Boca pretty much interrupts a hot streak of first season Sopranos episodes. It serves as a reminder that the show might have brought the medium into the twenty-first century, serving as a massive influence on televisual storytelling over the past decade, but the first season was still a product of nineties television. Boca feels strangely like a stand-alone episode, a strange artefact from some parallel universe where David Chase and his team decided that The Sopranos might work just as well as a piece of episodic television, rather than as serialised narrative.
Boca feels like one of those “ripped from the headlines” issue-conscious pieces of television drama, as if we’re watching The Sopranos by way of Law & Order. Of course, the script still has the show’s wit, and the episode plays into the series’ themes, but Boca feels a little strange. It’s not a bad piece of television, but it’s the first episode of The Sopranos that feels like it could have been repurposed from something else.
Old love…
Filed under: Television | Tagged: Boca, Carmela Soprano, David Chase, hbo, james gandolfini, Mary Kay Letourneau, Meadow, Myocardial infarction, New Jersey, Silvio Dante, Soprano, Tony, Tony Soprano, United States | 2 Comments »
