The Sopranos Season 2, Episode 6 - The Happy Wanderer

The Happy Wanderer is one of those thesis episodes of The Sopranos, an episode that lays bare the show's deepest themes.  Tony laments at the beginning of the episode people with 'clear heads' and expresses his desire to subject them to physical assault.  It's just his luck to come across one of these people in this episode - not only is Davey Scattino a Happy Wanderer, more importantly, he's not afraid of Tony Soprano.  They were childhood friends, but he seems to harbor some illusions about what Tony does for a living, or that he won't be subject to what Tony does.  After he loses his ass at poker in the Executive Game, Tony gets to rough him up in his own office for his tribute.

That said, his loathing of the Happy Wanderer manifests itself in an even darker form when he gets his daughter's friend's car from Davey as collateral.  Tony may express to Melfi in a future episode why he does this, but it's deliberate - Meadow's singing did wake him up the afternoon following the Executive Game.  This results in a supposed lucky break as Meadow's duet at Cabaret becomes a solo.

We'll see more of Davey Scattino in future episodes so I'll save some of my reflections for that time.

Random Observations

Writing for the Sopranos must've been quite a dark exercise at times, but getting to write a line like 'He was handsome, like George Raft' must've taken some of the sting out of it.

I can't remember the names of both of Christopher's underlings, but I do enjoy how they immediately go from saying things like 'we'll wash Tony Soprano's car' in a previous episode to being chastened at the fact that they're basically waiters and busboys at the Executive Game.

The Executive Game appears to be some sort of 300/600/1200 stud game.  So much for the 1990s.

We see Vito Spatafore for the first time here as a player at Richie Aprile's game.