Life is either "a big nothing" (Livia Soprano) or "just random" (crazy Nellie on "The Office") -- with a nutty Brit's take on the American dream

In this week's episode of The Office, "Get the Girl," crazy and incompetent Nellie (Catherine Tate), whom we thought we'd seen the last of in Tallahasse when Sabre CEO Robert California (James Spader) pulled the plug as humiliatingly as possible on her retail-store project, has unaccountably turned up in Scranton -- and literally walked into the absent Andy Bernard's (Ed Helms') job as branch manager.

by Ken

As I've mentioned, HBO is currently working its way, at a glacial pace through the whole saga of The Sopranos on its On Demand channel. Even though I've been checking frantically for a "new" block of episodes to be posted, when I saw the last four episodes, 10-13, of Season 2, I thought I'd somehow missed a block, and went to my VHS edition (yes, I have the first several seasons on VHS -- you wanna make something of it?) to plug the gap.

Gradually, episode by episode, I realized that I had indeed watched Episodes 6-9 during their On Demand cycle, but I watched them again anyway on the videotapes, amazed at how much I either couldn't get enough of or still hadn't registered properly even on such a recent re-viewing. I don't know how many times I've already paid awed tribute to the entire team assembled by creator-mastermind David Chase, both behind and in front of the cameras, but I don't see any way of avoiding doing it once again. The attention to detail in every aspect of the production remains so extraordinary that each viewing overflows with both grand and tiny matters to savor and resavor.

The one sad note is the illness-limited presence in Season 2 of Nancy Marchand as the massively looming Soprano family matriarch, Livia. I don't think it's possible to overestimate the impact she had in her sadly foreshortened presence in the series. The scene I've transcribed here wasn't one I'd forgotten. It strikes me as pretty much unforgettable. But that doesn't make it any less astonishing on each reencounter. One thing I didn't try to transcribe is how, in the course of this diatribe, Livia -- who so often announces her martyrdom by refusing to eat on the ground that she's not hungry (something that's all but unimaginable in this family) -- begins eating the hospital meal on the tray she's previously left untouched. Talk about attention to detail!

LIVIA SOPRANO: "IN THE END, YOU DIE IN
YOUR OWN ARMS. IT'S ALL A BIG NOTHING"

Young Anthony Soprano Jr. (Robert Iler) has, unknown to his parents, come to the hospital to visit his grandmother Livia (Nancy Marchand), who has been banished from her son Tony's life on account of conspiring to have him whacked at the end of Season 1. At the moment, A.J. is suffering an acute case of 13-year-old's angst of life's purposelessness, to the despair of his parents. (Tony, of course, has his own generally violent-toward-others way of experiencing despair.) He's sitting in a chair beside Livia's bed, where she's lying back on the pillow as we intrude here.

A.J.: What's the use? What's the purpose?
LIVIA [sitting up in bed]: Why does everything have to have a purpose? The world is a jungle. And if you want my advice, Anthony, don't expect happiness. You won't get it. People let you down. And I'm not namin' any names, but in the end, you die in your own arms.
A.J.: You mean . . . alone?
LIVIA: It's all a big nothing. What makes you think you're so special?

-- from "D-Girl," Season 2, Episode 7 of The Sopranos,
written by Todd A. Kessler

AFTER TRANSCRIBING THE ABOVE SCENE, I WAS TRYING
TO CLEAN UP THE STORED PROGRAMS ON MY DVR --

And I discovered that for some reason I had paused rather than deleted this week's episode of The Office, which I was pretty sure I'd watched all the way through. So I hit "resume play," and realized why I'd kept it: because I'd meant to do some transcribing here, specifically of the end-of-episode monologue given to crazy Nellie, now apparently safely ensconced in Andy Bernard's Scranton-manager's office.

I know there are a lot of people who can't imagine taking TV writing or acting seriously. And I know that this has been an exceedingly peculiar season for The Office. That said, I don't see how either writing or acting gets any better than this. ("Get the Girl" was written by Charlie Grandy and directed by Rainn Wilson, our Dwight.)

CRAZY NELLIE: "IF YOU ASK ME, THAT'S
THE AMERICAN DREAM RIGHT THERE"

"I grew up poor. I had little formal education, no real skills. I don't work especially hard. And most of my ideas are either unoriginal or total crap. And yet I walked right into a job for which I was ill-prepared, ill-suited, and somebody else already had, and I got it. If you ask me, that's the American dream right there. Anything can happen to anyone. It's just random."

Ah yes, the American dream indeed. Doesn't this help explain, at least in part, how people actually come to cast votes for worthless, dangerous, sociopathic-to-psychopathic scum like Willard Inc., "Man on Dog" Santorum, and the Big Noot?

#