» 6-17: "Walk Like A Man" 2007.05.06 (recap) Options

[Freecat]

I am not surprised the screenwriter was cold. But I think it was really, really stupid of him. I think the screenwriter, as we've seen all along, is a self-absorbed, selfish jerk, actually. Sorry, but a writer ought to have a little bit of sympathy. it wasn't just that he told Chris to shut up but he did it with no compassion, and given that he should understand the trials of an addict, sorry, but i think he's a jerk. Yes, Christopher has abused him. So? I remember this same dude pretending to write while doing atari all day. he is no saint, but he's so smug and superios now he acts as though he's above it all. Even the way he answered the door. You'd think it was four a.m., not 11:30.

I'm not saying I don't understand his attitude. But I think his attitude was, apart from cold, really, really stupid. You just don't belittle a cornered, desperate man that you know carries a gun. I'm not justifying his murder though, I'm just saying i won't miss him. Christopher's shot people on impulse before. Christopher is not safe guy. Tony, no matter how desperate and angry, has a better lid on his temper. But this was totally in character for Christopher, and given that JT's been hit with a humanitas award by Chris, he ought to have glommed on that Chris lashes out when frightened. So he was cold, shallow and stupid, too. i kind of think the tv writers had fun writing him that way. :)

I totally missed Tony propositioning the stripper. What did he say/

[CasualWatcher9]

I didn't see it as a deadline issue. I saw it as "Don't tell me things you'll have to kill me for knowing." As for "cold"--Christopher is the same guy who hit him in the head with his Humanitas Award, a warm welcome is a little unlikely.

Exactly. And Chris would not "kill" him for knowing anything. Oh. Um... Wait.



If you've never dealt with "Christophers" you have no idea. Once, twice, three times... you try to help. After the fucking hundredth try... you don't answer the door.

Or you get "JT'd"...

[Sparafucile]

I knew Chrissy would either turn the gun on himself or on JT the minute the word "mafia" was uttered and I was still shocked when it happened. I don't think this was a particularly "mafia-style" killing, though (isn't execution-style through the back of the head, not the front?).

It was "Mafia-style" in the sense that it was very clean and professional -- one shot, dead on, no mess. Even though we know it wasn't planned in advance, the least prepossessing detective in Jersey would be able to identify it as the work of someone who gets paid to be good at this sort of thing. (Which is not to say all mob killings have such economy of means. The Bevilaqua and Pussy killings were intentional overkill.)

Agreeing with marty118; JT wasn't "cold" (not that a shit like Christopher would deserve any less). He wanted no part of Christopher's naming-names blather, because he knew that it would take Christopher ten minutes, tops, once sobered up, to recall that he'd told JT too much to allow him to live. JT had his fill of mob involvement a long time ago; he was desperate to terminate that conversation and get Christopher out of there, but it was too late. I really don't know how he could have made it out of that visit alive. Maybe the moment he compromised himself with the gambling losses, it was all going to lead to this head shot.

[lucit]

I have been reading posts for a while now, and I enjoy every single one of them! Tonight though, made me think of just how much Tony is his mother's son...of course he's not going to say he wants his son to follow in his footsteps...he's said it all along. Yes it makes him tear up, yes it makes him miserable....but then he wouldn't be a Soprano if he didn't look on the dark sid of things. As for Chris , it totally goes without saying that hes' made his bed. And he knows it. I mean I was sitting on the edge of my seat during his and JT's exchange. Chris was getting something out, venting to JT, and I think he has done that the whole time....even with Cleaver. Was the film not a total bitch-fest on Tony? And yes, Christopher and AJ are running at a parallel right now. Fortunate Son? They always have been.

[Freecat]

JT had his reasons for trying to shut Chrissy up but he was cold from the moment he opened the door. "What are you doing here? It's 11:30!" Give me a break.

This guy sent his girlfriend away so he could write. I understand that he didn't want Chris to say too much, but his tone of voice as he spoke to Chris was not compassiionate-- and that was stupid. JT was in deep. Since he was, it was in his interest to at least feign some concern for the guy melting down right in front of him. Instead he blathered cliches like "work the program" and "I'll call your sponsor' rather than even attempting to act like a sponsor (since Chris' was unavailable). Not answering the door wasn't an option-- Chris knew he was there.

Sorry, I just don't feel the least bit sorry for him. He was no better than Chrissy in terms of his character-- he wasn't a murderer but he was equally self-absorbed and irresponsible. I'm kind of happy to see the last of him.

Sure, he and Chrissy met in AA. But he chose to go to Chris for help when he needed help.

JT had only two choices-- abandon Chris' world altogether, not really an option with Cleaver about to go into distribution, or suck it up and make the best of it and pretend to be a friend to Chris/feign loyalty-- like all the other suckers who get caught up in the mob. Somehow, being the arrogant sob he is, he thought he could rise above those two choices.

no, he didn't 'deserve' to be shot. But it didn't surprise me and i'm not at all sorry.

[lucit]

I think it just shows Chris' character...how he went home and tried to straighten the shrubbery....make it right. It's never going to be. All his attempts to make it right are horribly askew. I believe he was trying to make it right somehow through JT, and of course we see how that went. I feel sorry for JT, cause he was an innocent bystander who had a gambling problem....come on!!

[exit16w]

In “Walk Like A Man,” there were numerous allusions to T’s (and society’s) outmoded notions of manhood (even the title hints at the underlying theme).

Don't forget Tony getting excited when AJ was flipping through the channels and came across a John Wayne movie...

And AJ's unenthusiastic response just reinforced the disconnect between the old school guys and the new generation.

This post has been edited by exit16w: May 7, 2007 @ 2:29 am.

[sdmaturin]

The tree did stay upright. I kept expecting it to fall... but it didn't, not even when he slammed the door.

Likewise, I have been waiting and waiting for Christopher to go off the deep end - talk to the Feds, get whacked, kill Tony and/or Paulie, but it never happens. He always manages to come up Milhouse. I thought for sure Christopher was a goner as early as season 2 and here he is still, a captain with a nice house, wife, and kids. Despite all the personal problems - his frustrated creativity, Adriana's death, the boozing, the drug use, the tension with Tony, the piles of murders - he still manages to get home at night.

AJ is about the age Tony was when he made his first kill, isn't he?

[Essence71]

I think this was my least favorite episode of the season. While I like to see the Sopranos as a mini-movie each week, this week's show I really felt the edges of One-Hour-Dramatic- Series and all of the limitations that it entails. The whole AJ subplot felt sort of tired. And he simply is not a very dynamic character. He's sort of coasting through life.

The real scene stealer in this episode was Paulie driving circles on Chris's front lawn.

I would have preferred less time on AJ in that first half hour and more time fleshing out the Arab/Fbi subplot.

On a side note, Frank Vincent called into an LA radio show a few weeks ago and said "when you see the last episode, you will be shocked." Well, I wonder, what kind of shock? Will it be similar to Jimmy Cann getting filled with a zillion bullets at the toll booths in the Godfather, or something anticlimactic like Tony moving to another state to retire?

[marty118]

Tony, no matter how desperate and angry, has a better lid on his temper.

<sarcasm on> Right, we saw that with Carm last week. What did she do again? Oh, yeah, refuse to give him money to bet with. <sarcasm off>

Seriously, though, Tony has a horrible, violent temper, and has had throughout the series. He hit Georgie, the bartender, in the head with the phone because he couldn't figure out how to use the hold button (and Tony was frustrated at his mother's not knowing how to use the phone). He hit Georgie in another episode with the cash register, causing permanent loss of hearing. He killed Ralphie ("All this over a horse?"). He beat up the guy who was sleeping with his ex-girlfriend, after telling him that everything was fine between them (and rememer Tony is married to another woman).

Tony controls his temper to the extent that he generally doesn't pick a fight with guys who are likely to win against him. But he lashes out in anger and frustration at "easy" targets. He is not a safe guy to be around.

As to the situation with JT--JT met Christopher in AA. They became friends. JT lost money gambling, and Christopher collected by dragging JT out of a class he was teaching, having him beaten, and forcing him to write the Cleaver script (and still collecting the debt). Later he hit JT In the head for no particular reason--he needed JT to tell Tony that the mob boss in the movie wasn't intended to be based on Tony.

Yes, it would have been smarter to have had a more sympathetic tone of voice with Christopher while still trying to keep him from spilling serious details. But my sympathies are entirely with JT, he was morally the equivalent of a hit and run victim in this whole storyline.

This post has been edited by marty118: May 7, 2007 @ 2:41 am.

[tropicus]

This episode was near-unbearable for me to watch. It was like an hour of concentrated nihilism. I kept flashing back to Melfi quoting Yeats: the center cannot hold. There really is no center supporting any of these people. Their families are superficial accoutrements, their friends are self-interested and untrustworthy, their luxuries and privilege bring them no happiness, they have no moral or spiritual framework to lean on. When Chris tells us that babies are the future, we don't believe him, because we know how little his child has really changed him. Everyone important in this episode is desperately unhappy to some degree or another, and none of them have any way out. Almost every scene seemed like a cry of rage against the universe, a sentiment which Tony more or less articulates directly to the viewer at the end of the Melfi scene. Is this all there is?

Chris in particular is just a shattered wreck of a man, and at this point I think the only question is how many lives is he going to bring down with him when he falls, as he has to very very soon. I think he's the only character who is completely beyond redemption. His killing JT struck me as a very true moment--it made such sense precisely because it made no sense at all. Chris lives in a cruel, amoral universe; why should he be anything but cruel and amoral?

The AJ arc is interesting. I really do wonder where they're going with it. I won't be happy if he finds his way into the business in the final episodes, but I don't think that's going to happen. Even now he's a long way from being plausible in that role. He didn't even participate in the violence in this episode any further than having his name dropped as a deterrent and briefly holding the struggling victim down. As usual, he was more or less totally passive. AJ has no leadership skills, no initiative, no prior background in living a violent lifestyle, and above all, no self-confidence. He's never evidenced any of these things and I don't see him finding them with four hours to go. My guess is that they'll go one of two radically different ways with him--like Jackie Jr, he will attempt to play the mobster and botch it, leading to a tragedy which sets the final climax in motion. Or else he'll weather his brief exposure to the reality of mob life by rejecting it, pulling his life together and simply becoming a normal kid, allowing his redemption to be the one ray of hope shining through the overall blackness of this season. Having said that, I'm sure Chase will completely surprise me. But I don't think AJ is going to become the next Tony--it's just a little too neat and symmetrical as plotting goes. Also, a major theme of this show is that the mob is all but dead and no longer really viable as an organization. Concluding with the next generation taking it up would contradict this point.

One opportunity I feel this show has missed is any exploration of a dynamic between AJ and Chris. How does AJ feel about the man who up until now has fulfilled the role of the son his father truly wanted? Is he jealous? Might he at one point have seen Chris as a potential role model? How does Chris feel about his adopted father's feckless biological son? It seems like there might have been some dramatic potential here, but it never came to pass. Have these two ever had any significant interaction in the show's whole run?

As a side note, I'm sort of happy that everyone here isn't complaining about AJ's rudeness or obnoxiousness in this episode as has often been the case after past episodes. I've always found this tendency unfortunate because AJ seems very much to me like a realistic portrayal of a very unhappy young man. Surely many of us have been roughly where he is emotionally at some point in their lives (I certainly was), and I'm sure we weren't any more pleasant to be around at the time. Looking down on him or disliking him is totally to miss the point of the character. Iler really sold his misery in this episode and I'm glad people accepted it for what it was and resisted the urge to cluck.

Tony just seemed on fire during his scene with Melfi; it was really effective.

I'm not necessarily proud of this, but seeing Little Paulie go through the window was the highlight of the season for me.

You know, if there's one group of people more vapid and wretched than mobsters, it's frat boys. Ugh.

Can we have some more Ro in this season? Just sayin'.

This post has been edited by tropicus: May 7, 2007 @ 2:58 am.

[marty118]

AJ is about the age Tony was when he made his first kill, isn't he?

AJ is "a few months short of 21" (he's not drinking age yet). Tony was 22.

[Freecat]

Sorry, but Tony really does have a better lid on his temper. He YELLED at Carm. He didn't hit her or put a bullet through her.

We've seen Chris shoot people in anger/throw them through glass windows more than once. Chris is a loose cannon. Tony killed Ralphie, yeah, but Ralphie was sick SOB who'd beaten his pregnant girlfriend to death for no particular reason, and probably killed pie-oh-my too. I'm not saying Tony doesn't HAVE a temper, just that he controls it better than Chris.

JT was a tool. You don't borrow money from mobsters and go into business with them and expect it to be just a stop on the way in your career. He acted above his mob buddies, but he was happy to sponge off them when he needed them. If there's any moral lesson to be made here it's don't make "use" of the mob if you're not prepared to go through with it. Hit and run? sure, maybe. But i still blame JT for his attitude when Chris showed up. He was laughably stupid the way he talked to him and condescended to him.

[BeatBoxinJagoff]

Christopher had the Arab's phone number stored on his cell phone. Not a very smart move.

[SwampThing87]

As a side note, I'm sort of happy that everyone here isn't complaining about AJ's rudeness or obnoxiousness in this episode as has often been the case after past episodes. I've always found this tendency unfortunate because AJ seems very much to me like a realistic portrayal of a very unhappy young man. Surely many of us have been roughly where he is emotionally at some point in their lives (I certainly was), and I'm sure we weren't any more pleasant to be around at the time. Looking down on him or disliking him is totally to miss the point of the character. Iler really sold his misery in this episode and I'm glad people accepted it for what it was and resisted the urge to cluck.

He is a douchebag though. Like Meadow (although I grant she has improved slightly) he is a horrendously spoilt, sometimes sadistically cruel little shit. The difference with this episode is that he is depressed, which could serve as an excuse. The rest of the time, he is a horrendous person that I have no sympathy for.