Treading water

Figures, doesn't it? Just a few days after filing a piece for next week's magazine in which I shower praise on the West Wing team for how they're wrapping up the show, we get an episode entirely devoted to housekeeping and marking time. Meanwhile, The Sopranos yields the first clunker of what has so far been an absolute blue-chip season (unlike many, I was totally on board with the Artie and Vito-centric episodes of recent weeks). Not that they didn't both have their moments...

The West Wing 7.21 "Institutional Memory"
I liked the flashforward that began this season, but I'm annoyed that the writers feel forced to play connect the dots: Yeah, it's cool that C.J. and Danny ultimately get hitched and have kids and that Will Bailey ends up in the House, but devoting the penultimate episode to explaining how both things happen is really kind of a waste. We've barely seen C.J. all season, and Will hasn't been written at all well since Sorkin left the show--the John Wells team never got a handle on him. Still, some scenes were worth savoring: Xander Berkeley just rocked as the sex-bomb billionaire, and Danny's big speeches were really moving. His monologues were a little more befitting of a Herskovits-Zwick show than TWW, but I can buy the character sounding that way when he drops the snark and gets sincere. This could have been a great episode if they'd just dropped the Will story (which the writers were clearly uninterested in, judging by the lack of closure), lost the scene with Toby's ex and devoted a lot more time to C.J.'s professional hand-wringing. Oh well...

The Sopranos 6.09 "The Ride"
Not an inappropriate title, since the episode went up and down, was too fast in some places and too slow in others, and had stomach-turning elements along with thrilling ones. And, like many a second-class rollercoaster, it kind of felt like a waste of time when all was said and done. I really dug the playful energy of Chris and Tony stealing the wine from the bikers, but was none too pleased when it turned out to be just a longwinded setup for the famous deleted scene from "Long Term Parking", which was really wooden and mannered--Imperioli's a fine actor, but I swear, it kinda looked like Chrissy was laughing instead of breaking down when telling T about Adriana being a rat. The Paulie plot got way too hamfisted with the theme about the mob being left behind by an increasingly homogenized America, and Bobby and Janice seemed to be there just to fulfill some sort of quota.

And yet...we're finally getting some much-needed follow-up on Ade's demise, plus more hints that Carm is starting to see through Tony, something I've long predicted will play a big role in how the show comes to an end. The combination of Chris's relapse with his attempts to move forward didn't seem overly forced, and it fit well with the series' overall treatment of how the past informs the present. And those heroin scenes...damn. A late friend of mine who was quite the dragon chaser used to say that he grew to fetishize the needle so much that no sexual experience could ever get his cock harder than it got when he would shoot up. Chris' gutter wallow was one of very few movie/TV scenes I've ever encountered that managed to convey that aspect of junkiedom (Travolta shooting up in Pulp Fiction is the only other one to come to mind immediately), and it's always a treat when the show gets so cinematic. Even when it sucks, The Sopranos always finds a way to remind us why it's the Best Goddamed Drama Series of All Time.