the “infinity” joke?) — its that Tony-in-a-coma wasnt Tony to begin with. Hes Anthony, successful defense contractor in the area of precision optics, with a wife and kids back home who bear some of the characteristics of Carmela and Meadow and A.J., but who, finally, arent them at all. This doubled desire for escape from the self — first, the unacknowledged leap into an alternate-universe Tony, and then, the Freudian parapraxis of the slip into Kevin, a slip thats ostensibly undesired but that he doesnt struggle terribly hard against — is puzzling, and promises some interesting room for exploration, assuming Tony wakes up.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the episode also did a fairly good job of suggesting the impending struggle to fill the vacuum of power Tonys evacuation has left behind. Im still with <a href="/the_sopranos_season_6/">Jason</a> — the series went into a very rapid decline after its first couple of seasons, and the producers probably should have stuck with the original plan of ending after three (or was it four?) seasons* — but Im hoping that the show manages to maintain an intereresting narrative this go-round.</p>
<p></p>
<p>*Though I do agree with Jason that The Sopranos is no longer the best show on TV, Im unconvinced that Six Feet Under was really its replacement. Much as I loved the <a href="/six_feet_under_now_six_feet_under/">series finale</a>, that season (and, if you ask me, the one before it) had been a pretty long, hard slog to get there. Id insist, by contrast, that the best show on TV is <a href="http://www.hbo.com/thewire">The Wire</a>, which has consistently improved over the three seasons its been on the air, and which is far and away the best exploration Ive seen of the grey areas of crime and crime-fighting — not just the good guys who do illegal things in pursuit of a greater good, but the bad guys who do illegal things in pursuit of a greater good, too. The first two seasons are out on DVD; if you havent seen it, put it on your list.</p>
<ul class="links-nextprev"><li class="links-nextprev-prev">← Previous<br> <a href="/electrapress-moving-forward/">ElectraPress, Moving Forward</a></li><li class="links-nextprev-next">Next →<br><a href="/catching-up-with-the-rest-of-the-world/">Catching Up with the Rest of the World</a></li>
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