Saluti.
Sorry for the delay, folks – had a bit of a medical emergency in the family. It’s not much fun to realize at 4:00 AM that your four-year-old son has a 103 degree fever. Especially when he’s prone to febrile seizures. Anyway, we’re (more or less) back to normal, so let’s see how things went this week.
As always, if you have any questions about the show (background, history, etc.), or wish to share your opinions of a specific episode/character/plotline/etc, or if you vehemently disagree with one of my conclusions or opinions — please email me by clicking my name in the column title at the top of page. I’ll answer everything here in the column the next week.
First things first: if you aren’t familiar with The Sopranos, or if you need a refresher course on the history of the show (since it has been 21 months since the last episode), please read my column on the background of Tony Soprano. It concentrated on Tony’s character, but touches just about every large storyline that we’ve seen over the first 5 seasons. You should be able to find links to the recaps to the past few episodes at the bottom of the page.
Previously on The Sopranos:
- Tony meets Julianna Skiff, a real estate agent interested in buying some property from him for Jamba Juice
- Tony informs AJ that the situation with Uncle Junior is not his business
- Vito and Jim, the diner owner, share a tender moment over breakfast
- Phil Leotardo asks Tony about Vito’s whereabouts. Again.
- AJ brags to some random blonde chick that he’ll “probably have to do something” about Junior
- AJ gets caught with a knife in Junior’s psyche ward, and gets bailed out by his father
- Vito and Jim share a quick kiss, until Vito flips out and punches Jim.
- Vito apologizes to Jim for the fight.
- Tony eventually accepts the offer from Jamba Juice, and signs the papers at Julianna’s apartment. They start to make out, but Tony stops her before things get serious.
Episode 74: The Ride:
Directed by: Alan Taylor
Written by: Terence Winter
Christopher is watching “Saw” on TV, when his new girlfriend Kelli (no, I don’t recognize here either) walks out of the bathroom, and informs him that she’s pregnant. In a move that shocks her (and me), he proposes going to Atlantic City and getting married. She accepts, and seems thrilled. (I, however, don’t see this ending as well as she does.) He does go out of his way to mention that his ex couldn’t have kids, and how badly he wanted them.
Paulie and Patsy pay a visit to the local church, which will be hosting the Feast of St. Elzear. Paulie apparently handles the feast, “which is all run through our non-profit organization”. The new priest feels that the rent Paulie’s “organization” is paying ($10,000) is low, and pushes for an increase to $50,000. Paulie points out that the price has been 10 grand since it was run by Johnnie Boy Soprano back in the day, but the priests insists “this is a different time”. The priest also points out that the golden hat normally worn by the status of St. Elzear (which is paraded through the festival on the second day) is valuable, and he doesn’t feel safe handing it over this year due to the possible “criminal element”. Paulie, being intimately familiar with the concept, recognizes that this is turning into a shakedown, and as he puts it: “Fuck the hat.”
Christopher shows up to the Bada Bing, and displays his wedding ring to Tony, Silvio, Paulie and Patsy. They do a quick champagne toast, with Chris having just water (“My son will be my strength”).
Tony and Chris make a road trip to Pennsylvania to check on a job, and get lost on the way back. Tony pulls over to relieve himself, and they manage to catch a robbery in progress on a liquor store. They back up the Escalade, and manage to load up several crates of wine before they get interrupted. A quick firefight breaks out, with Chris nailing one of the robbers as they’re driving away.
The two of them decide to pull over and grab dinner, and bring in some of the newly acquired wine with them, which turns out to be an expensive French vintage from 1986. Chris remarks about the wine: “I miss it sometimes, I’ll be honest.” Tony suggests they should at least toast the wedding and the coming baby, so Chris figures he can be disciplined enough to handle it (ha ha). And of course, we see them stumble out of the restaurant later, and open up another bottle which they drink straight out of the bottle in the parking lot. They pull a bit of a bonding experience, and Chris brings up the day he had to tell Tony about Adriana.
And hey, surprise surprise — we get a flashback to that very scene. The two of them go down into Tony’s basement, where Chris can just barely bring himself to admit what happened, inbetween sobs. Tony’s main concern, of course, is what the Feds have learned from Adriana – after being sure to check Chris for a wire (“Aw Tony, how could you even think that?”). Chris tells Tony where she is, but begs Tony not to ask him to take care of her.
The next morning, Chris and Kelli go house-shopping, finding a rather nice-looking place somewhere out in the suburbs (having done similar myself, I’d put the price tag somewhere between $800K-$1.2M). Before even going inside, Chris calls it “stately Wayne Manor”, and announces “We’ll take it.”
We then make a visit to the Feast of St. Elzear, in full swing. (I’ve been to a couple of these, including the Feast of St. Anthony’s in Wilmington several times; when Tony later remarks that it’s “thousands of people, either praying or eating”, he’s not exaggerating at all). Tony informs Phil that he has a truckload of Centrum multi-vitamins to unload, but it has to be done that night. Phil agrees, “but in this case, I’m thinking we spare John the stress of having to hear about this.” Tony is somewhat shocked, and Phil’s smile back to him (see below) is classic.
Carmela comes out of church and joins Meadow and Finn in the Feast, where Meadow catches sight of Adriana’s Mom, Liz. Carmela realizes that Liz has seen here, and decides she should go over and say hi. The conversation itself is rather frank: “Carmela Soprano. How’s your daughter?” “Fine.” “Well.. mine is dead.” Wow, not one for small talk, is she? Liz outright accuses Christopher of killing Adriana, but Carmela valiantly keeps trying to deflect it.
Chris meets with Corky and starts telling him about the house he’s planning on buying. Corky does a decent job feigning interest, but is obviously only concerned with getting paid. And he seems especially pleased that he gets a bonus of a package of heroin. Chris tells him it’s no problem if he shoots up there, and continues to talk about the new house (“Christmas, Christmas Eve maybe – I’m gonna start a tradition”). Corky offers him some: Chris at first declines, but decides “guess I could toot some.” And Chris’s cluelessness continues to amaze: even while he’s preparing to snort heroin, he’s telling Corky to get some help (“Narcotics Anonymous or something”). The look on Chris’ face after the first sniff tells us: we’re quickly heading down a slippery slope.
And yup – in the very next scene, Chris already has the needle in his arm. We then get a lovely little “drug montage” (set to the sounds of “Dolphin”, by Fred Neil, with Chris staring at the pretty lights at the Feast, and making friends with a random mutt looking for scraps of food. (In case, you’re wondering, yes that is a perfect representation of what addicts do. It’s a textbook case, in fact, albeit on an accellerated schedule: temptation, justification, a small taste, and then right back into the addiction. Just don’t ask me how I’m so familiar with this.)
The next day, the statue of St. Elzear is paraded outside the church, with two different spectators noticing the missing hat. Paulie, ironically, watches in the front seat of a nearby police cruiser.
Back at home, Carmela tells Tony about what she heard from Liz (“I have been debating all night about whether to even say anything about this”). Tony of course dismisses it, and even uses some pseudo-logic to back it up: “First and foremost, there’s always a body. And 99 times out of 100, and this comes straight from my cop buddies, it happens either in the kitchen or the bedroom. If he killed her, with the forensics they got nowadays — with the uh, fibers — we’d know it.” “The FBI came to her house!” “Exactly my point. If they really think he did it, how fast do you think they’d haul his ass in?” This appears to be what Carmela wanted to hear, but I’m willing to bet she still has her doubts (see her facial expression below). At the end, we get our daily dose of irony, where Tony talks about how well Christopher has been doing recently: “Let’s not ruin his progress.” Uhh, sorry Tone – you kinda already started that the other night with the wine. He just progressed from there.
Paulie gets a call on his cell from his doctor, who says there were some results on recent tests that worried him a bit, which shows something possibly wrong with his prostate. He asks Paulie to come in for a biopsy. Paulie’s reaction is exactly what you expect.
Janice forces Bobby Jr. to get on a teacups ride with her and the new baby (who is, of course, screaming practically the entire time). Bobby Jr. is, shall we say, less than thrilled. The ride has some mechanical problems, and lurches violently to a stop, injuring at least one child who was riding at the time (he seems to be bleeding pretty badly from the mouth).
Little Paulie calls his uncle at home, and tells him about the accident (“It’s pretty bad. Some lady broke her wrist, and some Puerto Rican kid lost some teeth”). Paulie, in his own consistent manner, couldn’t care less and tells Little Paulie to handle it (“I got be up in the morning. I got my f*cking biopsy”).
Dinner night at the Soprano’s. Janice goes directly into her melodramatic embellishment: “One second you’re sitting there enjoying a ride with your family, the next your entire world comes crashing down.” The following conversation is a mix of racial prejudice about how the “locals” (read: Hispanics) will bring instant lawsuits, Meadow attempting to talk about actual negligence, and Janice nagging Bobby about doing “nothing” during the entire scene (“I was taking Sophia to the bathroom!”). The moments of awkward silence seem to take up about half of the scene: the tension is palpable.
And in the least surprising plot turn ever: here’s Janice the next morning, wearing a neck brace. Bobby barges into a hotel room where the ride operator is (seemingly) hiding out, and tries to shake him down for $25G to cover medical costs (“New Jersey has stringent liability laws”). The operator insists that he told the guy that hired him to get a repair crew, but he wouldn’t pay for it. And yup, you guessed it: that guy is Paulie.
Paulie is back at the feast, watching the cannoli eating contest. His enjoyment is interrupted by the call of “Hey, cocksucker!” Bobby charges straight after Paulie, accusing him of being cheap (“you don’t scrimp on safety!”). While five guys hold him back (an angry Bobby is actually a pretty scary sight), Bobby screams that Paulie owes him money. Paulie, of course, disagrees. (I remember seeing a piece of this scene in the season preview, and wondering what could possibly have gotten Bobby that worked up – he’s always been, by far, the easiest-going guy in Tony’s crew. The combination of his wife and baby being in danger, along with Janice berating him in front of everyone at dinner: yeah, that would do it.)
Tony talks to Dr. Melfi about the accident at the feast, and the concepts of rides themselves: “They pay money so they can almost puke.” “Why do you think that is” “They’re bored.” “Are you bored?” “You know my feelings: every day is a gift. It’s just… does it have to be a pair of socks?”
Paulie calls in for the results of his biopsy (“again” – I get the feeling this is more than the second time), but there aren’t any yet. He bumps into his “Ma”, who’s on a trip with her nursing home. She asks if what she’s been hearing about the ride is true, and tells him that he needs to do a novena for letting St. Elzear go without his hat, and cursing his mother, “a blessed nun”. Paulie curses her again, and storms off.
Cut to Vesuvio’s: “So, in keeping with this long standing tradition of doing everything ass-f*cking-backwards, we are gathered here tonight for the bachelor party of already married man Christopher Moltisanti.” Paulie arrives late, which is followed immediately by Bobby excusing himself (“I gotta go, Tone – the kids”).
Tony joins Paulie in the men’s room, and gets off my favorite line of the episode: “Doing a heckuva job there, Brownie.” Tony informs him that he’ll be settling this with Bobby immediately, and brings up the fact that they don’t need any negative press. Paulie apologizes, and tells Tony that he’s got a lot on his mind: specifically the biopsy. Tony wisely points out that it’s just a biopsy, and they don’t know anything. He also tries to remind Paulie that he’s prone to stressing about things like this (“the germophobia”), and that he should “get a grip”.
Christopher finds Tony in the basement, putting away his share of the wine in a new wine rack. Chris informs him that he sold his share: “$300 for the 6 cases.” (6 cases of 22 year old French wine? Oh, man – the look Tony gives him lets us know he realizes how much Chris just got ripped off too.) After about 45 seconds, they run out of things to talk about, and just rehash the robbery itself. (Once again, the conversation is defined more by the silence than the actual talking itself.)
Tony shows up at the Bada Bing early the next morning to make a collection, and has a revealing hallucination: a statue of the Virgin Mary on the dance stage. What I found interesting was that the statue can also be seen in the mirror behind Paulie, *before* he turns and looks at it (see below).
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On the last day of the feast, Janice is trying to calm down her daughter, who is screaming to get back on the (now closed) rides. Tony picks up his niece and swings her over his head, getting her to laugh. Please note the look on Janice’s face below, who really doesn’t seem to appreciate her brother’s efforts properly (most likely, she doesn’t like being reminded of her deficiencies as a mother).
Paulie, who appears to be somewhat able of grasping the imagery around him, makes an unannounced visit to his Ma in the nursing home. The only conversation is about the Lawrence Welk show she’s watching, but he sits down and watches with her. We pan outside the window, to watch some leaves blowing in the wind, and fade out.
Cue credits.
Next week on the Sopranos:
- Johnny Sack’s lawyer talks about the possibility of “co-operating”
- Vito (apparently) tells his background story to Jim
- Johnny’s brother-in-law comes to Tony, behind Phil’s back
- Janice accuses Tony of punishing Bobby because of the shooting
- Meadow is crying about something, while he father tries to console her
- Christopher is extremely upset about something, standing in front of his new house
- It looks like Vito and Jim get into a fight, and Vito makes out no better in this one
- “The Ties That Bind Can’t Be Broken”
