And so, this is it: the end of another year of The Sopranos. And like the first season, Series 2 ends on a very sad note, opening several paths for later episodes to explore.
The whole thing starts with Tony trying to get his mother out of the way by giving her a stolen airline ticket he got from David Scatino (Robert Patrick, who makes one final appearance at the end of the episode). As it turns out, though, that will be the least of his problems, as he spends most of the show unconscious and/or in pain from food poisoning, which he unjustly blames on Artie. While he is in such a bad state, he experiences a series of weird dreams, including one where he's dead, one where he has sex with Dr. Melfi in her office and one, most shocking, where Pussy Bonpensiero, in the shape of a fish (a metaphoric image of his fate), reveals his being a rat. Consequently, Tony must get rid of one of his best friends before the FBI has enough evidence to arrest him. Hence a boat-ride on which he invites Paulie, Silvio and Pussy...
Like few other episodes of the series, Funhouse tries to fully enter the main character's conflicted psyche, which explains the bizarre, Twin Peaks-inspired fantasy scenes. In any other drama series (bar Six Feet Under), they would have looked far-fetched and pompous. Not so in The Sopranos, where they actually are the closest we will ever come to fully comprehend something about Tony's nature. The merger of explicit violence and suggestive dreams, verbal brutality and visual poetry, is one of the things that set the show apart from all dramas produced before and after it. The fact that Tony discovers the truth thanks to a dream is also a clear sign of how much the series owes to Greek tragedy, where similar events were quite common, and therefore of its aim to go beyond the conventions of mainstream serialized television.
For all its air of mystery, though, the show remains firmly rooted in the real world and the tragic events that are often associated to it. And despite the ending's predictability, one can't help but feel sorry (it is, after all, a character we have come to like) and unprepared as the inevitable bloodshed is preceded by a conversation so filled with tension it almost gets too overwhelming to watch. Much of that is due to Gandolfini and Pastore, the latter in particular departing from the show with one powerhouse of a performance. Both of them, however, are outsmarted by Nancy Marchand, who walks away with the entire episode despite being in only two scenes. Considering this is her final episode (she died before Season 3 went into production, which required a major rewrite of the main plot line), that's a fitting tribute to the extra something she added to the program's first two years. Farewell, little Livia.
The whole thing starts with Tony trying to get his mother out of the way by giving her a stolen airline ticket he got from David Scatino (Robert Patrick, who makes one final appearance at the end of the episode). As it turns out, though, that will be the least of his problems, as he spends most of the show unconscious and/or in pain from food poisoning, which he unjustly blames on Artie. While he is in such a bad state, he experiences a series of weird dreams, including one where he's dead, one where he has sex with Dr. Melfi in her office and one, most shocking, where Pussy Bonpensiero, in the shape of a fish (a metaphoric image of his fate), reveals his being a rat. Consequently, Tony must get rid of one of his best friends before the FBI has enough evidence to arrest him. Hence a boat-ride on which he invites Paulie, Silvio and Pussy...
Like few other episodes of the series, Funhouse tries to fully enter the main character's conflicted psyche, which explains the bizarre, Twin Peaks-inspired fantasy scenes. In any other drama series (bar Six Feet Under), they would have looked far-fetched and pompous. Not so in The Sopranos, where they actually are the closest we will ever come to fully comprehend something about Tony's nature. The merger of explicit violence and suggestive dreams, verbal brutality and visual poetry, is one of the things that set the show apart from all dramas produced before and after it. The fact that Tony discovers the truth thanks to a dream is also a clear sign of how much the series owes to Greek tragedy, where similar events were quite common, and therefore of its aim to go beyond the conventions of mainstream serialized television.
For all its air of mystery, though, the show remains firmly rooted in the real world and the tragic events that are often associated to it. And despite the ending's predictability, one can't help but feel sorry (it is, after all, a character we have come to like) and unprepared as the inevitable bloodshed is preceded by a conversation so filled with tension it almost gets too overwhelming to watch. Much of that is due to Gandolfini and Pastore, the latter in particular departing from the show with one powerhouse of a performance. Both of them, however, are outsmarted by Nancy Marchand, who walks away with the entire episode despite being in only two scenes. Considering this is her final episode (she died before Season 3 went into production, which required a major rewrite of the main plot line), that's a fitting tribute to the extra something she added to the program's first two years. Farewell, little Livia.