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The only thing that bothers me about Buscemi - and "bothers" isn't quite the right word, I mean it in the sense of "fascinates in a troubling way" - is the extent to which Tony B is hard to fathom - somewhat sphynx-like. But maybe that's the point: he's the element that nobody really understands, he does very unpredictable things. Sometimes it seems like he's really smart and good at manipulating others (eg, the way he completely controls the Tony/Tony/Chris relationship by making the other two compete to make jokes at each other's expense), other times he just seems like a mildly psychotic loser. What I think is clear is that at the start of the season Tony S thought he knows his cousin - and he keeps wanting to cling to that - but he's discovered that he doesn't really know him that well any more. And then Johnny Sack is acting weird as well - he's supposed to be the sly, smart, tactical one, but he's losing it as seen in the scene at the funeral last week. Although really I think the irony is that Johnny has done this before - see 'The Weight' - and in fact although Tony S has a temper, he usually manages to make 'business' decisions that aren't influenced by his emotions - so far.
It seems to me that the last two seasons have really been about Tony Soprano's refusal/inability to make therapy work for him. At times it's seemed as if Melfi is complicit in this (and she probably has been), but this season, I get the impression that Melfi has helped Tony make what ought to have been breakthroughs - except he can't face them. So in the episode with his father's mistress, we see Tony coming very close to having to deal with issues relating to how he sees women (mothers, lovers or both) - but at the end, he veers away and back into a comfy kind of macho mentality, telling the guys at the Bing about how hot this woman once was, knowingly feeding them and himself a reassuring myth. It's a form of self-destructiveness, and it involves dragging everyone else down too, as we saw in the latest episode: if Tony can't be happy and deal with his temper, neither can Janice. It's only a matter of time before this does affect 'the business'. |
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