4) When Tony meets his father’s gooma; Christopher hangs out with Tim Daly (Season 5)
The stuff with the gooma was fine, but the real meat in this episode was Christopher’s ill-fated friendship with J.T. Dolan (Tim Daly), a once-successful television screenwriter who bottomed out on drugs. After becoming each other’s sponsors in rehab, Chris lets Dolan in on a high-stakes poker game… and Dolan quickly trades in his drug addiction for an addiction to gambling.
After Dolan racks up a $57,000 debt, Chris beats the shit out of Dolan, who proceeds to lose writing assignments and return to heroine. After taking Dolan’s car as a partial down payment on the debts, Chris, ever the friend, suggests Dolan return to rehab.
The episode is fascinating, because like the Season 2 plot about Robert Patrick’s gambling addiction, it shows how these bastards live with themselves: they divide their lives completely into business and personal spheres. Under the rules of Christopher’s “business,” it’s perfectly reasonable to viciously attack a close friend for not repaying his debts. It’s also perfectly reasonable to switch back to friendship mode and give an old friend advice about how to fix his life. Good guy, that Christopher.
This episode uses Tim Daly to perfection. As an actor, I find him smug and unlikable (popular critical opinion notwithstanding), and he’s no different here. (The only exception was the TV show Wings, where he played a wooden good guy, and was as boring as John Corbett.) So how do you make a smug guy sympathetic? Pair him with a hardened criminal who beats the crap out of him and takes his car.
I always like these episodes where civilians get mixed up with the crew because it swiftly reminds you that Tony Soprano and his associates are very, very bad people, with ludicrous and hypocritical value systems.
Unlike some other mob shows and movies – like Miller’s Crossing or Scarface, for example – Chase and his writers don’t buy into the popular claptrap that there’s a moral equivalency between mobsters and civilians and cops. While civilians may be just as obnoxious, ignorant or self-involved as the criminals, they’re never evil. Tony Sopranos’ violence against others is not a metaphor for the psychological violence that man commits against man or anything like that; it’s just reprehensible, morally bankrupt violence.
Posted by myownworstcritic 
