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Tony Soprano vs. Al Swearengen
TELEVISION
Tony Soprano's losing it, Al Swearengen's got it
BY DAVID HINCKLEY
New York Daily News
If you're among the many Sopranos fans who think Tony S. and his HBO program have gone a little soft this season, just wait a week.
After Tony's latest run ends Sunday night, Al Swearengen arrives on the next train from Deadwood. Sunday nights, same time, same station.
Ian McShane's Swearengen, who anchors the old-West drama Deadwood the same way James Gandolfini's Tony anchors The Sopranos, goes into the show's third season embodying all the qualities viewers used to love in Tony: He's an amoral, self-absorbed brute whose psychosis borders on sadism. He not only orders people killed, he'll kill them himself if he can't find someone to give the job to.
Moreover, he does it with a certain flair. Just as Tony stuffed Ralph's head into a bowling bag, Al feeds the deceased to Mr. Wu's hogs.
Because Deadwood is set in 1870s South Dakota and The Sopranos in 2006 New Jersey, the two men's lives have some differences. Tony has easier access to freshly laundered shirts and washes down his dinner with a good Cabernet instead of homemade whiskey.
But in the ways that matter, they're the same character. They both run the dangerous little world they live in, and they're both constantly exasperated by the morons who enter their line of work as subordinates.
They both feel entitled to any woman they see. They both know when to offer camaraderie and when to instill raw fear.
Tony's problem is that being an amoral, self-absorbed brute seems, for some reason, to have started bothering him. Ever since he was shot in the season's opening episode, and even a little bit before that, he has walked around questioning who and what he is, or what it all means.
We know what it means, of course. It means everything he touches turns toxic, including his family and friends.
The fear is that he could grasp enough of that truth to start feeling bad about it, which would be every fan's worst nightmare.
If we want penitence and salvation, we'll watch Oprah. From Tony, we want something else.
Al, so far, hasn't gone soft -- even though, ironically, he could end up living the kind of legitimate, respectable life that's out of the question for Tony. When dirty little Deadwood becomes larger and cleaner, which will happen, Al will have a role and be absolutely fine with it, as long as he gets his cut.
But even though one of the treats of Deadwood is watching this rough outline of order form amid chaos, at this point it's still the strong who survive, keeping the show crisper and edgier than The Sopranos.
Some fans say The Sopranos has simply hung around too long, that it is four seasons' worth of ideas stretched out over six -- or 6 ½ if we count the eight episodes that will wrap things up for good in January.
Some fans might even bravely say they'd rather see a good show end a year too early than a year too late -- and Deadwood is looking like it will test that particular assertion.
The latest report from HBO is that while creator David Milch originally mapped out four seasons, this third one is looking to be the last.
So we may have only this summer's 12 episodes to watch Al Swearengen remind us how it was with Tony back when things were good.
I mean, bad.
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