Saturday, April 29, 2006

Sopranos's "Luxury Lounge" episode

Here are the best observations I read about last week's episode of the Sapranos:

[Luxury Lounge] goes along with the general season theme of people seeing how their lives could have been, while being dissatisfied with their own, rightfully so or not. People have mentioned Tony/Finnerty, Vito in NH, and Chris in the movie business, but there is also Carmela having to imagine life without Tony's protections/money and seeing Angie Bompinsero running her own business. In each case however, family lets the person down. Tony is shot by his Uncle, Carmela's father and husband let her down as far as assisting with her spec house, Vito's cousin wants him dead, and Tony does not support Chris's movie ambitions. Meanwhile, Artie, Barone Jr., Eugene, and Ray Curto either are dissatisfied but straight or try to become so, and all end up hurt or dead."
Moreover, when Christopher meets Lauren Bacal, he mistakes the title of her first movie as "The Haves and Have Nots." It was "To Have and Have Not." In Hollywood, Christopher was very much the covetous Have Not, driving him to mug Bacal of her gift basket, the contents of which seemed a lot less grand in the cold light of New Jersey and Tony.

Finally, the seen where Artie shoots the rabbit in his garden is another of the show's use of animals as symbolism, such as the bear representing Tony and the family of ducks that sent Tony in his first anxiety attack. In the case of rabbit, this bunny represented Benny. The bunney was taking Artie's stuff at home. Benny was hording in on Artie's hostess/sex object at work.