The Sopranos Sessions

by Matt Zoller Seitz

  4 In a series of gliding lateral tracking shots that evoke the movement of a locomotive, the film’s hero leaves his small town by train while imagining his friends literally sleeping their lives away.

  5 This notecards-on-corkboard system is similar to how TV writers “break” stories while plotting out seasons of shows like The Sopranos.

  6 Much of Key Largo is set inside a hotel just before and during a hurricane. The first season of The Sopranos climaxed with a storm that drove many of its key characters to seek shelter inside Vesuvio.

  7 Christopher’s drug problems seem much worse. He’s clearly addled in most of his scenes, including the one with Adriana, Sean Gismonte, and Matt Bevilaqua at the bar where he asks his girlfriend to have a drink and slaps her after she complains that he left the gas burning on after “cooking your shit” and calls him a junkie.

  8 Janice’s carpal tunnel isn’t hugely convincing, either, so we might have a health fakery trifecta.

  9 Before The Sopranos, Brancato Jr. had his breakthrough role playing the teenage version of the main character in Robert De Niro’s 1993 directorial debut A Bronx Tale. Brancato Jr. had trouble with the law in the years after his Sopranos stint, culminating in a December 10, 2005, incident in the Bronx in which an off-duty police officer, Daniel Enchautegui, interrupted two men causing a disturbance in a vacant house next door to his and was shot and killed in a subsequent gunfight. Police arrested Brancato Jr. with another man, forty-eight-year-old Steven Armento—the father of Brancato Jr.’s then-girlfriend—and he was eventually convicted of burglary; he served almost five years. Armento was convicted of first-degree murder for firing the killing shot and sentenced to life without parole.

  10 The cousin of actors John, Nicholas, and Natalie Turturro, she’d previously appeared in the films True Love, What About Bob?, and Sleepers.

  11 At the season two premiere at Manhattan’s famed Ziegfeld Theater, HBO didn’t even screen this episode, jumping from “Guy Walks . . .” to the third installment, “Toodle-Fucking-Oo,” which introduced a significant new character.

  12 Prolific character actor Louis Lombardi, often in crime and action films and TV shows, including 24, Mob City, The Usual Suspects, and Spider-Man 2.

  13 Formerly the entertainment director of the Riviera in Las Vegas, Schirripa was inspired to pursue acting after working as an extra in Casino. Although he’s best known for playing Bobby, he gained a different following as Ben’s dad on the ABC Family series The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

  14 The music is Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman’s 1937 version of “Goodnight, My Love,” which got radio play when Junior was young.

  15 1947 gangster film, the most famous scene of which finds gangster Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark) binding an associate’s mother to her wheelchair and fatally pushing her down a flight of stairs.

  16 Bacala’s first appearance is shot to suggest that his stomach always enters a room well before the rest of him. Schirripa was actually wearing a fat suit at this point in the series, though he later put on enough weight that production felt comfortable with his natural physique.

  17 Beach cop Garner Ellerbee on Baywatch, among other recurring TV roles; author of four books, including A Gathering of Heroes: Reflections on Rage and Responsibility—A Memoir of the Los Angeles Riots.

  18 A bourbon-voiced scene stealer with over forty years’ worth of acting credits, Cobbs makes such a powerful impression here as the World War II veteran and social justice warrior that it’s a shock to realize that he only appears in two scenes.

  19 Proval’s breakthrough was in 1973’s Mean Streets. He read for the role of Tony Soprano, played the menacing father Marco Fogagnolo on Everybody Loves Raymond, and was Eddie Murphy’s acting coach on 48 Hrs.

  20 Janice and Richie are written as contemporaries who dated in high school, but Aida Turturro is twenty years younger than David Proval, and the age difference is apparent.

  21 Though best known as director of ’70s films like The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, a young Bogdanovich studied acting under legendary teacher Stella Adler, and has periodically stepped in front of the camera throughout his career. Chase previously used him on Northern Exposure.

  22 Don’t lie. You did this, too. Admit it.

  23 Herman has appeared in many notable American crime dramas, including Once Upon a Time In America, At Close Range, Heat, and We Own the Night. He also played Vince’s accountant Marvin on Entourage.

  24 This episode’s director, New Zealand–born filmmaker Lee Tamahori, came to international attention for 1994’s Once Were Warriors, a film about addiction, domestic violence, and toxic masculinity in Maori households that includes several beatings as stark as the one Richie inflicts on Beansie.

  25 “I thought I told you to back the fuck off Beansie,” Tony yells after Richie has run his car over Beansie multiple times. “I did,” Richie sneers. “Then I put it in drive.”

  26 While discussing Part II, Silvio again busts out his Michael Corleone impression, cracking most of the guys up as he snarls the film’s famous lament of betrayal, “I know it was you, Fredo,” while the camera cuts to the face of the traitorous Big Pussy.

  27 Played Don Tommasino in The Godfather Part III; a staple in both Italian and American cinema since Luchino Visconti’s debut feature Ossessione.

  28 The carjacking feeds into the show’s fascination with how the Italian American Mob interacts with African American criminals. Two black criminals rob a white family of their SUV at gunpoint in Manhattan, and the father yells a racial epithet and adds, “Who else?” Cut to Tony looking at Polaroids of cars he ordered stolen. Strangely, the family is listed in the credits as the Sontags, presumably after Susan Sontag, author of numerous books of cultural criticism, including two that are particularly relevant to The Sopranos: Against Interpretation and Regarding the Pain of Others.

  29 Half-Swiss, half-Italian actress with roles in more than twenty TV series, including Yelina Salas in CSI: Miami.

  30 The dream image of Tony mounting Annalisa while dressed as a Roman centurion is the single worst filmmaking choice on the show to date.

  31 Born in Naples, but mostly raised in New Jersey, Castelluccio had a few acting credits prior to playing Furio (including several episodes of Another World), but was primarily a visual artist.

  32 A veteran character actress whose career stretches from Baretta and Starsky & Hutch through Picket Fences and The Sopranos, Kalem also wrote and directed a thoughtful 1999 film adaptation of Anne Tyler’s novel A Slipping-Down Life. A different, uncredited actress played Angie briefly in season one, just as Steven Van Zandt’s wife Maureen begins playing Silvio’s wife Gabriella here, after another actress played the role the year before.

  33 The title translates as “I will leave with you.” Bocelli recorded the song for his 1995 album Bocelli, a staggering international bestseller. The song remains in heavy rotation in Italian restaurants from Rome to Kalamazoo.

  34 The scene suggests the two promotions are equivalent, but in time we’ll see Silvio working as Tony’s consigliere, while Paulie is captain of what used to be Tony’s crew.

  35 Tony cons Artie into hiring Furio as a cheesemaker at Vesuvio to help with the immigration details; our only glimpse of him actually working in the kitchen has him smoking a cigarette while he slices mozzarella. Charmaine knows instantly they’ve been had, even if Tony is paying Furio’s salary.

  36 The more time we spend with Skip Lipari, the more clear it becomes that he’s projecting a lot of his own professional baggage onto Pussy and the Soprano crew. At the diner, he answers Pussy’s annoyance at being outshone by a fresh-off-the-plane Italian by grousing that he just got passed over for promotion in favor of “a Samoan.”

  37 Richie and Janice are re enacting an old history, but that of Livia and Johnny Boy rather than their own relationship. It’s even happening in the house where Tony, Janice, and Barbara grew up, and there are times when Richie talks like a more meticulous Johnn
y. The show never mentions it, but maybe this is another reason why Tony is so spooked by this relationship, apart from the obvious familial-professional issues it presents.

  38 At Tony and Carmela’s welcome party, Furio reveals he knows a bit about American culture already, explaining that his favorite TV show is NYPD Blue—or, as he calls it, “The PD Blue”—a show whose rough-edged but ultimately heroic main character Andy Sipowicz helped pave the way for more brutal descendants like Tony.

  39 The liquid metal robot in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and David Duchovny’s replacement on the original The X-Files, Patrick has appeared in dozens of films and TV series, often genre pieces dealing with action, crime, horror, or science-fiction. Davey Scatino was a huge departure from the cold killers and authority figures he usually plays; like John Heard as Vin Makazian in season one, Patrick channels every ounce of his character’s delusional, then desperate, born loserdom.

  40 Sinatra Jr., a vocalist, songwriter and conductor, was the younger brother of actress and singer Nancy Sinatra and the musical director for his father during the last decade of his life. Throughout the elder Sinatra’s life, he was dogged by accusations that he was too cozy with mobsters, but if his son had any misgivings about guesting on The Sopranos, he never mentioned them. Sinatra the elder died just under eight months before season one debuted.

  41 Matt McNamara on Nip/Tuck and Gabriel Bowman on Witchblade, among other series. Also a fixture in horror films, including Teeth and Hostel: Part III.

  42 The title comes from the durable German song so often performed by glee clubs and children’s choirs, and from Tony and Melfi’s discussion of the idea of people—like Davey Scatino, it turns out—who are able to move through life without the misery that weighs down depressives like Tony.

  43 Longtime stage and film actor who made his Broadway debut in 1969 playing Groucho Marx in the musical Minnie’s Boys.

  44 Everything’s a scam and everyone’s a mark to these guys, as evidenced by Christopher putting a matchbook under a market scale to save money on seafood.

  45 The relaunched Executive Game is conducted at the Hasidic-owned motel that Tony took an interest in during season one’s “Denial, Anger, Acceptance.” The dealer, Sunshine, is played by director Paul Mazursky (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice), who, like Peter Bogdanovich, is an avatar of the sort of character-driven ’70s filmmaking that inspired the makers of this show.

  46 Sil, enraged: “Leave the fuckin’ cheese there, all right? I love fuckin’ cheese at my feet! I stick mother-fuckin’ provolone in my socks at night, so they smell like your sister’s crotch in the morning! Alright? So leave the fuckin’ cocksuckin’ cheese where it is!” The bad-boy grin on Tony’s face before and after implies that this is not the first time he’s pushed this button of Sil’s.

  47 Glimpsed at that game, in his first appearance of the series: Aprile crew soldier Vito Spatafore (Joseph Gannascoli, who previously played a bakery customer in season one’s “The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti”). “He was good in [that] episode,” explains David Chase, “and we were starting to run out of Italian American actors early on!”

  48 Notice how, in this scene, Tony yells at Richie that “the rules have always been there,” which is a variation of the sentiment Richie yells at Tony in “Toodle-Fucking-Oo”: What’s Mine Is Not Yours to Give Me. Like most of the Mob guys on this show, these two insist there’s a preexisting structure of rules independent from any one person, when in fact it’s all arbitrary and anyone with sufficient clout at that moment can do as he pleases.

  49 At the time, Favreau was best known as the writer and star of Swingers, a movie about young actors struggling with relationships that made stars of Favreau (who landed a stint on Friends as a result of it) and Vince Vaughn, and helped cement (or kill, depending on your point of view), the late ’90s vogue for swing music and Rat Pack fashions. More recently, Favreau the director has gone mainstream with the likes of Iron Man and The Jungle Book.

  50 After The Sopranos ended, Fumusa would play Edie Falco’s husband on Showtime’s Nurse Jackie.

  51 A former child actress (she made her screen debut at seven as the terrifying Alia in David Lynch’s Dune), Witt used “D-Girl” to transition into adult roles after spending four seasons as Cybil Shepherd’s younger daughter on the sitcom Cybil. Post-Sopranos, she’s been on Friday Night Lights, Justified, The Walking Dead, Twin Peaks: The Return, and many more.

  52 Gallo, a gangster with New York’s Columbo crime family, was the subject of a 1969 novel by longtime New York Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin that was made into a 1971 film starring Jerry Orbach. Breslin’s gangsters are probably the closest to Sopranos gangsters from previous pop culture, aside from the losers depicted in the 1996 film Donnie Brasco. They’re insular, petty, impulsive, lose fortunes on stupid schemes, hold dumb grudges forever, and make enormous, often fatal leaps based on incomplete or wrong information. Scorsese’s gangsters are the Corleones in comparison.

  53 The movie’s director, we’re told, had a film festival success with a “lesbian romantic screwball comedy,” and here her juices have been watered down to direct a spy movie starring Sandra Bernhard and Janeane Garofalo. Christopher winds up contributing a line of dialogue, suggesting that Bernhard call Garofalo buchiach when Garofalo objects to the script’s use of “bitch.” Buchiach, Christopher explains, is Italian for every woman’s least favorite word.

  54 See “Married to the Mob” in the Morgue section, this page.

  55 Junior’s aside when Richie gives Rocco’s jacket to Tony—“He later died of Alzheimer’s.”—illustrates how meaningless Richie’s petty, long-ago victory was. When Rocco breathed his last, he didn’t remember Richie’s triumph or anything else.

  56 Vito runs the operation, because construction is a major revenue stream for the Aprile crew.

  57 In therapy, Tony masterfully analyzes his own behavior, surmising that he regifted Meadow Eric Scatino’s car “to rub her face in shit,” though he fails to understand Melfi’s subsequent point that he was doing his part to separate from her in the run-up to college, something teens do to their parents through their own forms of hostile behavior.

  58 In retrospect, Chris’s postcoital conversation with Adriana about how he wants to turn his life around is one of the only obvious, TV-style pieces of writing in the episode. TV characters often get their affairs in order, or state a desire to, right before the show drops an anvil on their heads.

  59 Bronx-born actress who rose to fame playing Detective Gina Calabrese on Miami Vice.

  60 Played by future Scrubs costar Judy Reyes.

  61 The odd person out here might be Pussy, whom Skip Lipari keeps pressuring to really commit to his informant status, and who worries that Tony knows the truth about him on some level. “You’re the one who’s different now; you’re the one seeing through different eyes,” Lipari says. In the end, Pussy makes the grandest gesture a guy like him could make: he helps his boss revenge-murder a guy who helped shoot his figurative son.

  62 The Sopranos is constantly getting compared to The Godfather and Scorsese Mob films, but this episode has more in common with an Abel Ferrara–directed Catholic-freakout crime dramas like Bad Lieutenant or The Funeral.

  63 Not enough attention has been paid over the years to the idea that Melfi is not just trying to help Tony understand himself better or (as he accuses here) blame his outrages on a rotten childhood, but to awaken his latent sense of morality and improve him. This is something therapists aren’t supposed to do—that’s the job of clergy—but the fact that Melfi seems determined to do it anyway, sometimes half-consciously, speaks to Tony’s deep impact on her life and work.

  64 She could be talking about either her biological family or the far-flung Mob Family; the script never specifies, but there’s so much category overlap that this might be a distinction without a difference.

  65 There’s a lot of talk of vision and seeing in this episode, from Lipari telling Pussy that he’s seeing thro
ugh different eyes now to Carmela telling her cousin she asked God to grant him “vision, sight, so that you can see your way to Christ clearly,” and adding, “You saw, Christopher. You saw something. Something that none of us have ever seen.”

  66 This is a callback to that moment in the opening montage of “Guy Walks into a Psychiatrist’s Office” when Carmela and Tony make uncomfortable eye contact in bed after Tony comes back from seeing Irina.

  67 Arrested Development narrator: “He is.”

  68 Carmela’s bedtime reading is Arthur Golden’s 1997 novel Memoirs of a Geisha, about Japanese prostitutes in the 1930s and ’40s. The novel and the subsequent 2005 film version were criticized for exoticizing and misrepresenting a subculture, a charge also leveled at The Sopranos.

  69 Given the importance of the Holy Trinity in Catholicism, of course it would be three.

  70 In a much earthier mode than his suave TV leading-man roles on detective shows like Riptide and Jake and the Fatman.

  71 Janice has her own way of trying to control Richie, allowing him to hold a gun to her head during sex—in a darkly comic scene that ends with Livia descending into the living room on a power chair lift, demanding, “Are you smoking marijuana? I want to watch the TV.”—even as she’s telling an irritated Richie that he should be the boss.

  72 He is, of course, a product of bad fathering, as “Down Neck” and Livia’s anecdotes attest.

  73 Notice the return of “Con te partirò,” the official “Carmela’s Romantic Delusions” theme, in the scene where she flirts with Vic on the phone in Meadow’s presence. Interesting how Meadow just seems to know what’s up.

  74 Long-working character actor, best known as the mayor of New York in 1984’s Ghostbusters.

  75 Okay, he may enjoy the “stress management” sex he has with Dick Barone’s secretary—a peep show sight gag that, like the Roman centurion fantasy in “Commendatori,” finds The Sopranos mistaking garden-variety crassness for audacity.

  76 The subclinical inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. According to a 2014 Scientific American article, this condition “throws a monkey wrench into a person’s ability to know their own self-experience or understand the intricacies of what others feel and think.”