11. The Sopranos (1999-2007)

The imagery of it, if you can imagine, is almost comical.  Take, let’s say, that famous painting that Rockwell did of a family gathered around the table as Grandma presents the Thanksgiving turkey.  Replace the bird with a tray of manicotti. Grandpa is now smoking a cigar and picking under his fingernails with the tip of a switch-blade knife, and every man at the table is wearing unbuckled dress pants and sleeveless, white undershirts.  The room is no longer lined with laced curtains and holiday candles, instead it’s decorated from the catalogue of the gaudy Roche Bobois as a cloud of cigarette smoke hovers over the chandelier.  This is the essence and the truth of THE SOPRANOS, one of the most influential and critically acclaimed series in the annuls American television history and the flagship show of the current GOLDEN AGE.  It’s not about the mob as much as it’s about how every home, though slightly different from the one next to it, deals with the same things that every family in America struggles with.  Of course, none of this could be sold without a regular diet of extortion, hijacking and cold-blooded killing, things that people line up in droves for when they go to the movies, and the stuff that TV executives pray for to grab ratings.  The trick to THE SOPRANOS, and it’s executed with great slight-of-hand by Chase (who had produced and written for such shows as diverse as THE ROCKFORD FILES, I’LL FLY AWAY and NORTHERN EXPOSURE), is to use the sensationalism of violence and sex, organized crime and foul deeds as the draw-string to yank us into weekly viewing, and then feed us OURSELVES once we’re hooked.

The series dealt with the moral fibre of our existence and how it’s shaken by a monster set to roam free in our home.   Questions of hypocrisy, faith, familial loyalty, accepting evil as way to enjoy the high comforts few of us ever get to enjoy, and the familiarity and acceptance of death as an everyday, almost constant occurrence, were the real subjects that Chase set out to tackle, all the while presenting it through the tinted lenses of a gritty crime film.

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THE GUY THAT GOT US IN AND THE DEVIL IN A HOUSECOAT

The main character on THE SOPRANOS, the patriarch, is no Vito Corleone.  The romantic nature of Corleone, the quiet justice, fairness, and laser-focused love for his favorite child, was left back in the 1940’s, as depicted in 1972’s Academy Award winning BEST PICTURE: THE GODFATHER. There was no room for romanticism on THE SOPRANOS.  The show was about real, current topics, as seen through the eyes of a man who’d like to think he’s got a progressive mind but, is cowering in fright at the changes the world is taking with every day gone by.  He’s a complainer, a bully in his own home until his wife sets him straight (and she set him straight more times than not), and the head of this television family had to be as big, even bigger, and louder, than the most famous, realistic head-of-the-household ever seen on American television: Archie Bunker.

But, the bluster and bickering, forceful intimidation and regularity of bigoted, racial epitaphs, spewing from the mouth of Bunker, were only ignorant plates of armour that acted like a shield against the reality of a changing world.  Archie was really a good man frightened by the prospects of losing what he knew all his life to the hands of change that would threaten his personal comfort zone.  THE SOPRANOS Tony Soprano, not unlike Archie, is a creature of habit whose way of life is never as open-minded and out-reaching as he’d like you to believe.  Tony’s so frightened of losing his comfort zone that he lashes out, in monstrous ways Archie, and most others, would never dream of (namely, bloody violence and murder), and then aimed himself at a psychiatrist’s sofa to try to figure out how to combat these fears and reactions.

These fears for our glorious pasts, fading in the wake of the ever brightening lights of change for the future, infect the lives of those closest to us and our families are rocked by the disdain and the resistance our fathers put up to keep the status quo they’ve grown so comfortable with.  Archie Bunker and Tony Soprano are much more alike than you’d think.  They’re little boys that never really wanna grow up.  They enjoy the ribald excesses of adulthood but shrink away from the responsibilities that being an adult demands.  The difference between Archie and Tony is that Mr. Soprano can eradicate any reminder of those responsibilities, with a gun or a knife or a piece of stretched piano wire, if he feels too threatened.  Archie could only rant and scream until pacified with a can of beer, a cigar and a night of watching midget wrestling on the tube.

James Gandolfini’s performance as Tony Soprano is one of the great inventions in television history (and the character looms big in the company of the top TV fathers and husbands of all time, being Ralph Kramden, Andy Taylor, Rob Petrie, Homer Simpson and the aforementioned Archie Bunker).  He’s an immense polar bear of a man whose labored breathing, overweight swagger and drooping jowls betray the hard-bitten, violently intimidating and morally corrupt rock he wants to be for the more loving, confused and cuddly push-over he really is.  Gandolfini plays Tony as a tough-guy on the exterior and, like Archie, he’s all but thrown in the towel to the change that his wife and kids are demanding he face.  Archie, however, had the “Meathead”, his liberal/hippy son-in-law, Mike, to help show him the faces of change, and how they were really not as bad as he’d thought they’d be.  Tony has his “business”, and the FBI on his back, as the hands that force him to move forward, into those brightening lights we mentioned a few sentences back.  Tony doesn’t go willingly and, as hinted at in that ever famous, abrupt final shot of the series last episode, probably never got there anyway.

What’s really miraculous about Gandolfini’s turn is that we can see him evolve.  Physically he becomes bigger, fatter and more stylish, everything a man who has accumulated great power would look like.  Emotionally and psychologically, he’s shrinking, evolving into a wiser, compact, more open-minded, and free-flowing soul who gives passes to those he’d deemed unacceptably different from what the laws of his business demand, and pleasantly surprised by what the younger generation, mainly his kids, have showed him the world of the future can truly be like.  By the end of the series, he’s no longer the monster Chase presented us with in the first episode  but, rather, a man who is accepting the changes of the world while still doing the occasional monstrous deed.  It’s a masterclass performance of hard won revelations, and a physically demanding turn that takes him from ugly attacker to smiling approachability.

At the core of Tony’s anxiety are the women in his life.  His wife, his daughter, that crazy older sister, the many “side-jobs” that he regularly fucks and changes like we change shoes.  Yet, when THE SOPRANOS first opens, in it’s glorious pilot episode, it’s the figure of his mother, who in most Italian/American families is a blind and smiling advocate for anything and everything their SON’S do, without question, that hangs over him like Lady MacBeth hung over the title character of Shakespeare’s famous play.  Livia, played by the brilliantly observant and constantly evolving Nancy Marchand (LOU GRANT), is the Italian mother who takes guilt trips (the ever dreaded “Italian Guilt”-just as powerful and life damaging as “Jewish Guilt”) to the Nth degree.  She’s a walker-wielding terror of nasty comments and personality destroying observations, fueled by her feelings of abandonment (she cannot stand NOT being the center of attention or asked for her “learned” opinion on any topic-even the life and death decisions of, well, ya know) and her inner-mind concoctions of conspiracy against her.  She’s unable to live alone, but unwilling to move in with Tony and her family.  She says no one listens to her, yet any time she’s asked a question, or for advice, her responses are of dread or criticisms about how everyone around her is against her.  As seen in flashback episodes that get at the heart of Tony’s anxieties, that found their base when he was only a grammar-school-aged child, Livia was a bigger-than-life character whose aggressive actions masked a deep paranoia for anything that would signify change.

Sound familiar?

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THE DEVICE: TWEAKING THE CONCEPT

The character of Dr. Jennifer Melfi, as envisioned by Chase, is one of the greatest device characters ever leveled at a TV show’s ultimate concept.  Like the intersection of work and home-life that fueled THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW (and, later on, inspired SEINFELD), or the 5 year mission in space that legitimized the VERY western-themed adventures of STAR TREK, the very presence of a psychiatrist as Tony’s confessor and confidante was revolutionary.  That the psychiatrist in question happened to be a woman only raised the metaphorical and psychological stakes in Tony’s quest to get past his “whole mother” complex and find peace.

Brilliantly played by Oscar-nominee Lorraine Bracco, in a channeled back and calming turn that is the complete antithesis of her hysterical and screaming mob wife in Martin Scorsese’s 1990  classic GOODFELLAS (Bracco was originally offered the part of Tony’s wife, Carmela.  However, after much thinking by Chase, the offer was rescinded because he didn’t want a repeat of Bracco’s most famous, big-screen turn, and because the role of the quiet psychiatrist would offer a challenge for the actress), Melfi is not just a sounding board for Tony.  Sure, she has to listen to his rants and, sometimes, his bigoted, racist and chauvinistic outbursts but, the real electricity of their pairing bolted out at the audience whenever Melfi turned a mirror at Tony and his inward-folding hypocrisies.  The device of Melfi, a stroke of genius by Chase (and, by the way, the concept was conceived by Chase almost a decade before Harold Ramis, Kenneth Lonergan and Peter Toland brought pen to paper for the 1999 comedy, ANALYZE THIS, a film about a mobster letting it all go for the understanding ear of a psychiatrist), allowed the series to use the moments with her, in the shrink’s office, as a way to see the differences in Tony’s verbal description of situations and then, in flashback, the ACTUAL situation in visual terms.  The two didn’t always seem exactly the same, and the device of Melfi’s office as confessional proved that all Catholics don’t always tell the truth as they kneel in a state of contrition.

What ramps up the dynamic between Melfi and Tony, and then intensifies his confused quest for peace, and what he THINKS is a perfect life, is his attraction for Melfi.  Jennifer is everything his wife, Carmela, isn’t.  A professional, business-like woman of great organization and deep intellect, Melfi is also style savvy (as opposed to the rather gaudy and loud stylings of his wife and sister) with a note of sexual mystery.  Melfi is sexy by not showing everything and it drives Tony crazy with desire.  Even more so, Jennifer represents everything the women in his life don’t.  There is no materialism, no need for the immediate pay-off for love and loyalty.  That’s part of the hypocrisy of THE SOPRANOS.  Tony desires a woman he thinks could give without ever asking for monetary gain in return but, the woman of his desires is PAID to listen to him.

Time is a funny thing, though, and Melfi’s glow fades from Tony as the series chugged on to its 4th, 5th and 6th season.  As Tony found Melfi more and more unattainable, so then did the relationship between them grow more tense and, at times, frightening.  Tony is a man (little boy) who resents not getting his way (shades of Livia) and so not “obtaining” his dream woman meant Tony distancing himself from her (he was too appreciative of her help in the past to bring himself to kill her) and focusing on the women that know him, and know how to tend to him, best of all.

If there’s one harsh criticism I’ve ever truly had about the show, it’s the treatment that Melfi unjustly received in those last few seasons.  Her presence was so vital and necessary in the beginning of the series, perfectly paralleling the truth of matters against Tony’s versions, that the absence of her, sometimes two or three times an episode, seemed to take the very life-blood of the show and send it into waters that rarely stayed the calm course of the first three seasons.

Still, the lessons learned in that oval office in Caldwell, New Jersey, impacted Tony in ways that would reverberate up to, and including, that final, fateful episode.  Melfi’s words, suggestions and theories were the core of humanity that grew out from the animal/monster the central character strove to walk away from.  The psychology behind THE SOPRANOS, which sprung from Chase’s own experiences with psychotherapy, accurately defined what causes sociopaths to lead the lives, and act out as, they do.  But, even more so, it defined, with crystal clarity, the very fiber that made up one of the most extraordinarily complex and detailed characters modern television has ever seen grace the screen as protagonist.

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THAT FUCKING BITCH! THE MOST COMPLEX SOPRANO

It’s hard to imagine a more complex and perfectly realized character on THE SOPRANOS than Tony.  Yet, the longer you watch the show, repeating the episodes as so many of us do, entranced by the ever-evolving inner workings of each of the main players, it’s clear that Tony isn’t as screwed up or as cooked in his own inner turmoil as Carmela, Tony’s wife.

The show was never more realistic in tone and subject than when Chase explored Carmela’s side of the relationship she has with Tony.  Here, more than in any other moments on the show, the writing for, and the presentation of, the characters take on the kind of realistic, day-to-day questions and predicaments that befall a normal, troubled, married couple.  Yet, Tony and Carmela are not the normal, married couple.  Far from it.

From the perspective of Tony, the relationship has ONLY hit a few speed-bumps that he chalks up to bad decisions, laziness and a his wife’s constant over-exaggeration of his blunders and child-like behavior.  For Carmela, these blunders aren’t so much Tony’s delves into infidelity and bad decisions pertaining to the children, but more about his inadvertent placement of her in the role of his accomplice, in matters both deadly and criminal.  Carmela’s turmoil is the stuff of the great philosophers.  Her predicament, and her self accusation, come from knowing what her husband is, doing nothing to keep from enabling him, basking in the financial security his foul deeds afford her, and then realizing she’s selling her soul, and the souls of her children, to the devil.

It’s funny, when you watch the first two seasons of THE SOPRANOS you can see Chase’s intent for the show in the character arcs and their visibility on screen.  It’s clear that his original concept was to follow Tony through the pain and agony of recognizing his mother as the core influence of his sociopathic behavior, violent outbursts and anxieties.  But, when Nancy Marchand died during the middle of the filming of the second season, Chase had the unenviable task of course correcting the show, finding a new core for the central story arc and recreating THE SOPRANOS from the ground up.

That new core had showed itself in the first season, neatly tucked away as a secondary plot in the series all-time best episode, COLLEGE.  In it, Carmela reveals herself as a deeply religious, conflicted woman who questions where her soul will end up after years of enabling a man whose deeds of murder and deceit afford her every tempting luxury she could ever desire.  Carmela’s gaudy life-style of day-spa’s, almost daily rotation of new furniture, cars, furs, jewelry and clothing have made her a slave to Tony’s nervy machinations and a blind eye to what she knows is, inherently, evil.  She fears for the souls of her children, praying they are spared from becoming an accepting part of their father’s influence, and she desperately seeks doors that might find her an escape route away from all of the soul crushing hypocrisy that she feeds on like a daily diet of blood-soaked flesh.

Carmela is in too deep, though.  Her way of life, regardless of her disdain for what has gotten her everything she has ever wanted, is too big and too attractive for her to withstand.  It’s part of the brilliance of Chase, as a master conceptualist, that he’d balance all of the hilarity and day-to-day debauchery of Tony and his crew with this deeply felt, emotionally rich and morally contemplative look at the fine lines of morality, religion’s supposed interpretation of good and evil, and a soul in crisis.

Woody Allen explored many of these themes in his masterful treatise on morality and guilt, the 1989 classic, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (a film and filmmaker Chase has said he loves).  In that film, Allen contends that those who don’t allow the guilt of a bad deed to get the best of them, morally and spiritually, are set scott-free and cleansed before the eyes of God when every individual’s day of judgement comes around.  Chase took the ball from Allen when creating the morally raped Carmela and, by infusing what we see and hear from her with whisps of the nostalgic, we know that her attraction to Tony, his “bad-boy” charms that had so caught her when they met as high-school kids, still holds sway.  She “knows” nothing else and, because of her sequestered life within the world of criminality, she ultimately makes the decisions to accept Tony, for the price of a “spec” house project she’s always longed to do, and this way of life forever.

In casting Carmela, Chase was fortunate to nail down Edie Falco at a point in her career where the actress was still not a household name, yet at the height of her powers of experimentation.  A character actress with nothing to lose, her resume at the time was dotted with fits and spurts between the broadway stage (she was well received in the revival of FRANKIE AND JOHNNY IN THE CLAIR DE LUNE, opposite Stanley Tucci) and guest spots on popular TV shows (HOMICIDE: LIFE ON THE STREETS, LAW AND ORDER and a recurring role as a female prison guard on the HBO series, OZ).  Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1963, Falco was well aware of the types of women that Chase based much of Carmela Soprano, and many of the female characters of the series, on.  Her familiarity with the New York and New Jersey landscapes, the linguistics of the areas language, and her studious eye for the physical and stylistic details that made these mob types up, immediately gave her an edge in creating a fully realized and lived-in character right at the starting gate.

The hard work and almost shape-shifting ability of Falco’s immense talent, combined with a deep understanding of the spiritual and religious (Falco is a devout Roman Catholic), made Falco a performing force of nature on the show.  She became the perfect foiling balance for the more free-wheeling James Gandolfini, and the heat and tension between the two is visible in every moment they share on screen together.  However, it’s the moments of quiet introspection and investigation, finding Carmela at odds with her faith and the reality of her predicament that saw Falco rise higher in artistic stature than even Gandolfini did during the course of the six seasons of the series.

Falco scored 3 Emmy awards as BEST LEAD ACTRESS on a Drama Series for her work on THE SOPRANOS (she bested Gandolfini by nailing two Golden Globes as well), and it’s interesting when you link the wins to the episodes they occurred for.  In each, season 1’s COLLEGE, season 3’s SECOND OPINION and the season 4 closer, WHITECAPS, Falco comes in with only a few minutes of performance time and, in fits of tearful confession, questions or forceful resolve, wipes the floor with every actor who dares to share the frame with her.  Her work on THE SOPRANOS is the masterpiece performance of the series, the moral and spiritual core of the show, and one of the classic, dramatic female characters in the history of television.  Shrill and smarmy, often banging out a humorous observation about the insanity that life with a monster presents on an almost regular basis, she’s Tony’s conscience, for good or bad, and, in the end, the only person alive on earth that can tame the beast that sleeps next to her each night.

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LEGACY

THE SOPRANOS came at a time when TV was drowning in a sea of formulaic repetitiveness:

Lawyer shows that presented and wrapped up each case in an episode.

Cop shows that, although they thought they were daring, were little more than retreads of episodes of the titanic HILL STREET BLUES, but with quick glimpses of tits and ass.

Shows like E. R. started off with inventive looks at timeworn dramatic concepts, only to turn into a “disease of the week”, “doctor in jeopardy” soap opera whose episodes looked much like the ones that preceded it.

That was the norm set up by network programmers…

David Chase’s creation brought a whole new outlook to television that few ever thought would find home on the small screen.  Having envisioned THE SOPRANOS as a big-screen theatrical work, and then realizing it was far too big for a three-hour film, Chase, inspired by David Lynch, and his groundbreaking, prime-time soap, TWIN PEAKS, brought the cinematic aspects of movies to the living room.  Employing darkly brooding, deep-focus cinematography to the visual palette of the show, widescreen framing (television sets, when the show first premiered, presented each episode in the “letterbox” format) and a soundtrack almost completely dominated by classic pop/rock and contemporary music, the series took on the guise of a Martin Scorsese film production.   This, combined with a cast of hundreds that brought together newly discovered character actors and older, well known stars from TV and movies, helped sell THE SOPRANOS not just as must-see TV, but as a night at the movies without ever leaving the house.

Because of THE SOPRANOS, networks, admired of Chase’s vision, began to step up and take more risks.  The show was the tipping point for even more cinematically inspired works like Alan Ball’s surrealist masterpiece SIX FEET UNDER, David Milch’s revisionist history DEADWOOD, David Simon’s Dickensian tapestry THE WIRE, the Frank Darabont produced horror masterpiece THE WALKING DEAD and, probably best of all, Vince Gilligan’s crime noir/neo western BREAKING BAD (which Gilligan admits would have never happened if it wasn’t for the success of THE SOPRANOS and an anti-hero like Tony).

The viewers couldn’t have been more in love with the show either.  A ratings grabber from day one, the series connected with its audience by way of recognizable “types’ in the characters on the screen.

As Christopher Moltisanti, Tony’s junkie nephew and heir to the big seat of his business, veteran stage and screen character actor, also a GOODFELLAS alumni, MIchael Imperioli was cast.  Exuding just the right balance of short-fused temper and combining it with a shade of low I. Q. stupidity, Imperioli turns Chris into a dynamite charge of over-ambition felled by his secret addiction to heroin.  It’s a brilliant balancing act that is both raucously funny one minute, and dramatically depressing the next.

Dominic Chianese, best known as Hyman Roth’s right-hand man and mouthpiece, Johnny Olla, in Coppola’s THE GODFATHER PART II, is Tony’s deadly, over-serious uncle, Corrado “Junior” Soprano.  Played in every superb detail by Chianese, Junior is an “old-school” soldier making a move for the big seat without realizing the world around him is two decades ahead of his prehistoric ideas on how to run a modern version of the “business”. Chianese often batted his performances out of the park, particularly in the first three seasons that focused a great deal on Junior’s and Tony’s race for the top position, with a sly combination of inventively crass insults that could floor the viewer with aching laughter, and chill you to the bone a second later when his decisions turn reactively homicidal.

I often thought that if THE SOPRANOS had a secret weapon, one that could take a completely mundane, by-the-numbers story-line, and breath vibrant life into it, then Aida Tuturro as Tony’s scheming, older sister, Janice, in all of her comic bluster and inane stupidity, was it.  In episode after episode, Janice was a fit of alternating loyalty and back-stabbing.  Her free-wheeling, flower-child, pacifist exterior was always a mask for the deeply, emotionally scarred girl who, like Tony, never truly grew up.  As played by Turturro, Janice can go from child-like denier to physically violent accuser at the drop of a dime.

As for children?

Can anyone out there think of two kids more perfectly cast AS children than Jamie Lynn Sigler and Robert Iler, as Meadow and Anthony Jr., respectively?  Often, the show dealt with Tony’s blind love for his kids and, oft times than not, his sometimes disdain for ever having them.  As the perfect yin and yang, Meadow and A. J. (Anthony Jr’s nickname), couldn’t be more different in attitude and personal tone.  Sigler plays Meadow just soft enough to be “Daddy’s little girl” but just hard enough to be the master manipulator that always gets her way regardless of her mother’s consternation. Iler, on the other hand, is a kid, plain and simple, whose interest in video games, junk-food and jerking-off takes precedence over seeing what his sister sees about what their family is, outwardly, to the world looking in.  It’s moments in the later parts of the series that see the kids, and the actors playing them, beautifully grow into adults and start questioning their existence as a member of a family as calamitous as theirs.  Iler is particularly striking in the last two seasons of the series as his growing awareness of the world, and its global problems, start to suffocate his thinking and lead him to suicidal tendencies.  The pain of the character takes on a physical presence in Iler and his moments of personal, introspective analysis are so deeply emotional that one can feel the quiver in his soul.  It’s a wonderfully mature turn from an actor so young and with so little experience on the screen prior to his casting on the show.

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BEST OF THE BEST

THE SOPRANOS wasn’t perfect.  Unlike BREAKING BAD, that NEVER had a dull episode, THE SOPRANOS chugged along in fits and spurts of brilliance, spewing out a dud more times than not (The “Columbus Day” episode, Christopher’s affair with the Hollywood “D” girl, almost all the episodes with Steve Buscemi’s “Tony Blundetto” character, to name a few).   Yet, through it all, it remains a classic work of cinema on the TV screen, that still trumps BREAKING BAD overall, because, when it did hit…

IT HIT YOU LIKE A PAIR OF BRASS KNUCKLES.

Thinking long and hard about the run of the series and the episodes of each season, it’s easy to waft towards the comic ones.  THE SOPRANOS was, often, raucously funny.  At times, it was funnier than most comedy shows that were on the air.  However, as I really knuckle down, and as great the temptation is to list a wealth of the most comedic in the series, I find it’s the contemplative arcs, the episodes that examine the hypocrisies and faith of the main characters, that, finally, HAD to make the cut.

Here are, in my opinion, the FIVE episodes I feel represent THE SOPRANOS in its very best light.

5. PINE BARRENS (Season 3, Episode 11)

The single most popular episode of the series entire run, a complete fan favorite, it’s also the only out-n-out comedy episode that could not be overlooked.

After a payment collection for the boss goes horribly wrong, Paulie (the wonderfully annoying and finicky Tony Sirico) and Christopher (Michael Imperioli, never better), are charged, by an annoyed Tony, with disposing of the body.  With sick justifications to always find a silver lining in any dark cloud, it’s decided between the two morons to take the dead man out to the South Jersey PIne Barrens for burial.  The logic behind their decision?  The Pine Barrens are only an hour drive away from Atlantic City where our intrepid bunglers can retreat to, after the dirty deed is done, for a much needed respite of steaks, drinking, gambling and hookers.

What makes this episode so remarkable is the seeming simplicity of the story.  At first glance, “Pine Barrens” looks like a simple “Odd Couple” rehash between two of the most polar opposites of supporting characters but, as the episode moves into the deep, dark, wintry woods of South Jersey, where neither guy has a clue on how to get back to the main road, the writers kick each character into a personal analysis of each other.  At first, Paulie is seen for the lying, cheating bully we always THOUGHT he was.  However, when starvation, the fear of freezing to death, and an argument over an old piece of shag rug for a blanket ensues, he’s revealed to be a sniveling, frightened coward of a man capable of murdering his old friend for a toes worth of advantage.

4. UNIVERSITY (Season 3, Episode 6)

A heartbreaker of an episode and the one often thought of as the most disturbing of the series.  After it was aired, HBO was inundated with calls from subscribers canceling the service because they deemed the episode distasteful.

Seems Ralphie Cifferetto (the perfectly slimy Joe Pantoliano) is shagging one of Sylvio’s strippers at the Bada Bing Club.  Tracy, a 22 year-old, single mother who performs tricks as side work for her exotic dancing, honestly believes that Ralphie’s lies about running away with her, and her infant son, will come to fruition.  Because of this, Tracy misses work to spend time getting high with Ralphie and having sex, forcing Sylvio (a very intimidating Steven Van Zandt) to take forceful action and, hopefully, wake Tracy up to the reality of Ralphie’s lies.

When Tracy calls Ralphie’s lies out, publicly, and also announces that she’s pregnant, at a private party at the Bing, Ralphie takes Tracy outside to “explain” the motivations behind his lies.  Horrified by the truth (“why would I ever want a baby when his mother’s a cocksuckin’ slob?”), Tracy pushes Ralphie out of the way.  Infuriated by her assertion, the drunken Ralph proceeds to beat Tracy to death by slamming her head into a guard-rail.

The connotations about fathers and daughters, the protection of our children and the polite cruelties of society were never better on display than in this episode.  Alternating between the Tracy story and Meadow’s bumpy relationship with the egotistical Noah, the African-American college student Tony is having a fit over, the stories connect in theme as carnival mirror images of women looking up to men they see as powerful earth-shakers. To Tracy, Ralphie is a god who only has eyes for her.  To Meadow, Noah is that intellectual savior that will whisk her away from the hypocrisies she’s been surrounded by all her life.  In the end, neither is what their fawning female companions ever thought they’d be.  Luckily, in the case of Meadow, her choice was transparent enough to show himself before her life ends in a slave-like death relationship brought on by the neglect that is a result of his growing egotism.  As for Tracy, her death is a reminder to Tony about how his closed-minded nature, and forceful assertions, particularly pertaining to his daughter’s choices in life, are pushing Meadow away, and thereby not allowing Tony to truly protect her.

The final moment, that sees Tony explode in a fit of violent rage over Ralphie’s disgusting deed, sees James Gandolfini at his most physically raw.

3. THE KNIGHT IN WHITE SATIN ARMOR (Season 2, Episode 12)

For so many reasons, this one has to make the list.  Least of which is that the episode was the first truly unexpected shocker of the first two seasons…  And, I mean that in the best and most entertaining way.

As Janice’s wedding to Richie Aprile (the marvelously dead-eyed David Proval) moves closer, the jitters of planning the event, the money spent, and his future wife’s demands start gnawing at his craw.  Strapped for cash, Richie tries to muscle Tony into giving him wiggle room over the constrictions made on his cocaine sales on the Barone Sanitation routes.  Tony, refusing to budge on his decision, infuriates Richie, who then seeks an audience with Uncle Junior.  At the meeting, Richie tells Junior that he’s had enough with Tony’s self-sanctity and that he, pledging his loyalty to the elder Soprano, wants to eliminate Tony once and for all.

Back at home, Richie’s aggravations with Tony spill out all over the dining room as Janice serves supper.  Ranting on and on about dresses and flowers and the right caterers for their big event, Janice provokes Richie to lash out, striking his fiancee in the mouth.  As he eats his spaghetti and sausage, rocking back and forth in his chair over the power he holds, at the very least, over his girlfriend, Richie is shocked to be staring down the barrel of a gun wielded by the bleeding Janice.

With the character of Richie Aprile, THE SOPRANOS finally found a “heavy” to give Tony a true pain-in-the-ass.  He was just annoying enough, through his transparent “respect”, to cause Tony to walk the other side of the street, and so serious as to be psychopathically homicidal.  What made Richie truly scary was his despicable determination, resulting in senseless acts of violence, to obtain what he felt was his due after years in the can.  This alone, became a sore point that could, foreseeably, end up with Tony dead and his kids weeping at the funeral parlor.  

That the gun-toting Janice, of all people, finally took care of a piece of business Tony was reluctantly contemplating, sent the viewers over the backs of their sofa’s in shock and awe of the creativity the writers (Robin Green, Mitchell Burgess) put on display to never allow us to get too comfortable for our own good.  Aida Turturro bangs one over the park bench with her performance as the ever unpredictable Janice, leveling some of the most naturally-flowing funny lines in the history of the series.

Janice’s tearful one-on-one, when questioning Tony about what he did with Richie’s body, is one of the comic highlights of the entire series.

2. WHITECAPS (Season 4, Episode 13)

If ever there was question about who the finest actor on THE SOPRANOS was, this is the episode you present as submission A as evidence pleading the case of Edie Falco.

There’s alot going on in this episode…

Tony is simultaneously dealing with his loyalties to Johnny Sack, and negotiating the purchase of a shore home that will bring the family “closer”.  However, when a drunken Irina, Tony’s former mistress, calls the Soprano house and informs Carmela of Tony’s infidelities with her one-legged cousin, Svetlana (in retaliation for a beating Tony laid on Irina’s current sugar-daddy), the big lug comes home to find his clothes being tossed out of the windows of the house and an incensed Carmela questioning why she ever married him.

Succinctly, most of what goes on in this episode is pretty standard plotting for any one of a dozen episodes of this series.  What makes this episode a standout are the few moments that Carmela lays into Tony about how she’s blindly, and moronically, turned her cheek for every indiscretion and embarrassing infidelity he’s leveled at her over the years.  Edie Falco’s performance is a volcanic eruption of pent-up regrets and violently honest admissions that are, purposely, meant to drive a wedge between her and this ape she’s taken so much shit from in the past.  To be honest, Falco is like a rabid animal finally backed into a corner and forced to bite.  It’s THE high-water mark for performance on the series and the stuff that made Edie Falco a legend in television acting.  In just a matter of 7 minutes of screen time, after doing pretty much nothing all through this season, Falco mesmerizingly delivers, with everything she’s got in her arsenal, and waltzed right up to the podium, at the end of the year, to collect her THIRD Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

1. COLLEGE (Season1, Episode 5)

The best episode of the entire series and the one that David Chase feels perfectly encapsulates everything THE SOPRANOS is about.

I couldn’t agree more.

Tony and Meadow head up to Maine in a rented car to scope out possible College options.  Carmela, staying behind, is confined to bed with a severe case of the flu while Anthony Jr. acts as her bedside maid and personal chef.

While gassing up, Tony is pretty sure that a patron at the gas station is none other than Fabian Petrullio, a former mob soldier turned FBI snitch that reportedly disappeared under the Witness Protection program.  Leaving Meadow alone to explore Colby College, Tony snoops around town and confirms the man he saw IS Pertullio.  From there, it’s a delicate balancing of attention to Meadow while also finding a way to sneak out and throttle the man Tony had vowed to kill years ago.

A showcase for both Gandolfini and, particularly, Edie Falco, this one deals with Tony’s reactions to Meadow questions about what her father really does for a living (“Dad, are you in the Mafia?”), and, for the first time, examines Carmela’s inner turmoil regarding her religious faith and the hypocrisy she levels at it by leading the life she lives.

In a stroke of pure genius by Chase and co-writer James Manos Jr., it’s the parallel set-ups for each of the main characters that find revelations about themselves in ANSWERS they give when confessing to others.  For Tony, the answers he gives Meadow are everything a master deceiver would give.  They are lies laced with just a little bit of truth and loaded with just enough information to not only throw Meadow off his trail but, protect the image he thinks she has of her him as a pretty decent guy.

Back in New Jersey, the answers Carmela gives Father Intintola (the always reliable and sinewy, Paul Schulze) in a make-shift confessional in the living room (after a plate of baked ziti and a whole lot of red wine) are ones of desperate confusion and hysterical fear.  For Carmela, her faith is challenged by remaining part and parcel to the despicable deeds of her husband, frightened of a common life should she leave him.  It’s here, in the simplest of visual set-ups, two people sitting back-to-back, that the dreads of living a false life, how it affects children, and the hypocritical nature of rash materialism, informs every move Carmela makes in a life paired with a monster, and every option she wished she had to get away from him.

Falco delivered the first of her three Emmy-winning performances in this episode.  It’s THE show-stopper of an episode loaded with show-stoppers.

THE SOPRANOS

(USA HBO 1999-2007 DVD/Blu-Ray)

p. Martin Bruestle, David Chase, Brad Grey, Ilene S. Landress, Henry Bronchtein, Terence Winter  created/developed. David Chase  d. David Chase, Timothy Van Patten, John Patterson, Allen Coulter, Alan Taylor, Henry Bronchtein, Jack Bender, Steve Buscemi  w. David Chase, Terence Winter, Mitchell Burgess, Robin Green, Matthew Weiner, Frank Renzulli  ph. Phil Abraham, Alik Sakharov, William Coleman  ed. Sidney Wolinsky, William B. Stitch, Conrad M. Gonzalez  art. Bob Shaw, Dean Taucher, Edward Pisoni  theme. “Woke Up This Morning” Larry Love, Mountain of Love, Sir Eddie Real, Rev. D. Wayne Love

James Gandolfini (Anthony “Tony” Soprano), Lorraine Bracco (Dr. Jennifer Melfi), Edie Falco (Carmela Soprano), Nancy Marchand (Livia Soprano), Dominic Chianese (Corrado “Junior” Soprano), Jamie-Lynn Sigler (Meadow Soprano), Robert Iler (Anthony “A. J.” Soprano Jr.), Michael Imperioli (Christopher Moltisanti), Aida Turturro (Janice Soprano Baccalieri), Steven Van Zandt (Silvio Dante), Tony Sirico (Paulie “Walnuts” Gaultieri), Vincent Pastore (Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero), Drea de Matteo (Adriana La Cerva), Steve Schirippa (Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri), John Ventimiglia (Artie Bucco), Katherine Narducci (Charmaine Bucco), Vincent Curatola (John “Johnny Sack” Sacramoni),  Federico Castelluccio (Furio Giunta), Matt Servitto (Agent. Dwight Harris), Jerry Adler (Herman “Hesch” Rabkin), Joseph R. Ganniscola (Vito Spatafore), Paul Schulze (Father Phil Intintola), Micheal Rispoli (Jackie Aprile), Sharon Angela (Rosalie Aprile), David Proval (Richie Aprile), Joe Lisi (Dick Barone), Maureen Van Zandt (Gabriella Dante), Tom Aldredge (Hugh DeAngelis), Suzanne Shepherd (Mary DeAngelis), Jason Cerbone (Jackie Aprile Jr.), Max Casella (Benny Fazio), Carl Capotorta (“Little” Paulie Germani), Ray Abruzzo (Carmine Lupertazzi Jr.), Tony Lip (Carmine Lupertazzi Sr.), Dan Grimaldi (Patsy Parisi)

Guests:

Frank Vincent (Phil Leotardo), Peter Bogdanovich (Elliot Kupferberg), Annabella Sciorra (Gloria Trillo), Joe Pantoliano (Ralph Ciferetto), Steve Buscemi (Tony Blundetto), John Heard (Det. Vin Mikazian), Robert Loggia (Feech LaManna), Burt Young (Bobby Baccalieri Sr.), Julianna Margulies (Julianna Skiff)