hey, remember that show the sopranos? yeah. me too. i was a definite latecomer to it. i heard enough about it when it was on the air, but other than a few months in boston a few years back, i never had hbo, so my opportunities for keeping up with it were essentially nil, especially in that pre-itunes era. i eventually got around to watching the entire series straight through from beginning to end over a two week period about two years ago, shortly after the series had already ended. it's been a while since then, so over the past week, inspired by a stumbled-upon beverage, i went back & watched both parts of the final season, the one with that infamous final scene.

like i mentioned, i initially watched all six seasons of the show (with the split sixth season, sort of like seven seasons, but who's tallyin'?) straight through in a mad dash, so i was devouring a lot of character & story info at once. this time round, going in, i knew there'd be a ton of things i hadn't noticed or comprehended the first time through. i was definitely watching more from an entertainment perspective that first time through, so i was ready to analyze away & let the critic in me spill out this time. after all, with twenty-one episodes in the season, there's a lot of story packed in there.

take the soprano family. while i could care less about meadow going to college or carmela's spec house, the relationship between tony & a.j. during the last season is nothing short of awesome. as tony struggles to maintain his power as head of the dimeo crime family, a.j.'s struggling against a crushing depression that flies in the face of what tony thinks makes a "man." although our circumstances were less extreme & my dad worked at the post office, i couldn't help but think of my own struggles connecting with him when i watched them interact.

when the show was in its original run, there was an obvious fixation on "who's gonna get whacked this week?" in that final season, it takes seven episodes for anyone significant to get whacked & other than one other major whacking a few episodes later, the first half of the season's virtually whack free. looking back at how the season plays out, the lack of solid whacking during the first half definitely makes the second half whackings all that more powerful.

with less whacking, there's even more focus on the family than usual. sorry. i just wanted to use the words "whacking" & "focus on the family" in the same sentence. there's always been a focus on the soprano family, but in the final season, there's a lot of focus on how vito's coming out affects his family, how chris deals with his dead wife & new wife/baby, how paulie handles finding out who his real mom is, how bobby still struggles for respect even though he's tony's brother-in-law & the effects that johnny sack's prison sentence & cancer have on his family.

if you haven't seen the last two episodes yet & still want to, sorry but i'm going to speak to them now. you need to get with the times. it's been over two years since the last episode aired. in the penultimate episode, the scenes where the lupertazzi family quickly whack bobby & leave sil in a coma are epic. we spent eighty-four episodes getting to know them (but who's tallyin'?), so the raw violence of their deaths is SO powerful, especially with bobby, who's nice to a fault & has only killed one person in his life. as for the last episode & specifically the final scene, it's been analyzed to death, so i'm not going to get into all the symbolism & whatnot, but given two things--there's a sketchy dude who goes into the bathroom to tony's right shortly before the scene cuts to black & there was a scene in the opening episode of the second half of the season where bobby asks tony "you probably don't even hear it when it happens, right?"--i've decided that tony got whacked at the end of the episode. mystery solved.

#128 - i tallyin'?
snack: marinated mozzarella balls & boar's head beef salami
drink: sopranos chianti soda



with all that sopranos, i felt it appropriate to eat like a soprano. i would've picked up some gabba goul or made some lincoln logs if i knew what the hell either of them were, so instead, i picked up a tub of marinated mozzarella balls & a half pound of boar's head beef salami from the corner bodega. at first, i asked if they had capicola, not realizing that the dudes are muslim & don't serve any pork. my bad...& a happy ramadan to you, sir. instead, the deli dude suggested that i get some of the boar's head beef salami, so i did. i don't need to be eating pork anyhow. as for the marinated mozzarella balls, i made the decision to get them all by myself. my mom would've been quite proud of me.

beef salami's way different than regular salami. they aren't even close to the same thing. regular salami's spicy & sausagelike, all flecked with pork fat & herbs & spices. the beef salami's essentially a bunch of beef shaped like salami, with no spices or fatty deposits or anything built in. that doesn't mean i didn't like it though. it actually has a sweeter taste to it & when you wrap a slice around one of the mozzarella balls, the sweet beefy salami flavor melds with the oil & sun-dried tomato & spices of the mozzarella marinade. it's actually quite the delightful snack. in fact, i've already gone back to the bodega for more twice this week.

i came across the bottle of sopranos chianti soda last week whilst at eagle provisions, the polish market with a huge beer selection a few blocks from my place, up on 5th ave. it's one of three sopranos-themed sodas put out by hbo, along with the limencello & amaretto flavors. at first, i thought that the bottle, which has a 2006 HBO copyright on the back, might be some relic from the bush era, but the sopranos soda seems to still available for sale online, so i told myself that it was still relatively fresh. other than being italian soda, i'm not sure where the connection to the sopranos is, since i can't remember seeing anyone drink an italian soda at any point on the show. maybe i should check out the deleted scenes in the box set just to be sure.

i drank it during my first night of episodes, when nobody was getting whacked. it was a fitting beverage for the first half of the season...sort of. the first half was laid back, with the limited whacking & character exploration. the chianti soda was laid back as well, but in a less cool way. i've had my fair share of the archer farms (target) brand italian sodas & those things are the bomb. you'd think that a soda infused with the spirit of italian wine & gangsters would be a little more hardcore, but the sopranos soda's far from it. it was essentially like drinking a bottle of watery, over-sweetened juice with minimal carbonation. i hope i don't get whacked for saying this, but just like with david chase & tony's fate, i'm going to leave the other two sopranos soda flavors to the imagination. here's to hbo redeeming itself with the tru blood beverage, which will be available next monday. you'd better believe i'm going to drink hbo's blood.