I thought this was an incredibly strong episode, particularly the hospital scenes. Every time people would talk to Tony, the camera would go to him as if he would respond. But he doesn’t. It is SO right on, for anyone who has known someone in a coma. You keep waiting and waiting for some response and it’s maddening that it never comes. Brilliant direction.
This show has always been about the family (ie. Carm, the kids) first, and the Family (Christopher, Paulie, etc.) second, and that is exactly where it should be at Tony’s time of crisis. Note in his purgatory/hell dream that he calls his wife and kids, not his 'business associates."
I agree with most of you that Robert Iler’s (AJ) acting was the low point. I was rooting for him to have a cathartic breakdown scene with tears and stuff, and he just couldn’t pull it off. Sad. But when you cast these kids at age ten or whatever, you don’t know what sort of actors they are going to be seven or eight years down the line (see Harry Potter). It’s not like they could re-cast AJ, so I think they are making the character fit his natural style as much as possible.
A few things that haven’t been noted yet:
The flashing Tony sees outside from the hotel & bar. It looks kind of like lighthouse beacon. Could this be “the light?” It is far away, but maybe we’ll see it get closer, or not, as his coma wears on.
I agree that a lot of the symbolism points to Costa Mesa being hell, but could it be purgatory? It seems an awful lot like a way station of sorts - Tony is unable to go anywhere, or do anything. He’s stuck, waiting.
In the very first scene at the bar, just when Tony is about to leave, you see a woman come in and sit down on the left side of the frame (from Tony’s POV). We don’t get a clear look at her, but from the hair and the manner it reminded me a lot of Melfi. It may be nothing, but it seemed odd to me that there were these seemingly pointless shots showing random people at the bar. Perhaps he’s just populating his “dream” with barely-recognizable figures from his life.
The kids on the phone are much younger than Meadow and AJ. The daughter says the son went to bed because “he puked,” which links up with Meadow telling Tony about AJ’s “stomach flu.”
Tony sounded like he was about to cry telling his wife that the monk slapped him on the mouth. It’s like he’d never been hit before in his life, and can’t understand why anyone would do that. It was so anti-Tony.
I agree that the dream wife sounded like Charmaine more than Gloria or Melfi. Also I kept hearing her call Tony “Tom,” but maybe it was “Ton” and I just wasn’t hearing right. The saleswoman he makes out with looks like a (less attractive) combination of Melfi and Gloria, two women he’s very attracted to, but in this case doesn’t follow through with. Again, very anti-Tony. Also very much like everything else in this dream sequence - not moving anywhere, nothing happening.