Poetic Television Review: Watching Too Much Television (The Sopranos, S4X07, 2002)

In the shadow of HUD loans and hollow promises,
the rot begins—not with a bang, but a whisper.
A cousin’s casual suggestion, a politician’s nod,
a non-profit’s ledger bleeding red for the mob.
The Sopranos, that mirror of our moral decay,
shows us the cracks where the light gets away.

Brian Cammarata, with his spreadsheets and schemes,
unlocks the door to a world of broken dreams.
Affordable housing? A joke, a front, a lie—
derelict properties bought high, sold dry.
Tony and Ralph, their eyes gleam with greed,
while Zellman, the assemblyman, plants the seed.

And Maurice Tiffen, oh, the activist’s fall—
a man who once stood tall, now answers the call
of profit over principle, cash over cause.
His NGO, a mask for the mob’s applause.
“I used to believe,” he mutters, counting his share,
but belief, like integrity, dissolves in the air.

Adriana watches Murder One, her hope a fragile thing,
marriage her shield, her golden ring.
But the lawyer’s cold truth cuts like a knife:
“Pre-marital crimes? They’ll haunt your life.”
Her dreams of safety, her desperate plea,
crushed by the law’s cold machinery.

Tony’s world is a web of violence and vice,
where business and brutality share the same price.
A belt-whipping here, a groin injury there—
the eviction of squatters, a scene laid bare.
The crackhouse chaos, the teens with their guns,
a spectacle of suffering, but no one runs.

Zellman, the politician, takes the brunt of the rage,
his affair with Irina igniting the stage.
“All the girls in New Jersey, you had to fuck this one?”
Tony’s fury erupts, his control undone.
Irina, a pawn, a plot device,
her motives unspoken, her role not nice.

The FBI watches, their tactics cold,
Adriana’s marriage a move to be controlled.
Justice, it seems, is a bureaucratic game,
where personal agency is never the same.
The HUD scam thrives, the funds disappear,
while the marginalized drown in their fear.

The church, a symbol of faith and stone,
becomes a prop for laundering loans.
AJ learns the lesson, his father’s creed:
“In this world, it’s profit, not people, you need.”
The stonemasons’ craft, their labor, their art,
reduced to a scheme, a cynical part.

The episode’s title, a jab at the screen,
where Adriana’s hopes are crushed, unseen.
Television dramas, with their neat, clean lines,
fail to capture the world’s darker designs.
The Sopranos, with its operatic flair,
shows us the truth, if we dare to stare.

In the end, the message is clear, if bleak:
The system is rigged, the future is weak.
From mobsters to politicians, the cycle repeats,
as greed devours the world it meets.
The line between crime and respectability?
A thin, fading shadow, a fragile reality.

Watching Too Much Television, a prescient tale,
where corruption’s banality will always prevail.
In an era of scandals, its warning rings true:
The rot is systemic, and it includes you.

(Note: The review in its original form can be read here.)

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