My Review of "The Sopranos: Season 2"

The Sopranos: Season 2 comes off a stellar first season. That's usually the case when it comes to fantastic first seasons. Well there are the odd exceptions like the Heroes franchise. There's a sense of quality that comes with HBO shows that I can't really put my finger on and this one is another great show.

This season starts off right where the first season ended off. A lot of stuff had happened in the first season. I reviewed the first season not too long ago and that season focused more on the introductions of each of the characters.

A lot of the storylines from the first season bled into the second season. In the first season Tony had a broken ties with so many people by the end of the season. He broke off his relationship with his psychologist because of the fact she was trying to dig deeper into his relationship with his mother.

The problem was that in that first season his mother had inadvertently conspired to kill off Tony. She had confided some deluded information to Tony's uncle that forced an assassination. We soon found out that she had Alzheimer's but the damage was done. Tony's uncle was put into prison and his mother ex-communicated by Tony.

There was also a side story with Christopher in the first season trying to become a big mafia guy. That story didn't really go anywhere but I could see how younger members could get out of hand like he did.

Meanwhile Tony's family life seemed to be all over the place as Carmela and the children have their so called "normal" lives knowing that Tony's doing some shady stuff in secrecy.

Now with Tony's life pretty much at ground zero again there's an introduction of a number of characters and recurring problems that exist in his intermediate and external family life.

One of the big additions was the introduction of Tony's sister Janice. I could totally see how relatable Janice is. She's kind of high up on herself thinking that she's doing the right thing. Her heart is sometimes in the right place but there's always a sneaky suspicion that she's got ulterior motives. I didn't like her character but that means the actress and the writing for Janice's character was done very well. She's supposed to be annoying and I found it was to a tolerable level where I didn't want to shut the show off.

Her love interest Richie is one hell of a character. He's the brother of Jackie, who was the character that died off right in the beginning of the first season. Jackie death pretty much started the whole domino effect of the Soprano's series. I hated Richie but that is a good thing because he's such a great villain. His character is very layered and volatile. You never know when he's going to go off or not. At every second he's on the screen you don't know what's going to happen next and I was gripping in anticipation.

The biggest storyline that was focused on was based on the character Pussy. This big oaf of a man was thought to be a snitch in the first season. He somehow disappears close the the first season only to show up unexpectedly in the beginning of the second season. There's a lot of distrust and rightfully so because Pussy seemed to be all over the place.

As the season went on I loved how they paced the reveal of each of the character's motives. I can't say that I'm too shocked at any of the things that happen in this season though. It could be because I got to know how each of the character's work. I had a pretty good understanding of whether someone's going to die or not.

This season also had some nice diversions for example there was a little story arch where Tony and his boys go to Italy to talk business with the other mafia bosses over there. They went into the culture shocks of these Italian American men going to Italy. It was done in a pretty realistic manner.

Overall, I really liked this season. The pacing was right on the spot because there were very few lulls for me. All of the actors have me invested and I can't wait to go onto the third season. I have to give this season a 7.5 out of 10. Hopefully the third season will continue on this same path but only with a few more surprises.