My wife and I, advancing systematically through the 86 episodes of the HBO series The Sopranos, have made it into the seventh and final season. One of the last episodes we saw has what may be my favorite scene so far. Johnny Sack, having received a terminal diagnosis for his metastatic lung cancer, is visited in the prison medical center by his wife and daughter. With no hope of recovery, Johnny has begun smoking again, and his wife scolds him. Johnny is dismissive of her concern and of her optimism. She suggests that his bad attitude is probably in some measure to blame for his illness. As I remember it, Johnny exhales contemptuously, almost in a snort, so that the cigarette smoke pours out of his nose, and he says: "You gonna start with that again? What about all these 6-year-olds with leukemia? What's that from? All their negative thinking?"
Another memorable scene occurs in "Unidentified Black Males," from the penultimate season. Meadow and her boyfriend, Finn, finally get engaged. Excited, she calls her mother with the good news. Carmela, who is at the time separated from her own husband, picks up in an upstairs bedroom at the same moment that she catches sight of Meadow's father through the window. He has turned up unannounced to enjoy his backyard swimming pool. She listens to her overjoyed daughter while contemplating, as it were from on high, the oversized Tony lounging on a flotation device in the pool. Meadow carries on happily, and Carmela listens and says the right things while watching her husband splash water on his big belly.
Toward the end of The Tempest, Miranda enthuses, in some famous lines, over the revelation of a world hitherto unknown to her:
O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!
Her father's terse reply is comparatively unknown: "'Tis new to thee."
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