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goodbye tony, hello john

    Somewhere David Chase is laughing at the uproar over his strangely ambiguous ending of one of television’s most revered shows, the HBO series The Sopranos. After winning numerous awards and critics acclaim, any ending to this benchmark series would have been controversial. However, Chase chose to make a statement about the Soprano’s strong family bond.

    In the end, sitting in that diner, Tony was surrounded by his immediate family, listening to music, eating fried onion rings and having a peak moment of joy. After all he’d been through in his job as a Mafia boss, and after all the killing and problems, all that mattered was his family, which, at that moment, were bonded together in love and peace. Tony says to AJ, who has become a whiny new-age freak, “Try to remember the times that were good.” As Meadow tries to parallel park, viewers are expecting the worst, but she finally goes into the diner to join her family. Nada–nothing happens. 
    Of course, there was that sinister looking guy at the counter, who got up and went to the bathroom. Was he a hitman who would come out of the bathroom blasting away with an automatic weapon? Or could he be a red herring? We’ll never know. Is Chase done with The Sopranos? Frankly, I think there may be a movie in the works that take the Soprano family beyond the series finale. Anything is possible. There is still plenty of fan momentum.

    The segment with Paulie and the cat has special significance. Paulie gets spooked when he sees the cat, that was brought back from the safe house, staring at a photo of Christopher. Later near the end, Paulie is outside sipping espresso, and that darn cat just lays down near him, like the cat is willing to except Paulie’s eccentricities. Cats are wise creatures.

    As a confirmed fan of the series, I’m sad to see it go, but it’s worthy of reviewing on DVD and like Six Feet Under on DVD, viewers will pick up more detail the second time around. The complex plots and gradual character development will also be more apparent during a second viewing. No matter how many times I’ve seen the Godfather 1,2, & 3, I still enjoy viewing it every couple of years. Classics never go out of vogue.

    As we said goodbye to Tony Soprano, we said hello to David Milch’s new series after his rollicking wild west work, Deadwood, John from Cincinnati–an existential story of a highly dysfunctional surfing family who is visited by a very strange and lovable guy named John, who is definitely not from Cincinnati.

    Okay, what gives Milch? Viewers are willing to accept that John is a mystical being who causes paranormal things to happen. Is he an extraterrestrial being like Mork, or an idiot? It’s like the poor guy is mentally disabled. In the opening scene, Linc (Matthew Perry), a surfing agent, who has come to sponsor Shaun, Mitch’s grandson, notices a strange guy standing nearby the surfing legend, Mitch Yost, who has just come out of the water. The stranger says to Mitch, you need to get back in the game.” “Go f… yourself,” Mitch replies. As the scene sets up the fact that the entire Yost family, except for Shaun, are acrimonious jerks, it suddenly occurred to me that these characters were not too much different from the lowlife characters who inhabited Deadwood.

    Bruce Greenwood plays the Yost family patriarch, Mitch. He’s bitter and ill-tempered over his son Butchie being a worthless junkie, and he is frustrated over his futile efforts to keep his grandson Shaun out of the surfing game.

    Rebecca De Mornay plays Mitch’s wife Cissy. She’s a sarcastic ##### who seems to hate her own husband’s acting like the Big Kahuna. Still, they have sex once in a while when she complains she not getting enough attention. Austin Nickels plays John Monad who comes into the Yosts’ life and changes everything.

    Ed O’Neill is a cast stand out as Bill Jacks, an eccentric retired police officer who helps the family. The Yosts’ family embarrassment, Butchie, is played with skillful outrage by Brian Van Holt. He takes John under his wing. When he asks John for more than $2,000, John manifests the cash. This and the fact that, since John came onto the scene, Mitch can levitate, and a dead bird came back to life gives us the impression that he’s not from this world. But does he have to say stupid stuff like, “The end is near?” Clearly, this show will grow on viewers.

    So, even with The Sopranos gone there will still be great Sunday viewing on HBO.