Mayham (S06E03)
Airdate: March 26th 2006
Written by: Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Jack Bender
Running Time: 56 minutes
The sprawling narrative ambition of The Sopranos often necessitated storylines that bled across multiple episodes, their thematic heft too dense for containment within a single hour. Mayham, the third instalment of the show’s sixth season, exemplifies this ethos, grappling with the fallout of Tony Soprano’s coma while juggling parallel threads of familial chaos and existential dread. Yet where its predecessor Join the Club wove Tony’s unconscious odyssey into a haunting meditation on identity and regret, Mayham struggles under the weight of its ambitions. The episode’s split focus—between Tony’s dwindling purgatory, the DiMeo family’s disarray, and Christopher’s ill-conceived cinematic aspirations—renders it a fragmented, if intermittently compelling, entry in the series’ twilight.
The episode resumes Tony’s coma-induced alter ego—a narrative device that, in Join the Club, offered rich psychological terrain. Here, however, the subplot feels diminished, relegated to a series of disjointed vignettes. Costa Mesa’s purgatory, once a metaphor for Tony’s fear of erasure, now serves as a blunt plot mechanism. Alternative Tony attends a surreal reunion of Finnerty family members where Steve Buscemi’s cryptic usher (a nod to The Shining’s ghostly caretakers) demands he “leave his business”—a ham-fisted allegory for Tony’s clinging to life. The sequence culminates in a cardiac arrest-induced vision of a tunnel’s “white light,” Tony’s refusal to surrender mirroring his real-world resuscitation. While visually striking, these beats lack the nuance of earlier dream logic, reducing existential quandaries to literalised melodrama.
More intriguing are the intrusions of reality into Tony’s unconscious: muffled voices at his bedside pierce the dream, suggesting a psyche straining to re-engage with the tangible. Yet these moments are fleeting, overshadowed by the episode’s insistence on plot-driven resolution. Alternative Tony’s arc, once a vehicle for introspection, concludes with predictable defiance—a missed chance to probe Tony’s moral atrophy or the cost of his survival.
The episode’s strongest material lies in the chaos engulfing the DiMeo family. With Tony comatose and Silvio (Steven Van Zandt) hospitalised by an asthma attack, the crew’s fragile hierarchy crumbles. Vito Spatafore (Joseph R. Gannascoli), emboldened by a lucrative heist against Colombian dealers, eyes the throne, secretly courting Phil Leotardo’s support. Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico), ever the opportunist, oscillates between loyalty and self-interest, his malapropism-laden rants (“mayham” for “mayhem”) injecting gallows humour into the power vacuum.
Silvio’s struggle to maintain order—exhaustedly confiding to wife Gabriela (Maureen Van Zandt) that leadership “ain’t me”—resonates as a poignant critique of Tony’s absence. The loot distribution disputes underscore the crew’s transactional loyalties: without Tony’s brute charisma, the family devolves into avaricious anarchy. Yet these threads, while compelling, feel rushed, their potential diluted by the episode’s fractured structure. Vito’s scheming, in particular, warrants deeper exploration—a slow-burn betrayal rather than hasty alliance-building.
The episode’s weakest link is Christopher’s (Michael Imperioli) resurrection of his screenwriting ambitions—a subplot that veers into self-parody. A battered J.T. Dolan (Timothy Dalton) reappears, roughed up over gambling debts, only to be strong-armed into co-writing a genre-mashing script (“Cleaver: part slasher, part mob epic”). Little Carmine (Ray Abruzzo), now a self-styled film mogul, enthusiastically invokes the Mafia’s pornographic ventures—a nod to Deep Throat that feels tonally jarring.
While intended as meta-commentary on Hollywood’s trend at the start of 21st Century, the storyline clashes with the episode’s grim realism. The Sopranos’ forays into satire once offered levity, but here they register as contrived distractions. The subplot’s inclusion, sandwiched between life-or-death stakes, undermines its potential irony, reducing Chris’ creative aspirations to farcical filler.
Director Jack Bender, a veteran of Lost, lenses the episode with characteristic polish, balancing the sterile glare of hospital corridors against the crew’s shadowy dealings. Matthew Weiner’s script, meanwhile, delivers sharp dialogue and deftly interweaves themes of legacy and decay. Yet Mayham’s structural imbalances—the undercooked alternative Tony arc, the abrupt shifts in tone—betray a series straining to sustain its prior brilliance.
The decision to fragment focus across three disparate narratives (Tony’s coma, the crew’s implosion, Chris’ Cleaver) dilutes each thread’s impact. A tighter focus on the DiMeo power struggle—or a deeper dive into Tony’s subconscious—might have salvaged cohesion. Instead, the episode mirrors its protagonist: a once-formidable entity grappling with diminished vitality.
Mayham epitomises The Sopranos’ sixth-season problem: a series still capable of moments searing insight, yet increasingly prone to narrative bloat. Tony’s resurrection, while thematically apt (his return to “mayham” mirroring the show’s cyclical violence), lacks the emotional heft of prior reckonings. The DiMeo chaos, though riveting, hints at richer arcs left unexplored. Even Chris’ misadventures, while misfiring, underscore the series’ enduring knack for self-reflexive critique.
Yet for all its flaws, the episode lingers—a testament to the show’s residual power. As Tony stirs from coma, he signals not renewal, but relapse: the inevitability of return to a world—and a narrative—trapped in its own entropy. Mayham, like its protagonist, survives, but the scars of its stumbles remain visible.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
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