In an upcoming scene from the edited version of "The Sopranos," the one that begins airing tonight on A&E, mob guys Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico) and Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) are chasing a wiseguy through the woods before killing him, in cold blood, pumping his chest full of bullets, repeatedly, brutally.
What you don't get in this scene is the full effect of dark comedy -- Paulie Walnuts fretting, in colorful language, that he's just schlepped through poison ivy. In fact it's the poison ivy that ultimately provides the character's motivation -- Paulie pulling the trigger because he's freaking out about itching, while Christopher, for whom this is more personal, carries the moment's emotional weight.
The scene, in both its unedited and edited forms, was included on a DVD of "examples of editing" that A&E sent out to critics to illustrate how it was doing due diligence to both art and commerce in taking "The Sopranos" wide. (A&E is said to be carried in 91 million homes to HBO's 29 million or so, thus making this the debut of "The Sopranos" in front of mainstream America -- excluding the relatively more individual choice of watching on home video.)
The DVD arrived as an inherent disclaimer: No parts of "The Sopranos' " soul were harmed in the making of these reruns.
And yet, the migration of the HBO series to the more delicate climes of basic cable both reiterates the culture's lingering hypocrisies (it's OK to show assassinations, but the F-word is verboten and strippers must be in bikinis) and raises a simple question: What would happen if A&E just aired "The Sopranos" as is?
Apparently, something short of bedlam would ensue -- advertisers fleeing the scene as conservative interest groups ratcheted up the "boycott A&E" noise.
But given that the Federal Communications Commission has no jurisdiction over basic-cable content, the threat of a backlash is more an assumed one than an actual one.
While it might come as a small shock, cable networks do actually have what they refer to as "standards and practices" -- roughly defined, it tends to involve the F-word and the exposure of the male and/or female sex, perhaps the clearest demarcation these days between what you get from HBO and Showtime (Language! Frontal nudity!) and the FX network or Comedy Central (Less language! Coy partial nudity!).
