Long time, no blog.
My bad.
This has been on my mind for quite a while, so it's good to finally get it on the record. I'm turning State's Evidence on something big here, and I may have to go into the Witness Protection Program like any Goodfella should ...
I'm fascinated by what I'm calling "Sopranos Syndrome." Gandolfini and his gangs of Guidos have combined to make some of the best writing (it's ugly, and it's evil, and it's cynical, but it's pretty serious about showing how spiritually empty that kind of "life" is ...) in television history come alive (by, often, falling gruesomely, heavily, trans-culturally dead) in vividly self-indulgent, nerve-numbingly neo-pagan, blood-red detail, and it seems that the only problem anyone at HBO has had with this wildly successful cash-cow of a show is a two-parter: it can't last forever, and it can't be on 24 hours a day. Poor little programming executives and their Entertainment Industrial Complex dilemmas, right?
No need to cry from them anytime soon. They found a way around their troubles. Around the clock Jersey Mafia intrigue was too much to manage, so how could they capitalize on the country's appetite for capo-talespinning? Hello, Sopranos Syndrome!
First, there was the second incarnation of the Sopranos: _Deadwood_. It's _The Sopranos_ done in wild west style.
Same profanity-dense dialogue, same gratuitously amoral sexual depravity, same creatively horrific exhibitions of callously nonchalant violence-- all the "good" stuff Sopranos fans expect, but it comes complete with its own iambically-pentametered, curiously stiff and formalized, King James Bible-saturated vocabulary and lots (LOTS) of mud in which to shift around within the world "devoted to destruction" by a scheming crime-lord from the comforts of his liquor and prostitute-funded sanctum sanctorum. Oh, yeah. There's plenty of heroin-rich laudenum guzzling and low rent opium den action, too.
Now, we're being treated to _The Sopranos_ version of _Batman Begins_, and it, evidently, takes HBO AND the BBC to put it all together. What is this show? It's not a "what." It's a where: _Rome_.
Forget the East Coast vs. West Coast rap wars. Talk about "old school"! This is _The Godfather_, B.C. These bone thugs are nothing but dry bones in the catacombs today, but, it seems, they livened things up with lots of death and dismemberment "back in the day," too. Evidently, Rome also afforded its youth "culture" plenty of opportunities for training in "classical" techniques of hash-pipe-puffing and more under-aged and unwed sexual activity in a given week than in any given half season of _Friday Night Lights_ and/or _The O.C._. Whoduhthunkit, huh?
The character, Vorenus, is being developed, clearly, to be understood as The Original O.G., the Capo de Capo Tutti Numero Uno-- Godfather Number One. Titus Pullo is an interesting amalgam of Sonny, Michael AND Duvall as Consigliere, all rolled into one. The saga continues in the alleyways and dens of iniquity while, just as in the days of _Deadwood_-era "robber barons" and contemporary abuses of governmental privilege, the "real criminals" are the untouchable rich, powerful and politically-connected. Same song, different verse.
Speaking of "all rolled into one," the climactic scene of the most recent _Rome_ episode looked "for good and all" like nothing less than a quick-- cut the chase and get right to the hacking and slashing-- variation on the theme of _Gangs of New York_ (or is it a reference to the news-team gangfight in _Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy_?!). No kidding! The cross-eyed crazy, mayhem-is-inevitable-and-honorable "rationale" which we thought might have originated with Butcher Bill is pre-figured here as the same kind of "wisdom" honored and followed as no less barbaric-and-yet-oddly-somehow-accepted-by-the-participants-as-essentially-civilized-and-sensible to the lauded citizens of Rome as it was to the early ethnically-pre-occupied denizens of old Manhattan.
What is the upshot? The more things stay crazy and self-excusing, the more they stay the same.
How many Sopranos does it take to keep HBO singing all the way to the bank? At least three for now. I have no doubt that a modern-day Moscow or futuristic Mafia on the Moon show or an ongoing series "based on" an _L.A. Confidential_/Mulholland Falls_/_Hollywoodland_ knock-off will be ready to drop right into the timeslot Tony and the Tortellini-guzzlers will be vacating after this last season.
Someone will offer HBO a marketable, makeable treatment, and it will be an offer they can't refuse.
Recapping the "Mobsters in Therapy" motif: for more fun with the Mob on Meds, see ...
- _Mad Dog & Glory_ ('93) [Bill Murray thugs around with DeNiro playing against type]
- _Gun Shy_ ('00) [under-rated, under-viewed, and under-appreciated]
- _Analyze This_ ('99) [of course, even though it gets stretched a bit thin by the end]
- _The Whole Nine Yards_ ('00) [if only for the Tony Bennett cameo]
Labels: Sopranos Syndrome
posted by Tim Stark @ 9:14 PM
