Tony takes greater responsibility for Ralph’s horse.
Adriana meets her new FBI handler.
Janice pursues widower Bobby.
Episode 44 – Originally aired Oct 14, 2002
Written by Robin Green and Mitch ‘Iowa’ Burgess
Directed by Henry Bronchtein
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We see several different “horses” in this episode. The first one is a nightclub—Adriana’s Crazy Horse. Ade has always been interested in music (remember her foray into music production in 1.10?) and now she has her very own venue to feature some of the hottest local bands in New Jersey. But she is coming to understand that Chris procured the club not so much as a gift for her but as an additional place of business for la famiglia. A lyric from the song that the band performs in the opening scene says a lot: “It’s all about you.” This lyric gives voice to a main component of the episode (really, of the entire series): selfishness. Adriana thought the club was all for her but the mob has their own selfish reasons for getting it. And when Tony comes into the place, Adriana thinks his conversations are all about her—she imagines he is talking about her being a rat. The Dutch angle of the camera reflects her destabilized state-of-mind:
The FBI are also selfish, they care very little about their new mole. At a bakery, Agent Deborah Ciccerone coldly passes Ade off to her new handler, Robyn Sanseverino. We see immediately how much of a sarcastic bitch agent Robyn can be, as she mocks Adriana’s naïve beliefs regarding the fate of former mob associates. She gives Adriana a reality check. This scene in the bakery is also noteworthy for how it points to The Sopranos’ preoccupation with Food, Faith & Firearms:
Sitting amidst pastries and desserts with a jeweled cross hanging from her neck, Adriana realizes that Big Pussy and her uncle Richie met violent ends. She has to excuse herself to go to the bathroom. (She will be afflicted with Irritable Bowl Syndrome over the course of the coming year.) To his credit, agent Dwight Harris seems to find Robyn’s callous attitude distasteful. But like the other agents, he does not hesitate to apply pressure to Adriana in order to get information from her. They stalk her, call her unexpectedly, arrange secret meetings. When they question her about Giovanni, she lies to them. She had seen Chris and the guys beat Giovanni with a phonebook but she doesn’t want to implicate her boyfriend, so she sends the Feds down a different trail. The double-life is already taking a toll on Adriana. She takes comfort in “horse” of a different kind—Christopher’s heroin.
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Janice has a hardier personality than young Adriana. While the younger woman is being manipulated by the mob and the FBI, Janice does some manipulating of her own. From her window, she sees Jojo Palmice make a visit to Bobby’s house. Just as Bobby comes into frame, we hear a voice on Janice’s TV say, “Let’s bring out your lover.” (I think it is Jerry Springer’s voice, effectively launching this tabloid storyline.) Janice rushes over to Bobby’s home so that she can squeeze her rival Jojo out. Throughout the hour, Janice presents herself as a matronly type, someone who will make a good wife and mother:
She passes Jojo’s chicken marsala off as her own at Corrado’s house, and passes Carmela’s lasagna off as her own at Bobby’s. I particularly love how she opens Bobby’s dishwasher only to kick it closed as soon as Jojo leaves, without having rinsed a single dish. Janice is selfishly grabbing at security and power with both hands here. As she tries to seduce Bobby, she simultaneously tries to raise his standing with Boss Corrado (which would be a boon to her if she does land Bobby). She gets Bobby to do the job Corrado had asked him to do. When Bobby corners the union shop steward and intimidates him, we understand that: 1) there’s more to Bobby than we had previously recognized, and 2) Janice is the woman who will pull him out of his funk and help him realize his full mobster potential.
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The star of the hour is Ralph’s horse Pie-O-My (although technically she is owned by Inez, Ralph’s housekeeper). The racehorse is a perpetual underperformer so Tony suggests a new tactic for the upcoming race. The jockey doesn’t take Tony’s advice, but the race plays out in such a way that Tony’s strategy sounds golden. Ralph gives Tony credit—and a cut of his substantial winnings. After the next successful race, Tony demands, with outstretched hand, another substantial cut. And Tony has even more (expensive) advice for Ralph—the horse should be fitted with titanium shoes. Ralph felt no great love for Pie-O-My to begin with, and now these additional expenses pollute his feelings for the horse even further. When Inez frantically calls Ralph to ask him to pay the veterinarian, Ralph directs her to Tony instead.
There is an interesting parallel being made between Pie-O-My and Carmela here. We know that Tony has a tendency to subconsciously equate his family with animals, going all the way back to the ducks in the Pilot episode. Now, we see Tony act as a provider to the horse as well as to his family. Carmela has been hounding him for weeks to let Cousin Brian set up some legit investments for the family. Tony finally agrees—but he will not sign the irrevocable insurance trust because Ginsberg has warned him that it could bite him in the event of a divorce. Tony draws Carmela’s ire by not giving her the trust (in both senses of the word). Nor is Tony willing to invest in Carm’s stock tip. He is, however, willing to provide for her the way that he always has, doling out a weekly allowance. In mirrored scenes, we see how Tony supports those he cares about, dishing out cash to Carmela just as he does to Pie’s vet:
In the episode’s final scene, Tony sits with the ailing horse. Pie-O-My’s companion, a goat, joins them in the stable. The hour closes to the sound of Dean Martin’s “My Rifle, My Pony and Me.” Obviously, Chase must have chosen the song because of its reference to a horse. But perhaps there is more to this particular song selection…
We first heard this song as Tony watched Rio Bravo in the season opener, “For All Debts Public and Private.” And then two episodes later, in “Christopher,” Tony made a reference to High Noon. It’s a well-known fact of American film history that these two films have a strong connection to each other. Kate Kulzick at sightonsound.org writes that Rio Bravo was in fact made “as a direct rebuttal to High Noon.” The political and ideological arguments made by the two films are complicated and difficult to disentangle now, decades later, but the differences in the stories of each film’s main character are more easy to understand, and more relevant for my purposes here. Sheriff Kane (played by Gary Cooper) in High Noon is a man who must find the strength to persevere after he is betrayed and abandoned by everyone around him. Sheriff John Chance (played by John Wayne) in Rio Bravo is in the opposite situation; Kate Kulzick continues, “This film centers on affirmation, as friend after friend pops up to help…” So: Sheriff Kane must face his mortal threat alone while Sheriff Chance finds strength and comfort in the community that has formed around him.
The Sopranos, like both of these films, deals with various notions of community, including the lack or loss of community. Tony is part of a community, both through his family and his famiglia. But his relationships with his family and his famiglia are too flawed to provide him with any strong sense of community, and that weakens his bond with each. He continues to philander and pursue a mobster lifestyle even though that perpetually puts his domestic family at risk. And he knows that the mafia community would turn on him in an instant—as he himself has done to colleagues—if business demanded it. To make matters worse for him, Tony may have inherited from his mother some distrust of the very notion of community. Livia Soprano was never able to meaningfully connect with anyone—neither with her family nor her neighbors nor her fellow residents at Green Grove. When her grandson struggled with Nietzsche’s decree that “God is dead” in episode 2.07, Livia could only instruct AJ with her nihilism: “People let you down…In the end, you die in your own arms…It’s all a big nothing.”
A dark philosophy of nihilism prowls its way through this hour. A few examples: as Tony lays in bed, he is disturbed by the loud music of Deicide (a band whose name announces the death of god) coming from AJ’s bedroom; Corrado, disappointed that Bobby has not yet done a job that he asked him to do, complains “Each of us is alone in the fucking universe”; and when Vito and later Adriana crash to the floor because of a faulty chair, they incite peals of laughter rather than concern or sympathy.
We should note that “My Rifle, My Pony and Me” appears in Rio Bravo as Sheriff Chance’s posse takes refuge from an increasingly hostile town inside a jailhouse. The moment is one of lightness and camaraderie, as the four friends come together to form their own strong community:
Chase plays this song from Rio Bravo just as Tony Soprano forms a community of sorts with Pie-O-My and the goat. The stable has, at least temporarily, become a place where Tony finds refuge from his domestic and professional troubles, but also from the overall nihilism that poisons SopranoWorld.
The episode is bookended by a pair of “horses”: the opening shot is of the Crazy Horse nightclub, and the closing shot features Pie-O-My. These two “horses” couldn’t be more different, in a literal sense, but also in what they represent metaphorically: while the Crazy Horse will become an increasingly hostile place for Adriana (eventually playing a crushing role in her ultimate fate), Tony’s buoyant love for Pie-O-My will grow over the next few episodes.
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ADDITIONAL NOTES:
- Title significance: Maurice Yacowar writes that Pie-O-My’s name reflects Tony wanting his (or “my”) piece of the pie, as when he keeps his hand extended for a bigger cut of the race payout. If so, the name is a clever pun. But I seem to remember reading somewhere that the horse used for filming was actually named “Pie-O-My.” If this is the case, the episode title takes on a certain earnestness, perhaps underscoring the earnest connection that Tony feels to the horse (a connection that will drive his murderous rage in “Whoever Did This” later this season). [Edit: Turns out the horse’s real name is Goldee.]
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Hmm, just a coincidence?: I just realized upon re-watching that there is a lot of talk about the irrevocable insurance trust that Carmela wants in this episode, an episode which obviously features Pie-O-My. It is because of the horse’s insurance that Tony will suspect Ralph killed her in “Whoever Did This.”
- Corrado reworks a line from Twelfth Night (“I’m waiting like patience on a monument”) just as he did in episode 1.04.
- Although an ugly nihilism persistently skulks around SopranoWorld, there is evidence of love and concern in Chase’s universe: the food and Tupperware stacked in Bobby’s kitchen are signs of community—his friends and relatives are giving him support after the death of his wife.
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Sopranos Autopsy 
Interesting that, in the final scene, Tony sits down in the stable with Pie-O-My, and immediately commits one of the biggest no-no’s possible: smoking in a barn. Nothing bad happened, but it’s kind of a nice bit of foreshadowing of Pie’s ultimate fate.
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Started back in on the series.
Interesting take on the Westerns. When Bobby is talking in the bar to the Union guy, the music in the background is Theme for an Imaginary Western by Mountain.
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The final scene, with the torrential downpour, rustic setting/scenery, different animals… imagery that brings to my mind Noah’s Ark. Significance? Not sure yet.
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“These guys… no compassion for the animals whatsoever.”
This strikes me as an episode very much centered around the simple concept of compassion, or lack thereof. Both Vito and Adriana get laughed at when they fall off the chair in the Crazy Horse, plainly revealing the cruelty of Chris and the other guys. (At least Junior brusquely suggests Bobby make sure clumsy Murf is alright when they hear a big clanging coming from the kitchen!) Bobby is overwhelmed with plates of food from kind women like JoJo, but Janice leeches off of others’s compassion and uses it to put up her own false image of same. Ralph doesn’t give a fuck about Pie, but Tony is warmhearted enough to rush out in the rain and sit in the stable comforting her. We also see more of Ralph’s compassion-less streak in his scenes at the stables, interacting with the jockey — and everyone else’s aversion to this kind of verbal abuse (even though they all practice it, if not to the same extreme). Further, we see the cruel treatment of Ade by the FBI… and then by Chris at home. She pledges her love for him, and all he wants is his eggs stirred. And on and on… I’m sure you could find many such examples like this in most episodes — it’s far from a warm-and-fuzzy show! — but the theme seems rather pronounced here, I think.
On another note, it’s interesting how AJ and Meadow don’t feature in this episode at all — it’s the only S4 episode that Robert Iler isn’t credited for. (In fact, several of the best episodes happen to not feature Iler — like House Arrest, Knight in White Satin Armor, Amour Fou, Employee of the Month and Remember When).
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I think there is actually an interesting connection between your two points… Iler wasn’t the strongest actor but I think his strongest moments came in Season 6b when AJ was going through his post-Blanca depression; this was a period of AJ’s life very much marked by a lack of compassion, both in his father’s clumsy attempts to help him and in AJ’s own cruelty around the two Jasons…
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David – Re: Meadow’s absences:
Jamie-Lynn Sigler was diagnosed with MS (multiple sclerosis) at age 20. She acknowledged having certain problems (i.e., mobility) during her tenure on this series. So, her absences can be attributed to MS. (As far as Iler’s absences go, I certainly didn’t care!)
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To continue off of what’s been said about this episode being about the contrast between compassion and the lack-of, and to tie it back in to what’s been mentioned about previously that Ralph has been equated symbolically to the Devil: the scene where the guys are visiting Pie-Oh-My in the stable all together, during the walk up, they pass a goat that Tony extends his hand gently towards before Ralph snaps, “Careful, Tony, the goat bucks!”. In contrast, during the final scene, the goat enters the stall with Tony and Pie calmly. I feel like this one line from Ralph and small gesture from Tony was just an other juxtaposition of the main theme, suggesting the animals could feel Tony’s compassionate nature, and by contrast, Ralph’s lack-of.
So basically; an other Ralph devil reference? He must have been messing with that goat to get it to buck at him. Goat seemed chill with Tony.
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Now that you mention it, it’s hard to imagine Ralph not messing with that goat…
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A small correction. Ralphie says the goat “butts”.
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Ralph is identified frequently with Satan on the show (“the goat”) and also has a sexual preoccupation with “butts,” mostly his own.
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Bobby was eventually brought around by Janice- to bad it was for her own selfish reasons. Even Junior warned him about how Janice can be. By the end of Season 6B in regards to Bobby’s fate, I then wondered if Janice really did love him. Junior’s reaction to his “drawing” on the news is worth watching this episode, if the only reason. Ralph / devil / goat reference is quite interesting. No doubt about it the guy is the devil, at least in Sopranoworld. The ending of this episode is spectacular. The music and the overall tone and Tony bonding with the horse.
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LOve from Janice does not mean much. She is full of cheap sentiment. She dreamed if killing her mother. She shot her fiancee to death. She wanted to kill her brother. Janice lies to herself and others. I am surprised he fell under the sway of Janice but if you look at how Junior and Tony treat him he is used to being taken for granted and mocked by the Sopranos. Janice is just the next Soprano he takes orders from even though she dislikes his children and gets him killed. Again I am seeing how being in a community based on deception, and manipulation, and taking advantage of people cripples its’ members ability to be authentic and listen to themselves so they can communicate without violence and respond without violence but just assertively
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In ‘National Velvet’, Velvet Brown names her horse “The Pie” and the trainer is named Mi.
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Hmm “food” for thought…
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Adriana mentions moving to Chris and suggests Santa Barbara…
Michael Imperioli ended up buying a home in Santa Barbara
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Life imitates art…
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the horse who played Pie-O-My has her own Facebook page, where it’s stated her real name is “Goldee”
https://twitter.com/pieomyisalive
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And apparently Goldee will be appearing at the SopranosCon fan convention in Nov 2019
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Goldee just passed away i read several months back. Awful. She lived a full life and was beautiful. Lady Pie R.I.P
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Before reading these, I hadn’t thought much of Agent Harris and his moral quandaries, but damn it if they aren’t there. TVDW characterized S6’s Tony/Harris relationship as one of mutual respect between former rivals, and the seeds, it seems, were there from way back. Ron, you noted way back in “I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano” that he seems uneasy about playing Tony the Green Grove tapes, and in this episode he isn’t as cruel as the other agents. While Chase & Co’s moral view of the mob is clear from the get go, hits and tits aside, it’s interesting that they seem to have a dim view of the “good guys” as well, consistently depicting them as petty bullies not unlike their mafioso counterparts. I get the feeling that Chase in general embodies the “incredulity toward metanarratives” defined by Jean-François Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition, distancing himself from Northern Exposure as a glorification of corporatism, gladly deconstructing the mob’s self-identification as a “thing of honor,” and also critiquing the self-righteousness of those who think themselves correct for being on the law’s side. Good, as the trope says, is not necessarily nice, and vice versa (Tony has love for the horse, but is overall a man in moral decline). In the uncinematic regularness of life, there are no b&w heroes. Harris at least seems apprehensive of such reductive concepts himself, and is even willing to “work” with Tony in the final season. He’s not the liveliest character, either, mostly speaking in a dull, procedural monotone, typically eschewing humor (“You trying to bribe me?”), and keeping on task with the job. Perhaps he’s “natural police,” as they say in The Wire, another great show that depicts both sides of the fence in an unglamorous warts-and-all way.
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I think also part of the reason why we don’t think too much about Agent Harris’ moral quandaries is because the character is written and played with some real subtlety; sometimes it’s nothing more than Harris rubbing the back of his neck with his hand that signals his discomfort. Of course, we get a bit of an emotional outburst (and probable ethical transgression) from Harris at the series end, but I’ll get more into that later…
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The courtroom sketch that Junior objects to bears a resemblance to David Chase.
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TV homage alert: An unusually long exterior shot of not just Junior’s home but those of his neighbors. Cut to Junior, having just arrived home, putting on a cardigan in front of his closet. He says: “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…and I gotta rot in that courtroom.”
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Brilliant..
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I love that you are still active here. Great website, Ron, thanks! I’m on my first watchthrough and avoiding spoilers like landmines.. I’ve stepped on a few, and it would have been impossible for me not to hear the series ending in all this time, but nonetheless i absolutely love the show, and am kind of regretting not watching it many years ago. My only defense is that i’ve never had HBO before now!
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Back when the series first ran, I would sign up for HBO on the day of the season premiere and cancel on the day of the season finale…
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The scene of Tony banging on the wall, telling Carm to stop with the vacuuming, anticipates the Kevin Finnerty stuff for me.
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There seemed to be a parallel with Pie-oh-My & Adriana here. Tony says, “the horse is sick!”.. then an immediate shot of Ade soaked from the rain. She shoots up to “settle” down and sits on the bed with Cosette. The camera angle changes to outside the room looking in, making her looked trapped within the door frame.
Next scene, the vet tells Tony, “We finally gave her something to settle her down.”…. “At least she stopped thrashing. Thats whats dangerous. The intestines get twisted and you have to cut.”
This could be foreshadowing Adrianas IBS. A horse that is thrashing around enough to get its intestines twisted could be referred to as a “crazy horse”.
Tony comes to the aid of Pie-Oh-My & to pay the vet bill. Nobody will be coming to the aid of Adriana. No one will be coming to bail her out of her situation.
I do feel for Adriana, she had absolutely no one close to her to talk to in regard to her situation and this whole scene highlights her helplessness.
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Pingback: The Soprano Onceover: #66. “Pie-O-My” (S4E5) | janiojala
I think the final scene of the episode is quite Biblical…. brings to mind the imagery of the manger, with the various animals around and the coming of the Lord. Of course, its the Sopranos, so everything is inverted, perverted. Tony is no savior, he’s a selfish, morally corrupt king. Pie-Oh-My is something pure, innocent, and perhaps his care for her is something pure in his life, but he’s losing touch with it rapidly.
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I like that take on it.
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Very well said.
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I just realized, after the fire in the stable when Lois says to Tony, “she (Pie) survived but she was so badly burned she had to be destroyed,” that Tony took Ralphs horse and then he took Ralphs whore Valentina, who also had to be out to pasture by Tony because of a fire that burned her.
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Clever parallel
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A few posters here have pointed out repeated symbolism with Ralph related to the devil. Goat’s heads are a frequently used symbol for that sort of thing. Also, the first response pointed out Tony smoking in the barn. Premonition for the impending fire(?)
OR…Tony inadvertently caused it himself? Although that seems impossible given his timeline there.
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Adriana named her bar the ‘Crazy Horse’. Hmm … Chris became ‘crazy (crazed) when he did drugs, and loved heroin (‘horse’). I wonder whether Chase chose the bar’s name deliberately? Maybe I’m just reading too much into this.
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I noticed that the scene eerily framing Adriana shooting “horse” cut to the vet telling Tony “I gave her (Pie-O-My) a shot. It settled her down”
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R.I.P. Val Bisoglio (aka: Murf Lupo).
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A couple or three things that I noticed while re-watching this episode (first watched the show during the early Covid “stay-at-home” months, and have re-watched it 3 times since)-
“Danielle’s” goodbye remarks to Ade as she hands her over to the new FBI handler. “The little creatures? Good luck with that.” Another suggestion that children/family are equated to animals. Innocent, naive pets that need to be cared for and protected.
Ralph’s remark about the goat as they walk through the stables to see Pie-o-My “watch out for the goat, it butts”, alluding to the metaphor of the goat being the “rifle” of Tony’s trio at the end.
I hadn’t realized the amount of work that Chase and company had put into making this show so brilliant and layered until I started reading these analyses while watching the episodes. Great work, salud.
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Thanks Corrado
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R.I.P. Goldee (‘Pie-O-My’), 2022. Age 23. 😭
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Don’t think I’ve seen this pointed out anywhere, but in Pie-O-My, when Ralphie tells the jockey to use the whip, one of the other guys (Sil?) says “Too bad his mother didn’t do that with him” or something to that effect. In Mergers and Acquisitoms we get a suggestion that she very well may have.
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In the season opener, Brian is introduced by Carmela to establish her concerns about family financial security in the potential absence of Tony, with the rest of the episode thematically being about how money and respect is owed. Tony feels his famiglia is shortchanging him, and Carmela doesn’t feel she’s getting proper respect from Tony. In this episode we follow through on those themes. Ralph is clearly upset with having to pay up to the boss, and Tony seems to almost find satisfaction in how this is the way things should run. It appears he also feels this is how his domestic life should operate, with Carmela similarly bristling at the power dynamic (“I gave you 2 out of 3” … “you GAVE me?”). Business is going great for Tony and he’s making money left and right. Why can’t everyone else let him be happy with this arrangement?
Obviously, Tony sees the financial planning as counter to his own plans to keep control in his own hands. In Tony’s mind, his family depends on him which keeps them close/not able to flee, which is what he fears. He can dole out allowances and gifts as he pleases and they have no alternative. In his mind if Carmela has a her own way to make money or access to a trust that she can fall back on, she is then more likely to turn on him if the tides turn against Tony. The same sort of drama played out in season 1 with the ducks and his concern for his family’s security, with Tony admitting the ducks were about him feeling afraid of losing his family when discussing Meadow flying the coop not on his own explicit terms.
The end barn scene is pretty striking for a few reasons (besides the symbolism you already expertly articulated Ron). There’s heavy rain at night which can symbolize foreboding, yet we see Tony reaching for a cigar with a content expression on his face while in the company of his new animal friends he’s caring for (before the ducks fled his pool he was similarly happy with cigar in mouth). Tony’s home life is falling down around him with Meadow recently openly defying him with her independence, AJ being concerning isolated AJ blasting music, and Carmela giving him the full silent treatment that no amount of gifts seems to be effecting. Tony’s surrogate animal family is his escapist fantasy in this moment because it’s a simplistic representation of him acting out a paternal role in care of them without any fuss.
“That’s a good girl, okay? Shh. Okay? Trust me.” – In my mind these are the words Tony wants to express to Carmela and family–hell maybe even to himself–because he shares in their fears about the future but he only feels content if he is the one doing the planning, even if that involves digging up bricks of secret cash to invest is his own gut market speculations. By the way, he’s clearly insecure about how his cash flows are derived from organized crime (and luck), so he humble brags to Carmela that he made some sound real estate transacting on Frelinghuysen Avenue in order to acquiesce to her stock speculation plan.
Overall I think the episode is about this kind of “father knows best” and doing as you’re told for your own good. Tony commanding Carmela and Ralph (who then tells his maid what to do), Bobby coming around to his role under Junior, and Adriana becoming subservient to her FBI handlers (but not letting it get her too negative!). None of these things seem in the best interest of those under the thumb of someone else. Storm’s a brewin’!
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