Carmela longs for Furio while he is away in Italy.
Tony hooks up with Valentina La Paz.
Nucci Gaultieri has difficulty fitting into
the social scene at Green Grove.
Episode 47 – Originally aired Nov 3, 2002
Written by Larry Konner
Story By Chase, Green, Burgess and Winter
Directed by Daniel Attias
___________________________________
The Sopranos does not adhere to the conventional structures of televisual storytelling. A storyline can come and go in unconventional ways. Take Carmela’s arc, for example. All season long, Carmela’s worries about Tony’s philandering, her family’s financial instability, and her growing fondness for Furio have occasionally come to the surface of the narrative only to quickly submerge again, glimpsed for a moment like the humps of some SopranoWorld Loch Ness monster, before Chase turned our focus to other issues: Adriana’s FBI problems, Johnny Sac’s oversensitivity about his obese wife, ethnic tensions in “Christopher,” financial exploitation of social ills in “Watching Too Much Television.” Now, two-thirds of the way into Season 4, Carmela’s storyline begins to really come in out of the wings. But it still doesn’t take center stage. (We’ll have to wait until the Season Finale for that.)
In the opening scene of the hour, Carmela makes Furio a comforting cup of coffee. He has to go back to Italy to attend to his sick father. She is truly infatuated with him, everything reminds her of Furio while he is gone, even the ponytail of chef Mario Batali who she watches on TV. In the shower, she hums the tune that she and Furio had danced to at his housewarming party in “The Weight” (the same tune that echoed in her head as Tony climbed on top of her later in that episode).
While Carmela’s fantasy lover has gone to Italy, Tony acquires himself a new real lover. Valentina La Paz catches Tony’s eye the very first time he sees her at the horse stables. He tries to stay away from Valentina at first, but boredom drives him toward her. Tony is bored because he trying to be more “hands-off” in his business affairs, delegating greater responsibility to Chris and Silvio. The appearance of his attorney Neil Mink here (who asks Tony “How’s the life of leisure?” on the golf course) is not random: it was Mink that had instructed Tony to scale back his direct involvement in mob business back in episode 2.11 “House Arrest,” which then led Tony to become so profoundly bored that he felt depressed and trapped within his own house:
Tony may have delegated more responsibility to his men, but he still restlessly tries to micromanage them. We see that nothing is able to calm him out of his restlessness. He is momentarily diverted by his new, state-of-the-art entertainment center, but it eventually puts him to sleep. We watch him as he stares out of a car window or sits like a lump at the mall, bored. He munches listlessly on popcorn while watching The Fugitive, a movie that fails to capture his interest. (In “House Arrest,” he complained to Melfi that the film Se7en couldn’t hold his attention—it was just one more thing in the “series of distraction till you die.”) Tony sighs and mopes throughout the early part of the episode, not able to get excited about anything.
After one final sigh, Tony decides to call Valentina. It should come as no surprise that they end up in a hotel room together. (I love how Tony described the hotel proprietors as “hicks,” and when he opens the hotel room window, you can hear—very faintly—a cow mooing. We never get an exterior shot of the hotel, but these little details establish its rural location. [Not that the hotel’s location is important—it’s simply another example of the profound attention to detail found throughout the series.]) But Tony does not have any long-term plans for Valentina—at least not at first. The idea of carrying on with a woman who is also with Ralph may be more repulsive to him than finding out in the previous episode that Ron Zellman is now his wiener-cousin. Valentina tries to explain to Tony that she and Ralph don’t have actual sex, but engage in other forms of sexplay instead. Tony cannot understand why Ralph doesn’t have “penissary contact with her Volvo.” He asks Silvio for his opinion on their colleague:
Tony: Lemme ask you a question. You think Ralph is a little weird about women?
Sil: I don’t know, Ton’. I mean, he beat one to death for… uh, I forget, what was it again?
Janice is able to give Tony a more thorough assessment of Ralph. For $3000, she spills the beans on her former lover: “He bottoms from the top.” She divulges his masochistic tendencies, his enjoyment of the strap-on. When she assures Tony that “plain old fucking” doesn’t excite Ralph, it paves the way for Tony to take Valentina as his new goomar.
I think it is notable that Miss Reyjkavic makes her third appearance of the season in this hour, as she and Tony have dinner with the other men and their goomars. Although she and Tony have obviously been carrying on some sort of relationship, she seems to not have achieved goomar status. She has gotten very little screentime or dialogue. We never even learn her real name. Part of her marginal status in Tony’s life may stem from her occupation as a stewardess—she simply is not around New Jersey for very long stretches before she has to leave. But another reason why she may be little more than a random fling for Tony might be because she is too Nordic. We know from past history that Tony prefers his goomars to be dark beauties, like something out of a “Goyim” portrait (as he described Gloria Trillo). Valentina certainly fits the bill. Tony gets a sense of her Latin heritage early on, when he hears Ralph call her “my Chiquita banana.” Valentina does have a resemblance to the Chiquita banana-girl, both the company icon and the Portuguese beauty Carmen Miranda:
Irina, Tony’s Russian mistress, was not Latin but she had the requisite dark hair and dark eyes. Perhaps more importantly, she had the dark attitude—like mother Livia—that Tony is continuously drawn to. Perhaps this is the reason why Tony doesn’t forge a significant relationship with Miss Reyjkavic—she may be too emotionally centered and stable for his (subconscious) tastes. Valentina not only has dark physical features, but her dark emotionality and neediness are also hinted at here.
Carmela finds Valentina’s acrylic nail in Tony’s clothing. She has largely come to accept Tony’s philandering, but to have such glaring evidence of it thrust into her face at this time—when she is already beset by money worries and Furio’s departure—is more than she can endure. Frustrated, she hurls her nighttime reading material against the wall. The Mists of Avalon is a famously feminist retelling of the King Arthur legends. The novel tells the stories of the strong, influential women behind the fabled men. But the Arthurian mythology is only that—mythology. By tossing the book, Carmela signals her readiness to get real. She goes down to the storage container where she knows Tony has hidden cash. As she tries to smash the lock open with a shovel, we understand that she is really trying to unlock her own sense of empowerment and self-determination. She is trying to gain access to a part of life that the Mob’s strict gender roles have barred her from.
Her first attempt at accessing the money is unsuccessful. It is only later, when Tony is in the shower humming Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” that Carmela is able to grab his keys to go down to unlock the container. We might note that her “betrayal” of Tony as he showers is a direct parallel to the earlier scene in which Tony “betrayed” Carmela as she showered, when he broke his wedding day promise to never douse her with cold water:
PARALLEL TO:
Carmela swipes about $50,000. She is no spring chicken, she knows how to invest the money without raising IRS eyebrows. We might note that the brokerage firms on her checklist have very real sounding names:
As authentic as the firms’ names seem, the writers may be having a bit of fun. “Charles Schneer” was the name of a Hollywood film producer. And “Bloom Roth” may be a reference to the contentious marriage of actress Claire Bloom and literary giant Philip Roth. After their divorce, Bloom skewered Roth in a tell-all memoir, and he countered (reportedly) by basing the destructive wife in his novel I Married a Communist on her.
The final scene of the hour tautly pulls Carmela and Tony’s stories together. It is a memorable scene but I’m not going to clip the entire thing. I just want to excerpt the first minute in order to highlight how cleverly staging and the camera are used to reinforce the subtext of the scene.
After finding the fingernail that Carmela has planted amidst his things, Tony comes down into Carm’s domain—the kitchen. Clearly, something is amiss—and perhaps his unexpected hankering for decaf now reflects the strangeness of the situation he finds himself in. As Carmela goes into the kitchen to brew a cup, the camera shifts to capture the shifting power dynamic between husband and wife. (Maurice Yacowar notes that the episode is framed by Carm’s coffee: in the first scene, she gave Furio a comforting cup with extra cream and sugar; in the final scene, she prepares a wimpy cup of decaf for Tony.) Tony steps out of the kitchen, maintaining the physical and emotional distance that has been present between them all season long. Carmela and Tony tiptoe around the topic foremost on their minds—his new “merger” with Valentina and her new “acquisition” of cash. Their mutual silence becomes, as the song goes, “another brick in the wall” between them.
In their essay “What Has Carmela Ever Done For Feminism?” Janet McCabe and Kim Akass note that in “Amour Fou” last season, Carmela and her friends had discussed the way that Hillary Clinton responded to Bill’s cheating:
Gabriella: She took all that negative shit he gave her and spun it into gold. You gotta give her credit.
Carmela: Well, that’s true, isn’t it? She a role model for all of us.
Carmela almost literally tries to spin Tony’s philandering into gold now, taking from the pile of money he has hidden away. Carmela certainly doesn’t consider herself a feminist the way Hillary Clinton might, and even tells Rosalie as much in this episode: “Women are supposed to be partners nowadays. I’m no feminist, I’m not saying 50-50, but geez.” I agree with McCabe and Akass that “maybe Carmela is more of a feminist than she thinks.” She asserts herself by filching Tony’s cash. She hits Tony right where it hurts him the most—in his money bin. She knows that in SopranoWorld, it is money, more than anything else, that talks.
Hear Carmela roar.
___________________________________
SETTING THE STAGE
“Mergers & Acquisitions” is a great episode in its own right, but it’s also great in how it sets the stage for the next episode, “Whoever Did This,” which is one of the jewels of The Sopranos. One way that it does this is by quietly resurrecting our memories of Tracee from “University.” Although Tracee is not mentioned by name in the present hour, there are two references that evoke her:
-
After Valentina tricks Ralph into stepping in a pile of horseshit, Tony tells her, “It can be risky trusting him to have a sense of humor.” He’s referring to Ralph’s pummeling of Tracee after she made some on-target jokes about him.
-
And, of course, Silvio is referring to her when he mentions the woman that Ralph beat to death.
Tracee’s name will not be mentioned in “Whoever Did This” either, but her memory undergirds that hour. Another important way that “Mergers & Acquisitions” sets up the next episode is by increasing Tony’s distrust of Ralph Cifaretto. Tony learns, from Valentina and Janice, of Ralph’s unusual sex habits here. Brian Gibson, in his essay “‘Black Guys My Ass’: Uncovering the Queerness of Racism in The Sopranos,” writes that…
Ralph’s private sexual submission to women, exemplified by his queer gender-switching when he has Janice screw him from behind with a strap-on dildo (“Christopher”), makes him seem an impotent, passive liar to Tony and a traitor who, like the rat Pussy, is hiding his false male loyalty beneath an exaggerated hard-guy image.
Ralph’s masculinity—the most important characteristic that a mob soldier should have—has been called into question. Perhaps Jackie Jr was right when he described Ralphie last season as a “secret fag.” (This episode notably explores definitions and limitations of gender. Tony is vexed by Carmela breaking out of the gender constraints placed on her by mob culture, and even more vexed by Ralph’s deviation from the traditional sex roles of his gender.)
A third way this episode sets up events of the events of “Whoever Did This” is through straight-up foreshadowing. Tony gives the horse-portraitist a reference photograph but asks if he can change the composition of the painting: “But what about this deadbeat…can you leave me in and just crop him out?”
Tony will himself crop Ralph out of the picture, so to speak, in the next episode.
___________________________________
GREEN GROVE (AND HIGH SCHOOL) REVISITED
I love Paulie’s storyline here. He provides some comic relief in an hour that delves into some serious issues between Tony and Carmela. Because of Tony Sirico’s bad back, we haven’t seen too much of Paulie this season, but he appears in classic form here. There really isn’t another character quite like Paulie Walnuts in American television. His grotesque immaturity is in full display now. (We learn in this episode that he dropped out of school in ninth grade, and perhaps that helps explain his arrested development.) When Nucci has difficulty befriending her old acquaintances Cookie Cirillo and Minn Matrone, and fitting into social life at Green Grove in general, the director explains to Paulie that a high school mentality exists among the residents of the retirement center. Little does the director realize that Paulie himself is a man with a high school mentality. He delivers veiled threats to Cookie’s son (a former pizza-faced classmate of his, now a high school principal). When that proves ineffective, he sends his goons to chase the man through the halls like they are high-school bullies.
WHO WILL WEAR THE CROWN?
The songs that close out each episode of The Sopranos are always inspired choices, but Delaney & Bonnie’s “When This Battle is Over” deserves special mention. It manages to pertain to all three of the major stories of the hour. Coming just after Tony and Carmela have their (non)confrontation in the kitchen, the song obviously underscores the power struggle occurring within the Soprano household (and picks up on the idea of the power behind King Arthur’s crown found in Carmela’s The Mists of Avalon):
When this battle is over
Who will wear the crown?
Will it be you?
Will it be me?
The song also recalls Ralph’s story. Tony learns that Ralphie doesn’t wear the king’s crown in his sexual relationships—he’s more of a queen. Finally, the song plays off of Paulie’s story here. When Principal Cirillo (with arm in plaster cast) and his wife inform mother Cookie that she must either be nicer to Paulie’s mom or be moved to another residence, she is outraged. She says, “This is Green Grove. Here the senior citizen is King and Queen.” Cookie may want to believe that she is a Queen, but in reality it is the mob—specifically Paulie—that holds power. It is Paulie that wears the crown.
___________________________________
ADDITIONAL NOTES:
-
Tony’s power is being threatened from multiple directions, though he barely recognizes it. Carmela is challenging Tony’s authority on the domestic front while Furio’s uncle advises Furio to kill the Boss if he really wants to be with the Boss’ wife. Meanwhile, Chris is sinking deeper into addiction, seeming less and less fit to be Tony’s Chief Operating Officer.
- Nucci tries to nuzzle up to Cookie by buying her a greeting card, telling Paulie that “I cared enough, and I sent the very best.” We see over and over again how characters retransmit, often without any sense of irony or self-awareness, the advertising slogans and jingles that have infiltrated their thoughts. These slogans are the cultural equivalents of the hamburger wrappers (in Furio’s complaint to his uncle) that surround the San Gennaro cathedral: they litter our cultural landscape, and sully what is most holy—our thoughts and speech.
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© 2021 Ron Bernard
Sopranos Autopsy 
The comparison to House Arrest is most apt. The two are companion or sister episodes in a way, both being largely about boredom. Johnny Cakes, Kaisha and Chasing It also perhaps could be said to follow this trend. House Arrest is the only one of these that’d rank highly on a list of my favorite episodes, yet I still find myself re-watching all of them often more than the very greatest episodes. There’s something fascinating and enjoyable about just kind of relaxing for an hour in the Sopranos world. Maybe that’s why I rate Seasons 3 and 4 as the best (besides 6): they eschew plot machinations in favor of day-in-the-life mini-movies. I almost feel Season 5, great as it is, is a bit too fast-paced and plot-focused, as if trying to compensate for the viewer-alienating languor of Season 4. But languor is practically the show’s default mode, even at its plottiest, and if that wasn’t clear to people by Funhouse it should’ve been made sparkling clear by the final nine episodes — how remarkably character-driven and unconventionally uninterested in moving forward Big Narratives they are. Soprano Home Movies, Stage 5, Remember When and Chasing It are pretty much all character pieces, with only Stage 5 really moving much plot forward; even Walk Like a Man with all its incredible momentum is basically just focused on Chris and AJ’s psychology. Kennedy and Heidi is a game-changing episode but even that only has hints of the NY-NJ conflict, and it’s really only in The Second Coming with Coco’s affront and especially The Blue Comet that we actually get real plot momentum. Pretty amazing if you think about it, just how wonderfully unorthodox Chase’s storytelling sensibilities were, for such a pop-culture giant of a show. But I digress…
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Absolutely, and I think that the languor you speak of is a reflection of what lies at the core of the show—The Sopranos was constantly digressing and meandering away from those Big Narratives, often choosing to focus instead on “the fucking regularness of life.” I love Season 5, however, in part because it is so “plotty”—with Carmela and Adriana and Tony Blundetto’s forward-driving narratives in S.5, Chase proved that he could do “conventional TV” better than any conventional TV show could. In an odd way, it is precisely Season 5’s conventionality that makes it so different from all the other seasons.
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Seasons 3 and 4 are my favourite too, they really capture the languor and malaise of modern life than any other show. That, and Ralphie and Gloria Trillo were two of the most interesting characters the show ever produced. Joe Pantolio’s playing of Ralphie in itself felt complex enough to the be the central character of his own mob-show. Unfortunately I don’t think the average audience could stomach it.
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“There’s something fascinating and enjoyable about just kind of relaxing for an hour in the Sopranos world.”
I think that is just it – even all these years later, and with all the other TV shows out there, I keep coming back to The Sopranos. In this hectic ever more crazy world of ours, if I want to watch one hour of excellent writing, acting and cinematography, I know The Sopranos will deliver every time.
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Paul – I agree, ‘The Sopranos’ always delivers, as does ‘Seinfeld’. Two of the very best TV shows around!
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On at least a couple of occasions, I’ve watched the scene where Tony pours the glass of cold water on Carmela while she’s showering, and I get the false impression that he’s doing that to Valentina. Excellent juxtaposition there.
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That is my favorite scene of the episode. It seems both Carmela and Tony, each in their own way, desperately desire returning to a past where they shared a young love. But they fail to escape their present, too much luggage holding them back. And find themselves in a deadlock of mutes, culminating in the kitchen scene.
I find both Edie Falco’s and James Gandolfini’s acting spot on here. How they express the hope of maybe finding some of the old sparkles back, then being disappointed in the harsh present. How would the episode, and the entire show, have turned should Tony simply have hugged Carmela here?
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When Tony pours the water on Carmella over the top edge of the shower cubicle and she comes out wrapped in a robe, indignant, the fact her hair is plastered to the sides of her face, rather than the elaborate middle-aged lady beauty salon style she usually has, makes her look much younger to me. More casual. It’s like a flash back to when Tony and Carm were young, and both were less predictable, referenced by Carm to their honeymoon, when Tony last pulled that stunt. The sadness for me is that Tony is testing whether Carm can be young again, like Valentina with her practical jokes, and she’s telling him no, she can’t. Life has to be serious at their age.
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When Tony is in the shower, and Carmella looks in furtively,
I thought for a moment she was going to repay Tony by
playing the cold water trick on him! But that would have
been a different show. She goes to the bird feeder instead.
BTW, this also reminded me of the episode in Mad Men
when Don’s wife finally gains access to his locked drawer.
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I believe you misintrepreted what Paulie said when speaking to that principal. Paulie told the principal that it looked like his face cleared up and then Paulie said “see, ninth was my last” (inferring that 9th grade was the last year he had bad skin- NOT that he dropped out of school in 9th grade).
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I disagree. When Paulie says 9th was his last he is referring to why he didn’t know the other guy’s skin had cleared in the 10th. You can tell this puts an awkward strain on the moment between the two men.. one being a literal representative of education, the other a drop out.
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Shit. On second thought, you and Ron were probably right, ha. Either way, when is Ron going to finish the autopsies? Season 5 still needs to be finished and season 6 was also supposed to be done by now! Ron needs to get either a no-show or a no-work job so he can concentrate on this site.
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Hahaha someone please get me a no-show…
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” Either way, when is Ron going to finish the autopsies? Season 5 still needs to be finished and season 6 was also supposed to be done by now!”
Charlie, I know you’re not gonna see this as the comment is 2 years old (also you might’ve meant it a bit tongue in cheek) but if anyone actually believes this you need to stop acting entitled..
These are probably the best Soprano episode analysis’ I’ve read and he seems to spend a lot of time on research. Oh and he does it without getting paid for it. Don’t be like Charlie, people.
This message was brought to you by Ron for America 2020
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Hahaha
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Two pretty major parallels with Ralph’s masochism (great article though, as usual OP) are Tony with the mob and Carmela with Tony. Tony is trying not to be in control of his family; however, he can’t resist micromanaging Chris and Silvio. Also, Carmela is keeping up the appearance of being subversive to Tony, while secretly empowering herself behind his back (again, almost literally; in his back yard. (Maybe I’m over interpreting here.)). Both examples of ‘bottoming from the top’, in my opinion. I see it rather as a central theme. Where Paulie’s story fits into this? Maybe through the ‘normal’ mother/son-relationship and the establishing of Paulie as the bully, not the bullied. So he’s the exact opposite.
Fantastic episode, yet again.
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the interaction with Adrianna and Ralphie. Ade tells him ” my mom told me you can tell everything about a man by the way he treats women”. Well what does that have to say about Christopher lol
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I think she denies that Christopher is as bad as he is to herself. Also, she seems to understand him, and what makes him tick. So for some women, its a care taking thing. She loves him, good or bad. I think many woman and men too have an attitude of “saving” the one they love.
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That does sound like Adriana…
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One thing that seems strange to me about Ralphie is that he must have had
‘conventional’ sex at least once with Tracee if the baby she carried was his.
But why?
He never connected with Janice or Valentina’s ‘Volvo’s’. What about
Rosalie’s? We see the ‘frustrated goomar & wife’ again in Vito’s story later on, but in
Ralphie’s case what was different about Tracee? Maybe it wasn’t
different, and Tracee’s taunting of him at the end was related to his
preference for being the bottom, leading him to kill the story – literally. But at
least once she must have convinced him to do it the regular way, as did his
ex-wife.
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He has had one with Tracee that we got a glimpse of at the Bing (a threesome with a police officer?).
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There is an interesting moment in ‘Christopher’. In Rosalie’s bedroom, she and Ralphie are arguing, before they break up. She says he has had “your every need taken care of sexually, everything,” He does not respond. In retrospect, it seems that she has deceived herself. She was only giving him straight sex. Janice was taking care of all his needs – that’s why he was so keen to go to her.
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Wiener cousins where I come from is stronger than family.
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hahaha
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I don’t like the new Goomar. She’s annoying and I am surprised that they made her that superficial. Tony likes her playful sense of humor, but its so juvenile. I mean, Carmela is not exactly the life of the party, but they have been married 20 years, and things sort of even out by then.This one is the worst of the women we have seen him take up with. Even when Ralph’s son is speared, all she can think of is what she will order at “Tavern on the Green” which in and of itself is kind of a corny place to eat these days. Maybe it represents high class to her. Does anyone else find her annoying?
.
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I just started reading “Tony Soprano’s America,” a book that came out last year. It describes Valentina as “vulgar” but says Tony can’t see her vulgarity because of how attractive she is. It just shows how shallow Tony can be. And of course, Tony breaks up with her only after her pretty face is disfigured in a fire.
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Yeah I personally couldn’t stand Valentina whenever she was onscreen. Though I shouldn’t complain as she actually gets very little screentime (mostly during coitus). The audience is only ever really hinted at her Livia-like tendencies right before her send-off in the kitchen fire.
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Ralph probably has just plain old regular sex with Rosalie to keep up appearances. Who knows if Ralph is really the father of Tracee’s baby anyway? The paternity is questionable at best. Kinky sex can still get you pregnant as well.
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He was going to break up with her before the fire, because he was upset that he couldn’t do it because of how would it look. I also think that he doesn’t
care if she’s vulgar, she’s a simpler woman than Gloria, less likely to cause trouble and purely ornamental and sexual. She has no depth and after Gloria, that’s what he needed. He got tired of her too.
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In terms of verisimilitude, I can’t help but point out out that when the AV installation guy puts on the music with the bagpipes, that that is very likely the same channel showing “The Fugitive” that Tony tunes into later. Earlier in the movie [than the scene Tony ends up watching afterwards], there is a scene that takes place running through a St. Patrick’s Day parade where bagpipes are blaring.
It’s extraordinarily minor but I absolutely love the detail that shows that this is a television channel in the real world that gets tuned into and out of.
The only other time I’ve ever seen a detail like that is in the first episode of that *other* greatest show of all time, The Wire. Midway through the episode, two of the characters are driving through Baltimore, listening to hip hop on the car radio. Eventually they pull over, turn the car off (thus ending the music), and engage in conversation outside the car. About 10 or 15 seconds later, an irrelevant car drives by, pumping that very same hip hop song, implying that both the characters we meet and the characters we don’t live in the same city, listening to the same radio station. I just absolutely love those kinds of touches.
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Wow, good catch. It’s been awhile since I watched The Fugitive but I wouldn’t be surprised if this detail was true. It was also in this episode where they added the “cow mooing” sound clip to establish a rural location – Chase was really on top of his sound game in this one!
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Remember who is in the cast of The Fugitive ?
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Actually ignore this. Of course you do.
Superb site though, thanks for all the hard work.
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Thank you. Anyway, it’s Joey Pants haha
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Good work as usual. This episode neatly sets up the next one, which I think is the finest of the entire series. Finding that fingernail seems to have really pissed off Carm. I think this lit the fuse into what will transpire into Whitecaps. I enjoy how you break down the psychology of Paulie Walnuts. It makes for excellent reading and could be close to us rational folks as to what the hell goes on inside this character’s head.
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I enjoyed the echo of Tony’s ‘To Do’ list in ‘To Save Us All From Satan’s Power’ in Carmela’s Checklist in this episode.
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This episode has a spot in my top ten. As always, incredible insight and analysis. One thing that always stood out to me in this hour was the use of nudity. We see a rare naked Carmela and Tony showering as well as a naked Valentina. We see the characters, warts and all, but are aware each is still hiding secrets (badly) from the other. A nod to the fact that the character’s secrets (Carmela’s siphoning the money, Tony’s new mistress) aren’t all that secret and they both see each other for all they are.
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Great point. I’m usually wary of filmmakers who use “nudity” to represent “transparency” or “vulnerability” because it’s a bit too on-the-nose, but Chase is very subtle with it here…
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It was pretty meta when Tony told Dr. Melfi, “Friday nights were for the wives, but Saturday was always for the girlfriends,” a mangled line from Goodfellas (“Saturday night was for wives, but Friday night at the Copa was always for the girlfriends”), the film in which Lorraine Bracco played the wife in question. The camera cuts to a quick shot of Melfi’s face after Tony says this, and I could have just been imagining it, but I swear I saw a hint of a smile in her otherwise expressionless face, as if she’s in on the joke and appreciates the reference. 🙂
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haha totally meta… Tony even says he may have gotten the days the other way around, which would put it in line with what we heard in Goodfellas
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Ron –
In the paragraph beginning “After one final sigh”, I notice your correct use of brackets-within-brackets. Good. One doesn’t often see that.
A small error in the commentary on the previous episode. The black community leader is not Maurice Tibbett, but Tiffen.
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Ah thanks
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Re: Ralphie and “bottoming from the top”. I’m not sure it’s enough to say that Tony views Ralphie as a proto-Vinnie who, because he’s a closeted insufficiently masculine sexual deviant, is not to be trusted. I feel there’s something deeper going on here. One clue comes from Janice’s reversal of the typical expression ‘topping from the bottom’ into “bottom[ing] from the top”. The reversal here isn’t just a silly Carmine Jr. or Tony malapropism – it fundamentally reverses the typical expression’s meaning. Topping from the bottom = even when he’s playing submissive, he remains in control. Bottoming from the top = he seems like he’s in control, but he really *is* submissive, i.e., subject to humiliation. This, for Ralphie, *is* the erotic – iterating on this dynamic replaces for him penissary-volvo contact.
What’s the takeaway for the episode? In this episode, in his boredom, Tony has some time to kick around his own thoughts on unconscious motivations. His own possible intercourse displacements. Will Valentina just be Gloria all over again? In other words, if Ralphie is “bottoming from the top”, thus displacing the eros of intercourse onto the act of being humiliated, does Tony top from the bottom, thus displacing the eros of intercourse onto degrading others while pretending to be a decent guy? This would be pursuant to 4.06, where Tony is pre-occupied with the question of whether or not he is a fundamentally toxic person, after finding out about Gloria’s suicide.
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hey Ron, with this episode in tony’s session with Melfi he mentions an associate with two families, one in jersey and one somewhere else; who do you think he’s referring to? for some reason I always thought it was patsy
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Now that you mention it, Patsy seems like a good candidate—but I’m not even sure why I feel that way lol
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I know what you mean It’s really weird Ha ha ha!!!
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I think it’s Patsy as well because this episode has the scene in the restaurant with Patsy and his “goomar” and it’s noted in his comment “fifteen years of chicken mario!” and she snaps back that she likes it. They’ve been together a long time so she’s his other “wife” busting his balls. The little details of this show.
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Ron did you notice that the horse trainer rarely talks to Ralph? She only answers to Tony or other people around them. She hated Ralph.
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Good observation, I got that vibe too
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Just a funny coincidence: in 2.04, Annalisa burns her nail clippings, as you noted, to prevent her enemies from cursing her. Valentina’s jewel-encrusted fake nail that comes home with Tony in this episode strangely fulfills the prophecy to some extent: Carmela finds the nail and decides to use it to play with Tony’s head. Tony realizes this, and he also realizes a good chunk of cash is missing from his stash. The acrylic nail is also a tongue-in-cheek way of saying it’s the “final nail in the coffin” for Carmela’s desire to create a life savings: Carm decides to steal Tony’s money to invest in stocks/bonds for her future.
Another thing: in the preceding episodes with AJ learning about his family’s relatively modest wealth (in comparison to Devin’s family), there’s obviously the theme of economic and social class. I instantly thought “chicken feed” when Tony counts his cash hidden in the sack of birdseed.
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I don’t think Ralph was having vaginal sex in the threesome. Judging from the angle she was in, I thought it was anal sex. Which I interpreted as Ralph had no compunctions about how much he might discomfort or degrade her.
Re: which night is for the goomar and which for the wife, in an earlier episode, Tony takes his goomar to a restaurant on Friday, and then the next night he takes Carmela. (With the maitre d’ flawlessly participating in the deception on Saturday, “Mr. Tony, we never see you anymore!”)
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I once had dinner at a Philadelphia bar/restaurant that evidently was a mob hangout, at least at one time. It’s called The Saloon. Girlfriends on Friday, wives on Saturday.
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Anon – Yup! As a teenager, I remember Fridays being referred to as ‘date night’. Sigh.
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When Paulie is waiting to see the principal, he is sitting next to a boy who is chastised for not putting shoelaces in his shoes, which takes me back to the early episode where Paulie is lecturing the guys about shoelaces.
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What’s the significance of the use of The Fugitive here? The film gets several seconds of uninterrupted screen time. Is this just a simple reference to Tony trying to run away from hands-on mob activity, or is there something more complex going on here?
The scene Tony is watching is the one in which Harrison Ford’s character is solving the entire conspiracy against him. Remember, The Fugitive is the film Chrissy settles on in The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti as embodying three-act structure and a protagonist who undergoes change through conflict. The end of this episode, by contrast, is marked by a lack of catharsis: there’s no actual confrontation between Tony and Carmela.
Or is this a reference Tony having downtime in this episode to actually ponder what he’s all about, but instead running from it like a fugitive, to a new entertainment system, a new comare, basically anything that doesn’t require him to look himself in the mirror, because he’s terrified of what he saw there in Everybody Hurts?
Ron, what say you? Love the site and thanks so much for it. It’s been, no exaggeration, a great enrichment in my life that’s made me look at all kinds of art so much more closely.
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Thanks Jonathan. An interesting thing about The Fugitive is that Joe Pantoliano is in it, and his character in The Sopranos has a big episode coming up very soon…
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Doesn’t the Fugitive have one arm? Svetlana has one leg….
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In episode 87 of The Sopranos, Harrison Ford figures out Svetlana was Tony’s real killer…
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Ron – LMAO! Oh, BTW … you ARE penning your thoughts on 6:21, right?
I started dreaming about characters in this series when I started reading this awesome blog – seriously! Actually, I recently had a horrid nightmare about Silvio, of all people. Woke up yelling ‘OMG’! 😢
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Working on 6.21…
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Another bizarre dream … I dreamt that Ron’s much-awaited, much anticipated episode 21 autopsy was due for publication in 2023. I kid you not! I have to stop coming on this site … I have to stop obsessing … I have to … oh, what the hell. I ain’t gonna stop until Ron delivers! Seriously, take your time – all the time you need. Just don’t make me wait until 2023!! 🐽
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Haha no, it’s coming soon..
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Hilarious cut between Carmela speaking to Rosalie at the Church charity drive about “Tony’s circle” to the stables as we get a good view of a horse’s ass trotting past.
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😆
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Pingback: The Soprano Onceover: #55. “Mergers and Acquisitions” (S4E8) | janiojala
R.I.P. Anna Berger (‘Cookie Cirillo’, Minn Matrone’s friend at Green Grove), 2014
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Some great insight in the comments here.
A cple of things I have been pondering – why does Tony instantly shut down Furio when he opens up about his father’s illness at the beginning of the episode? He almost tries to offer him money to get him to shut up. Same again when Paulie begins a chat in the car about his mother.
Also – I wonder if Paulie’s own standing among his peers/social group is not so different from his mother’s? Unlike [for example] Christpoher & Silvio, Paulie is not included in Tony’s plans and he has been sidelined somehat to the periphery. We learn in this episode that his mother cries a lot and is a *telltale*. This immediately reminded me of Paulie’s lunch in the previous episode with Johnny Sack where he complained about not knowing full details [he was excluded] of the HUD scam.
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Only note here: Although Carmen Miranda was born in Portugal, she always considered herself as Brazilian =)
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Carmela puts the nail in the same spot she found the key. She is telling Tony that this is the price of the goomar and the recklessness. She is seeing if he puts it together, how he tries to get confirm it, and how he handles his temper. She is having fun with it and being strategic. You can feel her, “Just try me,” anticipation while they have this dance around it. And he just paid $3000 to Janice to have Valentina. I feel smug for Carmela, right along with her.
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