Happily Ever After

Even though I knew it was coming (after all, we all know "there's no gettin' out" of the mob once in) it was still sad to see the demise of Adriana on The Sopranos. One of the critics described her as the only truly genuine sympathetic character on the show. I agree even though she, like all of us, had her vulnerabilities--her addiction to drugs and alcohol. She did, however, truly love her man Christopher. She longed to move into the witness protection program with him and live happily ever after. It just wasn't to be.

For several years the viewers of The Sopranos had agonizingly followed Adriana's tortured life as part of the family. We simultaneously wanted her to get her proposal from Christopher, along with a big ring, but we at the same time felt she deserved better. We wanted her to be able to have a child with her man because, it seems, the true legitimacy of a mob wife is gained only by becoming the legitimate mother of a mobster's child. We watched Adriana repeatedly support Christopher through his bullet wounds, his own addictions, and his volatile, often violent and abusive, treatment of her.

Yet, Adriana made a choice when the FBI puts the squeeze on her--go to jail essentially for the rest of her life or become an informer regarding Tony's activities and hope to get protection at a later date. She made her fatal choice by choosing the latter option. From this point on, it was just a matter of time until she too was whacked. Still, the scene was chilling with the television viewers' watching the last scene of her crawling on all fours in the woods. Thankfully, the director spared us a final look of her face as she was off-camera when Silvio fired two bullets.

Is it possible for one to ever fulfill the dream of living happily ever after, or is the idea reserved only for fairy tales? Life is too complicated to believe fairy tales can happen.