{"id":7369,"date":"2004-05-02T21:33:06","date_gmt":"2004-05-02T21:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html"},"modified":"2004-05-02T21:33:06","modified_gmt":"2004-05-02T21:33:06","slug":"mid-season_sopranos_evaluation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html","title":{"rendered":"Mid-Season Sopranos Evaluation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So what do you think?<\/p>\n<p>I am usually one, during the course of this show, to remain in a state of perpetual confusion about the Mob stories. I can never remember who&#8217;s who <strong>especially<\/strong> when the New York families get involved. It&#8217;s pathetic.<\/p>\n<p>(Like with guy whose funeral was tonight. I&#8217;m going to have to sit down and make a chart to figure out who he belonged to, who had him killed and why anyone cared.)<\/p>\n<p>(And don&#8217;t even get me started on Deadwood. All those moustaches look exactly the same.)<\/p>\n<p>So, normally, I&#8217;m okay with the other, small &#8220;f&#8221; family sublots. I can tell them apart with ease. But even I am wondering just a bit about this season.<\/p>\n<p>An example&#8230;3\/4 of the way through tonight&#8217;s episode, I had to go upstairs to tend to Joseph. Meadow and her boyfriend were talking. I came down what seemed to me to be hours later. They were <strong>still<\/strong> talking. What?<\/p>\n<p>But, on the other hand, the weight of this season&#8217;s trope seems just terrifically heavy: everyone &#8211; every single one of these miserable people &#8211; is laboring under the most extreme delusions. Tony imagines himself a tough guy, a real live mobster, when actually he&#8217;s not (and I don&#8217;t mean he&#8217;s a sweet teddybear. I mean his just a weak jerk). Carmella &#8211; well, her fantasy is long-lived and seemingly unshakeable &#8211; that her lifestyle is deserved and  that it&#8217;s compatible with her proclaimed values. Meadow had clearly fallen tonight, with her speech to the boyfriend about the omerta in the old country. And it just extends to the rest of them, in subtle and obvious ways. <\/p>\n<p>To me, that&#8217;s overwhelming everything else this season &#8211; it&#8217;s like there is a big bubble over all of them that is slowly, slowly cracking. And I just want it to shatter, and see if Chase brings us any real consequences.<\/p>\n<p>(And by the way&#8230;did anyone else think Meadow&#8217;s boyfriend was inspired to propose by his sudden fear for his life, and the intuition that if he was part of the family, he couldn&#8217;t be harmed?)<\/p>\n<p>More serious matters tomorrow. Maybe. I am in the last stages of going over this manuscript, and it keeps me in such a state of constant fury, though, I dunno&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So what do you think? I am usually one, during the course of this show, to remain in a state of perpetual confusion about the Mob stories. I can never remember who&#8217;s who especially when the New York families get involved. It&#8217;s pathetic. (Like with guy whose funeral was tonight. I&#8217;m going to have to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Mid-Season Sopranos Evaluation - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Mid-Season Sopranos Evaluation - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"So what do you think? I am usually one, during the course of this show, to remain in a state of perpetual confusion about the Mob stories. I can never remember who&#8217;s who especially when the New York families get involved. It&#8217;s pathetic. (Like with guy whose funeral was tonight. I&#8217;m going to have to&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-05-02T21:33:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Mid-Season Sopranos Evaluation - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Mid-Season Sopranos Evaluation - Via Media","og_description":"So what do you think? I am usually one, during the course of this show, to remain in a state of perpetual confusion about the Mob stories. I can never remember who&#8217;s who especially when the New York families get involved. It&#8217;s pathetic. (Like with guy whose funeral was tonight. I&#8217;m going to have to&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2004-05-02T21:33:06+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html","name":"Mid-Season Sopranos Evaluation - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2004-05-02T21:33:06+00:00","dateModified":"2004-05-02T21:33:06+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/05\/mid-season_sopranos_evaluation.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Mid-Season Sopranos Evaluation"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}