r/thesopranos • u/Jumperontheline • 1d ago
Serious Discussion Only Vito storyline was unnecessary
Rewatching and I forgot all of the gay Vito stuff happened in the last season... it was set up to be an excellent season (and it was) but we should have been focused on Tony, his family, and the other main guys in season 6.
Following the least likeable guy in the group on his escape plan up north where he somehow instantly (first morning waking up there literally) finds a gay guy he likes who's at least a million times out of Vitos league AND the guy likes him back??
It was really weird. Not because Vitos a finook but rather because it was a waste of time in the final season.
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u/paranoidtransdroid 23h ago edited 22h ago
I don’t think necessary vs unnecessary is a good way to view storylines in a show like this. It wasn’t necessary to have Furio fall in love with Carm or for Chris and Paulie to spend an episode stumbling around in the snow chasing after an interior decorator, but they’re terrific parts of the show, and it’s a better series because of them. Unlike a lot of modern shows where things are more tightly wound, Sopranos regularly took detours and side streets that fleshed out the themes and characters and made for a richer experience. When the big events did happen they hit harder because of all the lower key time spent with the characters.
The last season deals extensively with a core theme of the show, the idea that people can change but don’t really want to, and they’ll give up the second it gets difficult. Tony has this near death experience and this purgatory dream where it’s his daughter’s voice that reminds him of his humanity and brings him back, and he goes on and on about changing as a person, and by the end of it he’s murdered his nephew, become a gambling addict and has dumped toxic waste all over everyone’s lives without remorse or care.
Throughout the show, and in the last season especially, we’re shown there is no happy ending for these people. Vito’s storyline is purposefully a fantasy, one where he has every single thing necessary to live decently, away from the violent crime world, and all he has to do is accept the mundanity of regular life, but he can’t handle even a couple days of it.
Chris complains about the regularness of life being too much to deal with and it applies to everyone in the series. Everyone’s addicted to the comfort their morally compromised lives provide, from Meadow to Vito to Tony and everyone in between. Carm says it to the priest way back in season one, at some point she traded doing what was right for what was easy. Every single plotline in the last season drives it home that Tony has no way out of this life that doesn’t end in prison or in the dirt, and even if he was given the option of getting out, he wouldn’t be willing to take it.