Vito Lives!!!!....for at least another episode.
Is "gay" the new "black" on tv/movies/books? By that, I mean does the homosexual character automatically get bumped off first by the manic serial killer on any slasher movie? Will any male actor whose role calls for being single, neat, interested in antiques, and driving a Volvo be meat rotting on a hook by the second act? When I was growing up, we always knew that any black guy, usually whilst providing comic relief...or at least attempting to, was gonna get the ice pick through the heart right quick by Jason or whoever the psycho killer was that week.
Now it seems as though it is politically incorrect to kill off African-Americans first. The practice was so commonplace that is was a national running joke. Gay people make much better targets.
In the last season of "The Sopranos", aired almost two years ago, Vito Spatafore, one of Tony's heftiest but also best producing captains, was ambiguously presented as being a closet homosexual. Meadow's then boyfriend saw what he assumed was the consummation of a sexual tryst (all right...blow job...) involving Vito "pitching" and an anonymous security guard at a building site early one morning "catching", to use Paulie Walnuts' euphamisms for oral sex. Vito, in several of the final episodes of that season, made what were, or seemed to be, sexual advances towards Finn, Meadow's bf. There was just a bit of leeway so that the viewer was not QUITE sure that this guy was gay.
In the current season, there is no ambiguity, no room for doubt. Last week Vito was seen in full leathered splendor (I read somewhere that it looked like one of Steve Guttenburg's outfits from "Police Acadamy: The Lost Footage") dancing with a John in a NYC gay bar by two Mafia hoods collecting protection money. Word spread like wildfire, and Vito knew he was in grave danger of being killed, as no self respecting capo would have sex with another man (at least outside of jail, as Tony helpfully points out to Dr. Melfi in this weeks episode: "they get a pass...there's no women..".) The episode ended with Vito in a hotel room, pistol by his side, and the audience is left to wonder if he will swallow a bullet now, or let someone else finish the job at some future date.
Come Sunday (or at least Wednesday morning, when I finally got around to watching the episode) the main question on anyone's mind was "Is Vito alive...or dead?" To David Chase's eternal credit, there is simply no way to predict what is going to happen on this show, other than that all characters will move unhesitantly towards moral bankruptcy (this means you Carmela and Meadow) from whatever mindset they enter the series. Turns out that Vito has hightailed it to the White Mountains. I recall that Bernhard Goetz also scrammed to NH after his subway shootings, committed back in 1984; do all New Yorkers think that the White Mountains are on the other side of the Earth? I guess that is beside the point: Vito needed somewhere to run and NH sounded good, at least short term. He even tried to locate some cousins in Peterborough (no dice thank god, because Tony and his minions woulda found him in about two days if Vito tried to hide out with some blood relatives, even those living in the wilds of Northern New England.) So Vito is alive and well, checking out antique stores somewhere in the Northern part of the state (he's apparently a "natural").
But you know and I know that Vito Spatafore is not long for this earth. How long before he gets a bullet to the brain? My guess: two weeks, tops. The Mafia do have their standards you know. Just like the Army, I guess.
Now it seems as though it is politically incorrect to kill off African-Americans first. The practice was so commonplace that is was a national running joke. Gay people make much better targets.
In the last season of "The Sopranos", aired almost two years ago, Vito Spatafore, one of Tony's heftiest but also best producing captains, was ambiguously presented as being a closet homosexual. Meadow's then boyfriend saw what he assumed was the consummation of a sexual tryst (all right...blow job...) involving Vito "pitching" and an anonymous security guard at a building site early one morning "catching", to use Paulie Walnuts' euphamisms for oral sex. Vito, in several of the final episodes of that season, made what were, or seemed to be, sexual advances towards Finn, Meadow's bf. There was just a bit of leeway so that the viewer was not QUITE sure that this guy was gay.
In the current season, there is no ambiguity, no room for doubt. Last week Vito was seen in full leathered splendor (I read somewhere that it looked like one of Steve Guttenburg's outfits from "Police Acadamy: The Lost Footage") dancing with a John in a NYC gay bar by two Mafia hoods collecting protection money. Word spread like wildfire, and Vito knew he was in grave danger of being killed, as no self respecting capo would have sex with another man (at least outside of jail, as Tony helpfully points out to Dr. Melfi in this weeks episode: "they get a pass...there's no women..".) The episode ended with Vito in a hotel room, pistol by his side, and the audience is left to wonder if he will swallow a bullet now, or let someone else finish the job at some future date.
Come Sunday (or at least Wednesday morning, when I finally got around to watching the episode) the main question on anyone's mind was "Is Vito alive...or dead?" To David Chase's eternal credit, there is simply no way to predict what is going to happen on this show, other than that all characters will move unhesitantly towards moral bankruptcy (this means you Carmela and Meadow) from whatever mindset they enter the series. Turns out that Vito has hightailed it to the White Mountains. I recall that Bernhard Goetz also scrammed to NH after his subway shootings, committed back in 1984; do all New Yorkers think that the White Mountains are on the other side of the Earth? I guess that is beside the point: Vito needed somewhere to run and NH sounded good, at least short term. He even tried to locate some cousins in Peterborough (no dice thank god, because Tony and his minions woulda found him in about two days if Vito tried to hide out with some blood relatives, even those living in the wilds of Northern New England.) So Vito is alive and well, checking out antique stores somewhere in the Northern part of the state (he's apparently a "natural").
But you know and I know that Vito Spatafore is not long for this earth. How long before he gets a bullet to the brain? My guess: two weeks, tops. The Mafia do have their standards you know. Just like the Army, I guess.
posted by joe sweeney at 6:17 PM
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