Corrado, released from prison, resumes his tense relationship with Tony.
Janice and Livia also have a tense relationship.
We learn that Big Pussy has divided loyalties.
Episode 15 – Originally aired Jan 23, 2000
Written by Green & Burgess and Frank Renzulli
Directed by Martin Bruestle
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David Chase has said that after the first season, he wanted to expand the threats that were lining up against Tony Soprano. In “Do Not Resuscitate,” Chase gives us a clearer view of the issues that Tony will have to face in upcoming hours. The hour confirms that Tony’s apprehensions about the people who have reinserted themselves into his life are totally justified: Pussy Bonpensiero has become a major danger to the New Jersey mob, and Janice aka Parvati is not the West Coast peacenik that she has portrayed herself to be.
Pussy
It turns out that Pussy has indeed flipped. He is trying his best, though, to protect Tony. This may actually be part of the reason why his back pain is so bad; he is doubly burdened because he’s playing both sides against the middle. His handler, Skip Lipari, is a type of character that viewers would not have been very familiar with back in 2000. He doesn’t resemble any of the typical FBI agents that we had grown accustomed to seeing on television over the years; I can’t picture him on The X-Files or The Untouchables or Criminal Minds or Bones… In fact, he could pass for a mobster himself: he is overweight, wears track suits, and even mocks Tony (calling him a “yuppie”) for getting psychotherapy. It’s probably because Skip Lipari is such an identifiable character for Pussy that he will ally himself with the FBI more and more as the series progresses.
Janice
It is fitting that an episode that is about seeing characters more clearly would have a scene set in an ophthalmologist’s office. In the clip below, we see that Chase cuts, notably, from the ophthalmologist’s waiting room to Livia’s hospital room:
It is Janice who comes into focus as Livia’s blurry eyesight clears. Like Livia and the ophthalmology patients, the viewer’s vision becomes clearer in this episode—we get our first good picture of who Janice really is. She has cloaked herself as an arts-minded hipster (“Lady Kerouac” she calls herself in her supposed video project) but the facade is wearing thin. We begin to see her true reason for coming to NJ: she wants control of Livia’s house. To gain this control, she must prevent her brother from selling the property and she must also restrengthen her relationship with her mother. Meadow reminds her that music is one of the few things that Livia enjoys, and Janice capitalizes on this. She buys CDs for Livia and reminisces childhood memories of Mario Lanza. When a Pavarotti song manages to soften some of Livia’s harsh attitude, Janice quotes the first part of William Congreve’s line: “Music hath charms…” (But she wisely leaves off the second part: “…to soothe the savage breast.”) Although Janice plays the warm and sweet daughter in this scene, the scorpion ring on her finger hints at her poisonous character:
Janice seems to have inherited her mother’s murderous inclinations. Livia has a filicidal impulse while Janice may have a matricidal impulse. Janice not only wants Tony to sign a DNR for Livia, she may actually be thinking of killing her mother herself. Livia certainly believes this to be the case (though it is difficult for us to know just how much of Livia’s fear of her daughter is produced by her pathological paranoia). Livia hints that she has riches hidden away somewhere, but we suspect she may be saying this just to help insure against her murder. She lets Janice know that she is on to her by making a reference to a Richard Widmark film; she is almost certainly alluding to Kiss of Death, the 1947 film in which Widmark’s character pushes an old Italian woman down a flight of stairs. Prompted by this reference or by her own dark impulses, murder flashes through Janice’s mind.
We almost feel pity for Livia when she calls the Soprano home, apprehensive that her life is in danger. On the phone with Carmela, she describes Janice as “a snake in the grass.” (The previous episode made a reptilian comparison as well—we saw the pool cleaner take on a snake-like appearance when it shared a scene with Janice.) Carmela curtly hangs up the telephone—she is in no mood to resuscitate the relationship with her mother-in-law. But other factors are pulling Livia back into Tony and Carmela’s life. Corrado is insisting that Tony repair the relationship with his mother because the current situation is disgraceful. Maybe more importantly, it’s bad for business. People are talking. (Philly Parisi in the previous episode and Freddy Capuano in the current episode are killed for their gossiping.)
So far this season, Tony has growled at anyone who has tried to mention Livia to him. But he seems to be softening his stance. He and Janice discuss their mother:
Janice: It’s not gonna be long before they release her.
Tony: How can she make “tremendous strides” when there’s nothing wrong with her in the first place?
Janice: It’s called Face-Saving Therapy. The patient has to believe that they’re getting therapy. Believe me, Medicare is not gonna pay for it if it’s not as necessary as real, would they?
Tony: (shaking his head) And the taxpayer foots the bill…
(Tony’s last statement is profoundly ironic; he had no hesitation whatsoever crafting an HMO scam in the Pilot episode which could potentially bilk taxpayers and Medicare.) Janice keeps chiseling Tony about the DNR and about Livia’s home. He finally relents and agrees not to sell the place so that mother and daughter can both live there together: “The two of you in that house deserve each other. It would be worth it just to watch.” Yes, it will be.
Corrado is also being pulled back into Tony’s life. He is more directly involved in the business now that he’s been granted house arrest (though Judge Greenspan does demand he wear an ankle bracelet.) (The scene in which Jewish lawyer Melvoin tries to nix Corrado’s ankle bracelet by smoothing the riled feathers of the racially oversensitive Jewish judge is my favorite scene of the episode.) The death of old man Herman James, Sr., may also serve to warm Tony’s feelings toward Corrado: Herman Sr. and Corrado are both WWII veterans, they are part of the Greatest Generation—and as such, they should be cared for and respected. When Corrado shows his old age and vulnerability by slipping and hurting himself in the bathtub, Tony comes over to help. In the final shot of the episode, Ella Fitzgerald’s song “Goodbye My Love” starts up as Tony lifts and carries the ailing Corrado. It’s a tender moment (made a little humorous by that romantic love song) and it affirms that the two men will be able to bury the hatchet. Business and family obligations require that this relationship be resuscitated.
__________________________________
MASSA
Tony plays both sides against the middle in this episode, pitting black construction workers and the Italian owners of the construction firm against each other. He pays Rev. Herman James, Jr., to instigate a strike by the black workers, and then accepts money from Jack Massarone to send in his henchmen to break up the strike. One of the black protesters holds up a sign that puns on the old slave term for “master”:
“No More Massarone,” the sign proclaims. While the frustration of the protesters may be real, the rally itself was falsely initiated. Herman Jr. engineered it as part of a scheme to line his pockets, not as a way to right racial wrongs. The real “massa” is greed, a master that very few in SopranoLand seem to be able to escape. The senior Herman certainly would not approve of this scheme, nor of his son’s collusion with Tony Soprano. But Herman Sr. dies of old age by the end of the episode, leaving Herman Jr. free to look forward to his next scam with Tony. (An asbestos removal job looks promising and profitable to them.)
FAT FUCK
The Sopranos is a heavyweight show—perhaps no TV cast in history has topped, in pounds as well as talent, the group that appears here. This episode alone, with the introduction of Skip Lipari and Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri, adds several hundred pounds to the cast’s overall tonnage. This is certainly by design. Tony continuously insults Bobby because of his weight in this episode. Poor Steve Schirripa; the actor had to take the insults even though he not that obese—David Chase asked him to wear a fat-suit to play the role of Bobby. Avi Santo, in his fine essay, “‘Fat fuck! Why don’t you take a look in the mirror?’: Weight, Body Image and Masculinity in The Sopranos,” explains why it is so important for the Bobby-character to be so obese:
Even though he is a made guy, Bacala is primarily Junior’s nursemaid, a role that clearly feminizes him…Bacala’s body manages to house many of the disempowering features of fatness—from his domesticated, feminized, peripheral, and servile role in the Soprano family to his laziness and his repeated objectification and ridicule…
There will be many jokes made at Bobby Bacala’s expense. Of course, Tony has a considerable girth as well, but he carries his bulk, and himself, in a more masculine way. He is weighty, larger-than-life, a man to be reckoned with. And, as Santo also points out, Tony is protected from ridicule in a way that Bobby is not because of their different positions within the Mob. Bobby does not have Tony’s standing, and Tony does not hesitate to remind him of this. We can’t help but chuckle when hangdog Bobby, trying to add a little dramatic flair to his exit, proclaims, “To the victor belong the spoils,” and Tony—ever the pragmatist—responds, “Why don’t you get outta here before I shove your quotations book up your fat fuckin’ ass!”
Before he dismisses Bobby from Satriale’s, Tony makes a dead-serious threat to Bobby. Against a background of the pork store’s products (which magnify his porcine characteristics), Bobby is told that if he doesn’t use discretion, “They’re gonna find pieces of you in eight different dumpsters.” With this particular background imagery, violence is equated with food. We saw this same equation be made in the Pilot episode, when Chris committed his first hit in front of a meat locker at this same pork store:
Satriale’s will continue to be associated with violence in shocking and grotesque ways in later episodes.
__________________________________
ADDITIONAL POINTS:
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By Season 6, there will be an interesting reversal, weight-wise, between Tony and Bobby. After years of overindulgence (of every sort), Tony becomes a slovenly, lumbering beast whereas Bobby seems to “grow” into his girth—he becomes a more substantial character with a meatier role in the business and the family.
- Corrado thinks about getting new eyeglass frames here but thank God he doesn’t—those frames are an instantly recognizable emblem of Corrado Soprano.
- The series often shows us how characters make mental associations that ignite some thought or idea. We see Corrado, for example, remember the old joke about “Cadillacs” after he hears a man speak of “cataracts” at the ophthalmologist’s office. Similarly, AJ remembers a joke—“What did one prick say to the other prick?”—just after hearing his dad cuss at the dinner table. And the next time we see them at the dinner table, Tony associates pricks with Italian sausage as he seems to subtly suggest that Janice has a penchant for giving blowjobs.
- Speaking of the ophthalmologist’s office: Corrado may have scheduled the meeting with Jack Masserone to be at eye doctor’s office because: 1) under the conditions of his house arrest, doctor appointments are one the few legitimate reasons for which he can leave his house; 2) patients in this particular waiting room, with their various eye ailments, might have difficulty seeing the payoff be made.
- Speaking of Janice’s blowjobs: Tony will allude to this again in “Soprano Home Movies” (6.13).
- The stair thing: In episode 1.02, Tony recounts to Melfi how his mother laughed when his father tripped and fell down some stairs. Here, Livia worries (perhaps justifiably) that her daughter will toss her down a staircase.
- Meadow tells Janice that her dad used to bring the music of “that Mario Lasagna guy” to Livia. We might remember that Tony brought his mother a Mario Lanza CD in episode 1.11.
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Skip tells Pussy, “Jimmy Altieri ate the pill for you,” which could perhaps mean that Jimmy was not actually an informant—he may have been killed because Tony had a mistaken intuition.
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The song that Janice listens to while driving, just after she and Livia share a sentimental moment, is Paul Simon’s “A Mother and Child Reunion.” Simon has said that the song title is actually the name of a chicken-and-egg dish that he once saw in a Chinese restaurant menu.
- At one point, Tony tells Pussy how hard it is to find good workers: “They’re either on drugs or compromised with the law or young, they don’t listen to orders.” He has just inadvertently described, respectively, Chris Moltisanti, Pussy himself, and Matt Bevilacqua & Sean Gismonte.
- At family dinner, Meadow says that she got her driver’s license despite having trouble with parallel parking. She still will not have acquired this skill by the series’ conclusion, she will struggle with it as the family waits for her at Holsten’s Diner.
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Sopranos Autopsy 
Not sure if you’re still updating this blog. Fantastic job! I was wondering, so you think Janice’s pov glimpse at the ‘falling down stairs’ sign but also be a quick flashback for her to when her own father tumbled down the stairs “and the whole family laughed” as Tony told the story to Melfi? Even if Janice joined in on the laughter, it was obvious she admired her father very much. It seems to me that Livia’s treatment of him was a very scarring influence on her. The male figure falling down the stairs was repeated in reference to Janice with Ralph, and repeated when Tony took a tumble walking quickly out of his mother’s house. The bit of acting on Gandolfinis face when his mother breaks out in laughter suggests he also flashed back to this moment and the memory was a painful one for him as well.
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Sorry to repeat myself and for my typos but i think falling down stairs factored into finerty dream as well. Wonder if this “happy memory” is an anchoring one for Janice and Tony
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Yes, I think you’re really on to something… There are also three or four other notable incidents that occur on staircases in addition to the ones that you’ve mentioned…I’ll be referencing them in future write-ups…
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Matt – And I’m sure that all of us howled in laughter when we saw Janice’s vision of Livia’s face superimposed on the ‘In case of fire use stairs’! And … how many of us have/had the same vision of our parents’ face on that sign?! 🐴
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lol. Meadow still not being able to parallel park, by series’ end. Parallel parking is like being left handed or right handed. Either you have that hand eye coordination to learn it fast, or you never really do. I’m 41 and I still avoid parallel parking. Luckily I live in a medium size city where spacious parking is typically available. Also, thankfully, California DMV’s doesn’t even test for it! Woohoo. Who needs it anyway? Plenty of parking on the beach.
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Notable that a family secret is inadvertently shared by AJ with Livia in this episode – for the second time. It was AJ who told his grandmother about Tony’s therapy, and this time, he spills the beans about DNR. Obv he doesn’t understand the implications on either occasion. Excellent blog, btw 🙂
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Thanks!
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Good job here, Ron. Skip Lipari certainly does not fit the typical FBI agent mold we have all grown accustomed to from other television and films we may have seen. I’m sure “Skip” isn’t even his real name. He certainly looks and almost speaks like a wise guy. I appreciate how they (FBI) don’t look polished or as if they are perfect, they are normal people too. I think Chase does these kinds of things on purpose and I think it adds depth to the characters. Good point on the bonding of Skip and Sal towards the end of the season. I love the way Skip was introduced to us segueing to Big Pussy being a rat. Confirmed in a car when driving with an FBI agent who escorted him to get back injections. WTF!? Reading this and thinking of the Janice Soprano character, she may be as ruthless as Tony, and I even think a bit worse. Tony seems to have a conscience and does seem to generally care for people. Janice is about Janice. The whole Baccala thing, being called a “fat fuck” and being made fun of is just too damn funny. The scene where he struggles to get out of his Lincoln and Tony calls him a fat fuck is just too much and I find myself laughing hysterically every time I see it. I’m laughing just thinking about it. What makes it even better is how we see Bobby is very hurt by it, and his comment afterwards. HA! I must read the FAT FUCK! essay.
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You’re right in thinking WTF, its insane that Skip would be accompanying Pussy to the doctor’s office. They tool around together quite a bit. I don’t know if this is the writers getting it wrong about how much discretion the FBI would actually have, or maybe it’s just to set up the plot-point of the Elvis-impersonator who sees Puss and Skip together a coupla episodes from now…
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I wonder if the reason Skip is Pussy’s handler is precisely BECAUSE he talks/looks/acts like a made Jersey guy. In the same way they made up Adrianna’s handler to be more of a guidette in order to ingratiate herself with Ade.
Anyway, I’m on my 5th rewatch and I know I’m way late with these comments but (Davey) you’re doing a good job! This is my favorite Sopranos analysis I’ve found and I’ve read most of them. Really hope you’re still finding the time to do them.. and if you are, thank you.
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Thanks T (Tim). I’m still working on them…
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Ron – Regarding the FBI guy’s nickname ‘Skip’, I noticed that nearly everyone calls Tony ‘Skip’ or ‘Skipper’. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Looks like the writers got lazy or just plain careless.
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OK. So, I guess someone ‘in charge’ is automatically nicknamed ‘Skip/Skipper’ (like Tony). Still makes me wonder if FBI guy had a real first name.
BTW: Louis Lombardi (Skip) met Vincent Pastori (Pussy) at age 14.
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I also love the little detail when Livia asks the nurse to swap out the offending tapioca, saying “they can’t expect me to eat this!” then she immediately offers it to Janice, “would you like some of my tapioca?”
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She never mentioned trouble with parallel parking. She mentioned the circumstances under which she had to parallel park–which is a common cause of anxiety for many potential drivers. I agree her bad driving in the opening is a fun link to the finale, but I think it’s a bit irresponsible to reach for “trouble” parallel parking here, when she did not mention any specific trouble; only that she was nervous doing so. That, again, is very common.
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Sure, but just to clarify — I don’t think Chase is reaching forward to the Finale here, instead I think he may have been reaching backward from the Finale to the conversation in this episode. Chase’s main method for forming a connective web through the series is by reaching backwards..
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That’s fair. I was kind of hoping–morbid as that may sound–that there would be a line about Tony not taking her to practice parallel parking. “No thanks to you, Dad” kind of thing…since her inability to parallel park left Members Only Jacket a clear shot.
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Oh I think Jimmy Altieri was a rat. But it’s possible that he has been turned recently, maybe partly to take the heat off Pussy. He was so bad at it that (1) it was obvious that he was fishing for information, so yes, he was a rat, and (2) he might have been new at the job. I go back and forth on whether they turned him after that bust at the card game and threw him back as bait or whether it was a separate thing, in that they would get informants whenever they could. For dramatic purposes, flipping him on purpose to deflect from Pussy makes sense. Realistically, who knows?
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That’s a good take. I tend to think that Jimmy was flipped by the Feds too, but I’ll never feel 100% certain about it. Tony had just seemed too eager to label Jimmy a rat so that he wouldn’t have to label his good buddy Pussy a rat…
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The first time I watched, I thought Jimmy Altieri was innocent, for at least four reasons. (1) As Ron says, Tony was too eager to suspect him. (2) Pussy obviously was an informant. (3) This is subjective, but I thought his manner was so innocent, his questions so ingenuous, that he must be innocent. And when he was taken to see a prostitute, he was like an adolescent, worried that he wasn’t good-looking enough. (4) Like matteobrasi, I thought it was a plot device – but a good one. Although he’s a criminal thug, in this case he’s innocent, and one feels pity for him, being killed for nothing.
The second time I watched, I thought he was guilty. A search for one informant uncovered another; he was unlucky.
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I tend to think Jimmy is most certainly a rat, although I debate whether he flipped upon his arrest or if was cooperating with the Feds prior to his arrest (perhaps his handlers ordered him to put a little more effort into uncovering incriminating evidence against the Soprano crew, which would explain how sloppy his behavior becomes following his release from custody). Either way, the hints are fairly blatant:
1. The number of crimes Jimmy could be charged with following his arrest are legion, including running an illegal card game, associating with known figures of organized crime, carrying a gun as a felon, and, most outrageously, having a cache of firearms hidden inside a trick pool table!
2. Despite the gaggle of potential charges that could be leveled against him, Jimmy is let out of custody in only a manner of hours. As Tony notes, this is especially odd, given that Jimmy already had a prior record.
3. Jimmy’s explanation for his early release? He explained to the police that he had no idea that the pool table was filled with firearms when he bought it. Hilariously, the police apparently bought this iron-clad explanation and let him go without incident.
4. While in Tony’s basement, Jimmy warns Tony that the feds are looking into the recent murder of the Colombian at the hands of the Soprano crew. Shrewdly, Tony does not mention anything that can be construed as incriminating, as Jimmy is most likely wired for sound; admitting that he had a hand in orchestrating the gangland killing of a rival criminal would be easy fodder for an eventual RICO case against his crew/family.
5. In a moment of unbelievable sloppiness, Jimmy goes up to Junior during a funeral and tells his Boss that he understands and agrees with his decision to execute the troublesome Brandon. Junior curtly refuses to provide any confirmation to Jimmy’s reassurance; for one thing, discussing business-related activities is on a strictly need-to-know basis (Jimmy is essentially stepping out-of-bounds by bringing this topic up in the first place). Once again, if Jimmy is wired for sound, it seems apparent that he is trying to get Junior to admit to a murder that he ordered.
6. Finally, Jimmy requests a formal meeting of the various capos and the Administration in order to discuss various matters related to their illegal rackets. As noted by Tony, it’s a bit peculiar that Jimmy would want to go over details that he should already be familiar with, unless he was wired and needed to get his criminal compatriots to admit to the specifics of their crimes. Junior is in agreement with this assessment and grants permission for the Soprano crew to murder Jimmy.
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Rain – Well thought out, and I totally agree with you! Good job! 😃
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I’ve never been sure either, but I was watching this episode again the other night, and what clinched it for me was the way Jimmy said, sort of whispering, “Mother of God” when Silvio mentions a wire calls him a rat and then “Oh, God” again just before Sil shoots him. Before that, he’d been angry, calling them pieces of shit and saying, “Did you forget I’m a captain.” As soon as Silvio says rat, the fight goes out of Jimmy. It’s the intonation. It sounded to me like the voice of a man thinking, “They know! I’m F’ed!”
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I thought just the opposite. I thought it was the intonation of an innocent man realizing they thought he was a rat at the last minute.
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There is no doubt in my mind he was a rat. No way a Capo like Jimmy would not vociferously defend himself when told he was a rat, unless of course he was a rat. Nor was there any reason for him to be asking Tony about the money, or calling for a meeting to rehash “old business”. Frankly, if he was NOT a rat, I would consider it very poor writing, an unrealistic plot device to eventually take the heat off Pussy. It was just too on point.
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Yes, I agree 100%.
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I agree, he was obviously fishing for incriminating stuff and as we see in the last couple of seasons, there are a lot of unknown rats. Also don’t forget that Tony alluding to Janice “Blowing Roadies” in another episode. Her sex life does seem to be a subject that comes up a lot with her brother. Funnily enough, she doesn’t care, except when she thinks it will queer things with Bobby.
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“It’ll be like “whatever happened to baby Janice over there.” That’s a good line.
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Another point to make; at the final scenes with Tony picking up Junior from his falling injury, the song in the background is similar to when Tony is shot later in the series by Junior as he “loses his mind.”
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Pingback: The Soprano Onceover: #77. “Do Not Resuscitate” (S2E2) | janiojala
The depth and layers of this show are absolutely awe-inspiring and mind-boggling. The parallel parking thing?! Ma’don!
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According to the APA, face saving therapy is “an act in which one attempts to uphold one’s dignity, as by addressing a social blunder or compensating for a poor impression one has made”. I don’t know where Janice came up with that one, but boy, she was waaay off-base! But you gotta love her! 😉
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Tony seems very concerned that Pussy may have ‘flipped’. But why hasn’t he had his ‘best friend’ tailed? After all, he had Dr. Melfi tailed by Makazian – so why not Pussy as well? 🙄
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Corrado’s lawyer tells the judge that he served in WWII. Really? That would make Corrado age 59 had he enlisted in 1941. There’s NO WAY the military would have accepted him at that age! Chase must not understand the value of calculators! Boo hiss 😆
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P.S. Well, boo-hiss to ME. 59 turns out to be the number of years since the beginning of WWII in 1941, NOT Corrado’s age! However, a problem still remains; if Corrado is now 70yo, that means that he was 11/12yo in 1941 – waay too young to enlist! He could, however, have served in the Korean War when it began in 1950. Oh well.
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A quick note: the dish Paul Simon saw in the Chinese restaurant was probably 親子丼 Oyakodon, a typical Japanese rice bowl dish. The name means “parents and child” which refers to the ingredients, chicken and eggs. Probably it wasn’t intended but it sounded quite ironic to me that the parents (chicken) and child (eggs) are both cooked to be served. In terms of Janice and Livia’s relationship, not sure who is cooking who🤣
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Haha yes
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Speaking of Livia’s borderline personality and the way she hits below the belt, she tells Janice “one day I hope you have children and they treat you like this.” At this point in the series we don’t know about Harpo, but I’ll bet she sure did.
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