“Made In America”

“The Sopranos” Finale, Ten Years Later

***Spoiler Alert! This piece spoils pretty much everything that happens in The Sopranos finale! Beware!***

There’s a scene early in the The Sopranos’ series finale, “Made In America”, where the characters attend the funeral of Bobby Baccalieri, Tony Soprano’s gentle, genial, guileless capo who was brutally murdered by a rival crime family’s hitmen in the previous episode. A.J. Soprano becomes incensed when a number of the attendees start discussing Jennifer Hudson and Dreamgirls. “You people are fucked. You’re living in a dream. And you still sit here talking about the fucking Oscars? ‘What rough beast slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?’…The world, don’t you see it? I mean, Bush let al-Qaeda escape into the mountains, Then he has us invade some other country?…It’s like, America. I mean, this is still where people come, to make it. It’s a beautiful idea. And what do they get, bling? And come on for shit they don’t need and can’t afford.”

This is not anywhere close to an original idea, and A.J. is more performing critical thought and awareness than actually engaging in it, but it sets the tone for the rest of the episode. In fact, most of the episode (a lot more of it than you remember if you haven’t watched the show in a while) is spent on A.J.’s desire to be a more woke capitalist consumer. After his SUV goes up in flames he states his desire to start riding mass transit so he can help the country wean itself off foreign. Later he develops a cockamamie scheme to join the Army so he can learn to fly and become Donald Trump’s helicopter pilot (yes, really). Why? Because, as A.J. puts it, “this country is in crisis”.

This finale is one last look at the state of the Soprano family, who they are after all they’ve been through these six seasons, and how they are, as the title suggests, truly made in America.

Being a proud American requires accepting a whole lot of self-contradictions and paradoxes. We live here now because our ancestors engaged in the systematic destruction of the Native Americans. Human enslavement was enshrined into our constitution because most of our founders believed black people were not humans. Our military has often acted as an imperialistic force to exert our will onto the world around us. And yet we’re the greatest country on earth, right? We sit as the most powerful country in the history of the world, but wish to ignore how we got here, what it took, the callous disregard for suffering that rests at the core of the American story, rotting us from the inside out.

Being a proud member of the Soprano family requires a similar sort of self-delusion. Carmela, Meadow, A.J., they all know exactly how Tony makes his money. They’ve been to the hospital rooms and funerals. They’ve had their property tossed dozens of times by cops acting on search warrants. They’ve come into contact with the financial and psychological ruin wrought on those who’ve come into Tony’s orbit. They avoid asking certain questions to maintain a certain plausible deniability, but deep down, they know.

Yet they live in his big house. They drive the cars he pays for. They go to college and law school on his dime. They wear fancy clothes and eat at fine restaurants because the money he brings in affords them that lifestyle. Why ask too many questions? Living comfortably is nice. Why fuck it up for yourself by knowing too much?

Eventually, A.J. is bribed out of his desire to join the Army. His father uses his connections to get him a cushy job with a production company, and buys him a beautiful new BMW to boot. Why a BMW? Because A.J. wants to reduce his dependence on foreign oil, he makes his parents promise, “No SUV”.

There’s a dread hanging over the finale, a lingering feeling that despite the cars and the houses and riches, despite coming out of a conflict with the New York crew in one piece, that all of this doesn’t quite end well for Tony. After quickly finishing “gangster business” in the first half of the episode, the back half follows Tony as he visits what’s left of his inner circle since the brief war took a number of his closest friends. Each interaction serves as a harbinger for possible destinations for Tony.

There’s Janice, his sister, now a widow after Bobby’s death, alone in a mansion with children who despise her. There are dinners with his children, who through choice and circumstance are doomed to stay in their father’s orbit despite his stated desire for them to get as far away from him and his work as possible, continued complicity with this disease. There’s a sit-down with his lawyer, who all but guarantees that indictments are just over the horizon. There’s a meeting with Paulie, who, after accepting a promotion to a job that he firmly believes is cursed, is left alone at once-lively hang-out spot Satriale’s, haunted by the ghosts of all his compatriots lost in this line of work he’s chosen.

And then Tony goes to visit Uncle Junior, who has been slowly losing his mind for years. Tony hasn’t seen his uncle in over a year, ever since Junior shot him in a demented, confused haze. Junior now lives in a state mental hospital, spending his days gazing out at the birds that come to rest on the branch just outside the window in the common room. Tony starts by attempting to conduct some business, chasing after some money Junior can’t remember where he stashed, but soon comes to realize that Junior is completely gone, his brain swallowed whole by dementia and senility. Tony gently tries to remind Junior who he is, that he ran north Jersey with Tony’s father, that he was a successful boss, that he was somebody. Junior smiles, detached, wistfully responding, “That’s nice”, then returns to his birds. Tony can’t bear the sight, and quickly retreats from the room. This is just too much.

Tony wants to make it through this. He wants to survive to enjoy grandchildren and retire with grace and dignity. He wants to believe that everything is going to be okay, that all of this pain and strife was for something, for himself and for his progeny. But that option isn’t presented to him. There are children who can’t escape his gravitational force. There’s death, there’s incarceration, or there’s decrepitude to the point that he can’t even enjoy the fruits of your labor. Eventually, it all comes crashing down.

So Tony goes to a diner with his family. He sits down to enjoy the meal, scrolls through the jukebox. Yet something isn’t quite right. He can’t find peace. As “Don’t Stop Believin’” blares through the speakers and his wife and children arrive one by one, Tony can’t stop looking over his shoulder, probing the room, scoping out his surroundings for potential existential threats. Maybe they’re there, maybe they’re not. Maybe Tony gets to live another day, to try again for something better. Maybe. Or maybe not. And that’s what matters.

Or maybe it doesn’t matter at all. Maybe it’s too late. Maybe Tony is too far gone to be redeemable, that whether he dies that night in Holsten’s or forty years down the road surrounded by a large, healthy, fruitful Italian family, the damage to his soul has been done. This is who he has chosen to be, and because of it he will never be at peace.

Either way, given all he’s seen, Tony seems resigned to his fate. He’s given up resisting. This is his life. This is the way it has to be. What other choice does he have?

It’s difficult to watch “Made In America” and ignore how it resonances in 2017, least of all because Trump gets name-checked twice over the course of the hour. There’s an overwhelming sense in the episode that there’s a price for the way these characters, these Americans, live. Eventually a debt must be paid for so blithely stepping over others for personal gain. Some call it karma, or cosmic retribution, but maybe in the end it’s just business. You fuck others, they fuck you. Nobody bats 1000, nobody is immune. That day is coming. That bill is coming due. The only question left is how hefty of a price will it be.

In this context, it’s impossible not to view the ascendance of Donald Trump as a national debt payment, the price of living the way we’ve chosen to live for so long. When intellectualism and thoughtfulness are demeaned as weak and fragile traits, we elect leaders who lack intellect and thought. When a country refuses to acknowledge its history of racism and bigotry, we elect leaders who are openly racist and bigoted. When our leaders act around the world with blithe and brutal disregard for human and then tell the public that it is not only our right or our privilege, but our duty to conduct ourselves in such a manner, we elect leaders who act with blithe and brutal disregard for human life.

And now we can find no peace.

This was not the way it had to be. There was no natural momentum that led our country down this path. It was the result of countless conscious choices, active decisions that made us who we are.

Is it too late for us? Is this just who we are? Or do we have the capacity for change? These questions we face as a nation are the sorts of questions we are left with when the screen suddenly cuts to black at the end of The Sopranos. The older we get, the more we accept as unchangeable, but is it really? At what point do we say it doesn’t have to be this way, that enough is enough?

Making that change, in our selves, in our lives, in our families, in our country, is difficult work. It involves actively accepting the less-than-savory aspects of who we are, of who we’ve become, is hard. It involves shattering long held illusions, disavowing the fairy tales and myths we tell in service of comfort.

It’s hard, but it’s not impossible. As long as we’re alive, there’s still time to change. We can be better. Even for a people as corrupt and corroded as Tony Soprano, there’s still time. We’re never too far gone.

But we can’t stop believing, as Journey implores us at the end of the episode. Because the moment we give up it all may cut to black, and we’ll be left with nothing but the silence.