The Sopranos: Season 4

Product Description

Sopranos, The: The Complete Fourth Season (DVD)

It’s tough times in Jersey for Tony Soprano. The sluggish economy hasn’t been good for the family business…and the ducks aren’t coming back anytime soon. HBO presents Season Four of this hit drama series that follows the life and times of the New Jersey mob boss. In addition to taking a hit from the downturn in the economy–which has had an adverse impact on his supposedly recession-proof businesses–Tony finds himself dealing with a wife who is constantly on his case and increasingly unhappy with their marriage; the absence of trusted capo Paulie (he’s in jail) and ascension of nephew Christopher as acting family capo; the impending RICO trial of his Uncle Junior; the continued irritations caused by his sister Janice; and the ongoing growing pains of his daughter Meadow and son Anthony Jr. James Gandolfini heads up the superb ensemble cast.

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Carmela to Tony: “Everything comes to an end.” True enough, Mrs. Sope, but on The Sopranos, the end comes sooner for some than others. Though for some the widely debated fourth season contained too much yakking instead of whacking, and an emphasis on domestic family over business Family, what critic James Agee once said of the Marx Brothers applies to The Sopranos: “The worst thing they might ever make would be better worth seeing than most other things I can think of.” And in most respects, The Sopranos remains television’s gold standard. The fourth season garnered 13 Emmy nominations, and subsequent best actor and actress wins for James Gandolfini and Edie Falco as Tony and Carmela, whose estrangement provides the season with its most powerful drama, as well as a win for Joe Pantoliano’s psychopath Ralph. The season finale, “Whitecaps,” was a long-time-coming episode, in which Carmela at last stands up to “toxic” Tony, and “Whoever Did This” was the season’s–and one of the series’–most shocking episodes.

Other narrative threads include Christopher’s (Emmy nominee Michael Imperioli) descent into heroin addiction, Uncle Junior’s (Dominic Chianese) trial, an unrequited and potentially fatal attraction between Carmela and Tony’s driver Furio, and a rude joke about Johnny Sack’s wife that has potentially fatal implications. Other indelible moments include Christopher’s girlfriend Adriana’s projectile reaction to discovering that her new best friend is an undercover FBI agent in the episode “No Show,” Janice giving Ralph a shove out of their relationship in “Christopher,” and the classic “Quasimodo/Nostradamus” exchange in the season-opener, which garnered HBO’s highest ratings to date. Freed from the understandably high expectations for the fourth season, heightened by the 16-month hiatus, these episodes can be better appreciated on their own considerable merits. They are pivotal chapters in television’s most novel saga. –Donald Liebenson