Christopher gains possession of a nightclub.
AJ and his friends throw stuff into the school pool.
Carmela is uneasy about Meadow and Jackie’s
growing relationship, while Dr. Melfi suspects that
something is going on between Tony and Gloria.
Episode 35 – Originally Aired April 22, 2001
Written by Mike Imperioli
Directed by Dan Attias
____________________________________
An old W.C. Fields movie, It’s A Gift, plays on the TV at the Soprano home in this episode. The title of the movie underscores how important the idea of gifts are in “The Telltale Moozadell.” People give each other gifts throughout the hour, but the gifts are self-serving, not bestowed with a true spirit of generosity.
For her birthday, Carmela gets a spa date from Meadow (who has also purchased one for herself—and charged both appointments to her parents’ credit card) and The Matrix from AJ (“Right up her alley,” smirks Tony). The most questionable gift, though, is the Harry Winston sapphire from her husband. Meadow seems to immediately suspect that her dad is using the expensive ring as a smokescreen for some guilty behavior. (Nothing gets by her—Meadow understands that expensive jewelry is part of what she earlier called the “bullshit accommodational pretense” that props up her parents’ marriage.) Carmela has misgivings about the ring too, but buys a pair of matching earrings to go with it. Perhaps this is how Carm can justify (to herself) wearing the suspicious sapphire—she has to wear it now, it’s part of a matching set.
Adriana is the recipient of one helluva gift—she becomes owner/manager of the Lollipop nightclub. But Chris hasn’t exactly purchased the place for her; he acquired it from Rocco DeTrollio in lieu of payment of his gambling debts. Adriana renames it the Crazy Horse and has a grand opening attended by several familiar mob faces. (It’s a nice bit of realism, how the characters can barely hear each other over the crowd noises and music at the club.) Chris and Furio are trying to keep the place “clean”—they pummel petty drug dealer Matush for doing business inside the club. Nevertheless, the Crazy Horse will increasingly become a location for mafia dirty business. (And of course, in Season 5, the FBI will use certain ugly events at the club as leverage against Adriana, pushing her into a corner from which she will not escape.)
But I guess we can’t blame Chris or AJ or Meadow or Tony too much for being so self-serving when even institutions like Verbum Dei (“The Word of God”) is looking out primarily for itself. AJ and his friends vandalize the school, but AJ escapes expulsion. Verbum Dei’s administrator and the football coach (who is also a priest) outline the various reasons why it is in AJ’s best interest not to be booted out of school, but everyone understands that they are really acting in the school’s best interest. Everybody has got their bullshit accommodational pretenses.
“WHAT KIND OF ANIMAL…”
Upon first seeing the vandalism, the outraged school administrator wondered “What kind of animal…?” It recalls Carmela’s question in “D-Girl” last season: “What kind of animal smokes marijuana at his own confirmation?” But the answer to both of these questions—“AJ”—is no animal; he’s basically just a kid. He does seem to have a careless, nihilistic streak (which he probably inherited form Tony’s side of the family and which reveals itself more clearly further down the road) but his misbehavior now is little more than youthful mischief. The short scene in which the police track down the vandals is one of the funniest of the season, and underlines that AJ is not by any means some sort of inhumane criminal mastermind. The first episode of this season, “Mr. Ruggerio’s Neighborhood,” was a send-up of the typical police procedural, and now the scene here in which the cops do their investigative work at the pizza parlor is a pure parody of the police procedural:
I love how the camera and the sound editing are used to connect the custom pizza to AJ: the camera pulls in on the parlor owner as the cops put the screws to him, as it were, and then pulls out to reveal the guilty party. Carmela’s voice bridges the edit, further connecting the pizza to AJ. I agree with Emily VanDerWerff’s assessment of AJ’s juvenile misbehavior here. She writes that…
AJ is just a kid who goes along with what’s happening. The other kids are the ringleaders…But AJ is weak-willed and willing to go with the flow…all he really wants to do is impress them, not take the initiative, for good or ill, with them.
Less than three months after this episode aired, real-life police officers saw Robert Iler (AJ) and three others accost and rob two teenage Brazilian tourists. Iler was promptly arrested for possession of marijuana and armed robbery. Iler, facing fifteen years if found guilty, made a plea deal for misdemeanor petty larceny and escaped with three years probation. But the judge, before accepting the plea, wanted an explanation of exactly what transpired that day. Iler’s explanation to the judge sounds like something that could have come straight from AJ’s mouth:
Someone in my group said something to the effect of, “Let’s hassle these kids.” One of our group demanded money from them. One of the teenagers asked whether we were serious, and one of us answered yes. Knowing that the others had demanded money, I intentionally aided them by being there and by intentionally blocking an avenue of escape for the victims.
To be fair, Iler has stayed out of trouble since this early foolishness, and by all accounts he is not like the weak-willed and callous character that he plays. While I think that AJ’s hijinks here are little more than youthful indiscretion, his later misbehaviors seem to signify a nihilistic and almost pathological personality.
WHAT KIND OF ANIMAL? (PART II)
AJ is no animal, but Gloria Trillo might be. Throughout the episode, she is compared to snakes in both subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The first comparison comes courtesy of an edit:
Chase cuts from a shot of Gloria to a conversation that Paulie and Tony have about snakes while watching a nature program. Paulie says that snakes are both male and female simultaneously, and can therefore “fuck themselves.” (He’s wrong. This is a myth originating out of the fact that a snake’s gender cannot be discerned just by looking at it.) The key analogy here is that Gloria, like the snakes that Paulie talks of, is intent on fucking herself. We learn in this episode (via Melfi) that Gloria tried to kill herself after her last relationship failed, and we will learn in an upcoming episode that Gloria has embarked on this new relationship with Tony specifically because she wants to die by his hand. At the Bronx Zoo’s Reptile House, she quite literally uses Tony’s hand to fuck herself:
Gloria knows exactly who Tony Soprano is—and what he is capable of. In an episode full of self-serving actions, Gloria’s entering into a relationship with Tony is the most selfish of all: she wants him to end her life. Although her morbid goal is not articulated outright here, we get a presentiment of the dangerous dynamic between Gloria and Tony when she fondles his gun in a hotel room.
Chase is beginning to draw a parallel between two sets of relationships here. Jackie and Gloria are each headed down a path of self-destruction, and Tony and Ralph will inadvertently aid each of them down this path. Chase juxtaposes two scenes in order to underscore the congruent geometry of these two relationships:
As Jackie holds Ralph’s gun and Gloria holds Tony’s gun in these back-to-back scenes, we get a premonition that Jackie and Gloria will fuck themselves by season’s end. Jackie’s misconduct thus far has been fairly minor: dealing some X, cutting classes, getting Meadow to write his essay on Edgar Allan Poe. But he wants to be more of a player in the world of the Mafia, despite Tony’s objections. Jackie is, in a sense, mob royalty (as the son of a former Boss) but this doesn’t guarantee him any power. And it certainly doesn’t justify his sense of self-importance: he attempts to channel “Michael Corleone” when trying to impress Matush, but he comes off more like “Fredo,” the son that got passed over. His desire to move up in the mob will lead him to make some self-destructive choices.
GLORIA TRILLO as a SUBSTITUTE FOR LIVIA and JANICE
One of the long-running ideas in The Sopranos is that characters fall into patterns that they will not or cannot escape. Tony can never escape having a destructive, nihilistic person in his life. First it was Livia, and when she died, it became Janice. But Janice has been largely absent in the last few episodes, and she barely appears here other than a small scene in which she brushes some cocaine off her nose. Gloria essentially functions as a reiteration of Livia and Janice in Tony’s life. Her similarity to Livia is conveyed directly, when she says “Poor you” to Tony the same way his mother used to. She has similarities to Janice as well. Both women use Eastern philosophy and Christianity as crutches. (“I pray a little bit, and I meditate in the morning,” says Gloria). And Gloria is associated to snakes here while Janice was repeatedly likened to reptiles in Season 2:
(Janice was juxtaposed to the reptilian motion of the pool cleaner in 2.01; she wore a scorpion ring and a her mother also described her as “a snake in the grass” in 2.02; and the camera panned to catch her just as she rose into Cobra position in 2.03.)
FOOD & FIREARMS
This is a recurring topic that I haven’t written much about this season, but this episode (whose title replaces the “heart” in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem with a food item) gives us a striking scene connecting food and firearms:
Ralph teaches Jackie how to make the perfect spaghetti while simultaneously advising him on what type of gun he should have. Then he lets Jackie keep his .38-caliber. That Ralph, what a guy! Hold on to him Rosalie!
LEGS
The news of Charmaine and Artie Bucco’s imminent divorce gets Carmela pondering her own road not taken. In Dr. Krakower’s office two episodes ago, it seemed that she might indeed take the road to divorce, but she ultimately decided to keep her marriage intact. Now she senses that Tony has got some new goomar hiding in the woodworks. Chase cuts from her contemplating her own unhappiness to a shot of Gloria’s gams:
“Legs” again. Just as in the previous episode, the imagery of Gloria’s legs represent the trap that is Carmela’s faithless marriage.
THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM
This episode functions mainly to set the stage for later fireworks surrounding Gloria and Jackie; there’s not much heart-pounding drama within the hour itself. In fact, things are running quite smoothly as the episode draws to a close: Carmela is impressed by Jackie’s maturity and help around the Soprano house; Tony and Gloria are getting along nicely; AJ escapes expulsion and learns how to clean the gutters. Tony is so satisfied with the way things are going that he even gives Dr. Melfi a cash tip. The episode ends with a calm and banal domestic scene at the Sopranos home:
The denuded trees outside the window and the dead leaves that fall from the gutter, however, remind us that we are approaching the dead of winter. Cold days are up ahead. Winter Storm Gloria is headed right for Tony and he doesn’t know it yet. The chorus of Ben E. King’s closing song—“I who have nothing, who have no one, love and adore you”—recalls the emptiness and neediness found in the chorus of the previous episode’s closing song: “You be the Captain, and I’ll be no one.” Tony may feel that everything is running along smoothly, but we know that pain, emptiness and despair are always lurking nearby in SopranoWorld.
_________________________________
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
-
Note the long-term connectivity between Matush & the Crazy Horse: Matush is first introduced in this episode in which Adriana acquires the Crazy Horse, and his last appearance will be in “Long Term Parking,” which will also be Adriana’s final episode (due to—that’s right!—Matush’s actions at the Crazy Horse).
- In this episode, Adriana rechristens the Lollipop club as the Crazy Horse. The club’s names might be meta-references to Vincent Pastore, who ran a place called the Lollipop Club and a café called the Crazy Horse prior to playing Big Pussy on the series. It’s almost as though Pussy is haunting SopranoWorld through these meta-references. Pussy will more clearly haunt the guys in the next episode when he returns as a sort of Ghost of Christmas Past.
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Sopranos Autopsy 
wow I’ve seen this show like three times and I never made the connection between Gloria and snakes. Nice work!
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thanks Viv
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As you’ve pointed out a lot of the show is about the nature of power.
I like the little scene where Tony shows up at Gloria’s work and convinces her to go to some motel with him. She’s helping a guy who buys a new 600 from her every year. He looks pretty important or successful in his own right. You get the idea that his annual trek to score a few hours around Ms Trillo’s fishnet stockings is the highlight of his year, something he looks forward to for months while he drones away at his desk job dealing with the f—–g regularness of life. And maybe he even goes home to his unappreciative wife, later fantasizing about Gloria in the shower. That’s his station in life.
But then Tony shows up, and takes home the real thing, and actually goes to bed with her … while our other successful gentleman is alone in the shower wishing he could do the same.
Mr 600-buyer is a successful guy, but he only has enough brass to taste real power just for a moment. To Gloria he’s just a new watch. But Tony lives his life in a way he achieves the authentic real thing.
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By season’s end, Tony had wished he’d done nothing more than bought a car from Gloria and gazed at her legs.
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For all we know, Gloria’s annual 600 buyer might actually have more money than Tony. It’s definitely about more than money. In the scene at Melfi’s waiting room when Tony and Gloria first meet, she looks at him first. At this point, she has no idea he’s rich or that he’s in the mob. He’s sharply dressed but he’s not necessarily rich guy dressed. Large men, even obese men in some cases, that exude confidence can be found very attractive to women that you think would be out of their league. It’s no accident that most leading men in Hollywood are tall. The ones that aren’t typically either look very tough, or they’re “pretty boys”. Being large can either be an asset or a curse to a man. If he doesn’t have the right personality, he may as well be Frankenstien. Think Bobby Bacala in the following episode where he plays Santa and a kid cusses him out. “Shyness, it’s a curse”, Bobby says to Tony. For large men, it really is. I think this is where shorter men have the advantage. Shorter men can be shy. It doesn’t seem to bring as much attention to them. A large man that looks unpleasant alarms the village. Tony wears his size well, both as a mafia don and as a regular old mid-life crisis dude-bro cheating on his wife. I watched Get Shorty a few days ago. Gandolfini is in his mid thirties at the time of this movie, his character looks like a hippy slacker, with long braided hair and a beard. Yet,. even looking like a slacker, Gandolfini had alpha male qualities, and had a chemistry with the women he shared screen time with. Gandolfini was one of the great male leads of our time, if not the greatest.
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A man who buys a rand new Mercedes every year has money they also probably have power such people are used to having their own way. If he really wants to be with a certain. Type of woman he can easily find that woman. He might be content to have the sales lady flatter him and listen to his story. He might also be the type of man who limes to have boundaries between his personal and professional life na d be actually very happy. Again we don’t really know anything about him but we do know Tony is destructive and Gloria is destructive. Both those shit starters are charming and superficially attractive but they bring chaos wherever they go. They even brought chaos to Dr Melting who tries very hard to help bring order and peace to people’s lives.
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Gloria to Tony at the zoo: “I’m crazy about you”.
Rather cheap foreshadowing, but foreshadowing, no less.
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I’m sure that you, along with most Sopranos fans have long known this bit of trivia, but for posterity’s sake, that’s a young, pre-fame Lady Gaga as one of AJ’s friends who trash the school pool.
Along with Perez Hilton’s appearance in 3.03, the shows writers seemed to (unknowingly) have their fingers on the pulse of the next decade in American pop culture.
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Why do you include so many little spoilers in your analyses? Is this more geared towards readers who have already finished the series once?
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Yup, that’s what it says on the homepage…
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Boo
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I just re-watched this episode and I noticed something that I didn’t before. When Tony and Gloria are at the zoo, she asks if he has ever taken his family to the Bronx zoo, and when he says “See Ya” to someone, she asks who’s that? And he said “I’m just saying goodbye to my hard on.” Then she says “Poor you” and he gets that look on his face like when he is getting a panic attack…I believe he thought of his mother’s favorite term…and because she is so seductive, he lets the red flag go by. Amazing that I can watch these so many times and still see new stuff!! It was probably obvious, but I didn’t catch it until then. I wondered why he got that expression…but I didn’t put it together until now. There was a lot of foreshadowing in this episode.
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Good point
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Reading through these for the first time while rewatching the show for the 4th or 5th time and not only do you warn them on the homepage that it’s for rewatchers, but I’ve seen you explicitly warn them in the comments multiple times as well. And they still bitch about it 3 seasons in. It’s getting annoying for me and I’m just a casual reader and huge admirer of your stuff. You could walk on water and there’d be guys saying “You see? He can’t swim”
Keep up the good work Ron
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Haha thanks
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Fuck off
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Hey now
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you’re a rockstar
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Just as a small, additional piece of information to your always excellent analysis: The specific TV police procedural Chase is parodying in the “cops interrogate the pizza place owner” scene is Dragnet (1951-1959), with its staccato back and forth dialog.
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Have you noticed the similarity between Jackie Aprile’s “meeting” and “The Godfather” first scene?
The way Jackie Jr. has his finger on his cheek and how he plays gangster reminds me Don Corleones posture.
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Yes, it just shows what a stupid idiot Jackie Jr. is.
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Melbourne standover man Chopper Read referred to this generation of gangsters (and one, Alphonse Gangitano, in particular) as “plastic godfathers” – those who grew up in middle to upper-middle class families on a steady diet of Godfather, Scarface and Goodfellas films and thought they were playing the lead role in a movie. I can definitely see AJ heading down the same path and Christopher is to a lesser extent.
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Notice that when Gloria is showing Tony the watch, she is giving Tony the “Italian Middle Finger”
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Didn’t notice that but I did see her give the malocchio to an ape at the zoo…
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I never thought that Gloria intentionally or even consciously wanted Tony to kill her and that’s why she went after him. Although, her actions are rather reckless, I think she’s just mentally unstable. She certainly got scared when Patsy Parisi pointed the gun at her…she was scared witless. She could have gotten him to kill her if she wanted to die by someone else’s hand. I think Tony is powerful and attractive, and that’s what she liked. The other stuff is just who she is. Destructive and depressed. How is he supposed to know that by just looking at her?
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Ah, but at Patsy’s hands death will not be cinematic. That’s what Gloria wants, a glorious death, as a performance.
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Interesting episode- good write up. Everyone seems to give AJ a pass leading to him become the whiney depressed screwball we see in season 6. I agree that his actions are a bit beyond a “normal” teenager. We seen time and time again how AJ just goes with what’s going on don’t we (particularly with the two Jasons). Funny how Chase spent a good deal of time last season on the Ramsey Sports bustout but not much of a backstory on the Lollipop club. Could have been some interesting scenes there. Chris brining Adrianna into the club is basically making her an accomplice, which as you stated led her to her demise. This is one of those episodes I find myself laughing through; Ralphie’s lesson on making macaroni, Matush thinking Jackie’s father was a professional golfer, and the whole snakes conversation. Paulie, as usual is way off on the facts but it’s still very entertaining. Then Tony with Gloria out of nowhere, “you know snakes can fuck themselves?” LOL. I am “tickled pink” you even added that in this write up with the text! HA. We also get to see how Ralphie leads the lost soul Jackie down the wrong path. To think Jackie could become a doctor is just absurd. Hell Chrissy could have been a doctor to! Any reasonable person would have to agree Meadow would have been better off with dick-bag Noah than Jackie. He is another example of someone trying to cash in on his family name to get ahead. He seems to feel since his father was boss he should be given automatic respect and be accepted into the organization. The sit down with Matush was just ridiculous. Ive never seen Gloria as someone who really wants to die, but as a person who has severe mental issues and naturally drives people away. She seems to be everything Tony wants (at least physically) but even he cant deal with her after what she end up doing in a few episodes. And we are shown just how crazy she is. Excellent character.
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Haha I made sure to grab that screenshot with the subtitle visible because I think it is one of Chase’s greatest “visual puns” of the series – Tony says snakes can fuck themselves and moments later, we see Gloria use T’s hand to “fuck” herself… The visuals of that entire scene are incredible, with the image of that snake coiled around a branch while Gloria coils herself around her victim…
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Another reference to food in this episode is when Carmella and Rosalie are dining in Artie’s restaurant and he brings out an appetizer to them. Rosalie mistakes it for mozzarella and string beans when Artie corrects her that “It’s not mozzarella, this is called buratta. It’s a lot more smooth and subtle than mozzarella , with an almost nut like flavor.” Rosalie responds that shes “not that big on nuts.” Carmella later proceeds to tell her what a find that “nut” Ralphie is and that she should hang onto him. Meanwhile, Carm’s own husband has become involved with perhaps the biggest “nut” in the series.
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I love Rosalie. She has no time for BS or for Artie’s flown-in-by-Fed Ex Buratta. She wanted the hot antipasto, why is he giving her string beans and cheese?
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I was just rereading your excellent write-up on this episode, and I wanted to mention that I’ve been trying the “Cifaretto Method” with my spaghetti and it’s actually been doing wonders for the flavor! Even a “nut” like Ralphie can have some great ideas 🙂 Also, I think the Matrix was another of Chase’s little meta-jokes, since it prominently features Joey Pants!
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I think its totally possible to be a bit crazy and still know how to cook… see Gordon Ramsay
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Rocco says “Goddamn Vikings! Nobody misses the extra point.” Whoever wrote that line knew his NFL well…that is just seems so very Minnesota Vikings to either blow their own good fortune or someone else’s on football’s easiest play. (This was when XP’s were a gimme.)
Out of curiosity I checked and in the preceding season (2000) Minnesota hit 100% of its tries. In fact the team hadn’t missed a regular season point after touchdown since 1997.
However, and this may interest only me but maybe it demonstrates just how much power this show and David Chase had…in the season after this episode aired, the Minnesota Vikings went and missed an extra point…in their very first game of 2001. I think David Chase got in their heads.
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Haha I’ve often said Chase is prescient…
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Dragnet was great in all its incarnations (apart from that awful 2003 remake with Ed O’Neill of all people). I could go on about it for hours.
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The pizza parlor, Dragnet homage seemed forced and crowbarred in.
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Another great write up!
Just something I noticed this time around. Jackie walks through the emergency exit…. He is literally setting off an alarm. Warning of things to come if he doesn’t “smarten up”
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👍🏽
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Tony fools himself into thinking that Jackie is “Special” and shouldn’t be in the mob because of his affection for Jackie Sr. But realistically, he’s a dumbass. Both Ralph and Richie tried to school Jackie Jr. in the way of their world, but like all the other privileged boys on this show, they just don’t have the balls. Only an movie idea of what a gangster is. I think Meadow went for him because he is familiar to her, and part of her world. Noah was an elitist douche. He wasn’t right for her either. I couldn’t even stand the sound of his voice. She realizes what how stupid Jackie is soon enough. For all of Carmela’s faults..her mother instinct was screaming at her that this relationship can only be bad for Meadow because it will be a repeat of her own relationship. Carmela’s reasoning for staying in this marriage has a lot to do with the kids and the opportunities the money can provide so they don’t end up an unhappy mob wife, and a low-level mob guy.
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Your comment about Jackie Jr suddenly made me think of Matt Dillon’s line in Drugstore Cowboy about “TV babies,” how some young folks get their whole sense of reality from television. I don’t remember the exact line, it’s been more than 20 years since I saw the movie…
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That’s true. 🙂
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There is a poignant moment in the previous episode when Jackie says to Meadow (quoting from memory): “You know what I really like? Men’s fashion. Not the faggy stuff . . .” He says he would like to be a Hugo Boss. His family have pushed him into a university course for which he is unfitted. Other pressures, including his own, are pushing him into a mobster life for which he is unfitted. If only he had been able to go the natural way . . .
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I agree. This time through my rewatch, I’m feeling more sympathy for Jackie than I ever did before. He’s not cut out for this life, but it’s what he knows, and he isn’t smart enough to figure out that he isn’t or how to get into something that would suit him better. His dream of being the next Hugo Boss is even more unrealistic than Adriana’s dream of being a music producer, but it does show that Jackie has interests that neither his family nor the world he knows would support. His father didn’t want him to be in the mob; he wanted him to be a doctor, which is ludicrous of course, and Jackie, Jr. himself knows he doesn’t have the brains. But he also doesn’t have enough good role models of other things he could be. So he feels ashamed of being unable to handle organic chemistry (which has defeated better students than he) and sort of shyly admits to Meadow his interest in men’s fashion (“but not the faggy stuff”). She’s probably the only person he knows who would encourage that, which is another reason for him to be attracted to her. But meanwhile, the only way he sees to be cool and impressive and a real man is to try to get in with the Mafia, which he isn’t suited for either. But there, he does have some encouragement: Chris let Jackie be the getaway driver when they ripped off the benefit concert in “Fortunate Son,” earlier in the season. Ralph, to get Jackie to warm up to him as Rosalie’s new man, offers to hook him up with a ecstasy supplier and later gives him a gun when Jackie asks about getting one. Jackie doesn’t have a strong enough personality to either break out of the life or become a real player in the life. Chris might think Jackie is the “hair apparent,” but Chris is far better suited to the life than Jackie would ever have been.
I always used to hate the Meadow-Jackie story line, but this time around, I found it kind of poignant. Meadow is smarter, Meadow has parents (Carmela mostly) who have encouraged her to broaden her horizons. It’s disappointing to see her “settle” for Jackie for a while, though understandable for a girl her age when her first attempt at a big rejection of her parents’ values ended up with her being dumped by a guy she believed to be a smart, sensitive, dreamboat, so her reaction is typical female self-denigration. So she turns to someone known and safe and not very smart because she knows she can get him. On another site, someone complains that they had no chemistry, but I don’t think chemistry between them was the point. Jackie is a rebound relationship for Meadow. It never would have lasted. For Jackie, I think it started as the possibility of bagging a hottie, but he is, perhaps surprisingly, a relative gentleman with her, opting not to have sex with her when she passes out after taking the ecstasy (though, being a red-blooded young man, he can’t resist a peek inside her shirt). And although he pressures Meadow for sex next time they’re together, he takes her desire to wait with reasonably good grace (after roaring off in a huff in his car) for a guy who probably isn’t used to having to do that. And here’s the thing that ties in with Jackie being more sensitive than he seems at first: Although he pulls the macho thing of telling her to go sit down when he’s playing pool with his buddy and she comes over to remind him that he said he would take her to hear music or whatever it was, that’s probably mostly to impress his buddy, to whom Jackie had just had to admit that he hasn’t had sex with Meadow yet. But when she then runs out with his keys and ends up wrecking his car, Jackie’s reaction is to be concerned about Meadow, not his expensive car, and it doesn’t seem faked. He’s still going to cheat on her eventually, because that’s what the culture he grew up in tells him men do. But the tragedy of Jackie is that he could have been a decent guy if he had grown up in a different culture and been instilled with different values.
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👍🏼👍🏼
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Tony should have let him join the mob and let it go. The fact that he isn’t very bright isn’t surprising. Funny when they were going to do the robbery, his better sense told him to forget it and “Go Down the shore”. Too bad he didn’t listen to that inner voice. He has an inflated sense of himself, Nobody should mistreat Tony’s daughter and think he will get away with it. It’s just stupidity..
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The only thing I can think about in my rewatch (which I’m surprised I didn’t notice other comments about although I didn’t read everything) is how I was happy for Adriana the first time I watched this episode and really depressed for her on this viewing. I wonder how much Chase knew when he wrote this about her story arc. Worst missed extra point ever.
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“All these kids, they’re all TV babies. Watching people killing and f***ing each other on the boob tube for so long it’s all they know. Hell, they think it’s legal. They think it’s the right thing to do.”
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Haha thanks
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I recently had the chance to view “Kiss the Blood Off My Hands,” a 1948 noir directed by Norman Foster, in which a zoo scene plays a pivotal role (the lead character, an unstable, violent former POW played by Burt Lancaster, has a PTSD episode while watching the apes in the company of a woman who has protected him).
While nothing overtly traumatic happened to Tony at the zoo, I am now convinced that David Chase was making an explicit reference to “Kiss the Blood Off My Hands.” (This film is almost impossible to view these days — it’s nowhere online and has not, to my knowledge, ever been released on DVD or VHS.)
BTW I am watching The Sopranos for the third time and am finding this site an INVALUABLE resource. Thank you, Ron!
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Oh wow, that sounds interesting, I’m not familiar with that movie but I think Lancaster was one of the greatest ever…
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I just recently rewatched this episode. Not much to say that hasn’t already been covered, but I have always thought that the scene in which Tony and Gloria have sex in the reptile house is possibly the most erotic sex scene in the whole serie. And all with their clothes on, including winter coats.
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I’ve always liked the idea of Jackie hiding the gun in the bread(money) maker. We know that guns are often used to profit off others, as Jackie tries to do by holding up the card game in “Amour Fou”.
Coincidentally, when I finished this episode, I turned it off and switched on Everybody Loves Raymond which was already in progress on TV. The episode was “The Car”, which has Ray buying back his old car from Frank. So with the “bread” he got from Ray, what does Frank buy? ….
A bread maker of course.
Anyway, “dinaps” has a point about the mention of nuts/crazy. Its not Just Rosalie that meantions it..
Rosalie: “I’m not crazy about nuts”
Tony talking to Gloria: “Ive been going nuts about you”.
Jackie regarding Poe: “Guy was fucking nuts”.
Gloria to Tony: I’m crazy about you”.
Not to mention..”Crazy Horse”.
The character in “Tell-Tale Heart”, is most likely a little nuts as well.
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So good
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Regarding the “poor you” connected, I think when she said it to him (after his hard on was gone) he felt it subconsciously. We got this weird look from Tony, maybe even the thought of his mother went through his head for a second there before Gloria distracted him with grabbing his dick.
https://ibb.co/fNQDSRf
https://ibb.co/D1rTTSk
I’ve heard there are often directorial notes in the scripts. I like to think such directions for even the slightest of reactions came from Chase.
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Thank you for the snake references! I heard Livia’s voice (that of a borderline mother) when Gloria says to Tony, ‘I want nothing more of you than just kindness’ (I’m paraphrasing here) and he replies with ‘okay.’ Gloria then responds with ‘well aren’t you full of yourself and conceded.’ This gave me chills because it shows how distorted her reality is. She’s saying: You’re good enough, you are never enough; and I don’t need anything, why won’t you give me everything! In his state of limerence, Tony has only expressed feelings of praise and awe for this women. Perhaps he is just accustom to these contradictory statement, but it is hard to watch.
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It was interesting and hair raising. I felt freaked out when I saw those two snaky “creepy” people, Tony and Gloria, making out in the snake house. It was fun watching Tony and Gloria walking around the zoo. Their body chemistry was in sync, they both dressed very nicely. It’s too bad they are such toxic people. It’s unfortunate they hurt themselves and others. They have lots of attractive qualities but are really not safe to have around like poisonous snakes.
Also Gloria frequently wears scares, or jewlrey around her neck.
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Now realizing after 4 rewatches, Gloria shows signs of BPD.
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Contrast what happened to Charming and Argue Bucco who did not get into a business with Tony and what happens to Adriana who got into a business with Christopher
We see the only small business that ends up surviving is Vesuvio’s even they were victims of a bombing and major credit card fraud even with Charmine’s efforts. Whereas Satriale’s, the lawn care man, the sporting goods store, and the Barone garbage business which end up having their lives ruined and end up living in fear because they wanted a cheap quick payoff from the mobsters.
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I don’t know if Charming and Argue are autocorrect fails but that’s pretty funny…although I would say Artie is the charming one and Charmaine is the argumentative one
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Haha that totally was an autocorrect fail.
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It’s odd that Rosalie Aprile went out with that total degenerate asshole Ralphie.
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I didn’t see this mentioned anywhere so I apologize if I’m late to the party, but I feel like the shot of Gloria and Tony with the snake is intentionally evoking Adam and Eve/The Fall of Man. It might even be a visual clue that they are both “cut from the same cloth” in the way that Adam and Eve were both created by God (one from clay, the other from her partner’s rib).
Tony and Gloria share many self-sabotaging behaviors that lead them to their ultimate fates. They also met each other in the safety of Melfi’s office (a sort of psychological/emotional “Eden” or safe-space for them). In that way, Melfi can also act as a sort of “God” figure in her opposition her two patients “eating the forbidden fruit” and consummating a physical relationship which would only end badly.
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Interesting, I can definitely see some Biblical imagery in that scene..
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Melfi refers to Tony as a big gorilla, while Gloria takes him to the zoo and admires a gorilla with him before fucking him, never telling him that she feels the same way about him. Marlon Brando imitated a gorilla, stood like one, with his palms opened forward and belly pushed out in order to create a strong physical presence of his character, Vito Corleone, in The Godfather. Funnily enough, Brando would later turn down a role in The Planet of the Apes (1968).
Somehow, and this is just to show the racial bigotry of modern liberal America, it is perfectly acceptable to make these clear and direct analogies in The Sopranos, even though Italian people have been called “apes” as a racial derogatory for decades, and even though Gandolfini was an Italian, playing an Italian. If Idris Elba played Tony Soprano, and I would not have protested such a casting, this would have been unacceptable. I guess it’s up to the liberal elites to decide what is a threat to our society and what constitutes *a* racism, and in 2021 it seems to still be… Donald Trump? Marone…
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In fact, we saw how it would play with the liberals when a liberal, black man Pharrell Williams dressed himself like a movie character that happens to be a monkey. He had to apologize. And he did. Well, I guess I’m still waiting for an apology from David Chase.
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I love how he apologized to himself. I just love how bigoted the liberals are, they make a black person apologize to themselves (?), and they are mostly white.
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Oh, my mistake, Pharell apologized for wearing a native american hair dress. Even worse. And, of course, a white dude apologized for comparing Pharrell’s outfit to that of a movie character that was a monkey. Yeah, makes sense, it’s ok to be racist to your own, but get just a little bit out of a fascistic racist paradigm that the entire USA subscribes to, and you are a problem. Nice. In fact, Pharrell’s monkey outfit was called “challenging” by the liberal media, how cool! Perhaps Chase was challenging when comparing Italian crime bosses to gorillas, too, us racists just get confused real quick, even though we ain’t black nor white. My fault, I’m not liberal enough to get all of this.
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It has fallen on liberals to decide what constitutes a threat when so many conservatives have proven they will not acknowledge even the most obvious threats to society, like climate change, gun fetishism, coronavirus variants, growing authoritarianism—and yes, also the threat that Trump still poses in 2021…
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So, when they started the KKK, opposed the civil rights bill, installed Jim Crow laws and kept them in place as long as possible, assassinated hundreds of thousands of civilians all over the globe with Obama and Clintons in charge, opposed black people both in congress and in politics in general, it was… conservatives who did it? Didn’t John Brown, a conservative religious christian man single-handedly start freeing slaves and murdering slave-masters, in effect, starting the war that would ultimately bring freedom to black people in USA? Weren’t Malcolm X and MLK Jr. conservatives?
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“it was… conservatives who did it?”
Yes, it was. The KKK may have been made up of mostly Democrats, but that was at a time when southern Democrats were profoundly conservative. The John Brown reference only proves my point: southern conservatives put Brown to death as a dangerous, insurrectionary radical while northern liberals hailed him as a hero doing God’s work.
I recognize and appreciate the good contributions that conservatives have made to the country. That’s why I was very careful in my criticism to say “so many conservatives”; not all conservatives, not most conservatives, but many…
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The same northern liberals that made black person’s vote to be 3/5 of a white man’s vote? How nice of them, sure, they deserve our trust. Liberals bombed my country, and me, my mother and my father. Twice. To avert the attention of a liberal who wanted a blowjob, and how it would be perceived by other liberals. They also wholeheartedly support censorship, neomarxism and oppose free speech and a right do defend myself. Was John Brown a gun fetishist? Because, without a gun… we would have slavery go on for who knows how much longer. Every conservative I know of thinks highly of John Brown, so that’s not really a good point, either – a person can be celebrated by both sides. Also, how come that northern democrats were liberal when they supported John, but were conservative in the 1960? You can’t have it both ways.
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Lincoln thought Brown had “shown great courage, rare unselfishness.” But, with most Americans of the day, Lincoln believed Brown had gone too far. “Old John Brown has just been executed for treason against the state. We cannot object,” Lincoln reasoned, “even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong.” – it seems that Abe doesn’t quite agree with you, either.
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Interesting—and very telling—that you keep bringing up these issues as they existed in the past and not at all in their current context as I had mentioned them. Trying to apply the modern definition of terms like “liberal” and “conservative” to people and issues from the deep past is almost useless; the 3/5s clause is good example. Southern slaveholding states wanted to count black people as 100% citizens, not because they saw black people as fully 100% human (they sure as shit did not) but only because this would increase their representation in Congress. Some northern delegates opposed counting black people as 100% citizens in part as an effort to decrease the slave trade. (Otherwise, southerners would have had greater motivation to import more and more slaves as a way to swell their Congressional representation.)
I’m sorry to hear you and your family suffered under American bombs. But believe me, it’s not the conservative portion of the American population that has wanted to drastically cut military funding since the Vietnam war.
I completely agree with Abe Lincoln: John Brown may have had noble motivations, but no man has the authority to take the law into his own hands, particularly when he’s literally using those hands to kill others. A belief that a man can be above the law is a fundamental characteristic of authoritarianism. (See my comment above about the conservative lack of concern regarding “growing authoritarianism.”)
If you think that Northern democrats in the 1960s were conservative in comparison to their Southern counterparts, then you are very misinformed and I really don’t have the time or inclination to go through American History 101 with you any longer.
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Oh, it’s not you that mentioned their current context, it was me. It was you that skipped on it, and only talked about the past, so, sorry, but if anything was telling, it’s your first reply. Liberal and conservative are, and I am sorry again, universal principles that existed in USA politics from the moment of it’s independence. What did switch, and this I never argued, is loyalty of the democratic party to those principles. This makes it impossible for you to defend the positions of modern liberals that are democrats, and that is why I brought it up. What “some” did is irrelevant. What most did is relevant. And most of the KKK founders and supporters were democrats. You completely skipped my comment about democrats and liberals not supporting the civil rights bill in congress, and that it took conservatives to pass it, yet you find it telling that I don’t mention the Now? I mentioned Clintons for that sole reason. And Obama.
USA having a strong military is not what makes that military imperialistic. I have no problem with strong militaries, if it’s the will of the people to finance and have them. I have a problem when they bomb nations illegally. Conservatives such as Ron Paul were very vocal (he was in the republican party at that time) about this being a war crime on USA’s part. Sanders was absolutely war mongering and demanding that NATO enters with their troops immediately. There are videos on YouTube of both of their speeches. Trump was against war, that evil orange racist.
You have nothing to be sorry about, since I don’t see myself as a victim, others had suffered way more than me and my family, and still do from the same liberal policies that Trump fought against. Congratulations on sending troops to Afghanistan AGAIN, you are completely right that Trump is still a treat. A treat to a never ending war, that is.
I certainly would not require you to teach me about anything, let alone American History, but it was not me that called the democrats conservative at any point: it was you. I would never call racism conservative.
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Hahaha you say I’m the one “that only talked about the past” while you kept the discussion current?! Of the four topics I mentioned: climate change is more significant now than ever before; the debate about guns is more contentious now than ever before; coronavirus variants were not even a concern 18 months ago; and, while authoritarianism has always been a concern, my phrase “growing authoritarianism” puts the issue squarely in contemporary times. Yet, your immediate response to this was to invoke the founding of the KKK, Jim Crow laws and “the civil rights bill.” (I’m guessing you mean the civil rights act of 1964. Signed into law by liberal democrat Lyndon Johnson, btw.)
And then you claim that you never referred to democrats as conservative at any point. But I only have to scroll up just a little bit to see your statement, “Also, how come that northern democrats were liberal when they supported John, but were conservative in the 1960?” Maybe you were being sarcastic there and I just don’t get your irony, so I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. I don’t block anyone but the most obvious trolls, and you’re very close to proving to me that you’re just trolling now..
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No, now you have expanded the discussion to include the things that are other topics that I did not touch on, yet you are saying that I ran away from: I did not. That is not what I refereed to, at all. Inside what we were commenting, you clearly went into the past and kept it there. Climate change is not proven. It’s based on computer models that are not reliable, at all. But since you have no empirical evidence for it and neither do I (links are not empirical evidence, sorry), it’s not a discussion I thought was worthy of pursuing, really. Since neither of us can experience it or prove it on a human scale, it’s a moot point in my opinion. It’s an ideology, just look at Al Gore’s bank account and his defense of his racist democratic father, and it’s kind of obvious.
Same goes for the corona virus: I’ve had a moderately bad case of it that lasted for 6 months. I have no problem talking about current stuff. Like Joe Biden. But you stayed in the civil war era with it, and I do NOT mind, until you blame me for that “switch”, like I’m running from something. Why would I? Covid is simply too current to say anything of certainty at this point, and again, I have no knowledge of biochemistry, and was assuming that you do not, either. So, again, not a really good subject for you to bring, which is why I skipped it. It’s simply too soon, and Trump was right all along about the masks, time has showed. Is it really better with Biden? We know it isn’t.
You never explained this phrase that authoritarianism is a concern: where? In Asia? In the world? In an unscientific essay written by Umberto Eco 25 years ago, that is the also the basis of modern liberal ideology? This is simply not worth discussing, in my opinion. I actually lived under a dictatorship – a leftist dictatorship. And it’s not fun. Fascism casualties (of the ideology, not the war casualties of those who stood against it) are 17 million. Communism’s are 120 and counting. I do not fear Trump, unless you can give me a reasonable explanation why I should, but I do fear Joe Biden, because he called an entire nation of people – genocidal – based on nothing, and then was the leading politician, or rather, propagandist, who lobbied for illegal bombing of various countries as a vice president since 1993. And of a nation that actually suffered a genocide in the WW2. He wouldn’t bow to the flag of that nation, which is the most fascist act that I ever saw a politician perform during a diplomatic visit. He is a staunch liberal, though.
Lyndon B. Johnson, a liberal democrat that was forced, yes, forced by the republicans to pass the bill, did so at the end of his term, was a southern democrat in the 60’s, which, to quote you, meant he was “conservative” (I would say racist, but whatever), and looooved to use the N-word all day every day, that democrat? N-word, please.
My claim was ironic, and semi-quoting you, so yes, it was an attempt at sarcasm, I would never call racist democrats conservative, as I have pointed out. Also, I didn’t troll you in all the comments about the Sopranos that I’ve made (for some reason, my Kozhyleus account is not visible as my username, perhaps there’s a limit to the nomber of comments per account, so it displays Anonymous now, wrongly), and I wouldn’t start now. If you want to block me, feel free to do so, I won’t continue this since I’ve said everything that I had to say, unless you would pursue it, which I highly doubt.
I hate ideology. I don’t subscribe to conservatism AS an ideology. I subscribe to people who end wars, not re-start them. I hate violence, and am no fan of guns, but want the right to own them for self defense. It saved the Swiss from WW2, and you can google that if you think that I am trolling you. It also saved America from the Brits, and American slaves from their masters. To quote Gandhi: “Among many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest”. It’s how you use them, not what they inherently are. Not a fan of big tech, nor polluting the environment. Not a fan of telling people what to do, and how to do it. But that was exactly what Trump stood for: transgender bathrooms and better economy for everyone. How he would fall in this authoritarian category is beyond me. He was the most classical liberal president USA has seen, to date. But I guess I contradict myself on this: perhaps it’s too soon to tell.
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Alright Koz
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🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯 Right on, Ron, you tell him! Drumpfism is still the greatest threat to our democracy in 2021. It represents the same hypocrisy, corruption and wickedness within the mob we see in the show.
Anti-intellectual, anti-democratic, anti-science hysteria is all the right has now… they cry about fake “voter fraud”, when their last 2 Republican presidents – the most unqualified ever – both lost the vote of the American people! You saw how they acted when “Dear Leader” lost by more than 7 million votes. Can you imagine what they’d have done if, like us in 2000 and 2016, they’d actually won the vote, yet had to watch their candidate “lose” to someone who got less votes than them?!? Drumpf never had a chance of winning half the votes of the American people – and never will – but the system is so rigged in the Republicans favor by the white supremacist electoral college, he could still be elected president. That’s insanity. Yet, even when we win the electoral college in a route, like 2020, they think it’s their white so-called “Christian” right to have won… why? Because they don’t consider anyone who’s not a right-wing white Christian to be a “real American”, with a valid vote.
As the Sopranos understates, THIS IS A COUNTRY OF IMMIGRANTS.
PS. I am a proud leftist and John Brown has been my hero since childhood. Anyone trying to claim him for today’s American right-wing is hilariously, dangerously, delusional.
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Pingback: The Soprano Onceover: #44. “The Telltale Moozadell” (S3E9) | janiojala
Anonymous right-wingnuts say what, again ? 😉
Well stated, Ron. Thank you.
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Thank you for your effort Ron. I just wanted to make an observation about the very first paragraph – when Carmela buys the matching pair of earrings, rather than just forcing herself to wear the ring now, it could also be a representation of what constitutes a huge chunk of her character: the fact that she *buys* into that lifestyle. Tony gets a super expensive gift for her as a smokescreen for cheating on her again, and while she might be subsconciously alert that there could be something behind (the conversation with Jackie sr´s widow proves so) she formally accepts the gift by buying a pair of earrings.
Just a thought, hope you´re doing good and again thank you very much for this website.
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Thanks
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Not sure if my previous comment actually posted, not really used to this format! I was thanking you, Ron, for your effort and for this website, and wanted to point out that Carmela buying the pair of earrings to match the ring could be due to her *buying* into that lifestyle. While she may know, and the conversation with Jackie sr´s widow proves, that there could be something behind it, she formally accepts it and the gift by purchasing the pair of earrings.
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Thanks Jose
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Two of the funniest ‘Tony comments’:
~
“How do you vandalize a swimming pool?” and …
“On your mother’s birthday?” LMAO 🤡
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Every time I rewatch this episode I can’t get over what awful writer Michael Imperioli is. All of his episodes are bottom of the barrel Sopranos fare (although I will concede that Everybody Hurts has a couple passable moments (and by “a couple,” I mean two)), but the dialogue in this one is particularly odious. It’s not even worth listing examples, because it really is roughly every third line or so.
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Does anyone else think Gloria has a resemblance to Meadow?
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Like something out of Goyim?
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i think Matush, in his first scene in the bathroom is selling to the washed up rock star (Defiler?) from season 1
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One item of entertaining similarity: Rocco loses his Lollipop Club because of the “Goddamn Vikings” missing an extra point. This same theme is repeated in Don Winslow’s fantastic novel “The Winter of Frankie Machine”, Chapter 6. The main character’s (Frank Machianno) friend John Heaney has lost his restaurant in Ocean Beach (San Diego, opposite coast from The Sopranos). Goes like this…
“What’s the matter with you?” Frank asked him.
“Twenty large on the Vikes to cover,” John replied. “They blew an extra point. A goddamn fucking extra point.”
“You have the money?”
“No.”
So bye-bye restaurant.
…coincidence??
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