52 If the zoo is a place where warm and illuminating things happen for Tony and Gloria, does that make it the Sun Zoo? Thank you, you’ve been a great audience.
53 This is one of the episode’s many scenes that retro-engineer certain facts and associations and flesh out the Sopranos universe. “Funhouse” never explained why Tony kept dreaming of the Asbury Park boardwalk, but this episode names it as the origin of Pussy’s future treachery: it’s where he agreed to go to Boca Raton, Florida, right before Christmas. Tony’s crew agrees that’s probably where the FBI busted him for the heroin dealing that Tony cautions him about in 1995 and that ensnared him later. We also learn that Pussy’s money and back problems dated back to at least 1995, that Tony’s father acquired Satriale’s in a bust-out that led to old man Satriale’s suicide, and that he established the Santa tradition Pussy and Bobby inherit. Judging from the awkward thinning already afflicting Tony’s hairline—What a fine job of toupee fabrication this is!—1995 might also be when he started seriously going bald.
54 The scene also resurrects Jimmy Altieri, whose own rathood deflected the question of whether Pussy was wearing a wire back in season one. Also, note that when the guys find Pussy’s Santa suit at the pork store and start venting about Pussy’s betrayal, the loudest and most indignant one is Ray Curto, revealed as yet another cooperator in “Proshai, Livushka.”
55 No food is present for this one, suggesting even Melfi’s brilliance only goes so far.
56 Judging from this scene and the prank Tony plays on Silvio via Matt Bevilaqua in “The Happy Wanderer,” the owner-manager of the Bada Bing often has cheese on the brain.
57 If Meadow hadn’t taken the lamp back to Columbia, Tony would be well and truly screwed here.
58 That Carmela decides to interrogate Tony about Charmaine’s sudden va-va-voomness, accuse him of pursuing her, and tell him she knows that they had sex in high school suggests that she’s already figured out he’s cheating again, even if she can’t prove it and is fixating on the wrong target.
59 The money launderer and Valery’s best friend and war buddy; both introduced in “To Save Us All From Satan’s Power.”
60 Over a terrible cell connection, Tony tells Paulie that Valery killed sixteen Chechen rebels single-handedly, and was in the interior ministry, which Paulie translates to Christopher as, “You’re not gonna believe this. He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator.” (Chris, confused: “His house looked like shit.”)
61 There are multiple details that make it seem as if Valery has supernatural powers, from the sheer size of the gore cloud erupting from his skull when Paulie gets off his lucky shot, to the way his blood trail and footprints simply disappear, to the running creature Chris shoots that turns out to be a deer but might as well be a reincarnated Valery. Director Buscemi, long a favorite filmmaker of Chase’s because of his debut feature, 1996’s Trees Lounge (a film that stars many future Sopranos cast members), makes a lot of choices here that imply the Russian is something more than a mere mortal—including an overhead shot looking down on Paulie and Chris from treetops that initially seems from the point of view of Valery, who’d have had to climb like a squirrel to get that high. Every choice has plausible deniability while also being vaguely chilling, hitting that Sopranos sweet spot between the known and unknowable.
62 Everybody wants to know what happened to the Russian, but hardly anybody asks who slashed Gloria’s tires. We assume it’s Irina, based on Tony’s past experience and the fact that she called his boat in the first scene, but the matter is never resolved here. To quote Melfi in this episode, “Read into things however you choose.”
63 Still relatively new, Gloria is already so indelible a presence in Tony’s life and on the show that she now gets entrance music: appropriately, “Gloria” by the Northern Irish garage rock band Them, which launched Van Morrison’s singing career.
64 Playing Scrabble with Meadow, Jackie assumes that “oblique” is a Spanish word pronounced “oh-BLEE-kay,” while his own words include “poo,” “ass,” and “the.”
65 This last gesture also has a self-protective edge, as outwardly considerate as it sounds: if Paulie made the decision not to go search for Valery, it’s Paulie’s fault if he turns up later.
66 Twice in this episode, during the drive home and over the end credits, we hear Cecilia Bartoli’s rendition (from the 1992 album If You Love Me—‘Se tu m’ami’: Eighteenth-Century Italian Songs) of “Sposa son disprezzata,” an Italian aria written by Geminiano Giacomelli. It was used in Bajazet, Vivaldi’s pasticcio, but composed for Giacomelli’s opera La Merope. The lyrics particularly apply to Carmela, who knows her husband cheats; but it could also apply to Gloria and Irina, who likewise resent Tony’s not fully committing to them and shutting them down when they ask for more; and to Paulie and Chris, loyal underlings who never seem to get their beloved boss’s attention unless he’s berating them.
67 “Pine Barrens” and “Amour Fou” have the same number of syllables, but the stresses are reversed. We’re just saying.
68 The scene where Tony and Ralphie debate Jackie’s fate is one of the show’s best-written scenes about two people trying to get each other to accept responsibility for making a huge but unpleasant decision. They keep pushing the matter across the table to each other like a poisoned meal that neither wants to taste. Ralphie tells Tony, “I want to give the kid a pass. . . . That’s just me, though. I know you got bigger concerns, you’re the boss, and I’ll make sure your orders are done, whatever they may be”—as if already knowing what has to happen, but not wanting to be the one to name it. “I think you should go with your instincts on this, Ralph,” Tony replies.
69 French-speaking actor from the Côte d’Ivoire; career hightlights include Night on Earth, Casino Royale and The Limits of Control.
70 See also: Fatal Attraction, Disclosure, Unlawful Entry, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear remake, et al.
71 It also reinforces the idea of Jackie and Dino as dumb, horny kids in way over their head, who would have been better off staying in to watch the rest of that movie.
72 If Gloria is a doppelgänger of the deceased Livia, it means Melfi double-booked a double.
73 Though The Sopranos developed a reputation for putting its biggest developments in the penultimate episodes of seasons, this was largely unearned: no one notable dies in season one’s “Isabella,” and the death of Pussy—a bigger deal for season two than Richie’s demise—comes in the finale. Because Gloria had become so memorable so quickly, “Amour Fou” fits this reputation better than its episode-twelve predecessors, feeling finale-ish to the point that the episode concludes with the sort of montage many dramas reserve for the end of a season: as Bob Dylan’s “Return to Me” plays, we see Ralphie trying to console a terrified Rosalie, Carmela studying for her real estate license as a way to feel more independent, and Patsy calling his wife to tell her about the groceries he’s bringing home for dinner. (His life isn’t cinematic, either.)
74 Dominic Chianese is a gifted tenor, and the year before this episode aired, he released an album called Hits. Two years later, he named his second album Ungrateful Heart, after the Italian song Junior sings here.
75 Played by Michael Kenneth Williams, a future HBO mainstay who played stick-up artist Omar Little on The Wire, gangster Chalky White on Boardwalk Empire (from Sopranos producer Terence Winter), and boxer-turned-convict Freddie in The Night Of (developed by James Gandolfini).
76 Jackie Jr.’s short, sad life, summed up in a single line: after he concedes defeat in a game of chess to the little girl, Ray Ray tells him, “See, you should’ve played that out. That’s the only way you gonna learn.”
77 The principal gets AJ and his friend to confess by convincing them his crack team has found a DNA match to their pee, but considering how the cops investigated the pool vandalism incident from “The Telltale Moozadell” like it was a high-profile homicide, maybe they’re not that stup
id for falling for the ruse. (Okay, they are.)
78 Tony may love his son, but he’s also cruel to him, not just in the scene where he slaps AJ for saying “Sucks to be you,” but in the moments right before the panic attack, where he starts making fun of the kid for wearing the cadet uniform for the very school that Tony himself is forcing him to attend!
79 Paulie needs the cash because he’s putting his mother Nucci (Frances Ensemplare) into Green Grove—and she’s much more appreciative of the place than Livia ever was.
80 When this episode first aired, Ciccerone was played by actress Fairuza Balk. Between seasons three and four, Balk was replaced by Lola Glaudini, and—in a unique case for a show that occasionally had to recast roles, but otherwise preserved the original actors’ work—Balk’s scenes were reshot with Glaudini for future airings and home video.
Season Four
“FOR ALL DEBTS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE”
SEASON 4/EPISODE 1
WRITTEN BY DAVID CHASE
DIRECTED BY ALLEN COULTER
The Halfback of Notre Dame
“Well, let me tell you something—or you can watch the fucking news—everything comes to an end!” —Carmela
Early in the fourth-season premiere, Tony smiles at a rustling in the bushes by the pool, assuming his beloved ducks have returned after a long absence. Instead, a squirrel emerges.
With “For All Debts Public and Private,” The Sopranos was returning after nearly a year and a half away, and the show that emerged wasn’t quite the same. Nor, for that matter, was the world it returned to, and that it had to depict going forward.
None of the series’ characters died during the horrific events of September 11, 2001, but as anyone who lived in the New York–New Jersey area at that time can tell you, you didn’t have to be directly affected by this tragedy to have it throw your world view off-kilter. The sidewalks were covered with impromptu memorials, commuter parking lots throughout Jersey were filled with cars whose owners would never claim them, and for a while everyone was either on the verge of tears or understanding of those who were. It was a shocking reminder of just how suddenly life could be taken away, even in a seemingly safe time and place.
So even though nearly a year has passed for Tony and company since 9/11,1 that day’s events are still very much on their minds as season four begins. “For All Debts Public and Private” doesn’t lay this on too thick—the Twin Towers are no longer in Tony’s rearview mirror in the opening credits,2 Carmela alludes to what’s been on the news, and Tony and Bobby Bacala briefly discuss the terrorist attacks while dining together3—but there’s a sense, for both Mr. and Mrs. Soprano in particular, that an end could be coming at any moment, and they’d best prepare for it.
In the world of The Sopranos, everything is ultimately about money, even respect (which you demonstrate through money), and thus everyone’s concern for their future (or lack thereof) is represented by cold hard cash. (The episode’s title comes from a phrase printed on U.S. paper currency.) Carmela is stunned to see Angie Bonpensiero working as a supermarket sample lady and realizes that she—like any Mob widow (or, for that matter, any 9/11 widow)—could suffer a similar fate if she doesn’t try to understand her husband’s finances and have some say in their current and future distribution should she lose Tony. She pushes him to speak to her cousin Brian about investments she could easily access to in the event the worst happens. Uncle Junior’s RICO trial is approaching, and with it more expenses from his lawyer than he’s comfortable paying on Tony’s allowance. Tony and Silvio hector the captains4—other than the absent Paulie, who’s in jail in Youngstown on a gun charge5—over the Family’s shaky finances,6 and Bobby gets a promotion to run what’s left of Junior’s street crew.
To Carmela, Junior, and the captains, Tony projects smug authority. But his actions paint him as just as anxious about the future as the rest. He insists to Carmela that he has hidden money in overseas accounts she’ll gain access to should the need arise, yet we see him simply burrowing cash in easily accessed places, including the bags of duck feed he keeps around in the event his feathered friends return.
This is deeply paranoid behavior, but sometimes people really are out to get you. Tony’s annual waddle down the driveway to pick up the Star-Ledger is accompanied by Afrika Bambaataa and John Lydon’s apocalyptic “World Destruction,” evoking not only the fragile state of the world but of Tony’s empire as well. The FBI even gets an undercover agent inside his house briefly, when Adriana picks up Christopher with Deborah Ciccerone (aka “Danielle Ciccolella”) in tow. Receipts are down, Ralphie is still alive to annoy Tony,7 and Paulie is complaining about him to Johnny Sack.8 Yet for all the stress—including things like the latest FBI infiltration attempt, of which he’s unaware—and impulsive money moves, Tony seems to have a plan to deal with the potential conclusion of his own story.
“There’s two endings for a guy like me,” he explains to Dr. Melfi, in one of their more direct discussions of the nature of his business: “Dead, or in the can, big percent of the time.”
Tony, though, sees a third way to wrap it up: “You trust only blood.” Never mind that Christopher is only vaguely related to Tony—nor that his “nephew” has quietly been shooting heroin between his toes—he’s the closest blend of family and Family available, and he’s vulnerable to the mind games Tony has been playing with him since Jackie Jr. died. The whole thing is one long seduction, starting out with Tony negging Christopher for months, making him desperate for his mentor’s approval, or even a non-grudging look. Instead, Tony goes much further by offering Chrissie a chance for revenge against the man who allegedly murdered his father: newly retired cop Barry Haydu (Tom Mason). We have no idea if this is true, or if Tony simply picked an easy target. Christopher is smart enough to acknowledge the possibility—but also pragmatic enough to realize that it doesn’t matter, because if the boss of the Family wants this guy dead, then he’s going to be dead.
It’s a chilling scene, not least for the contrast between Christopher coldly executing a dirty cop and a Magnum P.I. rerun on Hadyu’s television where Magnum and T. C. are pretending to be cops, to much more frivolous effect. Because of his father, this is a huge deal to Christopher—bigger than killing Emil Kolar or Mikey Palmice or anyone else so far—yet his manner is almost casual, because he wants to savor this long-awaited opportunity.
Money is once again a token of respect, as Christopher lifts a twenty-dollar bill from Haydu’s wallet and pins it to his mother’s refrigerator as a secret trophy, the end credits rolling over an extreme close-up of Andrew Jackson’s right eye over “World Destruction” reprised. This feels like a triumph to Christopher, but he’s just fallen hook, line, and sinker for Tony’s gambit—a human shield against Tony’s story having a bad ending.
“For All Debts Public and Private” takes The Sopranos into middle age. Chase didn’t know at the time how long he intended the series to run, but its advancing years, and the shocking real-life reminders of how swiftly things can end, had him and the characters contemplating the conclusion like never before. It’s hard to see things getting better for anyone from here.
“NO SHOW”
SEASON 4/EPISODE 2
WRITTEN BY TERENCE WINTER AND DAVID CHASE
DIRECTED BY JOHN PATTERSON
Mr. Mob Boss
“Wow. Listen to Mr. Mob Boss!” —Meadow
Early in “No Show,” Silvio settles a dispute between Ralphie and the incarcerated Paulie Walnuts by awarding Paulie’s crew five fake jobs at the Esplanade construction site: two are no-show, where you don’t even have to turn up to get paid, while three are no-work, where you have to be physically present but are otherwise free to lounge around and do what you like. The no-show jobs are the more coveted, but the no-work jobs are pretty cushy, too. The episode finds most of its major characters opting for one approach or the other, including the ones who don’t even work in construction: ignoring their current responsibilities while still enjoying the b
enefits.
This is most obvious with Meadow, who has been using Jackie Jr.’s murder as a blanket doctor’s note to avoid a summer job, choosing classes for the fall semester, or even reading from the canon of great literature like she claims. Yet she still benefits from Tony and Carm’s largesse, including a car they bought her as transportation to her very own no-show job. All she has to do to get out of anything is to mention Jackie’s name, pout, and/or storm out of the room.
To try to get his daughter to start showing up to her life, Tony sends her to a therapist recommended by Dr. Melfi, but Wendi Kobler9 turns out to have a different agenda from her paid one. Kobler’s somewhat no-show herself (she keeps calling Jackie “Jack” even after Meadow corrects her10), and Meadow is putting on an act at times, but what’s fascinating is how much their interaction still mirrors many Tony–Melfi sessions, with Tony replacing Livia as the parent casting a shadow over everything. But he’s more overtly threatening than Livia, and twice in the episode—the scene where the sound lowers and lowers until Tony explodes and dares Meadow to follow her year-in-Europe plan, then after her “Mr. Mob Boss” taunt—she gets a brief and terrifying glimpse of what her father is like at work.
Meadow ultimately abandons her Europe plan and registers for classes, but while her parents await the news, Carmela assures Tony that Meadow blames her, not him. Some of this stems from standard gender issues—teenage girls often turn against their mothers and rush toward their fathers—but given what else is going on with Carmela at the moment, it’s easy to draw a link to her crush on Furio and her growing frustrations with Tony. No-working her own marriage,11 she’s more excited to talk to Furio about his plans to buy a house in Nutley than to interact with Tony. (And she clams up when Tony suggests Meadow could meet a guy like Furio if she takes the Europe trip.) Her concern about supporting herself if Tony disappeared, coupled with Meadow’s emotional implosion—launched by the suspicious murder of the Family’s previous boss’s son—seems to have her questioning the status quo even more than usual. When she says Meadow blames her, is she projecting her own questions about why she’s still married to Tony?
The Sopranos Sessions Page 24