It's a Small World Afterall

After Tony Soprano was shot in the season six opener by Uncle Junior, he lapsed into a two-episode coma. Over the past seasons, Tony's dreams would have given his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi, much to interpret, as he conferred with whacked family members on the deteriorating Asbury Park boardwalk and went driving with dead mistresses. And the coma was a rich vein of material to assess Tony's character.

But hovering at the comatose edge of his own death, Tony was first robbed of his own identity then found his wallet and suitcase full of the evidence of someone else's life. His driver's license and credit cards said he was Kevin Finnerty. He looked like Kevin Finnerty; even the Buddhist monks whose monastery Finnerty had outfitted with a shoddy heating system recognized him. They were ready to sue Tony, er Kevin, for the crappy work he had stiffed them with. He was even invited to the Finnerty family reunion, and the fellow who greeted him out front knew him. Of course the guy just happened to look like the cousin Tony had blown away at the end of season five. On the threshold of infinity, Tony/Kevin doesn't take that final walk up the steps to reunion mansion. He wakes up, heeding the bedside calls of Carmela and Meadow.

Kevin Finnerty seems to be an alternative Tony, the ordinary guy he might have been if he had gone into the heating and cooling business instead of the family business. Finnerty, too, is successful and maybe just as ruthless as Tony Soprano; he's a shrewd businessman in his own right. He seems well off, and probably lives in a nice suburb with his own family; maybe he has a boy like AJ who is a bit of a ne'er-do-well. And like Tony he's probably sent him to a good school and would bail him out of trouble, if it came to that.

As a matter of fact, he's about to do just that.

As coincidence would have it, this week's papers carried the news of three Duke University La Crosse players arrested for the rape of a black stripper. When two of the Duke players turned themselves in and sat soberly at their court arraignment, I couldn't help but notice that one of the two, Collin H. Finnerty, was accompanied by his dad, Kevin Finnerty. Collin isn't so far from AJ. Both are just teetering there at the edge of serious criminality. AJ has been in trouble for petty crimes, including vandalizing his school, and has just been caught by the "family " buying a handgun to use on Uncle Junior. As for Collin, the rape charges mark the second legal trouble for him in the past six months. A man in Washington, D.C. said he was punched repeatedly by Finnerty and two of his high school lacrosse teammates as they spouted anti-gay insults.

Kevin sits next to his son in court, looking stunned, wishing he were somewhere else, maybe even someone else. Maybe he's wishing it were all a dream. Come to think of it, this all seems to be the American Dream gone bad. The dad has made a success of himself, at least in a monetary way, and can afford private school, and the sort of lifestyle where young white boys play la crosse on wide lawns, and develop a keen sense of privilege and prejudice. It is not an isolated incident. The trio of white college boys from Alabama who torched ten rural churches this past year would feel right at home with Collin Finnerty.

Do you think David Chase knows Kevin Finnerty? Maybe not. But he certainly knows the difficulties and rot at the center of the American family and the American Dream.

The Sopranos is an unfolding great American novel. It's fiction, but fact as well. Art and real life.