The New York Times’ political blog, The Caucus, seems to like the new, Sopranos-themed Hillary campaign video:
It’s a great spoof off the ending of the HBO series – even though so many people were disappointed with the abrupt closing shot, when the music and the filming just cuts on Tony’s face with “Don’t Stop” – from the refrain of the Journey song.
The other two videos in her series have been widely viewed on YouTube, where she seemed to have a lot of fun kicking this game off. Peter Daou, her Internet director, recently deemed the contest quite a success. The campaign release counted up more than 1 million views of the two song videos before this one, 200,000 votes for a song, and more than 25,000 song suggestions.
But this video, by far, represents the best campaign spot we’ve seen this season – yes it is still early.
But the post doesn’t explain why the writer thinks the video is so good, and I’m at a bit of a loss for explanations myself. Sure, it’s a unique concept (at least in the realm of political videos), and the production values are reasonable, but it’s awkwardly acted (Bill’s stilted delivery is really kind of surprising), edited without rhythm, and, as Greg points out, makes no clear point about anything. The parallels to various Soprano characters are certainly unflattering—Bill as a mob thug, Hillary as the petty wife blinding herself to her husband’s misdeeds. There just doesn’t seem to be anything to it other than, “Hey, people are talking about The Sopranos… let’s borrow from the show!” If someone has a better idea of what the video is really supposed to accomplish, I’d love to hear it.