Originally Posted by
greybeard
1. Don't remember June trying to take Tony out in the second season. What happened? Did Tony know about it? My take on June is that he was a figure who provided comic relief, not someone to be taken seriously. He was second bananna to his kid brother, who stole the only woman June ever loved. Tony thought he was a joke, and so did I. He clearly had a sharp mind, but as a gangster he was oh so over the hill, if he ever got there. A grown up what's his name, Michael's older brother, with a little more smarts.
2. As for Butchie boy, what did he say to Phil when Phil told him that the reception was fading out and hung up? Don't remember. Go back and look. He told Phil that he wanted to meet to discuss his, Butch's future, in the thing. Phil had opened that prospect after rebuffing Butch's suggestion that they try to make the peace with Tony. Butch said something to the effect, "I should hope so," and Phil hung up.
Second, why did Butchie suggest that Phil make the peace with Tony if he didn't want peace. He did not know that Tony had a line on Phil, and did not know that Tony would reach out to him. Ditto for agreeing to meet with Tony. Talking about theatrics, that meeting with Tony indicated that both men knew that the killings were all just business, driven by Phil's craziness.
Business killings are forgiven, if it makes good business. Even Phil was on board with that until he did a 180 on his decision to step back, and decided to take out Sack's successor anad then Tony, all in the name of some egomanical vision of what their thing had been but in nobody's mind but his. Look back on the things that Phil said, in particular in announcing his plan to go after Tony, and you will see how chillingly maniacal he was. It got him killed, with Butchie's complicity.
How your vision that Butchie had it in him to execute a revenge murder and throw everything into complete turmoil escapes me. BTW, Tony was no easy guy to kill. You really think Butchie was going to break the peace that had existed between the two families for two generations and risk having Tony go after him like he did after Phil. Hey, in case you missed something, Tony took Phil out, even though Butchie himself had not a clue where Tony was. Make some sense man.
Had Paulie been able to make a deal with SacK and big Carmine, it is not a forgone conclusion that that would have lead to an assassination of Tony. However, if it had, Paulie was a much younger guy who had not had cancer and had not witnessed the decimation that had just been inflicted. Sack turned Paulie down flat; Paulie was no boss, and everybody knew it, including Paulie himself.
Look, you examine that last scene again, carefully. Not from the loaded eyes of the viewer who is expecting mayheem, but from a cool, dispassioned perspective of how this last season played out. If Tony got whacked in the context of how this thing wound down, Chase left way, way too much inexplicable to me. Perhaps the interstices that would make that last scene explainable as an assassination were on the cutting room floor. They did, after all, miss a holiday weekend show. So, if you are right, and you might be, there are two principal themes of this show which Chase resolved in a way that profoundly disappoints. The first, as I've mentioned, was the Melphie thing; without more, the 12-step like confrontation engineered by her schrink was unfathomable (spelling?). But that would be small change in comparsion to how the show ends.