Setsuled's Journal

I didn't expect The Sopranos to be the sort of show where a major revelation in a season finale would come from a talking fish, but more surprising is how nicely it works. It's a dream sequence, and the fish is speaking with the voice of a man Tony Soprano, a mob boss, hasn't consciously realised is betraying him by working with the feds. The dream sequences, which recur throughout the episode, nicely tie together Tony's depression with his food poisoning that may have come from some seafood he had the night before--he wakes up thinking he's looking into a frightening existential void, then realises the feeling is coming from his stomach and rushes to the bathroom puking and farting. This rather nicely allows Tony's emotional issues the dignity of not being treated as holy.

I love how the show takes the piss out of itself without being post modern--though maybe it was one writer needling another when a revelation in one episode, that Tony is told he is his own worst enemy, is pointed out as being a cliché in another episode. The nice thing about this is that it avoids reducing the characters to clichés even as we're given universal truths to work on. There's a noir-ish aspect to it of the validity of predestination as a concept being put to question by contrarian behaviour and dialogue, accompanied by the feeling that destiny and stereotypes may be unavoidable whatever we say or do. Tony's not just a mobster, he's a family man, he has friends and compassion, he gets food poisoning. But maybe all these other things do is prove he's just a mobster and none of it really means anything. The second season of this show was a lot better than the first.

Twitter Sonnet #428

Sustained sprinkler reversal grassed the air.
Mountainous ninja juggernauts tranqed God.
Hellish shortening shatters the software.
Cake in the computer isn't so odd.
Hard tongues hammered ring in a mad pile.
Wall length grins will send sunset inside Oz.
Heirloom tree limbs deaden round cloud smile.
Springtime's top hat shrubs green to great applause.
Readers decide which words are the verbs here.
Breaking skirts sequin gaseous armour.
The ace sword cups wands for pentacled beer.
Diamonds spade hearts clubbing 2D glamour.
Duckish drizzle absorbs the grass boundary.
Hourglass digits describe the foundry.