The Sopranos: The Guts to Stay a Comedy?

[NO SPOILERS AHEAD: I haven't seen or read anything about what's going to happen in the final season, which starts on Sunday. There are spoilers about the previous seasons, though.]

The Sopranos, certainly one of the greatest series on TV ever, has always been a comedy. I don't just mean that it's so often funny. Rather, the flaws of its hero put him into incongruous positions. And unlike a cheap sitcom — Hetero bachelor has to pretend to be gay! Loutish mother-in-law emasculates man in front of his hetero work buddies! White man tries to act black! — the incongruities make fun of our own foibles: Our reliance on babble (psycho-, business-, family-), the irrational and even silly roots of actions with big consequences, our inability to control the character of our children. With a perfect sense of timing, the show then beats us up for accepting the comedy by reminding us of the thuggishness of the protagonists. We are, like the Mafiosi cast, too easily amused.

Three women in the show are at the heart of the audience's shared dilemma. Carmela, Dr. Melfi, and Meadow all know that their own amusement is based on moral depravity from which they benefit. Tony's issues are more emotional and self-centered: How can he get past his mother's rejection? How can he maintain his social position? He's capable of tenderness and connection, but they don't surface as ethical issues. But those three women all face stark ought's. Carmela benefits from Tony's depravity exactly in the ways that Tony does: Her comfortable life and her social position rest on rot. Meadow has left most of the material trappings, but she knows that she's gotten as far as she has because her father is a monster. Worse, she loves a fallen father who loves her. Dr. Melfi gets the least out of it: A thrill, an interesting case, a flirtation. She also has the easiest rationalization — maybe she can turn him — although her own psychiatrist keeps telling her that it doesn't hold water.

All three of these women are capable of tragedy in a way that Tony and his crew are not. Tony certainly can suffer, and there's a good chance that he will in this final season. After all, the previous season, ended with a warm Sopranos family scene, a joke on the audience's expectations. Where was the whacking? This final season is therefore unlikely to end as comedy. The domestic tranquility of the previous season I think mitigates towards ending this season with the disruption of that happy family tableau.

So, the series, I'm afraid, will not have the courage to end as a comedy. I worry that David Chase will see tragedy as the more important ending to his Shakespearean drama. The temptation to bring it to a climax by pitting family members against one another — Meadow vs. AJ, with Carmela giving up her struggle towards ethical renunciation is, I think, the most likely path — will probably be just too strong.

And that would be a missed opportunity for this great series. The Sopranos as a comedy has been about the fallibility not just of the oafish Mafiosi, but about every character we meet. It's reveled in imperfection. Every character has a little bit of good, although even that can be absurd — Paulie Walnuts loves his mother so much that he'll kill her aged rival. The one exception is Tony's mother, the show's only pure monster, and she is a psychological monster, not a moral one. Ending the show tragically would say that a world based on imperfection cannot stand. Righteousness will finally have its day. Ethics and the ought ultimately reign. But comeuppance would be a letdown, a repudiation of the themes that have made The Sopranos so good: Ethics may judge us, but we're guided by pettier concerns. Weakness is a more powerful force than power. And, it's not simply that there's humanity in each of us. Rather, we are all ridiculous, every one of us.

Well, we shall see. I've been thoroughly wrong all the way through this series, which is one reason I love it.