The New SteveSilver.net

The Deckest “Sopranos” of the Year

A few notes on last night’s “Sopranos” episode, “All Happy Families”:

- The highlight of the episode, for me at least: A.J., sitting in his new car for the first time, exclaiming, “this is so deck!” Apparently someone on the writing staff has read “The Hipster Handbook,” a satirical tome written a few years ago that made up an entirely fake hipster lingo- examples including “kale” (money), “Cronkite” (boy), and, most infamously of all, “deck” (cool). I’ve never heard anyone actually use the word “deck” unironically, but Dong Resin last year made fun of the phenomenon. Still, I’m sure the reference sailed over the heads of about 99.999% of the “Sopranos” audience.

- I was surprised Feech was gotten rid of so quickly, although I’m sure his sort-of one-note schtick would’ve gotten tiresome after another episode or two (tell funny stories, then scream at the top of your lungs once or twice an hour). Still, interesting to hear him mention the now-shuttered Hoboken landmark The Clam Broth House in one of his stories; makes you wonder if there was any mob complicity in that building’s collapse last year.

- And speaking of quickly-departed new characters, I think they could’ve done a lot more with the lady loanshark as well- and the whole getting-shot-as-she-runs-naked-through-the-house thing is gonna have the “Sopranos is misogynistic” people going nuts, like they did during the violence-against-women marathon that was Season 3.

- The first time they showed guest star David Lee Roth, I wondered why Steve Buscemi was wearing a blond wig. Lawrence Taylor didn’t look nearly as embarrassing, though with all the guys sitting around the poker table “ribbing” each other, a drugs-and-hookers joke or two thrown LT’s way might have been appropriate.

- Most nonsensical guest appearance- New Republic Literary Editor Leon Wieseltier, the man who called Mel Gibson’s Jesus movie “a sacred snuff film,” appeared as one of the Jews whose cars got stolen. Still, nice to see ‘Sopranos’ embrace Jewish family ritual for a change.

UPDATE: Here's Wieseltier, discussing his character:

But Stewart Silverman lives in perfect horror of the street. He doesn't even park on the street. A derangingly materialistic co-religionist who dreams frantically of "Wedding of the Week" and waits a whole year for some stupid car in which he can idle for endless hours in traffic east of Quogue every weekend of every summer, the vulgar Zegna-swaddled brother of a Goldman Sachs mandarin whose son's siman tov u'mazel tov is provided by a pulchritudinous and racially diverse bunch of shellfish-eating chicks in tight off-the-shoulder gowns—such a fellow is a long way from authenticity. And so he would land very hard on that "g" [in "motherfucking"]. He didn't go to BU for nothing. This is a man who is this week boasting to anybody who will listen that he once flew into West Palm on the same plane as Peter Bacanovic. In sum: motherfuckinggg.

Posted by Stephen Silver at March 29, 2004 02:40 PM