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. 

The Sopranos Season 2, Episode 9 - From Where To Eternity

How do we justify the choices we make in life?  I suppose that's our own individual cross to bear, but many of us are never truly called on to justify them.  Then again, most of us are not involved in a crime syndicate.  From Where To Eternity explains all of the ways in which people in the Soprano orbit justify themselves.  Tony claims that the Mafia are merely 'soldiers' and that soldiers only kill other soldiers.  He maintains that Italians who didn't want to slave away for the robber barons started 'this thing' and that he is simply upholding that tradition.  Melfi challenges these notions because she can't help herself from seeing the bullshit inside - it's a strange choice particularly because her raison d'etre professionally speaking seems to be to give patients the ability to justify their actions, in part to make better ones. 

Tony comes at his justification for his actions intellectually - unlike apparently everyone else in this world, he does not believe in God, or at least that is deeply suggested by his actions during this episode.  Paulie does, but his God is both easily bribed and fooled - Paulie figures he'll end up in Purgatory, but he'll serve almost no time there because time passes quickly in Purgatory.  After he sees a medium, he's upset that all his donations to the church didn't protect him from what he discovered there.  He decides he will no longer donate to this particular protection racket.

Meanwhile Carmela prays to Jesus that Christopher should be shown the light, and ironically perhaps he was.  Her moral journey is a little more difficult to comprehend - she begins the episode insisting that Tony get a vasectomy and ends it by wanting to perhaps have a child with him.  I'm not sure how all of this happened, but Carmela is a woman who has to choose what to believe - she has to choose not to guess at why Tony would leave and come back as he did that night.

I don't think we've seen Tony kill anyone in cold blood before now.  Earlier he says to Melfi that he's not one of these sick fucks who takes pleasure in killing, but he most certainly does take pleasure in murdering Matthew Bevilaqua.  It's certainly justified as much as any revenge is, but there's a very clear cat-and-mouse aspect to Tony's insincerity with the captive Matthew.  Afterwards, he and Pussy go out for a big celebratory steak and then Tony has sex with Carmela.  His conscience is, as ever, the clearest.

Random Observations:

I love that the medium might actually be legitimate in the world of The Sopranos. 

'I had [my mistress] tested for AIDS, what do you think I am?'

Someone gives up Matthew's location for $20.

Christopher's vision of Hell is really something - an Irish bar where it's St. Patrick's Day all the time.

Hey, a malapropism!  But not really - it's just that the doctor calls Christopher 'Mr. Moltosanto'.

The Sopranos Season 2, Episode 8 - Full Leather Jacket

I didn't write up the previous episode, D-Girl. It's not for any animosity towards that particular episode, which is often maligned, but I just didn't get around to it and then the need to do so floated out of my head.  It's an experiment in the Sopranos universe, that's for sure.

Regardless, let us move past that into Full Leather Jacket, a great exploration of power dynamics in the Sopranos universe.  Carmela wants Meadow to get into Georgetown because she wants her to stay closer to home, so she decides to bully her neighbor and her neighbor's sister into writing a letter of recommendation for her.  What's fascinating is that while she supposedly 'gets her way', I don't recall if we ever see any real evidence for the letter being written.  The great part about the whole exchange is that Carmela knows what she's doing the whole time even as she's being both demanding and overly nice - she's aware of the effect she can have on people as a mobster's wife.

Meanwhile, Richie Aprile's being forced into making his victim's house wheelchair-accessible.  He resents this and tells said victim that if he complains again to Tony Soprano that he will be further harmed.  But he has a present for Tony - a jacket he took off some tough guy 20 years ago.  Richie claims that Tony used to admire the jacket, but Tony appears to have no memory of it.  He later learns that Tony gave the jacket away.  Again, I've seen this episode several times, and what remains ambiguous is whether or not Tony actually liked the jacket back when it was a relevant item, or whether Tony was just sucking up to someone more powerful and older than him in the organization.  We see Tony understand power dynamics so well here - he sends his underlings to tell Richie to build the ramp and he always busts balls with people lower in the organization.

Christopher proposes to Adrianna because 'she loves me and these are her child-bearing years', according to what he tells Matthew and Sean.  He knows that even though he has been garbage to her over the last few weeks that she will take him back, and he's right. 

And lastly we get Matthew and Sean who are cracking safes with Christopher at night and trying to horn their way in on the action in the day.  They get rebuffed by Tony and are forced to kick more upstairs by Furio.  They decide that they have to make a move and that move is to shoot Christopher in a drive-by.  It's a weird choice, but we can only imagine that they decided to do so for very dumb reasons, as these are dumb people.  Christopher survives, Sean does not, and Matthew is on the run. 

Random Observations:

I assume it's a form of code switching but I love how Jeanne Cusamano says 'fuck'.

'I went to Pace College!'

One thing I really love about The Sopranos is how it deconstructs certain mythos - Sean and Matthew say to Christopher that kicking upstairs to Tony Soprano will be an honor, but they also have to kick upstairs to everyone else, including Furio.  Given that the Mafia are a ring of amoral thugs, it's not surprising that the 'rules' are usually broken.

Love Richie telling the Rocco DeMeo story twice in the same exact way.

'Don't leave handprints on the finish!'

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.

The Sopranos Season 2, Episode 5 - Big Girls Don't Cry

After last week's foray into what women mean in the Sopranos world, it makes sense that this week's episode is a look at masculinity.  Tony's struggling with rage issues, and he tries talking to Hesh as though he were his therapist, with disappointing results - either Hesh is deliberately not listening to him, or is too lost in his own world to consider what Tony is saying. Christopher is the sensitive artist-type - when going to menace a whorehouse owner derelict on payment, he merely shoves a paintbrush up his nose and threatens him with more violence.  He's also attending 'Acting for Writers', a workshop class Adrianna signed him up for.  Pussy laments the fact that there's no honor in the Mafia business anymore to the FBI agent assigned to his case; neither one acknowledges the deep irony here.  Furio arrives in America - our first few scenes with him, he's playing with babies and making cheese, but as an enforcer he is terrifying.

Meanwhile Melfi invites Tony back to therapy after some deliberation with her therapist.  She says that she does not have a sexual attraction to Tony, but that he can 'be such a little boy sometimes'.  Still, she calls him from home, glass of wine nearby, in a flirtatious way.  If there's a sign one way or another in this episode if she is attracted to him sexually, I didn't see it - certainly there is some vicarious thrill in her treatment of him, which she acknowledges.  Plus there's the 'toodle-oo' scene from a previous episode.  We'll monitor this situation as it develops.

Tony kind of states the thesis of this episode when he tells Melfi that his goal in therapy is to focus his rage on the people in his life that deserve it.  Christopher realizes this as well when he trashes his screenplay - the world of felt emotions is simply not for him.  It's too vivid.  He can't handle those frustrations.  The rage will find its supposedly deserving targets.

Random Observations:

Love the scene where Tony pulls the phone out of the wall in front of Anthony Jr., then apologizes to him with a joke.  When he doesn't respond to the joke, Tony merely leaves the room.  This episode drives home how much Tony uses humor both as a weapon - with Richie Aprile and Paulie in his business - and as a defense, here.

Furio becomes a true American when Tony hands him a baseball bat to smash up the whorehouse.

Everything at the acting class is great - the writers are really on solid ground here.  'I'm from Hartsdale, but don't hold that against me'

Christopher is late twice in this episode.

Tony's Russian girlfriend is smoking hot.  That's it.

"Did you ever think that's why he's the Gentleman Caller?"

I didn't catch any malapropisms in this episode, but I suspect they're there and I'm not catching them.

The Sopranos Season 2, Episode 4 - Commendatori

What sort of power do women have in the world of The Sopranos?  Is it merely potential control of the home and hearth or is it something more?  We've seen Livia's lengthy tendrils more than once so far, but Carmela appeared powerless in the previous episode - she did have the magnanimity to apologize to Janice without being passive-aggressive, but ultimately Tony's notion of punishment won the day. 

We see female power manifest itself in several different ways here - in Italy, Tony has to negotiate with a female boss.  All throughout he is shown as more powerful than her - he has a dream about having sex with her where he is a Roman centurion; when he stays at the family villa, he overlooks her.  Finally when she brings him to a historic site, she manages to gain the upper hand in the negotiation using her sexuality as a weapon.  Meanwhile back in Jersey, Angie Bonpensiero has had enough of her husband's loutish ways.  She tells Carmela and Rosalie Aprile that she's going to file for divorce.  Carmela tries to talk her out of it, citing the fact that marriage is a sacrament, but in reality she's fighting for her own marriage - Angie divorcing reflects poorly on her own union.  Janice also confronts Carmela about her choices, wondering if she's content to ask so little from life.

Meanwhile we get a trip to Italy by Tony, Christopher, and Paulie - all of them have an unsuccessful journey.  Tony gets outnegotiated, Christopher swears he's going to see Mount Vesuvius but instead he gets sidetracked by heroin, and Paulie tries to relate to the locals, with hilarious results.  They may have Italian roots, but they will never fit in outside New Jersey.

Random observations -

Pussy's lying to the FBI and also killing people to keep his informing a secret.  Also this is one of those spots in the series where suspension of disbelief breaks down - he claims to have driven 'all the way the fuck out here', but in reality, the Party Box is right next to where the Bada Bing is located.

Are we to read anything into the fact that the old man is fixated on street names when Tony is selling cars?

I wonder what the audition was like for the guy who gets carjacked.  I also love their quotidian struggles before they get robbed.  And that their dog is named Churchill and runs away.

I think I had this graffiti pointed out to me before, but on one of the panels explaining the history of the oracle site, it says 'FUCK NATO'.  Did the production crew put that there? 

Love the prostitute idly scratching her foot as Paulie explains that his relatives come from the same part of Naples as she does.

I don't remember any malapropisms in this episode though there must've been some in Italian.

The Sopranos Season 2, Episode 3 - Toodle-Fucking-Oo

The past comes out in fits and starts on The Sopranos.  Seldom do the writers resort to flashbacks to tell the story of these characters' pasts - it just all comes out the way it does in life; in arguments, in drunkenness, in good times and in bad. 

We get reams of the past in this episode - it begins with Richie Aprile's release from prison.  The Sopranos would do this several times over the course of the show and it would feel forced except that Aprile fits so seamlessly into the preexisting world.  He once dated Janice and he's a loyal member of Junior's crew.  He's immediately a huge thorn in Tony's side.

Meanwhile Meadow hosts a party that wrecks her grandmother's now-vacant house.  Tony pretends to be upset, but for some reason he's not - maybe because he knows what kind of agita it will cause his sister and mother.  Maybe because he's aware of his own teenage misdeeds.  It's not really explained, but either way Meadow manages to manipulate her parents into barely punishing her.  Janice helps with this lenient stance until she actually sees what Meadow did, then she reverses her position - this disagreement nearly leads to her expulsion from the Soprano home.  Meadow overhears all of this.  Still, when Hunter asks what her parents did about this transgression, she gloats that they gave her the punishment she suggested.  Hunter says her parents did nothing; they're too worried about her becoming bulimic again.  She suggests to Meadow that she 'start purging'.  In the final shot of the episode, we see Meadow on her hands and knees cleaning up the mess she helped make in her grandmother's home.  Tony seems to have no idea what to make of this, and I as the viewer didn't really know either - I didn't remember this scene.  Meadow's pangs of conscience appear to come from nowhere.  Then I thought about the scene with Hunter -

They're making hot chocolate and singing 'No Scrubs' by TLC.  I don't know the lyrics exactly, but the song's main thesis is that these women are tired of men who act like children and have the finances to boot.  It's about men who don't take responsibility.  That's generally what we see in this episode - adults not taking responsibility.  Tony and Janice argue, but no one talks about who's going to scrub away the mess.  Carmela and Tony discuss how punishing children essentially means punishing themselves - to make sure the child stays home, they have to stay home.  They're unwilling to do the ostensibly hard work of trying to set a good example.  Meadow is perceptive and after some off-screen reflection, she's trying to be different.  She does indeed start purging, but only (voluntarily) in the Christian sense.

Random Observations -

I didn't even talk about Beansie and Richie and that stuff - but that's kind of Sopranos by rote.  I do love the phrase 'good earner'.

James Gandolfini is so good at bad acting.  It's something I used to talk a lot about on here was when actors have to add another layer of acting in a scene, and he's brilliant at it.  We usually know Tony's real thoughts even if he's trying to conceal them, and we have to ask - is he really trying to conceal them, or does he know what he's doing?

Is this the first scene with Elliot Kupferberg, Melfi's therapist?  Probably not.  I know he exists as a device for Melfi to express her thoughts, but he's also imperious and smug.

Christopher's late again.

One thing I love in the dramatic arts is when a character appears to have values we would agree with, but it's quickly revealed that he doesn't - like when Richie Aprile remonstrates Christopher for hitting his girlfriend.  But he quickly adds that if Christopher were married, it would be 'none of his business'.  Old school, indeed.

This episode is the first one where Janice's estranged son is brought up.  Tony is not (yet) heartless enough to use him as an example of Janice's poor parenting.

I didn't catch a malapropism in this episode.