>There's lots of good stuff and a pretty solid, unvarnished look at
>contemporary U.S. I was very disappointed that they kept 9/11 out of the
>show though.
I agree with just about everything you've said here, but I do think they let 9/11 into the show, but I don't know that the way they did it worked.
I think the cue is editing out the WTC from the opening credits, 9/11 would be felt through an absence, rather than a presence. IMHO the first 1/2 to 3/4 of season 4 (shot right after 9/11 I think) seems kind of unfocussed and distracted with some kind of a vague external threat surrounding the main characters. I thought that caught the sense of things right after 9/11 well; until the war hit the ground in Afghanistan the scale of what had happened and more importantly, its implications, left a lot of people dazed and confused. By the end of season 4 Tony and the family seemed to have their shit together and saw that there enemy was Johnny Sack and the New York families, much like the U.S. and , well, Islam.
I could be wrong here, and reading way to much into things, the counter argument is just as convincing; given Tony and his cronies hyper-patriotism they would be cheering bombing the crap out of Afghanistan, Iraq and so on, so leaving those events and their reactions to them out of the story makes it a little less satisfying.
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