Lust and Logorrhea on the HBO Couch

A new series, "In Treatment," is trying to do for psychotherapy what "The Sopranos" did for organized crime. But from the evidence thus far, Dr. Melfi and her star patient can rest easy. Talk alone, without Bada Bing pole dancers and bloody on-camera murders, won't cut it.

In our time, HBO has provided a sociological index of upper middle-class anxieties and guilty pleasures from "Sex and the City" to "Six Feet Under."

Now comes "In Treatment," half-hour sessions confined to consulting rooms and self-absorbed talk-talk-talk.

In one story line, the therapist has to fend off the sexual advances of a gorgeous patient and, while trying to help a hostile couple decide about aborting a pregnancy, has his couch stained by a miscarriage, which leads to his wife's cleaning up the mess and, in passing, unloading her rage about his indifference and taunting him with news of her affair with a divorced business type. This sends the therapist to his therapist who recommends unloading the gorgeous sexual predator and is rewarded by accusations about her mishandling of an ancient case of counter-transference.

Holy Freud! In an interview this week, George W. Bush dismissed a question about his relationship with his father as "shallow psychobabble." If the President has a taste for deep psychobabble, HBO has just the thing for him.

Greenspan's Oily Explanation

The exalted former Fed Chairman is sounding like a Mafia don these days explaining whether or not he ordered a hit on Saddam Hussein.

After writing in his memoirs that "the Iraq War is largely about oil," he is backpedaling. "I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said in an interview, "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."

Greenspan is maintaining his deniability by explaining that he never discussed the subject with Bush or Cheney but talked to White House officials, one of whom responded, "Well, unfortunately, we can't talk about oil."

To think that Greenspan would have had to spell out his position to two former Texas oil men with a Soprano-like “I want him dead” stretches the imagination, but it’s good to know that the code of omerta is still being observed at the highest levels.

Sopranos' End? Start Here...

Among the pleasures of “The Sopranos” has been the feeling you get when the world discovers someone or something you’ve appreciated for a long time.

David Chase’s writing has been giving me pleasure since the 1970s when he did the scripts for and later produced more than a score of episodes for “The Rockford Files” with James Garner.

Many of the attitudes and themes of “The Sopranos” are there inchoately--fascination with the Mafia, insecurities and ineptness behind the bravado, dicey family relationships. But the furor over the series’ finale keeps bringing back echoes of one Rockford script that had nothing to do with the Mob.

It was called “Irving the Explainer,” with an over-the-top plot about Hollywood history, Nazis, a missing painting, French police, unsolved murders and so much more that Rockford has to hire a logician to try to untangle it all.

At the end, when he finally thinks he has it nailed, along comes one of the characters with yet another dying confession to bollix up all his theories.

All the deep thinking about last Sunday’s final chapter of “The Sopranos” keeps reminding me of Chase’s playfulness about rational explanations for everything and of something else he said some time ago:

"Network television is all talk. I think there should be visuals on a show, some sense of mystery to it, connections that don't add up. I think there should be dreams and music and dead air and stuff that goes nowhere. There should be, God forgive me, a little bit of poetry."

Chase has given us all that and more--no forgiveness needed.

Arrivederci, Sopranos

With neither a bang nor a whimper, David Chase just pulls the plug.

OK, as in other season enders, the family is having dinner, this time in a diner, Meadow is having trouble parking the car, there is talk of a turncoat going over to the Feds, a shifty character goes to the men’s room and...Silence and darkness. It’s over.

Traditionally, gang bosses end up in pools of their own blood.

In 1931’s “Little Caesar,” a bullet-ridden Edward G. Robinson breathed, “Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?”

In 1949, James Cagney, a mother-loving psychopath in ”White Heat,” went out atop a burning oil refinery, screaming, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world.”

In 1983’s “Scarface,” Tony Montana walked into a storm of bullets with a machine gun, yelling “Say hello to my little friend!”

Not our Tony. Is his creator (small “c”) telling us that “The Sopranos” level of art does not call for melodrama? Is Uncle Junior’s Alzheimer the metaphor for real life swallowing eight years of our involvement with these people? Do we turn off the set and fuggedaboutit?

Arrivederci, Sopranos. It was great while it lasted, even though a little weird how it ended.

The Sopranos and the Bushes

Two families have kept us in suspense since this century started. We won’t have all the answers about the Bushes until the end of next year, but tomorrow night will tell us how it all comes out with the Sopranos.

Both clans produced strong-minded men who came to power in the wake of their fathers and went on to outdo them in lawless violence. But there, as I pointed out earlier this year, is where the resemblance ends:

Art and life diverge. The fictional Mafia boss is racked by conflict and ambivalence to the point of having panic attacks. The real-life Decider is never in doubt.

Tony Soprano seeks help from a therapist, but George Bush takes advice from no one.

In “The Sopranos,” Federal authorities are closing in on the Mob. In Washington, the White House fires Federal prosecutors who don’t toe their line.

Both men have blood on their hands, but the imaginary thug feels some guilt while the actual Commander-in-Chief sends young men and women to their deaths feeling smugly secure in the approval of a Higher Power.

The Sopranos’ final season was obsessed with aging and waning powers. In the wintry White House, Bush and his capos have been in a bunker of denial, still insisting against all evidence that they are in absolute control of events.

In the end, the difference is that there has always been some poetry in Tony Soprano and none in George Bush, and no script writers could change that.

Tomorrow night we find out how it all ends with the Sopranos. When it comes to the Bushes, there is not that much suspense.