The Sopranos: The Complete Fifth Season
by Tim v. Patten, A. Coulter, J. Patterson
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Edie Falco, James Gandolfini, Michael Imperioli, Steve van Zandt, Tony SiricoDirector: A. Coulter, J. Patterson, Tim v. Patten
Brand: SOPRANOS
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Spanish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: AC-3, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 780 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-06-07
Audience Rating: Unrated
Platform: PlayStation 3
Model: 92300
Studio: HBO Home Video
Movie Reviews of The Sopranos: The Complete Fifth Season
Movie Review: A great drama, great character, heartache in the eye of the tornado
Summary: 5 Stars
One might ask why buy this in DVD form when one can see the whole season for the price of HBO or videotape it. My response is that there is no drama that I have seen anywhere more intense or fullfilling than watching these DVDs.
The ability to watch several episodes one after the other after the other without stopping provides such a satisfying and unstoppable drama, that is so rivetting, so essential, so emotionally visceral. In fact, I no longer watch the program on HBO. Each year, I eagerly await the release of the season DVDs and watch them together intensely several times, compressing the watching to a weekend or a week at the most. There is nothing like it in my 55 years of watching television and video, nothing!
The Sopranos work because of the building of tension up in the character Tony Soprano. Everything else in the show is oriented for that to happen. While he releases tension, sometimes in small increments, the show would collapse and become completely uninteresting if he ever made sense or was relaxed to the degree that most people are. In that, Soprano is the opposite of the typical dramatic hero, especially the typical television hero who may have his or her contradictions and worries, but who always will solve any problem by the end of the episode, or at least the end of the season. The buildup of tension occurs because the program focuses not only on the physical violence and "business" aspects of Tony's mob or the marital strife, teenaged rebellion, and multiple affairs of his personal and family life, but on his pyschological tensions across his entire life. It is a tribute to the writing and the acting of this program the degree to which se share that pyschological tension inside of Tony Soprano ratcheting up, ratcheing up, ratcheting up, but he never becomes so totally unattractive, or totally insane that we no longer identify or even sympathize with him.
At the end of each program, so much tension, so many problems, both emotional and in the life of his crime family, are posed that I greedily want to see the next one. Monday (June 20) I watched five episodes one night, even though I started at 9 PM and had to get up for work at 6AM!!!!
Why do we do this. Don't we lead lives of tension, longing, fear of what will happen to us. Yes, but our fears are played out at a slow, gradual, sometimes imperceptible pace, a pace where sometimes only the judgement of years of hindsight allows us to make sense of what has happened. Even with all the angst and pain and pressure isn't it satisfying, intoxicating, and luxurious to see what happens next to Tony Soprano whether more tension, whether partial resolution, whether deeper tragedy, by simply flicking the remote and spending another hour?
This year he faces the deepening of his internal conflicts by the prescence of his cousin Tony B, who in turn reminds Tony Soprano of his conflict with his mother, the most fundamental of his problems because Tony B has returned from a long time in prison after a job Tony S missed because he had the first of his panic attacks after an argument with dear old mother. Tony B creates headaches when he does free lance killings for one faction in the New York mob against another faction, while Tony S tries to keep his crew neutral. In the end, Tony's loyalty to his cousin is expressed by Tony deciding to murder Tony B himself, rather than let the New Yorkers torture him.
The weakest thing this year is the reconciliation between Tony and Carmella. Our natural pressure is to deisre that our virtual parents, Tony and Carmella, get back together and love each other. We're like small children who demand that their parents never part. In real life, often when the same small children become adults, we learn that our parents were completely incompatible, that they became happier people and better parents divorced, and that marriage is a thorny and problematical experience at best. This is very truly painted at the end of the 2003 series and the bulk of this 2004 series when Carmella separates from Tony and tony is forced to recognize the extent of his inability to deal with women in a decent way. It is confirmed by Tony's inappropriate and scary acting out with his mistress, and above all with his totally inappropriate behavior with his shrink, something that would have gained a total break in relations, an order of protection, or even assault charges in the real world.
Yet, as the Sopranos's virtual children, we feel something good with Carmella getting back with Tony. Perhaps that is inevitable, because what role would she have on the show if she were completely divorced? Carmella is, after Tony S, the most attractive character on the program.
However, we don't really see any justified motion that takes Carmella back to Tony other than her lying to her son's counselor, who had been her lover, about going back with Tony and a sex scene in the pool after which she was more committed to divorce. We do see her being blugeoned back to Tony by her priest who is probably sexually jealous of her new lover and by Tony's compromising of all the divorce lawyers in New Jersey and the fear of dealing with him that the forensic accountants have. This all should make Carmella more angry and afraid of her loss of freedom by being associated with Tony, not bring her back.
What seems to bring Carmella back is the series's need for further confrontation between Tony and Carmella, the series's need for infighting about how Tony junior will turn out, a closer center for their bickering and fighting, and the series belief that we pathetic virtual kiddies of Tony and Carmella will accept anything as long as they are back together.
We say good bye to Andriana. I say good riddance! No doubt this may be that the actress is having a baby, working in films, or has other things to do. As far as I am concerned, her character had been painted too poorly for me to care much for her. She seems to be incapable of intelligent decisions. I don't think of her so much as a "real" person as much as I think of her as an expression of the series's writers's prejudices against lower middle class Italian-American women. Andriana was just so stupid in her relationship, her drug use, the way she conducted her business, and anything else. The only glimmer of interest I had was when she and Tony sparked a friendship. Yet, with all of her cliched confusion, I felt Christopher didn't deserve her and, perhaps, she didn't deserve him.
This is not to detract from the talent and dedication and beauty the actress who played Andriana demonstrated in her years on the Sopranos. Moreover, maybe knowing she was going to get rubbed out the series writers didnt feel charged to write her character well.
One of the more innovative aspects of this year's series is the prolonged dream sequence that really marks the end of the second act of the story. Every horror in his life, every threat from his cousin, from his wife, from his own men, from a symbolic mob of all the characters and people off the street running to get him, everything is thrown against him in another one of the series's very good dreams which remind me too much of my own. In a sense this dream acts as a kind of Jungian descent into the underworld of his subconscious, a cleansing catharsis that allows Tony to move forward to resolutions of all the pending situations for the season: his murder of Tony B, his reconciliation with Carmella, and his finding "peace" with Johnnie Sack. So much that is not earned by plot development is earned by the catharsis of this dream.
Yet, catharsis is the central product of the Sopranos and its glowing strength. Laden as it is by murder and violence and thuggery, by wealth, corruption, the sexual decadence of his mistresses and prostitutes and the silicone queens at the Bing to give it a more and more andrenilen edge, Tony's catharsis is what we watch the series for.
I am not surprised by the reviewers who speak of sexual eruption as soon as the Aopranos are over. The tension in him is always tighter than the tension in us, even if it is so evocative of the personal time bombs we carry within us. We feel hot, charged,electric and energized after a burst of three or four of these shows together, rather than the angst we might feel after one with a week or more to wait until we find out what happens next. The charge here,the rush, of several episode blasted together on DVD is overwhelming.
How interesting it is that a double of that dream occurs in the final sequence of the last episode. Tony goes to the estate of Johnnie Sack, the new king of the New York mob, to make peace after Tony S has murdered Tony B. At the end of a negotation when Sack finally comes to terms with Tony, hordes of FBI men in full SWAT team regalia descend on them. Even as Sack is caught, Tony flees through the woods, the brush, through a stream, through backyards until he reaches a telephone and learns the feds were after Sack and his family and not him. He returns home after trudging miles through the snow with his clothes ripped, his face bruised, and exhausted, but silent when Carmella asks, keeping all of this horror in.
Well, just like Carmella's barely explainable reconciliation with Tony, Tony needs to escape the FBI so this wonderful series can go on another year.
Will there be horror from a New York mob that doesnt know Sack and Tony made peace or think Tony got away for the wrong reason. Tony Soprano bottles up an explosive morning, but does not tell Carmella anything. Their war too can break out again.
Yet, this is what we need, why we want more Sopranos, and we hope this is what they will provide for us season, after season.
Summary of The Sopranos: The Complete Fifth Season
The entire fifth season of the television program about the complicated life of New Jersey mob boss, Tony Soprano.Genre: Television: HBO
Rating: NR
Release Date: 7-JUN-2005
Media Type: DVD
Facing an indeterminate sentence of weeks/months/years until new episodes, fans of The Sopranos are advised to take the fifth; season, that is. At this point, superlatives don't do The Sopranos justice, but justice was at last served to this benchmark series.
 James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano in a not-so-nice mood |
 Carmela and Tony |
Explore More
For an even deeper immersion into the world of crime (movies, that is) see our guides to crime classics and our who's who compendium of famous mob bosses.
Bada Bing! More of The Sopranos at Amazon.com
 The Complete First Season |  The Complete Second Season |  The Complete Third Season |
 The Complete Fourth Season |  Seasons 1-5 |  The Sopranos Family Cookbook |
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