The Sopranos (HBO) TV Show • Page 42

Just watched that episode last night, haha.

 

Onward to S3!

 

This is very dangerous to my productivity lol

 

Copped the Sopranos Sessions to read along with during the rewatch (and first watch of S5)

 

One of the less discussed parts of the show is how The Departed is incorporated into the last season. It is a perfect portrayal of the family's connection to pop culture; people like Tony and Paulie probably only see a "new" movie when they are scrolling through channels, but The Departed is the one movie that people like them would make an active attempt to see.

 

Chrissy when he attends the “acting for screenwriters” course cites Goodfellas as the type of movie he wants to write unaware the actor who plays him was in the movie!

also, in the first season when he spots Marty outside a NYC club he shouts out his love of Kundun. As a huge Scorsese fan myself I haven’t even seen that movie!

 

Paulie would have been wearing a face shield on top of a face mask. Janice would have gone viral for yelling at a grocery store worker for telling her to put on a mask. Silvio would have gotten fines for trying to keep the Bada Bing open during the shutdown. Eventually Tony and New York would have worked together to hijack hydroxychloroquine.

 

Chris and Paulie concoct a contact tracing scheme to get a gov't contract. Chris continues to party because "he's young" and eventually gets sick.

Meadow's dorms are closed/AJ fails distance learning, causing tension at home.

Junior makes Bobby sit outside in an effort to avoid being infected.

Tony can't figure out how to get an app created for mobile ordering for Satriale's, instead muscles in on Artie and creates a new delivery racket for Vesuvio's.

No one can understand Sil when he's wearing a mask, he refuses to take it off.

 

The last one hahah

 

I think Sil would be the one who constantly calls it “the China virus”

 

I just watched “Employee of the Month” again and can’t help wishing Melfi asked Tony for revenge :/ the justice system fails survivors every single day – not believing us from the very beginning, complicit in Australia’s shameful domestic violence crisis – maybe my moral compass is skewed, but survivors in my life have expressed that they’ll only feel peace when their abuser is gone. I’m with them.

 

cut to the 9 minute mark but it was David Chase’s intention to not have Melfi seek revenge or follow up on the story in future episodes

 

The situation is designed so that as many people as possible, Melfi included, entertain the possibility of getting revenge. It is a heinous violation of an innocent person, he gets away with it, and he could very well do it again. It fits all the parameters of vigilante justice. John Wick is about a dead dog, so this is would fit the bill.

However, the question is what happens after you cross that line. On a practical level, she will have destroyed her professionalism, and Tony would always have it over her and would use it to get her to commit to other unsavory things. More broadly, though, is the question of what would she use that power for in the future? Melfi deals with very stressful clients who are suicidal; maybe they are found in a hotel room after they overdosed. What about when her son graduates college and she thinks that he was unfairly denied a job opportunity by an unfair boss?

After all, the gangsters regularly use violence for increasingly minor inconveniences and always justify it to themselves. Christopher shoots a cashier at a bakery for making him wait and Paulie kills his mother's friend in a robbery he planned to please Tony. Famously, Paulie amplifies the situation with the Russian because he feels inconvenienced and then decides that he has to kill him because he knows too much.

Would Melfi necessarily jump from one extreme to the other? No, but we have all felt that feeling of power when we realize the system can be subverted in ways we were not told about. Children learn to lie very early, and spend much of their development honing their skills. We figure out what rules really need to be followed at work and where it is safe to speed down the road. People will feel guilty the first time they cheat on their spouse but it becomes easier as they keep doing it and create justifications for themselves.

The episode chooses such a sympathetic situation because it would not work if Melfi decided to get even on the guy who screwed up her lunch order. It is deliberately pulling at our sense of morality and forcing us to ask what is okay to do in the name of justice. It is understandable for someone to reach the conclusion that revenge is justifiable, but what is society if each person is deciding for themselves what morality is? Tony and his friends are the end result of people taking what they want under the justification that Italians have been discriminated against (even though the main characters grew up long after that strife), the government is unfair, and that they are only hurting other members of the Mafia. Melfi's whole career is about helping people live within and prosper in society, so breaking the social contract becomes an even bigger issue for her.

 

Do you all think Tony knew about the rape? I question it on every rewatch.

 

Tony didn't know. He has no impulse control; he would have questioned Melfi and/or found the guy and killed him.

Remember, this is still when he had romantic feelings for Melfi. He curb stomped a guy that he was not completely sure harassed Meadow and would have killed the teacher who was sleeping with Carmela.

 

See, I always thought that if he did know, he was waiting for Melfi to speak up before seeking revenge BECAUSE he had feelings for her. Maybe he didn't want to scare her away again.

 

Tony has no respect for boundaries. He had a detective tailing her and had her car stolen to fix her car when he overheard her talking about car trouble. He was continually pressuring her to date him when he was separated from Carmela.

 

when he wasn’t seeing Melfi, he tried to woo her back by sending her a gift basket of Tide detergent

 

I had no friggin' clue.

 

finished recently, already miss my friends Tony and Paulie and Christopher. it's funny how half the cast has a podcast now

 

I'm embarrassed to say I've never seen this show.

 

Check it out, its great.