The Sopranos Season 2, Episode 11: House Arrest

I'm skipping again.  Basically I think the previous episode goes over themes so central to the Sopranos that I don't need to discuss them here.  Or I'm lazy.  Either one probably applies.  But House Arrest is to me a top-shelf Sopranos episode.  We get a perfect little one-off with Tony and we get deeper insight into Junior's life as a mostly retired capo.

Tony's lawyer tells him to spend less time at the strip club and more time at one of his businesses, so he chooses Barone Sanitation.  He's immediately bored with the daily grind there and he suffers a panic attack at a local waste hauling gathering.  He also develops a rash that he cannot stop scratching.  He's angry with Richie Aprile also.

Junior meets an old acquaintance at the hospital and she starts visiting him at his home.  Junior is quite vain - he hates being seen in a wheelchair and hides his CPAP mask.  He lies to this woman both about why he can't go out and why her husband used to come home with wads of cash in his pocket.  Finally he comes clean about why he can't go to a restaurant - he's under house arrest.  The final shot we see of these two, she is putting on his CPAP mask after he falls asleep in front of the television.

Meanwhile Melfi is drinking before therapy sessions with Tony.  She insists she's not an alcoholic but she gets into a screaming match with a rude smoker at a restaurant.  She confesses to her therapist that she has a fascination with what Tony will do even as she's repulsed by it.  It's always difficult to think of Melfi as anything other than a viewer surrogate, and after we watched Tony kill someone in cold blood, it's hard to imagine anything redeeming him.   Why do we watch this shit anyway?  Is it because we'd be taking shoe buffers to our rashes otherwise?  Does it make our life more interesting?

One thing that's fascinating about the dynamic of Tony is that he often does the right thing for the wrong reason.  Richie Aprile orders that a garbage truck be deliberately tipped into a parking lot because the customer is complaining about poor service.  He and the man at the trucking company get a call from the irate business owner demanding they remove the garbage, and they laugh and pretend not to understand him.  It's classic bully shit and it's a lot of what Tony does - he loves bullying people who have no recourse.  He is thrilled when Furio beats up the massage parlor owner for non-payment even as the owner alleges that Tony's protection does nothing for him.  The problem here is that Tony isn't the one doing it, so it's out of his control.  Everything has to be in his control - he panics when that isn't the case.

Random Observations

One thing I've never really commended in James Gandolfini's performance is his ability to let the viewer know Tony is on the verge of having a panic attack.  This seems like a really hard thing to get right - his eye movement and breathing and everything are so good every time.  The camera doesn't have to play any tricks and neither necessarily does the soundtrack.

This episode has some of the best lines from the Sopranos - "deconstructivism - your grandfather was a contractor".  Sadly I can't remember any of them now.  "What you don't know could fill a book" is a very funny statement.  "When I get better I'll take you to a discotheque". 

This episode also contains one of the worst jokes - the unfortunately named 'Marshall McLuhan'.  Just some of the worst 30 seconds in the show's history.

Someone did a malapropism but I can't remember what it was.  My memory's going.