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.

The Sopranos Season 2, Episode 2 - Do Not Resuscitate

Corruption is pervasive.  With corruption comes twofacedness - showing one face to one person and a different face to others.  Janice is trying to persuade her mother to return to the house she's lived in for most of her adult life, Tony's trying to resolve a union dispute, and Pussy is revealed to also be an FBI informant.  Even Meadow is scheming to see her friend at the hospital instead of her grandmother, and she lies to her mother and her little brother to get her way.  The FBI agent assigned to Pussy tells him a jaundiced view of his boss's situation.

Overarching this theme of double dealing is a lot of talk about the World War II generation - the African American organizer's father lived through World War II as a soldier; Tony watches the war on TV.  Junior compares a house arrest bracelet to Nazi Germany which gets him a scolding from a Jewish judge.  Livia's constantly calling everyone by the wrong name, seemingly transported back to the 1960s in her hospital room, complete with Mario Lanza and the DeCastro Sisters.  It's implied that this generation is honest and Tony's is not, but that's not exactly what we see on screen.

Meanwhile through a rather large contrivance, Anthony manages to tell his grandmother about Janice discussing her Do Not Resuscitate; Livia begins to see the worst of Janice's intentions immediately.  It could very well be her dream to be in a coma while the rest of her family has to support her financially (and ostensibly emotionally) without the pain of living, but more obvious is the fact that Janice doesn't really want to spend time with her mother and would likely welcome her demise.

At the episode's conclusion, Junior slips in the shower and needs to go to the hospital - he insists that Tony end his grudge with his mother, as a kind of dying wish.  I have a suspicion this is partly because they know the show thrives on the tension between the two and they can't keep them apart all season.

Random observations -

We're introduced to Bobby Baccala in front of the sign at Satriale's that says 'SUCKLING PIGS - ANY SIZE' - was this deliberate?  He takes Tony's abuse for the entire episode.

I looked for it in my previous posts and I swear there's a mention of it last season - maybe it was in an episode I didn't cover.  But this is either the first or second mention of the New Jersey Devils in the series - Anthony is wearing a Devils hat.  He acts as a kind of accidental tempter to his grandmother, plus he's probably rude to be wearing a hat indoors - it all works, as it almost always does in this show.

The elder African American offers Tony Coca-Cola when they meet at his house - is this to imply he's a teetotaler?

I didn't even discuss Tony's double-cross of his uncle vis a vis the pipefitters union but I find the mob stuff to be a driver of the rest of the action of the show.

"What did one prick say to the other prick?"  We don't get the punchline to this joke.  Shame on you, David Chase.

I didn't catch a deliberate malapropism in this episode - the best I can come up with is Mario Lasagna instead of Mario Lanza.

The Sopranos Season 2, Episode 1 - Guy Walks Into a Psychiatrist's Office

We're back!  It was high time for me to continue on this journey of Sopranos viewing and writing. 

Season 2 begins with a Tony-focused episode - Pussy Bonpensiero returns to North Jersey, and specifically to Tony's house, with a tale about a love affair with an acupuncturist and time spent in Puerto Rico to fix his ailing back.  He's welcomed back into the fold albeit with some suspicion.  Tony is no longer seeing Dr. Melfi - scared for her safety, she is continuing to see patients at a local motel.  He is, however, having panic attacks, and so he tries to convince her to see him again.  He fails.

Most importantly, his sister Janice returns from Seattle - she had changed her name and distanced herself from the family, but with her mother in the hospital she decides to come back to ingratiate herself into the family affairs. 

I suspect we're meant to compare and contrast these two returns - Janice (aka Parvati) purporting to care about her mother's convalescence but being more interested in her home's pending sale and Pussy needing to return because of his family's finances.  Pussy is told in no uncertain terms that his return is contingent on Tony's approval and he accepts the fact that his 'pickups' were garnished by the men who made them.  Moreover, at the impromptu reunion party, Pussy accepts Tony's insult without getting offended.  He knows being insulted is part of his life as an underling of Tony Soprano.  Janice refuses to accept what Tony wants and he knows she's not going to go away until she does - she's a Soprano.

- Aida Turturro does an excellent job of establishing Janice as a character right away.  The little scene with her and Tony sharing a cigarette on his patio - it's a great moment to establish their sibling chemistry.

- I didn't mention the subplot with Christopher getting his Series 7 and running a pump and dump scam with Webistics and the two goon underlings he has working for them.  It's so good, though.  'We'll do wet work, wash his car, whatever'.  There's a certain kind of idiocy that this show nails and a show like Breaking Bad overdoes.

- This is the first episode we see Tony's in-laws, but there's not a lot established about them.  I do think we're meant to observe that her mother is similar to Tony's mother - she repeats the awful (but true) thing Livia said to them on her wedding day.  Perhaps that's just elder blitheness.

- I feel like I missed some of the dramatic import of the series the first time around because I was too gobsmacked at the location choices.  Melfi and Tony's diner confrontation happened at a diner I've been to.  It's called the Six Brothers Diner but this wasn't revealed in the show nor do I think it has any thematic import.

- Malapropism alert - 'Duane' for 'deign'

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 12, 13 - Isabella, I Dream Of Jeannie Cusamano

It's been a while since I watched these episodes, but I feel like I owe it to this project to stick it out here.  Isabella is a difficult episode of television to write about without either becoming depressed or being cliche (or more likely both).  So I've combined these all into one and am just going to throw out some things based on what I remember from 2 weeks ago.

It's disappointing how much the Sopranos leans on Freudian bullshit in the last two episodes here.  That said, this is compelling television, so I can overlook it a bit.  Tony runs into an Italian smokeshow in his backyard, a 'mother figure' who listens to him without judging.  Melfi claims this is because his brain is trying to scream at him that his mother is trying to have him killed - that his hallucinations are sort of day-dreams getting him to realize things.  I think he also flips over a glass table and threatens Melfi during these episodes.  He might not. 

Livia, meanwhile, is forgetting everything - she doesn't recognize Meadow, and she's wandering around after dark calling out for her dead sister.  This is meant to imply she's had some sort of psychic break after recommending that her son be murdered, but Livia's mental state is almost impenetrable - unless she's angry or otherwise making herself the center of attention, it's difficult to ascribe motives to her.   I'm curious to see how characters' mental states and physical states reflect one another as the series progresses - we've already seen Pussy's back injury used as a pretext to assume that he's an informant.  Tony's depression is, according to Melfi, a signal that something is amiss in his life.

Random observations -

Mikey Palmice actually uses his track suit to go jogging.  Jimmy Altieri doesn't.  They both die in it, as prophesized by Junior in the tailor's.

Tony's demeanor when he talks to the Feds is so different from when he talks to anyone else. 

It's hard to remember stuff from episodes of television you watched several weeks ago, even if you had seen them already.

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 11 - Nobody Knows Anything

I decided to skip the writeup on the previous episode for two reasons - I watched the episode nearly a week ago, and it's not very good.  I could write a lot about Adrianna's foray into the music business but it's a slender episode, character development wise and otherwise.

Let's plow ahead with this one, which introduces Pussy as a potential FBI informant.  We haven't seen a lot of this character before now - early on, he's just one of the guys in Tony's crew.  He offered up some advice for Christopher when he was having nightmares, but he's largely been sidelined.  Here, he's accused of being a rat after he gets arrested and Tony's crooked cop gets a tip about him.  Everyone's eyeing him and acting differently around him - Tony comes over to his house and insists that he has friends that would die for him, which really means that Tony has friends who will kill him.  Paulie takes him to a spa/steam room to try to see if he is wearing a wire, but Pussy insists that his doctor has advised him that prolonged exposure to heat is bad for his already high blood pressure.

Meanwhile Jimmy, another heretofore sidelined character, also gets out of jail and goes to Tony's house to discuss some illegal things in a leading way, trying to get Tony to implicate himself in criminal activities.  It's unclear whose idea this is, the Feds or Jimmy's, but if he is an informant, it seems awfully clumsy.  Either way, Tony realizes that his cop must've gotten a bad tip, but that there is an informant.  Too bad he can't go back to that cop because he committed suicide.

I want to speak a little bit about John Heard's Vin Makazian, a character who wasn't exactly three-dimensional until this episode and then he's gone.  I never quite understood why he chose that moment to kill himself, but Tony might understand why.  It's the fact that he's still a respected member of society.  As a police officer, he's afforded special privileges.  He didn't want that - he wanted the opposite because he thought he was garbage.  When Vin's madam/therapist tells Tony after his death that 'at least with Tony Soprano, you know where you stood', he has a flash of recognition - Vin liked Tony, but Tony always treated him horribly.  It's implied that Tony might be thinking about that at the end of the episode as he stares out at a river.

Oh, and Livia's telling Junior that Tony's captains are meeting in Green Grove along with Johnny Sac and other people from New York.  The wagons are circling around Tony from Junior's crew.  How's this going to end?  I guess with the series continuing.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

"He's like the fuckin' Jonas Salk of backs."

"But when it comes to backs, nobody knows anything"

I know it's to provide exposition but I love how focused the local news is on Tony's life.   

I don't think Mikey Palmiece's wife shows up again, but that's a great one-scene performance if so.

Malapropism alert:  Bra-oon appliances.

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 9 - Boca

I haven't been critiquing the quality of episodes much in these posts, but that's because they've all been  outstanding so far.  Not so with the unfortunate Boca, an episode that establishes three things heretofore unseen in the Sopranos universe - that Meadow plays girls' soccer, that her teammate is a constant presence at their house, that Junior has a mistress he's been seeing for well over a decade, and that Junior and Tony go golfing together sometimes.  This latter one is quite plausible, given Junior's already established interest in athletics, but the previous two things are artifacts of a world where serialized storytelling was not the norm. 

I just don't have a lot to say about this one.  The Junior arc about cunnilingus feels like a true story someone told the writers that they thought they had to put on screen, and it doesn't quite work.  Tony's arc is about justice and is a question as old as Aeschylus.  Meadow's is probably worth addressing - the fact that she tells her father about her coach having sex with one of her teammates and he refuses to believe this at first seems of the moment, and that she sees him stumble home completely drunk after the soccer coach is arrested instead of killed.  Given that we're shown this entire scene from Meadow's perspective, we're meant to consider what she thinks about this - Tony seems giddy about having this pressure taken off him, but his giddiness looks like blitheness to Meadow.  She'll never know that he went through an ostensibly difficult decision to not kill someone.

Random Observations

I can't remember the malapropism in this one.

"You yap worse than six barbers!"

 

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 8 - The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti

I'm going to focus on Christopher for this writeup because by and large, this episode does as well.  There's plenty of other critical Tony stuff, but we don't really see a very new side of him.  The episode opens with a dream, and we're pretty sure it's Christopher's dream because we only see things that relate to him - the Czech man he killed and Adriana are featured.  The Czech tells him that he didn't properly dispose of the evidence and that the wrong people will find out soon.  A hand grabs him from inside the meat case.  Christopher wakes up with a start next to Adriana.

Christopher mentioned selling his story to Hollywood in Episode 1 and now he's working on a screenplay.  Meanwhile, indictments are supposedly coming for the North Jersey crime families.  Christopher is upset that Brendan is mentioned on TV in relation to these indictments but he is not.  He pulls a gun on a bakery clerk who doesn't respect him enough.  He spirals into a depression over this non-recognition, claiming that he has no identity.  This seems like an absurd claim - he's part of a crime family and spends most of his time employed in that regard.  Since we see him writing a screenplay and he talks about how much he loves movies - we don't see criminals in movies going about anonymously.  Henry Hill in Goodfellas claims that when he became part of 'the crew', the bakery owner would serve him first even on busy days.  Meanwhile Christopher has to wait for cannolis even for a guy who wasn't there when he came in. 

Thankfully Christopher has his other criminal associates to keep him from getting too down.  First in this list is Paulie, who consoles him with this great exchange:

CHRISTOPHER:  You ever feel like nothing good was ever going to happen?
PAULIE:  Yeah. And nothin' ever did.  Who gives a fuck?

Paulie's a pragmatist or a complete sociopath.  He never had aspirations to anything more than what he's got already, and it doesn't really matter to him whether life is good or bad.  He's a great foil to Christopher as we'll see in the coming seasons.

Next up is Pussy, who informs him that it gets easier to murder people the more people you murder.  He seems to at least have some idea of what Christopher is going through.  Plus he explains to him that the logic of his dream doesn't make sense - why would his killer want to help him? 

Third on the list is Tony, who sees Christopher's behavior for what it is - a sign of depression.  He mentions how he's seen people who are obsessed with appearing as gangsters and who end up in jail because of it.  Tony starts talking around depression and therapy and suicidal ideation, but Christopher pretends to be above it all.  Tony is, after all, his boss, and showing weakness in front of the boss isn't the best career move.  Still, Tony seems genuinely excited to try to discuss these things, but after Christopher says he's never thought about killing himself, he has to turn it into a joke.

This depression doesn't get resolved until his mom calls him to wonder if everything's okay.  He lets the answering machine get it - she thinks everything isn't okay because his name is in the paper.  Vindication.  Depression over.  He's a real somebody now.

Sprinkled around this in the episode is the idea that gangsterdom is thrilling.  The Melfis discuss how gangster films featuring Italians are now part of classic cinema.  When they go in for family therapy, their therapist leads them on a big aside about how in part of his (Jewish) family, there were also gangsters.  The episode itself seems to speak to why gangster content is compelling - there are always so many things left untold.  Plus we don't pull guns on retail clerks.

Random Observations

I must be loyle to my capo.

Questions I will never get the chance to ask:  Was the choice of having the papers blowing around in the dream sequence influenced by Bela Tarr's Satantango?

I feel like this shot lived on in DVD menus and promos for the show, but when Tony is standing against a barbed wire fence as the camera pans across his face with a train in the background - that's amore. 

I really like how it's established that Jennifer's ex-husband is still a part of her life.

I think it's really challenging to write plausible bad jokes and so I have to commend whoever wrote the bits for the nursing home stand-up comedian.

Malapropism Alert:  Tennessee William, Antichrists (instead of Anarchists)

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 7 - Down Neck

What determines who we are - nature or nurture?  This is the question that eats at Tony Soprano after his son gets into trouble for stealing sacramental wine.  Is his son acting out because he's a 13 year old boy, or because he's a 13 year old boy who has learned that his father is in the Mafia?   Tony tries to feel his son out to see what he knows, but he does very little to reassure him that he's not involved.  Meanwhile he's digging through his own memories and we get to see his recollections of 1967 Newark acted out.  We see his father beat up some guy on the block and we see a young Tony stow himself away in his dad's trunk to find out where his father and sister went every Sunday.  Tony claims he was proud of how tough his father was when he learned of his Mafia affiliation when he was a child, but he's aware that things have gotten more complicated since his childhood.  One thing that's decidedly missing from his childhood recollections is how exactly Tony got involved in the business.  We learn how much of a troublemaker he was, and how his mother would threaten him with very specific violence, but how that particular choice took place isn't mentioned.  Tony seems to have accepted this choice as an inevitability and projects his feelings on to Carmela that he's responsible for his son's bad behavior.  Livia and Junior seem to regard this theft with odd pride - both of them enjoy recounting what a scoundrel Tony was at that age.  After all, to them, Tony is a huge success.

One thing that's illuminating about Tony's feelings on the range of livelihoods a successful person can have are the other potential life paths he mentions during the episode - he claims he could've been selling patio furniture in San Diego, he mentions Rocco Altieri (sp?) moving to Reno and becoming a billionaire ostensibly in the casino business, and a classmate who invented 'the twist ties that go on the ends of salamis, he sits on his ass making millions'.  Capitalism produces some unusual outcomes - I'm inclined to see Tony's view on these lifepaths as being reflections of his upbringing as a man's livelihood demands some sort of grift - he is equally skeptical of psychiatry as some sort of long con (and indeed his mother tells her grandson it's all a scam for Jews) - but I'm not fully willing to wed that idea to the Sopranos writers.

Anthony Jr, meanwhile, has to undergo a battery of tests to make sure he isn't ADD.  When Tony and Carmela are told the results, that he manifested 5 out of the 9 possible signs of ADD, they both voice their frustration with this process.  They will handle things themselves.  Nature, nurture - whatever the case, with Anthony Jr., doctors will not be involved.

Random Observations

So much of this series is informed by Goodfellas - I had Henry Hill's line about school, 'how can I listen to my teachers talk about good government bullshit' running through my head this whole episode.  Both Johnny and Tony seem to think their sons should listen to their teachers.

I don't usually do this, but the contrivance of Tony and Anthony having a flat tire on the way to the dentist (and the dentist is apparently in Kearny?) is a bit much.

Absolutely love Young Janice giving Young Tony the finger.

Also love this actor who plays Anthony Jr.'s psychologist.  He has three scenes and nails them all.

Is Melfi entertained by Tony's stories?  She laughs in the right places, she's shocked in other places - I know at some level she's supposed to be a viewer surrogate, and Lorraine Bracco has to make a lot of choices with how she reacts to what her character is being told.  Maybe it's trying to demonstrate Melfi's empathy.

When Livia goes into her performance about how upset she is when she learns her son is seeing a psychiatrist, Anthony Jr. has no reaction.  I think upon previous viewings I took this as adolescent indifference to his surroundings, but now I think it's that even he at 13 is wise to his grandmother's bullshit.

It's 1997 alert:  Anthony Jr. mentions the first season of South Park.  It feels like every male in my freshman high school gym class knew those first 6 episodes almost by heart.

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 6 - Pax Soprana

How do you talk to a person who has authority over you?  I suppose that's not a particularly fraught thing for most people, as most of us do it every day.  The question of how do you talk to a person who has authority over you and can also have you killed for insubordination is a much thornier issue.  Tony tiptoes around the issue of his uncle's decision to 'tax' Hesh all episode - he tells circular stories about Augustus Caesar, he tells Livia in coded language that some people need to learn to listen to other people.  But Hesh himself has this great moment where he too needs to tiptoe - he expects that Tony will pay him back his share, but he's not entirely certain.  He can't ask for it.  Everything has to be said in this roundabout way.

Likewise with Tony and Melfi - it was Carmela, not his mistress, who burned him with the candle.  Why is Tony not owning up to having a mistress?  This is the episode where he confesses his love for Melfi, so perhaps he's trying to portray himself as a one-woman man to her.  In a loving gesture, he steals her car and has it fixed.  When I first saw this episode, I didn't quite understand what a ridiculous violation this is - if you can steal someone's car to have it fixed, you can also steal it to have it sabotaged.  The crooked cop is still watching her house.  He's still having dreams about having sex with her.  Gandolfini nails how creepy it is for a person like him to start talking about how gentle a woman is. 

This is juxtaposed with the fact that he can't seem to sexually perform for either his wife or mistress.  What's interesting is that this does not seem like it was a problem for him in the past - we don't have his mistresses' take, but Carmela implies that this has never been an issue in their relationship, even though he's always had women on the side.  By the end, he's reconciled with Carmela by lying to her about how much she means to him, while we see that shot of the empty pool.  I doubt it gets much better.

Random Thoughts

Things escalate so fast with his Russian mistress - he insults her by laying $200 on the bed and she throws a candle at him. 

Carmela talks with Father Phil about how she always viewed his dalliances with mistresses as a form of masturbation.  He doesn't really seem equipped to talk about life in this way.

Again, I should write these up right away, but I don't think either of the children have a scene in this episode.  This is adult stuff in this episode.

Whose Little League game are Junior and Tony at, anyway? 

The irony in this show is often hardly worth documenting, but the fact that Junior acts indignant about a drug dealer selling to minors while not realizing that that man works for his organization is pretty high up there.

Nancy Marchand's line reads are phenomenal.  'Water, water, always with the water! It's like living next to Gunga Din!'  'Bring the cookies!'

Love that they just get a Sikh to play this auto mechanic in one scene.  Why not? 

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 5 - College

Revenge is generally a fantasy we read in a book or see on a screen.  The opportunity to seek vengeance does not often exist in real life, and when it does, it's often through legal remedies - revenge may be best served cold, but in our day-to-day lives, it's usually served quite slow.  Those of us who swallow our road rage and back down from physical confrontation only have sports and art through which to see rights wronged, and then only vicariously.

We'll get to things done vicariously later in this post, but for now I want to say - College portrays revenge, real revenge, and it's not a win for the viewer.  Tony gets to tell a man why he's being murdered, but at the cost of his relationship with his daughter.  He's even given an out by Christopher - Christopher offers to do it himself.  No, Tony says, this is personal.  He risks his own life and this trip with his daughter to ensure that this man who wronged 'this thing of ours' comes to a bad end. The writers wisely have this person be someone we haven't seen or heard about, and the people he wronged are also all off-screen presences.  Tony claims that this is 'for Jimmy', but we know better.  I suppose an argument can be made that this is a message more to Tony's guys - if you think about ratting, we will find you and we will kill you.  Even if, as a result, the ducks are spooked away. 

Meanwhile, Carmela's day of sickness is altered by Father Intintola's unexpected arrival.  They talk about their shared love of movies, they get drunk together, Carmela confesses very emotionally and then takes communion in the sexiest way possible.  In the morning, she pretends nothing happened whereas he thinks he should be apologizing.  This is one incident I feel like I could talk a lot more about if I hadn't seen the show - having seen it already, we know nothing substantial comes of Carmela's confession.  Furthermore, it's obvious that Father Phil really doesn't want to rock this boat - whether he's scared of Tony or whether he's overwhelmed by what Carmela is confessing, he doesn't have a lot to offer when Carmela asks him what she should do.  Perhaps this is what he's apologizing for - he was blinded by his own lust and drunkenness.  I feel like someone pounding sacramental wine is somewhat of a comedy cliche at this point, but Father Phil really goes for it here.

Each character confesses something - Tony, that some of his business involves illegal gambling, Meadow that she was doing speed, Carmela that her husband is involved in terrible crimes and that she considers herself complicit, and Father Phil confesses that he had lust in his heart for Carmela.  Meadow's confession is the only one about an event that appears to be in the past - the rest are ongoing.  It's interesting that Meadow doesn't seem to judge her father; she's just happy enough that he admitted that yes, he's involved in some illegal activities.

I don't have a ton to say about College even though it is one of the great television episodes.  Part of it is that there's a surprising amount of action - Tony is trying to figure out who this guy is, this guy is trying to figure out if Tony knows who he is - there's not a lot of space in there for the psychological drama this show usually trucks in.  The other is that the story is masterfully told on screen. What do you need me for, anyway?

Random thoughts -

This episode was partially filmed in my hometown - the Odenoki Motel is actually the Ramapo Lodge Motel and is not in Maine.  Amazingly it is still there - almost everything else this seedy and rundown has been removed from this area.

I wish I knew more about The Remains Of The Day to know why Carmela was so moved by that moment in the film.

I love the detail that Petrullio does wood carvings and that he can't do lips.  Also love the two Mainers who wander in off a David Lynch set refusing to kill Tony Soprano.

Great production design moments - Anthony overfilling his mother's orange juice such that it almost spills (and comically wobbles as he brings it to her), and the wooden ducks mounted outside Petrullio's travel agency.  Those might've been there anyway but they're a great touch.

I like that they felt compelled to ADR in a line about Nathaniel Hawthorne being Bowdoin's most famous alumnus, or else the audience might think the Sopranos creators just jammed in a quote about this episode's theme.

Malapropism alert - 'Knight in white satin armor'

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 4 - Meadowlands

The day for it has long past, and a keen-eyed viewer doesn't need it, but I'd like to see The Sopranos without Tony.  I don't mean, what if he's dead, I mean, what if we just see everyone else in his life without him around.  Dr. Melfi's life, as demonstrated by this episode, seems quite mundane - besides the confrontation with the police officer, which we got to see, there wouldn't be a whole lot there.  We'd get to hear more jokes by Junior Soprano ("Did you hear about the Chinese Godfather?  He made them an offer they couldn't understand.").  We see how Meadow's life is altered here - Christopher picks her up at school and demands that she tell him whether or not her father knows that he sold her drugs.  Anthony's would-be schoolyard fight is thwarted because his enemy's parents are terrified of his father.  What were these weeks like in the Piacosta household?  We only get a glimpse when Tony runs into the father at the local gardening center.  It's an interesting idea that I don't think ever came to pass in the series (except when Tony is in a coma, and even then, it doesn't happen).

We start here with a dream and we end with Tony talking conspiratorially to his captains at Jackie's funeral.  Let's begin with the dream - This is the first dream sequence in the Sopranos, and there's a lot to unpack, but why bother - I think it's less important to consider the contents of this dream but rather if the images from it recur in future episodes.  I also think it's important that this dream comes when Tony is sleeping at his mistress's apartment.  But yeah, we get Tony lusting after Melfi, we get Melfi as Livia, we get his crew hanging out in Melfi's waiting room. 

We see his crew later in a medical setting, but they're with Jackie at the hospital.  He didn't die yet, I just misinterpreted Junior in the previous episode.  He dies in this episode.  Jackie's death is a sad time for Tony and his crew, it appears, but it seems like it's always interrupted - their mourning is about to begin at the Bada Bing when Christopher comes in and demands that they begin a war.  Tony gets angry and then drives off to meet Junior, but the show does a nice 180 as Tony makes a temporary peace with Junior.  At the funeral, the talk is all strategy.  Perhaps as Jackie grew sicker in the previous episode, Tony had already buried him - thus the supposed 'acceptance' in episode 3's title. 

I'd talk about Christopher's arc in this episode, but I don't think there's a lot to it.  Does his anger drive Tony to make peace with Junior?  And what of the fact that Tony makes peace with Junior and decides to keep coming to therapy?  It seems as though Tony takes the lessons that Melfi is trying to impart about his mother and uses them in his business, and that this is what provokes his hilariously insincere sounding reason for continuing with therapy.

Random observations -

Jeremy Piacosta.  Jennifer Melfi.  Meadow Soprano.  Brendan Filone.  Hunter Scangeralo.  What are we to make of these non-traditional first names coupled with Italian names?  Something to consider as the series moves along.

There's so much buried in this show that I feel like I'm seeing things.  Tony says to Melfi that his mother always told him never to answer a question with another question, but Livia does so twice in their conversation that occurs shortly after.  Is that deliberate?

I always thought it was funny that they picked Mario Kart 64 as the N64 game that Tony and his son would play, but I never noticed until this viewing that we only hear Wario, Mario, and Luigi, the 3 ostensibly Italian characters speaking in ridiculous stereotypical voices ('I'm-a Wario, I'm-a gonna win!', 'Mamma mia!').  Paulie's rant about Italian culture being stolen came to mind.

Anthony Jr. would absolutely choose Mario as his Mario Kart character.

There's a lot of talk of urination and defecation - Christopher's fear-induced soiling is brought up twice, Tony mentions pissing on someone's head when he's talking to his mom.  Things just recur in this show without really having to have a point.

I don't remember ever seeing any live TV broadcasts of local mobsters' deaths.

I have to finish these writeups the night I see the episodes.  I forget too many details and things get so squirrely.  Maybe I have to at least write down the critical parts and then fill in the blanks.  And christ, I didn't even talk about John Heard's character beating up Melfi's date.

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 3 - Denial, Anger, Acceptance

What binds us to anyone we know?  Family, old friends, business partners - how do these connections sustain one another, and will they mean anything when tested?  I suppose those are two large questions, but Tony Soprano himself is asking 'What if this all means nothing?' to his therapist as his 'friend' wastes away from cancer.  Back to the ties that bind, then - this is a theme covered by most of the so-called 'prestige dramas' that I've seen, and perhaps it's trite to postulate that when circumstances change for people close to us, most of us are ill-equipped to deal with a friend or family member going through something traumatic.  What complicates things about The Sopranos is that often we're watching a bunch of murderous sociopaths failing to connect with one another - are we supposed to relate to this failure, or are we supposed to think this is mostly a result of the rest of their lives?

Jackie Aprile is dying of cancer.  Tony goes to see him three times, and I suspect those three times relate to the episode title here (albeit this is in the nascent DVD era when we couldn't be certain if show creators put a lot of thought into titles beyond what might look intriguing in 'TV Guide').  The first time, he and his crew chase out Mikey Palmice who is trying his hand at empathy and failing.  They talk about work with Jackie as this is the context in which they know him, but he's not really enjoying the conversation.  The second time, Tony comes in with a stripper dressed as a nurse as a prank, and leaves the two of them alone.  He tells Melfi that 'I came back in, we had some booze' - but we're not shown that scene, and so I wonder if Tony is lying.  I doubt it, but I had never considered it until writing this.  The final time, Jackie is visibly ill, and Tony is trying to talk about business and Jackie is not even pretending to listen at this point.  It's implied at the end of the episode that Jackie is dead, but Tony has spent the episode in denial.  His anger comes at Melfi, and I suspect his acceptance comes at Meadow Soprano's recital.

Ah, Meadow - I haven't talked much about her yet.  Then again, the show hasn't established a ton about her either - she's a sullen and rebellious teenager, she uses Online, and she has a friend named Hunter Scangarelo.  She seems quite aware of how her family is different from other families.  I love her code switching in this episode - it's established that she's a good (and diligent) student, but she can also talk to Christopher and Brendan in their language. 

Since this is a show primarily about one family, they do a great job of establishing prior relations - Meadow and Christopher talk like knowing cousins whereas Livia and Junior talk like co-conspirators.  I was going to point out in Episode 1 how out of place Junior and Livia's conversation seemed, but I forgot that they spoke like this frequently - did Johnny Soprano talk with his wife like this?  I should look for parallels between this relationship and the one that Tony and Melfi are developing.

Random observations -

Three great details I noticed in this one - the half-empty Jolt Colas in Meadow's room, the Garfield card in Jackie's hospital room, but the piece de resistance was during choir practice when one of the teens was singing with her arms folded across her chest.  Did anyone tell her to do that, or was it just unconscious?   It's a great choice.  And there's only one of them doing it too despite there being 20 kids there.

I do enjoy that 'All Through The Night' montage at the end - I can't call it on the nose, but it's certainly close - but I also like the connection to Meadow's study habits and meth needs.

I also enjoy the Hasidic Jews meeting Tony Soprano outside a pork store.  Another thing I'd never put together and no one says anything about it - nor does Ariel mention it when he's tortured there.

What a brutal own on the Masada story by the Sopranos writers here - Jews may tell this tale to emphasize Jewish pride and stubbornness, but as Tony reminds Ariel, the Romans didn't go away, either.

It took this long to reveal that Tony Soprano has a cellular phone.  In the last episode, Junior Soprano managed to track him down at Green Grove - it's implied he didn't have one.  I would've liked to have seen some seasons of The Sopranos where he didn't have one.

Haven't managed to talk a lot about Carmela yet but that 'come here' gesture is so perfectly demeaning.  These are too long and I have too much to talk about with them.

Malapropism alert:  To Tony, the psychological exam involving a patient saying what they think of when they see an inkblot is the Horshack test.

The Sopranos Season 1, Episode 2 - 46 Long

I can't recall the image that closes the episode, but I can remember the one that opens it - the mob guys all sitting around a table counting money.   That's the overarching theme of 46 Long - how money trickles up and down the Mob hierarchy, and how theft permeates their lives.  Christopher and Brendan are robbing trucks, Livia's nurse is suspected of stealing, Anthony Jr.'s teacher's car is stolen, and Paulie's taking a steamer (or something) from the Seattle and Tacoma Coffee Roasters.

It's very hard to get at Livia Soprano as a character, especially here - she exists as a kind of antagonist to Tony, but it's impossible to read her motivations at this point in the show.  I think you've either met someone like this in your life and fill in the blanks, or you don't think much about her internal state - she is not only decidedly miserable, she seems to take no joy from making others miserable.  Now that my parents and the parents of people I know my age are closing in on 70, it's hard to imagine any of them to be as inept and addled as Livia is here - she's portrayed as a much older woman mentally.  Then again, we see very little evidence that she has an active life mentally or physically, and it's not clear when her husband died. 

I forgot how casually racist most of the characters are, but a distrust and dislike of other ethnicities is already evident from the jump and continues on to episode 2 here.  Livia doesn't trust the postal worker who is black, she doesn't trust her Trini nurse, neither does Tony, and Junior mentions offhand after Tony leaves that 'can you believe it, Tony hired [a black person] as a nurse?'  It's interesting to contrast this to the pains the show makes to demonstrate that New Jersey has deep Italian roots, and so while yes, that means organized crime, Tony also sees Dr. Melfi and a Ms. DiCaprio runs the retirement community.  I don't think these are meta-concerns about the show's negative portrayal of Italian-Americans - I think it's meant to establish that there are other Italians in this world who are not in this miasm.

I have to talk about Paulie and Pussy at the Starbucks stand-in.  It's a broad bit of comedy having these two greaseballs at an upscale coffee place, but Paulie's contempt for the fact that Italian food and drink were co-opted by corporations for mass consumption and mass profit works into the overarching theme of theft.  The scene seems to imply that if these sorts of guys had more business sense instead of just stealing, those might be Italian-run businesses. 

Plus I haven't even really gotten to the main events that drive the episode - Christopher and Brendan stealing trucks.  They truckjack one and the driver asks them to beat him up and tie him up with rope so it looks real.  The second driver isn't so lucky - he catches a stray bullet and dies.  Meanwhile it's established that the trucking company pays protection to Junior, so Tony forces Brendan to return (most) of the stolen goods.  It's implied that the company won't really care about its missing driver.

Nor have I even really mentioned Tony's near-panic attack, his rage fit, or his anger at his mother potentially giving expensive jewelry to his cousin.  I will mention, regarding the jewelry, that Livia supposedly gives it away because Carmela never complimented her on it.  Whether or not this is true, it's highly implied that the jewelry was stolen - Carmela may not have done so because she knows this, and it's not something she wants to think about for herself.

Random thoughts -

Pilot issues:  We get introduced to Brendan, Mikey Palmice, and most importantly, Jackie Aprile.  In the pilot, it was made clear that Tony runs things, but now they've installed Jackie as the (temporary) boss. 

A cold open!  Like Jackie Aprile, cold opens would not last long on this show, but I honestly thought upon seeing the first scene HBO went in and removed the opening credit sequence, so as to not bore binge-watchers.

A host of great lines here - chemo-sabe, Christopher talking about cloning cell phones instead of sheep, Christopher's 'Kundun, I liked it!' to a passing Scorsese.

JD Williams (Bodie Broadus from The Wire) shows up here as a truckjacker.  Fun. 

This show was really great at casting small parts.  The woman who plays the retirement community head is excellent, and I love the dopey guy working at the strip club who Tony beats up.

Funny to think that DVD players were state-of-the-art technology at the time of this episode but that my Sopranos DVDs are not how I'm watching these episodes.  It's harder for the mob to get in on content distrbution.

Also, the aspect ratio of the 'Previously on' is incorrect on HBO On Demand but the actual episodes are correct.  Almost had to break out the DVDs.

Malapropism Alert:  Captain Tiebs.

The Sopranos - Season 1, Episode 1 - Pilot

I resolved never to turn this into a television blog, but The Sopranos is worth making an exception for.  There's no real reason to make this presentational - 3 people and several dozen bots will read this, and the bots will probably get more out of it, as they will know what products to advertise to me.  Nonetheless, this is not the best opening to a Sopranos blog, but it is some great misdirection - Tony uses misdirection a lot in this episode.

There are undoubtedly pilot episodes better than that of The Sopranos - pilots that suggest a series birthed directly out of a showrunner's head like Athena from Zeus - The Sopranos pilot is not that.  It is messy and fussy and there's voiceover and it's still brilliant.  For the one or two of you who might need a full refresher on the plot, Tony begins therapy with Dr. Melfi because he's been having panic attacks.  He explains the day that led up to the panic attack via voiceover - his voiceover almost always ironically contrasts with the on-screen action.  He does some mob stuff, more on this later.  He visits his mother, gives her a CD player, and is generally made to feel like garbage for doing so.  It's his son's birthday, something which doesn't seem to register completely with him; he doesn't forget, but it's also not very important, either.  He has a panic attack after the ducks which have taken up residence in his pool fly away.  Melfi and him discuss these events, but he walks out when he is repeatedly asked whether or not he's depressed.  He comes back after another panic attack and he's prescribed Prozac, and after taking it he feels better.  I think he skips his next appointment; things are back to normal except that his pool is empty, and it will remain empty for the rest of the series.

The characters are what carry this pilot - they're mostly fully realized.  Carmela Soprano is perhaps the one major character who is slightly different when we come back for the rest of Season 1, but Meadow, Tony, Junior, Livia, Melfi - they're all here, and they're all miserable.

What struck me most about watching this pilot episode for maybe the 4th or 5th time is that the mob stuff that drives the plot is not particularly compelling.  We get Tony running a guy down in broad daylight at a crowded office park and Christopher shoots some guy involved in the garbage business.  But the main problem Tony has is that his uncle is going to make a hit at his friend Artie Buco's restaurant, which will drive business away.  He conspires to try to get him to take a vacation in order to close down the restaurant when the hit is scheduled to be made, only to have his wife shut that idea down - instead, unbeknownst to him, one of Tony's associates starts a fire at the restaurant.  It's a fine bit of symbolism and a good foreshadowing of what's to come - Tony seems very proud of himself that he's resolved this difficult situation, even though he's temporarily ruined his friend's life.  The insurance will pay for it, he says.  This plot really doesn't make a goddamn bit of sense - it drives the action of the first season and indeed the rest of the series, but it's never quite established why this hit has to happen here or why even this guy has to die.  I suppose that makes more sense than explaining it. 

 I never realized that Dr. Melfi is given an out here.  She asks Tony if he ever has any qualms about what he does.  He says yes, that he thinks he has to be the sad clown.  She mistakes this for introspection, and perhaps it is, but it's a hilarious sidestep of the question - she's asking him about whether he has any moral quandaries caused by his work, and he basically says it sucks that he can't express his emotions.  Then she writes him a scrip for Prozac.

Random observations -

Love the location work here, obviously.  Great scene atop Paterson Falls where they threaten that guy (again).  Playing golf in the shadows of the Pulaski Skyway another terrific choice.  There's also those two scenes next to the trash pile where he talks to his Triboro Towers connection who drives a Mercedes convertible and also chats with Artie Buco - maybe a bit on the nose, but hey, he's in waste management.

Have always enjoyed that little exchange between the priest and Carmela when they're talking movies and they get interrupted right when he asks her how he feels about the movie Goodfellas.  I never realized it gets called back when Tony talks about Henry Hill with Christopher.

I love how they nail Christopher right away - he's eternally disloyal, lazy, and vainglorious.  It makes me think that a Sopranos prequel show, as has been rumored, really wouldn't work for Tony in his late 20s - I bet he was the same way (he might hint at this with 'I've had offers too, you know').

That AK-47 that Carmela pulls out is unfortunate.  As are some of the music choices.     

Robert Iler is not asked to do very much in this episode, but his line reading of 'What, no fuckin' ziti?' is exceptional.  I'm now imagining 50 tween boys trying out that line in auditions.

There's a great little moment at the very beginning when Tony comes in for therapy and there's two chairs there and Tony isn't sure which one to sit in.  That's not something his character is used to.

God, Nancy Marchand was incredible.  There's this great little moment when Tony leans in to kiss his mother and she just does not move or change the expression on her face.  It is expected that she is kissed but she makes absolutely no movement in his direction.

Another bit I think I always missed - Tony goes to a restaurant with his mistress, then goes to that same restaurant in the next scene with his wife, and the maitre'd says 'We've missed you, Mr. Soprano'. 

I'm not sure any dramatic series I've watched calls back the pilot as much as this one does.  The ducks and the pool are recurring motifs, Pussy Malanga comes up again much later, I think Tony throws his conversation with Carmela in the MRI back at her when they might be getting divorced. 

Malapropism alert:  Luther Brasi, Hannibal Lecture