Based on the timestamps associated with my various Sopranos posts so far this year, it appears as though I've taken three months on average to finish most of these seasons. This one took nine days. Not coincidentally, this was also probably my favorite season of the show yet. I'll need to re-watch the entire series a second time before I can confirm the way the individual seasons compare to one another, but Season 5 was the most Shakespearian and imagery-laden season so far, stretching from one autumn through more than a year to the following winter and killing off at least a couple of likable characters along the way. There have always been tones of fatalism in The Sopranos; the people in Tony's life end up worse off just for knowing him, it seems, and Tony himself is merely the product of his upbringing and environment. We are who we are for reasons beyond our control, and as such, we may ultimately do things without really choosing to do them at all. If you can compare The Sopranos to The Wire - and God knows plenty have - then this show's fifth season is most readily parallelized with that show's fourth season because of some thematic similarities in the exploration of fate and free will. And in case you forgot, or simply haven't read my Wire posts, The Wire: Season 4 was the greatest 13-episode arc of television I think I've ever seen. It makes sense, then, that I'd enjoy its Sopranos counterpart. Just one Sopranos season remains for me to watch, but in classic HBO fashion it was split into two parts, so the next time I post about this show it'll be midway through an extensive sixth and final season. Who knows? That could be at least three months from now.
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