Tony and Noah talk about movies, among other things.
Janice organizes a memorial service for her mother
at which guests try to think of something nice to say.
Episode 28 – Originally Aired March 4, 2001
Written by David Chase
Directed by Tin Van Patten
__________________________________
This episode, along with “Mr. Ruggerio’s Neighborhood,” was part of a two-hour doubleheader that opened Season 3. It was the only time during the original run of the series that two episodes premiered on the same day. As I mentioned in my previous write-up, I think this may have been part of an effort to both deflect and deal with the issue of Nancy Marchand’s death.
According to Prof. David Lavery, Chase had originally wanted to kill off Livia at the end of Season 1, but Marchand was so good in the role that he changed his mind. The loss of Marchand must have been quite a blow to the cast and crew, but the quality of the series certainly didn’t diminish after losing the high-caliber actress. Season 3 takes The Sopranos to new heights, giving us memorable episodes such as “Employee of the Month,” “University,” and of course, “Pine Barrens.”
“Proshai, Livushka” is memorable for a number of reasons, one of which is its very uncharacteristic opening sequence. The camera pans across the kitchen to reveal Tony face-down on the kitchen floor. Has he been killed? Did Patsy Parisi return and shoot Tony through the kitchen window as he came close to doing in the previous episode?
No, Tony has not been shot. (That is tomato juice on the floor, not blood.) The reason why Tony is passed out on the floor is revealed to us in a very irregular way: the narrative “rewinds” to an earlier point (when Tony meets Meadow’s black friend Noah) and then plays out once again for our benefit. Verisimilitude is a hallmark of The Sopranos, and therefore this self-conscious, postmodern gambit feels like a gross violation of the show’s usual realism. But the violation works here. It helps to establish the series’ status as a postmodern work. The classic mob movies that Tony and Noah discuss are arguably part of the first wave of American gangster movies. Later works such as The Godfather trilogy, which built upon the original classics, are part of the second wave. The third wave is more recent, and include, for example, some of Scorsese and Tarantino’s films along with The Sopranos. A characteristic of these most recent works is that they conscientiously build upon the earlier works, but also deconstruct and depart from previously established conventions. William Wellman’s 1931 film The Public Enemy, which Tony watches throughout the course of this episode, represents a foundation which Chase plays on and plays against.
The “rewinding” ploy would never have been used in a first or second wave gangster film. It could only be used now, in a contemporary work like The Sopranos. And this underscores a predicament that conservative Tony must deal with: the passage of time. As much as he wishes that “in this house, it’s 1954” (as he proclaimed in episode 1.11), Meadow’s friendship with Jewish-African-American Noah Tannenbaum proves that the 1950s are long over. Noah’s racial makeup would have been a non-issue for most viewers in 2001, but it is Noah’s defining characteristic for unenlightened Tony. Noah’s multiple ethnicity multiplies Tony’s hostility. The epithets that Tony hurls at the young man—creative in their own right but ugly nevertheless—confirm a well-practiced racism. But we can chuckle a little bit at Tony’s bigotry because we suspect that it may not be as deep-seated or hostile as he would like Noah to believe. We might recognize Tony as something of a modern-day Archie Bunker:
Meadow is understandably upset that Tony is trying to drive Noah away from her, particularly in light of what she sees at her grandmother’s funeral:
Meadow sees that Tony has business partners that are black (Rev. James) and Jewish (Assemblyman Zellman). Tony’s hypocritical attitude toward Black Jewish Noah is more than she can swallow. While Tony’s racism cannot be condoned, we do understand that he is acting in what he believes is his daughter’s best interest. (The primary tension in the final stage of Season 3 will come out of Tony again trying to protect his daughter—not from Noah but from Jackie Jr.)
Tony tries to be a good father to his children. Being a good son, however, is hardly worth the effort with a mother like Livia. In his last conversation with Livia before she dies, he tries to counsel her on what to tell the Feds regarding the stolen airline tickets. (One wrong word from her and he’s looking at time in federal prison.) But she hems and haws and complains and makes faces—in other words, she behaves typically like herself. His last words to her are: “For a year I didn’t speak to you, maybe I should have kept it that way. Fuck it—do what you want.” Many viewers took exception with the computer-generated Livia that appears here, finding the whole scene flawed and unbelievable. The CGI does get the lighting and shadows wrong at times, and Livia’s hairstyle changes from one shot to the next. But I think the CGI, on the whole, is done fairly well, and more importantly, is narratively justified: it eases us into the removal of Livia from the series. If Livia had died without ever appearing on-screen in the third season, it arguably would felt more unrealistic—we would have become hyper-aware that it was Marchand’s death that precluded any more appearances by Livia. And in truth, many viewers never even realized that Livia was artificially generated for her final scene.
The computer-generated Livia and the “rewind” scene are examples of how this episode explores notions of realism in TV and art. Another example is the use of Cozzarelli’s Memorial Home for Livia’s funeral. Cozzarelli’s is a real-life institution in Belleville, NJ, originally established over 100 years ago. Tony and his sisters visit the undertaker Cozzarelli (actually played by Ralph Lucarelli here) here in a funny duplication of the Godfather scene in which Don Corleone meets with undertaker Bonasera. Check out the video to see how Chase plays on and plays against the scene from Coppola’s classic film:
Cozzarelli refers to Livia as “Mom” in an attempt to be thoughtful and sympathetic, but it is only ironic as Livia was far from motherly to her children. Livia wished for her funeral to be quick and uneventful: no Mass, no service, no wake. But Tony is convinced by his sisters to have a small gathering at his house, and it is here that Janice herds everyone together before asking them to give a remembrance about Livia Soprano.
We are all guilty of using conventional, generic words after the death of an acquaintance. It can be difficult to know what to say in that situation. The Sopranos, which has so adamantly investigated the conventions that make up our lives and our art, now looks at the conventions that surround death. The series, which has always embraced the mundane, now depicts the banalities that we utter when confronted by the reality of death. Livia’s acquaintances offer up generic platitudes (“At least she didn’t suffer”) not only because of their discomfort in the situation, but also because it is so difficult to find something nice to say about her. They shuffle their feet and avoid eye contact until Carmela finally brings the ridiculous wake to an end, describing Livia as she really was and everyone knew her to be. But did we really know Livia? Unexpectedly, from the back of the room, Fanny raises her voice to tell everyone that Livia was her best friend. We might remember Fanny from 1.02:
It is hard to imagine that Livia could have had a best friend. Perhaps Livia was nice to Fanny out of guilt for driving into her and breaking her hip. More likely, mousy Fanny has difficulty making friends and mistook Livia’s morbid conversations about death as an act of friendship. In any case, Fanny’s quiet statement is the closest that Chase really ever came to humanizing Livia. All of the show’s major characters—even the most villainous—are shown, at some point, in the fullness of their humanity. Livia is the one exception, she was never much more than a caricature. Perhaps Chase would eventually have fleshed Livia more humanely, but the death of Nancy Marchand put an end to that possibility. As it is, Livia will forever be the severe, one-dimensional embodiment of a grim philosophy of nothingness that lingers throughout the series.
With Livia dead, Chase’s narrative could use a family member that will bring some more tension into Tony’s life. Cue Janice. Chase may not have planned to bring Janice back into SopranoWorld so soon (if at all) after her sending her back west at the end of Season 2. But the death of Marchand may have hastened Janice’s return. When Tony calls her at her bungalow in California, she answers the phone as “Ace Garage,” reminding us what a shady character she is. She finagles an airline ticket to New Jersey from Tony, purportedly coming to take part in Livia’s funeral but we suspect that she may have an ulterior motive. Janice has long believed that Livia has hidden riches somewhere in her house. She is quite willing to take a hammer to the foundation of her family home (metaphorically as well as literally) to get what she wants:
Janice essentially functions as a replacement for Livia for the remainder of the series, though she does also develop into a unique and formidable character in her own right.
In Dr. Melfi’s office, Tony falls back on generic banalities while discussing his mother’s death, but eventually his real anger and bitterness come through. “Miserable cunt,” he calls her, even saying that he is happy she is dead because now there is no possibility of Livia testifying against him. ‘Mothers’ are a recurring topic in psychotherapy offices, and this is probably more true of Tony’s sessions than in most cases. He facetiously tells Dr. Melfi, “So we’re probably done here, right? She’s dead.” But Tony has reasons to continue therapy: Chase ironically cuts from Tony’s facetious line to the scene in which Ray Curto is meeting his FBI handler. Any immediate and pressing threat from Livia may have dissipated with her death. But Tony is definitely not in the clear: Ray Curto is eager to wear a wire for the Feds; Janice has come back; and Ralph Cifaretto, one of the great villains of the series, is introduced into SopranoWorld in this episode. The so-called “garbage wars” are heating up and ambitious Cifaretto is adding fuel to the fire, torching trucks and smashing bodies.
REALITY SHOW
The series’ greatest departure from its usual realism occurs at the gathering for Livia at Tony’s house, when Big Pussy appears for a moment in the mirror:
Is this actually the ghost of Pussy Bonpensiero? Or is it a hallucination by Tony? It is never made clear. Apart from Paulie’s vision of the Virgin Mary in Season 6, and some strange moments that occur in dream and in coma, nothing quite as supernatural as this ever occurs again on the series. Although this paranormal moment seems out-of-place for The Sopranos, it actually fits well into this particular episode which radically breached realism with the “rewind” ploy right in its opening scene. What I find most interesting about this possible breach of reality, though, is that it occurs just as Furio is talking about a reality show. He (jokingly?) tells the guys his new moneymaking scheme: muscle the winner of Survivor into forking over a quarter of his $1 million prize. Reality shows were just beginning to have a presence on primetime network TV when this episode aired. Chase sometimes seemed to have a prescient sense of where the culture was headed, but even he probably could not have predicted just how ubiquitous reality shows would become. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the shows themselves, or with their popularity. If viewers want simple entertainment after a hard day at the office, these programs fit the bill perfectly. I do have an enormous issue, however, with the name of the genre; “Reality TV” is, for the most part, not very real at all. The shows amp up the drama with absurdly exaggerated musical scoring and with teaser clips that turn out (after the commercial break, of course) to have been falsely titillating. The setups are staged and the conflicts are contrived. On the scale of realism, they are closer to Cartoon than to Documentary. The Sopranos, on the other hand, is the true reality show: very little non-diagetic scoring, scenes that depict the banal minutia of life, dialogue that is always true to its characters. More importantly, the series is able to evoke real emotion and real thoughts and real empathy. (This is something that so-called Reality TV fails miserably at.) With its postmodern self-awareness and supernatural moment, “Proshai, Livushka” temporarily departs from the series’ customary realism, but ultimately the episode returns to a simpler, more earnest tone, evoking our genuine emotion. In the closing scene of the hour, we see Tony shed tears while watching a tender scene in The Public Enemy, and we too might feel a sting in our eyes. Tony is such a flesh-and-blood character that we—perhaps despite ourselves—feel sympathy for the man.
TITLE SIGNIFICANCE
Sopranos episode titles are usually very clever things. They often pun or wordplay or refer to something outside of SopranoWorld. They routinely have double or triple meanings. But this episode’s title is much more straightforward. It comes from the simple Russian toast that Svetlana gives Livia. I think its simplicity reinforces the ultimately genuine, earnest nature of “Proshai, Livushka.” Despite the episode’s postmodern gamesmanship and possible foray into the supernatural, it finally becomes a simple goodbye to Livia Soprano—and Nancy Marchand.
___________________________________
“ASSHOLE ROBERT FROST”
This episode contains a small but, I think, extremely significant scene. AJ needs to turn in a close-read of “Stopping by woods on a snowy evening” by “asshole Robert Frost” for English class the following day. \ He enlists Meadow’s help because close-reads are not really his forte. Meadow tries to guide her little brother into figuring out the poem’s meaning. What ensues is a biting parody of much of the analysis that has been done of The Sopranos itself. Many viewers are convinced that the series can be “solved” like a Rubik’s Cube or a crossword puzzle, with one unequivocal, clear-as-day solution. They disregard the ambiguity that is woven into the show. In his essay, “Christopher, Osama and AJ,” Jason Jacobs writes that the scene…
…warns us to beware of pat answers of the kind that Meadow confidently offers. We may see in AJ’s frustration the wider impatience of a consumer society that wants packages of meaning that clearly define and orientate their subjectivity; but the scene also seems to warn that even relatively sophisticated solutions to the problem of meaning (“I thought black was death,” says AJ; “White too,” replies Meadow) ultimately provide clarity where there may be none.
Dana Polan, in his fine book The Sopranos, has something similar to say about the scene:
Meadow tells him that the symbolic key is to see white as death. When he answers that he thought black symbolized death, Meadow replies that both do, demonstrating unintentionally the very silliness of a fixed catalogue of symbolic forms.
It is particularly ironic that Meadow and AJ ponder which color represents death when neither the word “black” nor “white” actually appears in the poem. It is not even certain that the poem is actually about death; my Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry footnotes that “Frost always insisted that the repetition of the last line was not supposed to invoke death but only to imply a somnolent dreaminess in the speaker.” It might be that Meadow and AJ are preoccupied with the idea of death only because their grandmother just passed away. This is quite understandable. Everyone brings their own preoccupations and experiences into their interpretations. We each bring our inner and outer experiences into our understanding of an event or a work of art. And that’s why I find it is so disrespectful and inexcusable whenever another person insists that our conclusions are absolutely wrong or unacceptable. After that final scene at Holsten’s Diner, many viewers proclaimed that the cut-to-black signified Tony’s death. That may very well be the case, but it is silliness (to borrow Dana Polan’s word) to insist that it is so.
__________________________________
ADDITIONAL POINTS:
- The episode begins to the sounds of Grand Funk Railroad’s “I’m Your Captain” playing as a garbage truck explodes. We later learn that the explosion was the handiwork of Ralph Cifaretto, who is trying very hard to become a Captain within the NJ famiglia.
- The class that Meadow and Noah are taking is “Images of Hypercapitalist Self-advancement in the Era of the Studio System.” Almost sounds like a description of The Sopranos itself.
- The opening placard of The Public Enemy says that the movie’s intention is “to honestly depict and environment that exists today in a certain strata of American life, rather than glorify the hoodlum or the criminal.” This too almost sounds like a description The Sopranos.
- Bobby mentions in passing that his father is sick. We’ll meet Bobby’s sick father in a few episodes.
- Irony: Livia (probably) faked a stroke in Season 1 to escape Tony’s wrath; she dies of a stroke in this episode.
- I think it’s fitting that Svetlana delivers the simple toast to Livia, as Svetlana herself has a refreshing simplicity about her—there is very little drama or subterfuge in her. Last season, she calmly reasoned with overly emotional Irina after the goomar‘s suicide attempt. Now, she stands in contrast to the overly dramatic Soprano women: she seems like she would have been a worthy opponent to old Livia, and she faces off admirably with Janice over the possession of Livia’s old records.
- A character credited only as “2 to 5 / 7 to 9” played by Marie Donato appears here at the funeral home. The character’s name is explained only much later in the series when she appears at a funeral home again.
- Corrado asks AJ, “How’s the surfboard I gave you?” He complained about buying the boy a $400 surfboard all the way back in 1.03.
- Tony watches the famous “grapefruit scene” from The Public Enemy here. Chase paid homage to the scene back in episode 1.09:
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I thought tony crying when watching public enemy was a touching scene. I think that watching his mother joyfully await his ( supposed) return triggered tony as to the lack of maternal love and warmth he received ( or maybe it was that he realised he would never receive any more), the image of Cagney as a golem or Frankenstein like creature echoes melfis words that tony is that subhuman monster, tortured by his mom. I thought this episode was quite tedious in parts though I suppose that was kind of the point.
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To me, the scene where Tony cries is all about him finally understanding his Mother. For years he has grappled with whether or not she loves him, and why he is not worthy of her love. When the mother in Public Enemy is joyfully fluffing pillows and singing, assured that her son is safe and on his way home, we see that he is really being delivered dead to her doorstep. Our hearts ache at the contrast of these scenes. She looks like an ignorant fool. To me, that is how livia desperately wanted to avoid feeling. Why should she be happy, offering love, when the reality is that her husband (and subsequently her son), are due to show up dead any day because of their profession? I think a common theme is the family’s disassociation of the reality of Tony’s profession and the horrible ending that is more than likely headed their way. They all know it, but nobody acknowledges or talks about it. Earlier Tony was confused to find that his Mother saved his childhood items, and his alone. When he sees this scene, he finally understood his mother’s necessity to try and avoid loving. In this odd way, her avoidance of growing their love shows how she is afraid of how much she could love him, only to lose him. So as not to be a fool. They are in the mob, after all. In a way, Livia is really the only one who seems to fully understand what they are involved in. Oh, and I also noticed that her “favorite song” that Janice played had some revealing lyrics. Can’t remember but it was something like, “if i loved you, I couldn’t find the words to tell you” etc.
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@Ann,
That’s an interesting take on Livia. What’s the point of loving, knowing it will all
end badly? So she chose not to be a sucker. It would be interesting to know at
what point in her life her personality turned so toxic. From birth, or upon her initiation
into the mob through JohnnyBoy.
Louis CK – since he’s in the news – had a routine where a
father brings a cute puppy home to the kids. “Look kids,
we’re gonna cry soon!”
Why love when the best case ending is the death of one of the participants?
Livia couldn’t answer that. Tragic.
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Yes, really interesting take on Livia… she holds back her love because she doesn’t want to be vulnerable to the inevitable heartache. It doesn’t explain, however, why she’s so cold-hearted to Janice and Carm and people at green grove who are not constantly at risk of being killed. But I could see how the threat of mob violence could have hardened Livia, especially if she grew up in a la cosa nostra family…
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I wonder how aware Livia was of her historic namesake, the wife of Caesar Augustus ?
If you have read or watched the magnificent Robert Graves’s I, Clavdivs, which I think is one of the lesser but still occasion influences on The Sopranos, it is revealed therein that she is the hidden power broker of the Augustine era, poisoning or arranging to be murdered various impediments who lie between her son Tiberius’s accession to the Imperial purple and a sticky end for him. Victims include (Spoiler alert) her own son Drusus, various members of Agrippa’s family who had been Augustus’s favourites and her adopted some and daughters and even, ultimately, her husband. Here, I would point out that we never learn how Johnyy Boy died…might it have been the figs ?
Now Tiberius is known mostly for being an initially reluctant Emperor, much given to telling the Senate that ” I personally do not think we should do this but you will have it so! “. And for being a decadent man in his personal life who was either consumed by his appetites or murdered by his nephew Gaius Julius Caesar. Or Caligula if you prefer.
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I seem to remember Chase (or perhaps it was some critic) noting the similarities between Livia and her ancient namesake… Maybe we’ll learn in the upcoming prequel how Johnny Boy died (although I believe in Season 5 Tony says something like it was complications from emphysema)…
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I am afraid I must disagree with this interpretation of Livia’s psyche simply because there is absolutely no evidence provided to show she is capable of tenderness or love. Of course anything is possible, but my take on fictional characters is that since they are the products of their creators we either take them at face value or we end up projecting ourselves into them…and then their integrity is lost since anyone can project anything.
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Also anthonys wearing an “Osiris’ hat an his close up which is another deaths reference.
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I love all of the detail you put into these write ups. It’s been very enjoyable for me to read these as I am re-watching the series. One thing I disagree with; in the piece above you state that “Fanny’s quiet statement is the closest that Chase really ever came to humanizing Livia.” Even though Nancy Marchand passed away, Livia remained very much a part of the series, as many of the emotional problems that Tony and Janice suffer from stem from Livia’s poor parenting. However, I believe she was humanized a bit more much later in the series in the episode ‘In Camelot’ (5.07). The memory Tony had of his father spending the entire night with his goomar Fran when his mother had a miscarriage made me understand a bit of Livia’s angst a little easier. That her husband could disregard her so easily, and enlist his son to lie on his behalf showed me that Johnny Soprano was most likely no picnic to live with either.
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Good catch. Chase does humanize Livia a bit more in “In Camelot.”
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and in this same episode, when Janice finds that she saved all the stuff from Tony’s childhood. It is made to look as she is a cunt, saving only Tony’s stuff instead of all three of them, but she still saved something! I think that’s quite nice of her, or I’m missing something
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Guido, I think that actually tied in to Meadow and AJ’s relationship more so than anything else. After AJ attempts suicide he and Meadow have a conversation about him being the golden child of the family regardless of what trouble he might get into, and how upset Tony and Carmella are that he tried to kill himself. There is definitely a cultural aspect to that attitude, and it is notorious in families Mediterranean decent (whether true or not in the individual families), I felt like this conversation foreshadowed that conversation, as well as highlighted how true that cultural belief is in some families, especially ones where there is an established patriarchy, like a Mafia family in the US.
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I watched the episode again, and still couldn’t tell that it was computer animation. I’m guessing that most viewers were no more observant.
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It’s very,very blatantly obvious. As they switch between Tony & Livia’s “close ups” during their conversation, her hair is different just about every time the camera moves back to her. Her head looks too small for “her body” & the shadowing doesn’t fit @ all, She looks strange, very off.
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Something similar to Livia’s hair happens in a later episode where AJ and Carmella are talking. Apparently they didn’t check for continuity when they edited various takes together. Every time they switch back from Carmella to AJ his shirt sleeve is either up or down. It happens over and over… kind of distracting when you notice it, like the hair.
I didn’t realize the scene with Livia was animated until it was pointed out to me. I guess it was kind of an experimental thing to try at the time. It doesn’t bother me but I can understand why some people would find it creepy.
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Another continuity problem in this episode is when Tony comes in from moving the sprinkler in the garden and is told that his mother died. In some of the shots of Tony’s face, there’s visible water (from the sprinkler?) or sweat on his forehead and cheeks; in other shots in that sequence, his face is dry. Distracting, like you say, though I didn’t notice it the first however many times I’d already seen the episode, so it can’t have been too bad. For me the problem with the Livia scene is less the CGI (though it’s pretty artificial looking) and more that I recognized, even the first time I saw it, lines she had said in earlier episodes. When Tony walks in and she says, “Look who calls,” that was the worst, especially because Tony then points out that he’s standing right there. Couldn’t they have found a better line for Livia? Every time I watch that scene, I wonder whether there weren’t alternate takes or scenes with Livia that got cut that they could have mined for dialogue instead of using the exact takes from earlier episodes..
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Also, I remember the episodes where she said those lines.
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I am rewatching that episode now for the first time since it was originally broadcast. That opening scene was definitely re-edited. I distinctly remember how fake it was. Her head was actually floating in front of a stand-in’s head and face. Her spoken lines were cut from an old tape, and her responses to Tony didn’t fit his conversation with her, nor did her facial expressions . It just proves how much technology has advanced. I believe the same thing happened in Gladiator when Oliver Reed passed.
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I watched every episode of this show as they premiered, and have rewatched the series at least a half dozen times over the years. And I never caught on that Fanny was the one Livia ran over with her car in the driveway. lol. That’s a great sequence of stills you post, one with Fanny rolling over the hood of the car, and the next with her being at Livia’s wake, clearly disabled, presumably from that accident, then to think of her calling Livia her “best friend”. It truly reflects how the Sopranos were always able to manipulate at least one unconnected civilian into putting up with all of their crap. She was Livia’s Artie Bucco. That’s what’s so great about this show. There’s so many little nuggets that you catch each time you rewatch, or that someone else catches. Really appreciative of sites like this. This site reminds me of the newsgroup alt.tv.sopranos when the show was airing. A lot of great insight. Keep up the site. I’m looking forward to its completion, and reading your summaries of the last season, especially the second part of the last season, which I feel topped seasons 1 and 2.
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“Livia’s Artie Bucco” – I love that.
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I like that the thumbnail of Fanny is a shot of her giant fanny as she goes ass-over-tea kettle on the hood of Livia’s car…
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yeah visual pun…
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And she’s hidden behind Furio’s fanny at the wake…
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hehe
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There was one moment humanizing Livia in Season 1, maybe the pilot, and it relates to Fanny. During a therapy session, Tony is trying to defend his mother what he perceives as Melfi’s criticism and says that she always has time to drive her senior friends places when they can’t drive anymore. That ends badly for Fanny, but she probably doesn’t hold it against Livia because Livia has been the friend giving her rides and Fanny knows that the accident was a slip made by an aging mind and reflexes, not deliberate on Livia’s part. Fanny is no longer driving presumably because she can’t (vision? reflexes?) Maybe that fact about Livia was just a setup for the scene with Fanny, but it showed that she could sometimes be a friend. My mother (so unlike Livia in other ways that they were barely the same species), at the age of 90, was still able to drive and was giving rides to friends who could no longer drive. It’s a big problem for the elderly who live where there’s no good public transportation.
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James Cagney was also referenced in 2.05 when Paulie bribes the Police Officer before the card game and says, “Whaddya hear, whaddya say?” That was Cagney’s signature line in “Angels With Dirty Faces.”
Thank you for writing this magnificent web site. I am watching the Sopranos now for the first time. I live in Essex County so I recognize most of the filming locations, but I still haven’t been to Pizzaland.
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I happened to pass by PizzaLand the last time I was in NJ but I didn’t have time to go in…hope to make it back soon, though. Thanks for visiting my site, but proceed at your own risk – this site is full of spoilers for the first-time viewer.
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Maybe this supernatural moment is not as overt as Pussy reappearing for a split second, but what about that mysterious man who climbs down the steps and climbs back up again? When Janice starts playing the music? It happens when Tony wipes the sweat off his forehead, and you can see the figure (who looks vaguely like a young Junior) peer at the scene and head back up again. It was unexpected enough to be unsettling.
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I also wondered about that this viewing! An odd moment, indeed. Perhaps it was a guest who wanted to avoid having to speak about Livia? Even so, the way it is shot, with the man out of focus in the background yet still present, almost looks sinister. Or just a mistake.
I also like the brief moment when AJ is home alone after his grandmother’s death and thinks he hears something. Those shots of the empty house, him calling out to her, etc. This show is full of little moments that you forget. Thank you so much for writing this blog! I’m rewatching the show for the first time in 10 years and love reading along. I feel like I’m in a college course for The Sopranos. I hope all if well in your life, if only so that you may finish this blog one day 🙂
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hahaha thanks for your concern
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I think the guy walking down the stairs and back up again is completely deliberate. Not a mistake nor meant to be supernatural – I think it’s actually a comic moment, the scene is so awkward that you just would just give anything to not be there. So the guy makes the decision to go back upstairs until it’s over. I certainly laughed out loud when I saw it. Would be great to know who he was!
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YES!!! He also appears again later in the episode, in the back of a hallway at some point during the funeral proceedings at the house. And another moment that supernatural is definitely shown in the series is the episode where Paulie goes to see the medium when he is freaking out about Christopher’s warnings of “3 o’clock”. I think that it’s definitely evident that some of those people he killed are talking to him from beyond. He freaks out, because there was no other way the medium could have known these things.
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The stranger on the staircase genuinely creeped me out.
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Noticed something new while re-watching the Proshai Livushka ep.
When Tony has a panic attack in this episode (around 6:35 into the ep), he staggers and falls – and the screen blacks out. Just like the end of Made In America. For a shorter interval, of course, but it happens the same way. Instant blackness – no sound.
Proshai Livushka is an ep almost all about death, so I think that not only is this another clue about Tony’s fate, but that Chase had the ending all set in his mind as early as the beginning of S3.
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I also connect the Black & White thing with what you were saying earlier, about good and bad nature of people, Don’t remember the episode.
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Do you think there’s any connection to Noah being both black and white?
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And all the movies in the episodes are black and white
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Yes!! I’m so glad someone said this. I learned in this class I took that racism goes so deep; people ultimately associate black with negative (death and darkness), and white with positive (life, heaven etc). I feel that this casual discussion of the poem is a way of showing that AJ was brought up in a world where black was bad, and white was good. The truth is that there is really no basis for these associations and may possibly be due to systemic racism in part. White: blankness, nothingness, empty. Easily could be death. But AJ can’t see that because of his associations.
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Nonsense.
Black:
Crows/Ravens = Scavengers = Death
Space = Airless = Cold = Death
Night = Lightless = Winter = Death
Coal = Fire = Death
It goes on and on and on…
Assuming Black = Skin Color = Death requires being a racist. Those people are usually teaching classes on it (likely in a elite place such as Columbia), projecting their racism onto others in some weird display of progressive xenophobic altruism.
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I’m more than happy not to condone Tony’s racism. I find it odd that someone would be okay with their daughter dating a person of color, I believe they call themselves
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So then you do condone Tony’s racism… Don’t feel bad, you’re not the first troll to get ‘condone’ and ‘condemn’ mixed up.
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I find it truly odd and foreign that a human would even consider contemplating whether they are OK with the skin colour of your son’s or daughter’s choice of date. Why does something so trivial matter to people? I can think of 1000s of other factors that would be more important, Eg integrity, honesty… even more trivial factors like taste in music and favourite authors. I’m baffled such attitudes still exist.
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An amusing bit in this episode, which calls back to the previous one, is when Tony goes out by the pool to try to squash the beef that is building between the garbage crews. This is Chase giving police procedurals another middle finger: the bugged lamp in the basement, installed last episode, is on, but whether by accident or because Tony has good instincts, it fails to be of use. Once again, the efforts of The Good Guys amount to nothing in the face of something so simple as just walking outside. 🙂
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Of course, black and white are also both symbolic of death in that all the characters in the scenes at Livia’s funeral and wake are wearing… black and white, of course. Different cultures have different customs regarding this, though. In some Asian cultures, white is worn at funerals, not black. But it does seem widespread around the world for death to be associated with one or the other, or both, of these. White and black are recognized universally as extremes – colors (if you can call them colors) of complete presence or absence. And death is of course one of the extreme conditions we all face.
So it’s interesting to see how the Sopranos, as a show, copes with death. In a show that determinedly ignores social conventions of black-or-white morality (showing us Paulie Walnuts’s gentleness towards his goomar’s kids, for instance), shades of grey seem more appropriate. Chase often seems to be telling us there are no extremes except in our fantasies. Small wonder, then, that when the black-and-white formal wear is donned, all our characters immediately become stiff, awkward, and unlike themselves, willing to be roped into Janice’s absurd, self serving “memorial” scene. (Chris, Furio, and Adriana’s getting high together foreshadowed the miserable wake; they weren’t getting high to avoid grief over Livia, but to avoid being bored out of their skulls; possibly because Janice was invited, they were aware the event would become a train-wreck.)
Ritualistic behavior becomes a coping mechanism. I was struck by the way in which Tony philosophically endures the repeated, identical hugs, back slappings, and fake condolences of his friends, who clearly were not thrilled to be giving them, either. When Tony says, “what are you gonna do?”, he seems to be referring not just to the inevitability of death, but to the inevitability of the empty, ritualistic behaviors that the living use to comfort themselves after death.
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Funny moments: When Christopher is high and talking about how it’s impossible to know for sure that everyone is unique…..the look on Carmela”s dad is priceless!
And when the FBI agents in the van are listening and one of them says, his mother died last night and then they hear Tony happily whistling….just before he puts on the sad face for his friends
Silvio laughing at Heshs joke and then shaking his head in sorrow when Tony approaches them
Furio”s version of Survivor
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“shades of grey” is precisely the right to term to describe this series.. I think even the famous black shot that closes the series actually represents these shades of grey..
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No coincidence either, that in the final scene of the show Tony wears a shirt comprised of black, white and grey stripes.
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Everybody has to pay taxes,
even businessmen that rob and steal and cheat from people everyday, even they have to pay taxes.
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I read a few comments about the mysterious man walking halfway down the stairs, then walks back up…I actually wrote to you about a year ago and you figured it was a guest that decided he didn’t want to join the others in the great room to talk about Livia….I found the scene very creepy and I wonder what David Chase’s explanation would be, in my opinion there has to be some meaning to it. Thanks for posting this site….nice work!!!
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I really wish I knew the story about the tall man coming down the stairs, then changing direction and going back upstairs….very odd
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i love how Silvio, Chris and Paulie are watching the skateboarding channel with AJ when tony and carm return. they’re all such overgrown children at heart ha ha ha!!
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It looked to me that AJ had control of the remote, and the fellas were not at all excited about it.
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I thought the man starting to come down the stairs was just meant as a comedic moment: someone is about to rejoin the wake, realizes it’s that point where everyone has to say something nice about the deceased, decides to step backwards to avoid that politeness.
This is a bit out there, but in the final clip from The Public Enemy, when the family learns Cagney’s character is “coming home”, not realizing he’s coming home as a corpse, and his mother starts preparing his bedroom, she tugs happily at a pillow to release it from its pillowcase, and I’ve always wondered if the director might be slyly referencing Cagney’s character’s birth with that gesture, the pillowcase the mother, the pillow, her son being born into the world at the beginning of his life, to contrast ironically with her son’s re-emergence in this scene as someone at the end of his life.
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That is an amazing revelation! I think you may be onto something there. Because she has a hard time getting the pillow out. Like birth. Also did you notice the sound of someone moaning during the movie scene when Cagney gets beat up in the rain? It’s not in the movie soundtrack. I think it’s Livias ghost. Tony acts strange in the scene- he hears it and can’t figure out where it’s coming from. I have never seen anyone discuss this strange scene in any blogs on line, but considering Pussy in the mirror and AJ calling his grandmothers name and the guy in the steps and the Robert Frost poem, it fits that it’s Livias ghost.
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For the record, the moaning sounds while Tony watches “The Public Enemy” ARE in the movie, I’m watching it right now. It’s not Livia’s ghost, lol…
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Just wanted to add that Livia’s favorite song is “IF I Loved You” because, of course, she was completely unable to love anyone.
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Who is the unknown old man in the stairs during the remembrance scene?
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My guess is a random guest. It’s just a comedic moment as Rob says above, no great mystery to it…
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That was my take as well. Didn’t even consider it being supernatural until I read others calling it so. It really doesn’t make sense that a spirit would be coming done the stairs and do a comedic u-turn. Really, the possibility that it was an extra entering and leaving the scene by mistake is more likely than a supernatural explanation. But i’m pretty convinced it’s just an intentionally comedic moment
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Ron – For some reason, I always thought that Junior was the person walking up the stairs. Then I suspected it was a member of the crew (a worker bee). Are we being played by Chase? Grrrr …
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This episode is packed with all kinds of stuff. “At least she didn’t suffer…What are you gonna do?” We have all heard or possibly even said these things when someone we know has passed. I found this episode interesting (and sad) because it’s almost as if they had a service for Nancy on the show. A previous commenter (Ann) said Livia was incapable of loving anyone due to her husband’s and son’s mob status; the fact that they could be killed at any time was too much for her to accept. I think there may be some truth to that. In some flashback scenes in the future Chase even makes us feel bad for Livia. I found the entire wake scene very real in way people fidgeted around, stammered at a loss for words, and just looked very uncomfortable. What you said about reality television is absolutely true. The Sopranos is very much a reality show. When I first seen the ad for this show in 1999 and began watching, I had the expectation of this being a show specifically about mobsters. It turns out it was much more that that. It’s a show about everyday life and it’s “regularness,” and the good, the bad and the ugly. These stories just happen to be told by a few people who are involved in the mafia, which makes it much more interesting. Some folks will never appreciate an episode like “House Arrest,” but I think those types of episodes are as good as an action packed episode, for different reasons of course. I always found it interesting the first time we see Ralphie he is crying. Besides Tony at the end of this episode, we don’t see anyone cry when Livia passes. Good job on the comparison between Bonosara and Cozzerelli. I love the little passages to the Godfather throughout this series. I can say that I absolutely hate the Noah character…what a dick. (I think this character was written with the intention to piss off and annoy) His background is too much for Tony to handle, and this in effect is the beginning of he and Meadow’s love/ hate relationship that extends well into season 5. (I forget when, but when Tony refers to Noah as “Jamal Ginsburg, the Hassidic homeboy,” I must have laughed for a good hour..WTF?) It’s interesting that if Nancy was still in the cast and didn’t pass on, that we may not have had the Janice character in the show. That would have changed things for sure.
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I was struck by Hugh’s little tirade about Livia at the wake. Not that he was saying anything untrue about her, but she was Tony, Janice, and Barb’s mother, after all. There might have been a more appropriate time to vent. I guess you mix enough liquor and hard feelings and there’s no telling what will come out.
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Weddings and funerals are always fraught with stuff like that. Janice is obviously looking for attention, and making everyone uncomfortable because there is really nothing nice to say about her mother. Hugh had enough and I think he was justified….Janice is so annoying. Carmela and Hugh don’t mince words. I say Bravo!!
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I think the funeral and all that went with it (against livia”s rather explicit instructions to her children) was Janice’s last way to humiliate and retaliate against t the mother who showed her no love. Sure, have a public event where no one (except Fanny) wants to be there and not one of them has a kind word. Janice’s final nail in the coffin-so to speak.
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The guest at the to of the stairs would appear to be Uncle Junior, but unsure – the glasses are too big!
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Just watched the whole series through the second time, and absolutely loving reading these with the show still firmly in my short-term memory (that won’t last long). It’s deepened my appreciation of the show to levels I didn’t think we’re possible.
The first time I watched the show was when they first aired and I was still a teenager. Im not sure if I picked up on digi-Livia, but I have a feeling I looked out for it because I had read in a TV digest magazine before the fact that the show had decided to do something pretty experimental (I live in the UK so we got the show some time after it’s US premier I believe) My second watch was at over age 30, and the weirdness was blatantly obvious to me. It was also weird to see Livia repeat phrases she’d only just uttered not long ago in my marathon-watching sessions, which I appreciate would have been a years-long gap when originally aired.
I actually find it a weird decision that they did this (much like that episode with the random strange cheesy transition edits – cant remember the name of the ep – which made me startled and then laugh out loud on second viewing), and furthermore made me question whether it was the right call. Simply having her disappear from the show actually potentially reinforces two of the main themes of the show which you always highlight Ron – verisimilitude (thanks for teaching me that great word) and the unsure nature of the ending of the show. We could die at any minute. You’re there…and then there’s black.
With this in mind it surprises me that Chase and the rest of the team felt the need to have Nancy’s character back on the show for what was a bit of a novelty – even if it was a nice send off for the actress.
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Chase is all about the verisimilitude, and perhaps it would have been more realistic for Livia to never appear again. But there is also something very real about giving us a chance to send Marchand off nicely, as you say — Chase may have felt that the reality of her death took precedence over any goal of verisimilitude in fictional SopranoWorld…
(P.S. It was S.5’s Cold Cuts that had the weird edit you’re probably thinking of…)
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I really enjoy these posts, Ron. You reach a little too far sometimes (haha), but overall very enjoyable! Just a note…that is absolutely blood, not tomato juice. Watch the scene again. Looking forward to the rest of Season 6!
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Here’s a quick question: in the scene where Tony and Carmela pull up to Livia’s house as the ambulance is pulling away, there is a shot of the neighbors standing outside in the street, presumably observing the commotion. The scene pans from a view of the neighbors in the street, back to Tony, and then back to the neighbors (through Tony’s perspective). This final shot of the neighbors, holding their dog on a leash and silhouetted by streetlight, seems to hang for a bit of time, almost implying some significance to the shot. Curious to hear any thoughts on what this may have been intended to imply….
BWT: Ron- this site offers such a wealth of insight. Thanks so much for your efforts.
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Nosy neighbors… Nothing makes people crane their necks like the possibility of seeing a dead body.
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I’ll take it one step further…nobody on the street liked her, so the neighbors didn’t feel inclined to approach Tony and Carmella to extend their condolences or ask to any questions… further proof that Livia was a toxic person.
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Sue – Livia was a true psychopath; she meets the criteria delineated in the DSM5. Richie was also a psychopath. (As cruel, manipulative, and violent as the rest of the crew is, they are NOT psychopaths) If you ever meet one, run for your life! 🤯
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One thing I’ve noticed on re-watches: on at least one occasion, Tony refers to Noah as ‘Noel.’ It sounds less like he’s doing it as an insult, and more that it’s an honest speaking mistake, like he genuinely can’t even be bothered to learn his name. But I like how it plays… like Tony is so upset about Noah’s ethnic background, that he’s subconsciously trying to make his name sound more Christian.
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I watched this episode last night. Thanks to the magic of the pause button, I was able to determine that the logo on Janice’s shirt, in her first scene, is Kenny Rogers Roasters. I’d never heard of it, so I Googled it this morning. It was a chain of fast-food chicken restaurants originally co-founded by the singer in 1991 but with a checkered history over the years as it changed ownership several times and expanded to over 400 restaurants at its peak. It went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1997, and by 2000, when this episode was in production, the chain was down to 90 franchised restaurants, with only 40 in the United States, and all American locations eventually closed. So Janice is working for a failing fast-food chain, and she’s “engaged” to a teenager who we only see whining petulantly about his manager at work as Janice sets a plate of food in front of him like a mother (I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who wondered at first whether this was her son Hal/Harpo). In an economical way, while the dialogue is moving the plot forward, the visuals are telling us that Janice is a loser in her current life. I think choosing Kenny Rogers Roasters as her employer is a subtle way to reinforce that. No wonder she jumps at the chance to come to New Jersey and never looks back. Whether it’s true that she couldn’t afford plane fare, there’s no telling. She probably isn’t making much working at KRR. On the other hand, she surely knows that with everybody so upset about her refusal to come, Tony will open his wallet to get her there, and we can hardly expect to take anything Janice says at face value. In any case, for someone who was crying poor, she sure managed an expensive-looking outfit for the funeral. I wonder who bought that. It’s quite the contrast to the unflattering yellow KRR shirt and hairnet.
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If you are a Seinfeld fan, you are no stranger to Kenny Rogers Roasters!
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“I’m on no sleep, no sleep!”
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Kbola – Another great and hilarious Seinfeld episode!
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That homage to The Godfather in the funeral parlor is a trip! I never saw the Godfather movies or Goodfellas, so I’m obviously missing all kinds of little references and jokes and overt “steals.” All his powers and all his skills. Tony: “Don’t go crazy.” The writers must have had a great time writing that scene!
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I have watched this episode so many times, I can’t believe I never noticed something as blatantly obvious as Jewish Zelman standing with black Reverend James and Meadow turns and sees her father schmoozing with them. Poor Meadow! You think that’s hypocritical? Just wait, you poor thing. At the house after the funeral, watching Meadow being gracious to guests, Tony complains to Carmela that Meadow is “already becoming a robot like the rest of us” and adds, “All her innocence is gone.” Not all of it, Tony. You’ll take away more of it soon, and at the next funeral Meadow won’t be a robot.
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She certainly won’t be… “This is such bullshit!”
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Interesting that Fanny’s comment about Livia was something like “She always let me know when somebody died”. Was Fanny really a “friend” in Livia’s eyes or just someone she could spread death news to?
Maybe i’m just stating the obvious , but I get the impression the true depth of Livia’s toxicity was not fully fleshed out when Chase wrote the pilot. She was wicked, but she didn’t seem to be the full-fledged psychopath she would be for the rest of the season. Or maybe it was Tony putting her into a “nursing home” that pushed her off the edge.
This is my second viewing, and from my first viewing I remembered the CGI as being pretty bad. Maybe it’s all about expectations, because I didn’t find it nearly so bad the second time around. I truly believe at least a portion of the criticism over this comes because everyone knew going in it could not be real.
I’m not sure I have ever watched a scene that simultaneously made me laugh and yet feel so uncomfortable as the “Remembrances” scene at the wake. Some pure comedy gold there, but I could feel the desire to just get out of there that the characters must have been feeling. Awesome scene.
The Godfather nod was so spot on, I think Cozzarelli the character had to be aware of what he was doing.
Noah. Ugh. Chase did a great job of making what should have been at least an initially sympathetic figure entirely dislikeable. And somehow Noah goes downhill from here.
Loved the extensive The Public Enemy scenes. Cagney is one of my favorites.
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I thought that comment by Fanny was hilarious. It’s such a telling detail about Livia, though Fanny clearly is sincere in her appreciation. FWIW, it’s very common for elderly people to let each other know when someone has died or is in the hospital, not for the pleasure of spreading morbid news but as a way of making sure the friends are kept in the loop. When my mother died, my siblings and I made sure to call some of her close friends so they could spread the word. It’s better than finding out from the newspaper obituaries. But in Livia’s case, it would have been more about the pleasure of spreading doom and gloom. That’s probably the only time her “friends” heard from her, unlike my mother and her friends, who also called each other with good news. It’s sad/funny that it’s the only positive thing anyone can find to say about Livia at her own funeral, and it comes from the woman whose hip Livia broke (who is now in a wheelchair), a bit of deft black humor on the writers’ part.
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Tony’s view or rememberence of mother Livia was best stated by him to Parvati (Janice) during her first trip back to NJ, at the side of his pool, in the previous season:
“She’s a streg,,,,She’s the devil!” ( Streg being a shortened version of the Italian word Strega, meaning witch.)
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Livia is also humanized in season 5, In Camelot. In fact it is difficult to see that episode and not feel some pity for her.
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Another quick mention: the Death Metal AJ is listening to is so loud and obnoxious he can’t read the poem closely enough to figure out it’s about death!
PS you never responded to my comment about the sound of Livia moaning during Public Enemy? It’s super creepy!
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Hmm that does sound creepy, I may have to give it a listen!
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I actually thought this episode was hilarious, despite the sad backstory. James Gandolfini really made some great faces at the well-wishers’ bullshit. This episode was full of bullshit, really. The bullshit platitudes, the bullshit funeral, Janice’s grasping bullshit, and even a bullshit poem that seems to be about a nice pony ride in the snow but is actually miserable and morbid (and come on, black *and* white meaning death? What kid can stand a chance with bullshit like that flying around?)
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Cozzarelli: “Mr Soprano, Janice, Barbara please accept my condolences. I’ll use all my powers, all my skills.”
CLOSED CASKET lol
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hahaha
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“Meadow and AJ ponder which color represents death when neither the word “black” nor “white” actually appears in the poem.”.. “It might be that Meadow and AJ are preoccupied with the idea of death only because their grandmother just passed away.”
I agree with this. At the same time I think it adds another element to the ambiguity of the show.. and as we know, anything can become associated with negativity and death in The Sopranos universe (bridges, stairs, trees). For most people black is associated with death. I find it interesting that Meadow, who is saying the (white)snow can also be associated with death, will soon begin a relationship with Jackie Jr, who meets his death and falls face first into a pile of snow. “Endless white, endless nothing”.
I also wonder if it was a coincidence or not that in an episode talking about black & white, is also the episode that depicts Tonys dissaproval of Meadows relationship with Noah. If I remember correctly, the death of Jackie Jr is blamed on an African American. So even in the death of Jackie, there’s racisim.
A possible connection to the previous episode..
Here we see Janice & Tony in Livias basement, where Janice realizes that none of her things were saved.
In “Mr Ruggerios Neighborhood”, we see Tonys basement get flooded. Carmela reacts by telling Tony to “save the pictures”.. but it seems to be too late. This could explain what could have happened to the belongings of Janice. I wouldn’t be surprised if Livia just threw them out though…
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A small detail, but the red liquid on the floor is blood, not tomato juice. That’s why he has his arm bandaged throughout the episode. The tomato juice is still on the counter. I love this site BTW! Thank you Ron!
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I just read in The Sopranos Sessions that it was tomato juice and not blood. I might be mistaken but I rewatched it and I don’t see the juice in the glass. It seems he drops an empty glass. It’s a minor point anyway.
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Either way, it adds to the drama of the scene—we believe that something very serious has happened to Tony…
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Ron – Tony passed out after seeing Uncle Ben’s white rice (now called Ben’s Original) AND a jar of Planters Peanuts, which is a crop that used to be picked by (Black) slaves. So we have black-white issues – not only foods, but also Meadow’s relationship with an African-American. Tony’s mind must have been on overdrive! No wonder he fell flat on his face!
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Hmm interesting
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Joe J, you are absolutely correct. It is blood. The still full (and seemingly SEALED) bottle of juice is on the counter in the picture provided in this very write-up. Haha Tony drops the empty glass and faints and cuts himself on the broken glass. We even see Carmella nursing him after finding him; there’s a trail of blood leading to Tony’s seat, where he is tending to his cut arm. Tomato juice could have been USED as blood by the props department (though it doesn’t look like it). But the juice Tony was about to drink is not what is spilled on the floor. It is a minor point, you’re right. (An even more minor point is that it’s V8, which is vegetable juice, not tomato juice Haha!) I just can’t see any way this can be argued as juice from the sealed bottle.
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Gandfolini on the brain today, someone tweeted pictures of him and his multiple appearances in public with SpongeBob Squarepants. COVID days.
Ralphie’s so great I love him that awful man. Chase gives us the sociopath up front, I can hear it in his dry voice: “Look, the guy comes in crying and hugging you and then its right down to business talk and adversity mixed with an insincere humility and disarming jocundity (giacondawha? da fuck you sayin here?). That’s Ralphie boy. He gets to do the Ritchie role but with significantly more episodes in which too play it out. We practically shotgun Ritchie over the second season; his arc is there like Noah’s from the get. Ralphie’s arc begins with his getting passed over in Employee. From there, we see who he is, and what he’s capable of. How tickled were people to see Joey Pants on the Sopranos?
Tony has Pussy on the brain. The Wire does not bother with these metaphysics. Don Draper, however, also experiences ghosts throughout Mad Men. Tony has vivid dreams, but does not typically fall into freaky Paulie territory. We experience the Sopranos as the characters do, and should not interpret signs THEY see is things we should take beyond what’s there. We see a ghost but that’s what Tony senses, like a brief flash one might “see” from memory. I think its also just kinda literary. It’s pretentious to say but ah well, the Sopranos is a literary show. Frost? no Nixon? Best kind.
Cozzarelli’s Godfather invocation: too on the nose? Just enough? I like it. That dude looks so old school he probably embalmed Joe Masseria.
I *t*h*i*n*k* Drea De Matteo said on Podabing that she and Michael were actually weedstoned in the wake scene, which was a big no no on set. Take that with a grain of salt & one of Coco’s teeth. I love the Geico/Uncle Junior guy on the stairs.
Ashamed to admit I’ve still not seen Public Enemy. I’ve read Chase’s quotes about how freaky it was to him as a kid. He really doesn’t approve of the gangster as an admirable masculine figure, and I imagine Cagney’s roles in the pre-code and noir age play some part in that.
Oh, and CGIing Livia: it’s ok. It’s not great, and its definitely some simulacrum level bullshit.
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I seem to remember Drea saying something like that about the wake scene too… But then I’ve also heard Michael Imperioli say he never got high or drunk to play high or drunk in a scene, because those types of scenes require more conscientiousness from an actor…
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Michael is so good at playing high. One of the best. So few actors can even act drunk.
I think he and Gandolfini are drunk when they dump the body in Whoever Did This. I feel like I’ve heard that multiple places; they had to wait till dark to film at a park (?) so they drank in a trailer. The crew were afraid they’d fall or something.
Tony says “Oh yeah” in a very casual, amicable way more than once on the series, but its the one in his conversation with Chrissie in this episode that I think I’m channeling when I say it to my longsuffering spouse, which is often.
btw, I meant the Six Flags guy, not Geico, on the stairs. Dunno where that came from.
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Ron – Multiple websites have mentioned that Gandolfini was (actually) abusing alcohol and cocaine during the series. Not only that, he would also ‘go missing’ for days at a time, and that people had to search for him so he could do his scenes. Was he ‘using’ during his shoots? I’m not sure, but there are scenes where his eyes appear ‘glazed’. Regardless, how tragic it all is for such a fine actor! 😥
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I think the funeral and all that went with it (against livia”s rather explicit instructions to her children) was Janice’s last way to humiliate and retaliate against t the mother who showed her no love. Sure, have a public event where no one (except Fanny) wants to be there and not one of them has a kind word. Janice’s final nail in the coffin-so to speak.
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There are more supernatural occurrences in the show besides this episode:
The wine glass moving during Janice and Bobby’s meal of Karen’s baked ziti
Paulie’s visit to the psychic
The cat in the finale
The quotation up on the billboard in Tony’s hospital room I believe is meant to be of supernatural origin, in a way. The show emphasizes, if I recall correctly, how we don’t know how it got there.
There may be more little things I’m not remembering. I feel like seasons 5 and 6 felt otherworldly, spooky and dreamlike throughout.
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Maybe Tony was crying at the scene in Public Enemy because his mother didn’t love him in any way, and he tried hard to please her but it was a lost cause. He loves his mother and hates her as well. No matter how we feel about a person, when they die, we always feel the loss of things unsaid.
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I’ve read that the speaker in the poem by that asshole Robert Frost is Santa Claus (little horse = reindeer, darkest night of the year = winter solstice/nearly Christmas Eve, “naughty or nice” type of omniscience, miles to go/promises to keep). We see what we want to see. “White is, too” is very Moby Dick btw.
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right after Tony confronts Noah he goes to the fridge to eat his emotions. The he sees a box of smiling, black, Uncle Ben, on a box of white rice and passes out. This time eating is not enough for the emotions he does not want to deal with Tony has to have a fainting spell. So much for the strong silent, Gary Cooper type.
In D-Girl AJ was asking some deep questions but all the people he asked for guidance only gave him empty platitudes and quotations. This time when he is given a poem all he wants are the answers. He does not have the patience to try and figure it out himself. And yet he still ends up questioning the answers Meadow gave him. I really appreciated the comment about AJ listening to death metal so hard he was distracted from really reading the poem about death.
I always liked the Noah character even though he is full of himself and high achieving. In that he is like Meadow. Then again what very smart, privileged teenager is not kinda of an asshole. He is so much better off with Meadow out of his life.
Janice is always a joy to watch, she is such a terrible person. Seeing how fake and changeabe she is very funny. Such people are funny in at a distance but not up close and in the moment they are flinging shit all around. How Tony teased his uncle during the funeral seemed very real to how people are at funerals.
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Ron did you notice about 43:10 Sal tells a story about a guest rabbi who asks the congregation to say something nice about the deceased. and a voice in the back says his brother was worse after minutes of silence. This foreshadows and parallels what people are going to say about Livia.
In the flashback Artie Bucco has we are reminded Livia enjoyed reading the Obituaries.
AJ is still fidgeting and cannot sit still
Janice is such an asshole. She is as unpleasant a person as Ritchie Aprile.
At
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Two things: when Cosarelli says we brought mom down this morning Janice and tony look down either literally that she is downstairs or symbolically that’s she is below them in hell, maybe both. Also Raymond agrees to wear a wire to the wake and he is shown in the hall right after Tony and Junior discuss business, barely missing an opportunity to record or peep a conversation between boss and acting/street boss. Noticed both on my 12th or so watch. Thanks for making these they are amazing.
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So enjoying rewatching Sopranos for a 2nd time. I’ve followed each episode with a chapter from The Soprano Sessions and Talking Sopranos podcast. And now I’ve found this site, which seems to take things even deeper. So good! Thanks Ron and all the commentators.
I’ve found the episodes far funnier than when I first watched them, but that was 15 years ago. Older and wiser now!
So much to love about this episode. I actually missed the Pussy reflection in the mirror and the moaning during Public Enemy. Going to have to watch again! The guy on the stairs was a hilarious moment and, in my opinion, not supernatural.
One thing I really loved was Tom’s rant during the Livia reflections part. How she ruined several Christmases, estranged them from Carmela etc. Her tentacles stretched far further than just her children. I really enjoyed it when Tom told his wife to let him speak. Who do you think you are, the Minister of Propaganda? I get the feeling he’d been wanting to say that to his wife for many, many years! I laughed out loud at that moment. Absolutely brilliant.
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👍
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Sorry for another comment but had to watch some of this episode again today after reading Ron’s analysis and everyone’s comments. One thing I noticed was Tony looked very disturbed just after Pussy appeared in the mirror, like he knew there was a presence there watching.
Similar look on his face when the wailing occurred during Public Enemy, I’d missed originally.
I’m just amazed now rewatching all the episodes how deep it goes and how many small details are inserted. Incredible that these crop up throughout all the episodes and also that some details refer back to details inserted in episodes in previous season. Guess it’s one of the reasons that elevates Sopranos above all other TV, as far as I’m concerned.
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Pingback: The Soprano Onceover: #79. “Proshai, Livushka” (S3E2) | janiojala
Could the public enemy scene be a tie to the dream he has as finnerty where he almost enters the house where everyone is “waiting” for him. Just a thought because he also sees big pussy in this episode as well and the public enemy scene says “you were like my blood brother”
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Hey Ron, here’s a question I could’ve dropped in any of your autopsies so I’m sticking it here. Did you ever notice that in the Sopranos master bedroom, the headboard to the bed is covering the artwork behind it? I cannot understand for the life of me why they would’ve hung a giant oil painting behind the headboard… is there any significance to this? Has anyone else ever noticed it? Thanks Ron.
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Yes, it is a strange place to put a painting. Franco Ricci in his book “Born Under a Bad Sign” does a lengthy analysis of the painting itself (Jacopo da Pontormo’s “The Visitation”) and its appearance in this episode. Ricci writes that the painting depicts a moment of collaboration and confidentiality between the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth and their handmaidens, and thus depicts a kind of feminine parallel to the masculine code of omerta that Tony engages in with his guys. In this hour, Tony loses the most domineering female-figure in his life—his mom—and now he must reconcile the male and female approaches to omerta. Or sumthin like that.
Ricci says that Chase creates a meaningful contrast by panning down from the painting to the shot of Carm and Tony laying in bed; the painting is fixed on the canvas, it can no longer be edited, but Carm and Tony’s relationship is still a work in progress. We don’t know what their story will look like in the end. Ricci’s analysis of the painting is a bit complicated and I’ve never really wrapped my head around it, so I never included it in any of my writeups. But thanks for giving me the chance to go into it a little bit here, Sue.
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Ron – l was initially baffled by the painting being half hidden by the headboard. Perhaps it symbolizes the frature in Tony’s and Carmela’s relationship; what could have been a perfect ‘whole’ (marriage) has been cut in half and hidden from view (i.e., Tony’s penchant for affairs with others).
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Svetlana toasts Livia and says ‘Proshai, Livushka’, which means ‘Goodbye, little Livia’. I’ll drink to that!
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This morning, I came across an article (Eric Schaal, 2020) about this episode, specifically the scene when Janice played the song that Livia ‘loved’. According to Schal, “The cast caught a laughing bug … (starting at 44.45), you see de Matteo (Adriana) holding a finger across her mouth as she tries to keep from laughing … (she didn’t need help pretending she was holding back laughter. After letting the laughter out, they must have somehow shot the scene”. Sounds like a fitting tribute to a much loved actor! 😉
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I also made a connection with the scene you mentioned at the wake with the black and jewish people together. Also hesh who is jewish who was with a black woman last season when tony was visitng
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Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this, but do you think AJ and Meadow’s interpretation of the poem being about death is tied into the post-structuralism that was mentioned in a previous episode? I recall you mentioned the theory being that one’s identity and experiences could shape one’s interpretation of a text (for example), and perhaps this is another statement on the ambiguity of art and the infinite meanings art can have. I admit I don’t know much about post-structuralism so I may be wrong.
I also agree with an earlier poster that although Livia wasn’t humanised much in her life, she was a little more after death (not so much showing her softer side, but showing what made her the cold person she ended up). Which I suppose is true to life, we learn things about our family sometimes after they pass that show them in different lights or explain things about them.
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