Googootz

Even if it wasn't as wonderful a series as it is, I could scarcely fail to respond to The Sopranos given that I am a son of Northern New Jersey and that the local aspects of the series are spot on. The locations are used brilliantly, the town and street and business names are real whenever possible, the geography is correct (right distances from here to there, and so on). I could watch just for that stuff and have a blast.

But of course, The Sopranos is also The Great American Novel disguised as a television show (not really too disguised -- everyone catches this). And David Chase has both the architectural skill and the poetic subtlety of a major novelist. Take, as just one example, certain references and echoes in the celebrated final scene of the series. The Soprano family is gathering at a local diner, but each arrives individually. Before A.J. arrives, Tony asks Carmela, "Where's googootz?" -- he mumbles it in such a way that some viewers heard "Where's the ghost?" But "googootz" is a term of endearment (Italian slang for "zucchini") that Tony has used for A.J. before.

Last night I was watching the final episode of the first season, and Tony calls A.J. "googootz" at the dinner table -- without any explanation for the audience, for the vast majority of whom the word would be unidentifiable and would therefore pass unnoticed, or at most briefly noticed ("What did he say?") and then forgotten.

This is not the only tie between this final episode of the first season and the final episode of the last season. In the earlier, the four "nuclear" Sopranos are driving about in a horrible, power-line-downing rainstorm, and seek refuge at Artie Bucco's candlelit restaurant. Over an impromptu dinner, Tony proposes a toast: "If you're lucky, you'll remember the little moments, like this, that were good."

Flash forward five seasons to the diner, and A.J. recalls that moment to his father (who, ironically, doesn't remember his own exhortation to remember): "Isn't that what you said one time? Try to remember the times that were good?" But so much has changed in those years. In the earlier episode, the family is still a unit, finding shelter in a storm together; but in the later episode, atomized, they come to eat in four separate cars. And Meadow, who arrives late because of her difficulty parallel parking, is the most separated of all -- which may be her salvation. She tries to park legally, although she botches her first couple of tries; she has a hard time fitting into the correct spot. That has been her dilemma all along. David Chase's metaphors and symbols are beautiful and exact.

POSTSCRIPT: That first season finale, "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano," is not actually one of the stronger episodes of the first season, perhaps because Chase had to cover so many plot points. But in this case, what you get from a weaker episode of The Sopranos is about twenty great moments and scenes, and one that is positively Shakespearean -- Tony cursing his mother Livia on a rolling hospital gurney after her stroke, and her smile (or is it?) back at him.