Sopranos - Season 2

wow. going back to this has been amazing. i remember feeling let down by this season, but watching it now it's clear how amazing it is, what a great continuation of S1.

richie aprile is such a great character (man, the way he talks) and SUCH a red herring—the real conflict is between tony and janis, who's furiously manipulating everyone against him. i remember thinking that the fact that tony never actually goes mano a mano with richie was a letdown, too, but it's so perfect... once janis realizes richie is never going to win against tony, she just discards him.

what a great show this is. and the music is so on point too.

richie was the best of the single-season antagonists imo

lolz s1ocki are you me

Would take Ralphie over Richie for that title, but I don't think any Sopranos series made me go "Oh, shit!" as much as series 2. Maybe 4.

totally agree about Richie btw. Fantastic character - shorter and less physically imposing than the other gangsters, but overcompensates for it in very subtle, effective ways

the great thing is how he's totally misdirection

but mostly i just love his voice and his cold, dead eyes. and the yoga.

Ralphie is fun, but never found him as convincingly threatening as a gangster as Richie.

also the robert patrick stuff is soooo cold.

it's funny how many great arcs they managed to get out of the "old-school gangster gets out of prison" thing. i'm thinking buscemi (AMAZING arc), robert loggia's character, richie... who else?

also have noticed that A&E really chopped these episodes to shit in the reruns, and not just for swearing and nudity

Feech LaMana getting out of prison (and gettin sent back) is hilarious, but that arc is pretty brief

oh I see you already mentioned him lolz

the use of music and sound editing is so great in this season too (whoever did their sound editing is kind of a genius).

there's that one episode that ends at the talent show... this german girl gets up and starts singing an aria, it sort of morphs into a country song and you think that it's going to be a montage of acts from the talent show, but then the shot changes and she's still there, and it snaps to black.. it's actually an end-credit song. beautifully done. shit like that is why sopranos is always going to win over the wire in my book.

Feech LaMana getting out of prison (and gettin sent back) is hilarious, but that arc is pretty brief

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, December 9, 2008 9:06 PM (53 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that is awesome too tho. the whole not-laughing-at-tony's-jokes plot device was really smart. lots of interesting stuff in season 5, i think it's up there.

love when Junior turns against Ralphie cuz "he couldn't fucking sell it". The crew of losers that Junior attracts in general is so much fun - Mikey Palmice, Richie, Bobby etc - such misplaced loyalty. Although its funny how no one ever really gets into why Junior shouldn't be boss, not even Tony, even though its painfully obvious from his interactions with the other capos that he doesn't have the gravitas or foresight to pull it off.

ya the couldn't sell it thing is so perfect.

no one ever gets into the disparity between Junior's lifestyle and the younger generation's either. Compared to all the other guys (Silvio, Paulie, Hesh) its clear that Junior was never all that great at being a gangster, otherwise he wouldn't be living in a wood-panelled home with a shitty TV and eating his dinners at a card table.

i don't know, i always got the feeling he was sitting on a pretty big "nut" but he was too stingy to spend it. also, no wife to pretty up the place. ALSO, really big legal bills.

i think he's the kind of character who would be eating at a card table even if he was raking in millions... just generally miserable.

i don't think it implies he was worse at being a gangster tho.

maybe I'm reading too much into it - but there are plenty instances in the series where he doesn't make the smartest calls and he does things that end up costing him. Exhibit A: the crew he surrounds himself with - Mikey and Richie and Bobby all fuck things up for Junior at various points (like Mikey killing the guy who took out the contract on Tony right in front of Junior, or the coke dealing thing, or blabbing to the plant in the doctor's office, etc.)

well you definitely get the feeling he's slipping as he's losing his mind. but i also always got the feeling that he was originally pretty sharp and good at what he did.

the overall message of Junior's arc seems to be that you can work hard and struggle and succeed and still not end up with anything, not even your memory.

great season but probably would have been better with snakes

ya, imagine richie aprile... with snakes

would love a listing of every single song used in the entire run, so many perfect moments

rubbish finale tho

like, its kinda a miracle that Junior survives as long as he does given the line of business he's in, but in the end he ends up like any other hapless senior.

x-post

wow, just checked wikipedia and apparently the finale places in the top 5 sopranos eps

I thought it was garbage, really put me off watching season 3 after watching seasons 1 and 2 in quick succession, and subsequently I never went back to the show

are you nuts, the last episode is amazing

take it to that thread tho, this is for S2!!!

the one with the fever and the dreaming? barf

no, the finale to season 2, I hated it

I probably just need to watch it again (bcs it sounds like I'm in a minority) but I found it v.frustrating and a bit of a letdown (too sombre) after the rest of the season

agree w.all above re:richie aprile, brilliant

and dude, you so need to go back to the show...

ja I know

think I'll re-watch season 2 and torrent 3/4 in the meantime

it's a pretty minor moment but the scene where carmela kisses the decorator is so amazing, her 'oh jesus' just before it happens - perfect. i rewound that over and over, just wowed by edie falco. other falco greatness in this season: the ep where tony goes to italy and she tries to convince pussy's wife not to divorce him, really trying to convince herself. <3 u edie.

her character really opens up in Season 2 - agreed about the bit with Angie Bonpensierro (is it me or doesn't a different actress appear as Mrs. Pussy in season 1?). Honestly going back over season 1 made me think Carmela was a fairly one dimensional bitch for most of it. Although the stuff with the priest is A+++ classic. what a loathsome dude.

"rubbish finale tho"

WHWHAHTHT?!?! The finale of this season is incredible! This was the last great season IMO, although 4 is pretty strong all the way through IIRC.

I was just gonna say, the food poisoning episode is a masterpiece

Btw my favourite minor character in this show is rosalie aprile... So good

I don't think I believe in this list anymore.

Best HBO/Showtime series?

yeah they introduce some great characters in Season 2 that really broaden the show, primarily the women - Janice, Rosalie, Angie, plus more screentime for Adrianna and Carmela

Although having not watched most of these seasons in ages, I might be better off trusting haha.

I think my favorite musical moments are usually when people are driving:
- Janice unironically rocking "Mother and Child Reunion"
- Tony totally ironically rocking "Dirty Work"

i seem to recall info somewhere along the line abt junior never really getting paid

Yeah I think they are shorting him once Tony installs him as a figurehead, but I don't think that = he's not as good a gangster as Paulie.

Hesh is obv kind of an exception though.

paulie also lives rather meagerly

WHWHAHTHT?!?! The finale of this season is incredible! This was the last great season IMO, although 4 is pretty strong all the way through IIRC.

― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 9 December 2008 23:43 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hey! I said I probably have to watch again but I remember at the time being disappointed with it... I have v.little patience for dreams

but letting yrself get shorted obv is not being a v good gangster - tho that could just be him slipping w/age

yah all the dream shit is one of the things i really hold against the sopranos - some of them were well done but i mean come on serious dreams plz

i will never not love talking fish in dreams

paulie also lives rather meagerly

Does he? My memory is of him being a few steps above Chrissie and Junior, he's got his own place that's pretty nice, he takes care of his "Ma", etc. Maybe I'm wrong.

I think the first few dream sequences (particularly Chris's) are really not well done, fairly clumsy. By the season finale though they are on some next level.

the Wizard of Oz dream is very uh waht

(great music editing in it though)

rubbish finale tho - "Whaddya Talkin' About?"

http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/img/episode/season02/ep26_fish.jpg

see! hilarious!

sets up excellent Xmas gag too

Does he? My memory is of him being a few steps above Chrissie and Junior, he's got his own place that's pretty nice, he takes care of his "Ma", etc. Maybe I'm wrong.

― Shakey Mo Collier, Tuesday, December 9, 2008 7:10 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he lives in a rather bleak apartment as i recall from the whole decorating it w/tonys horse painting scenario - did obv have some cash to drop on the retirement home tho

^^^thought it was a house...? I dunno I can't remember - I'll take notes when I get to that episode.

Paulie cuts coupons, but is that leaving meagerly or just thriftily?

leaving = living

Well I think it's clear from the show that Tony is a much much more successful gangster than Junior is, but that Junior is still a cut above most of the rest of these guys.

My fave Richie quote from this season...

Tony: I thought I told you to back off Beansie!
Richie: I did. Then I put it in Drive.

he lives in a rather bleak apartment as i recall from the whole decorating it w/tonys horse painting scenario - did obv have some cash to drop on the retirement home tho

If memory serves, I believe this was based on a real-life NYC/NJ capo who was pretty high-up and wealthy but lived rather spartanly in an apartment over a butcher shop.

yah junior/paulies living situations prob hav more to do w/bachelorhood than any financial realities

much like young attorney roommates sitting in a blank apartment before a lol hueg tv smoking weed they are just environment indifferent

ya exactly

and i gotta say i am NOT a fan of dream sequences as a rule but sopranos is a huge exception... they are really brilliant and totally integral to the show

ok I ws on crack

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3173/3096975269_a473876f71_o.gif

urgh

are you trying to give me a migraine

but im glad you acknowledge you were on crack

fixed, apols

are you referring to the GIF or your opinion of that ep?

man, this show packs in SO much. so dense.

for instance. i started this thread last night not having seen that episode yet (well, not yet re-watched it), and i TOTALLY forgot that pussy gets it this season!! i had just been assuming it was in season 3!

and i also totally remembered livia dying in season 2!

she livias on in our hearts

lolz Philosophy 101 with AJ in this season

nitch

anyone get the complete boxxx?

I bought it a year and a half ago for $100

master P vs kierkegaard

anyone get the complete boxxx?

― uәʇɹɐƃu!әʍ ˙ƃ ʎәu!Ⴁʍ (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, December 10, 2008 4:33 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya that's why im going thru the seasons!

it is a ridiculous box.

the livia cgi shit was the low point of this show

http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/080410/ghostbusters_l.jpg

Shakey, that site we both bought the complete box from is out of business now. I'm glad we got while the getting was good...

there's a BIZARRE CGI shot in one of the S2 episodes... when the garbage gets dumped on the deli owner's parking lot and he's calling to complain about it and the garbage is in the foreground and it's clearly a static plate that's been pasted in... so weird

the livia cgi shit was the low point of this show

? where does this happen

the episode when she dies, she has a scene with tony... nancy marchand died suddenly so they didn't get a chance to film anything with her.

huh - haven't gotten there yet. Don't remember it jumping out at me before. Oddly I DO remember that garbage thing you mention, that was weird.

like, real garbage is so hard to come by, you know?

obviously the shot was fucked for some reason or they were unhappy with it so it was a last-minute fix, i'm sure. totally weird tho.

I don't remember the shot, but I remember rewinding the Livia scene once I saw her haircut change about eight times.

don't remember the trash shot.

don't remember pleasant plains rewinding the livia scene.

someone needs to pay more attention

I bet I pissed off a lot of Sopranos viewers when I did that.

the livia cgi might have bothered me less if the dialogue didn't feel like it was just scraps from previous episodes and the conversation between tony and livia in that episode didn't come across like him talking to a computer program. would have worked better as a dream sequence.

do not envy david chase in that position tho. also had to scrub his whole season arc apparently.

nancy marchand kinda got a raw deal too.

Ha, what?

where is Cheers episode w/her as Frasier's mom

oh here it is

Ha. Martin Crane's Tony's step-dad.

haaaaa!

fwiw I didn't really notice the CGI'd Livia scenes and probably wouldn't have registered them at all except for the comment on this thread about the changing hairstyles. With a character as semi-senile and prone to repetition as Livia, having a bunch of lines cut in from other scenes was not all that distracting. (How many times does she say "I wish the lord would take me now" or "I gave my life to my children on a silver platter" etc.)

Also these scenes were in Season 3, not season 2... maybe I should revive that thread...

already started a new one!

and it was one season, in season 3--not a lot. and it's REALLY obvious. serious uncanny valley.

not season 2 but just rewatched the series finale and when aj pretentiously mispronounces yates its so sad - i keep thinking abt it

would love a listing of every single song used in the entire run, so many perfect moments

http://www.sopranomusicguide.com/ This site is real comprehensive, probably 97% of the songs used are listed.

his cold, dead eyes

"Don't gimme your fucking Manson lamps." Jesus, what an awesome line.

S3 pretty much sucked. I actually stopped watching the show about halfway through season 3 and didn't pick it back up again for over a year. Livia CGI, the sudden introduction of Ralphie (terrible character all the way through imo), and being subjected that pointless and brutal rape scene, didn't make up for how great an episode Pine Barrens was.

I'd been watching every episode with my friend/roommate at the time, and he quit watching after the rape episode and never really got back into the show again. I'm glad I gave it another shot, because seasons 4 & 5 were pretty fucking great.

"Don't gimme your fucking Manson lamps." Jesus, what an awesome line.

oh man, thanks for reminding me of this.

haha totally.

Matthew Bevilaqua: NOT GUILTY

the phrase "manson lamps" has become so deeply entrenched in me and my wife's vocabularies that I didn't even remember it being from this show until we recently re-watched that episode

My favourite Sopranos coinage: coozehound.

I think there's an understandable dropoff in season 3 due to Nancy Marchand's death, but the high points of the series are pretty high. Don't understand the complaints about the "Employee of the Month" episode (would you guys prefer a prosaic rape scene to a horrific one?) especially in that that is really a huge, key episode for Melfi as a character - the final shot, where she explicitly refuses Tony, is a major moment, and really well done. The rape incident spotlights all of the relatively arbitrary moral boundaries that are examined over the course of the series, especially between the mob-affiliated and the non-mob-affliated, and that stuff is crucial. I don't think the rape was badly handled or exploitative at all, it is perfectly in tune with the series' overarching themes of doing what is right vs. doing what is easy vs. doing what your inner psychopath tells you...

ya any time the sopranos tried to be witty about showbiz it just failed completely... always makes me cringe

― s1ocki, Sunday, June 14, 2009 3:51 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark

the episode in this season with jon favreau and the spaced out producer or whatever - every scene is cringe inducing

is that the one with alicia witt? daaaamn.

idk, i like some of the showbiz stuff. that one daniel baldwin/tony moment in the last series makes the whole cleaver plot worthwhile imo

aj as existentialist is about as unconvincing as if they has turned him into a transsexual

so much Glenlivet in this show.

tony's mom riding that thing down the stairs is my favorite shit ever

maybe this comes back to haunt him but was a bit put off by how easy tony skated on the airline tickets thing - i mean i know he has a great lawyer and whatever but it's great that they balance out tony's skill as a boss with the fact that like anyone else he has to get lucky once in a while just to stay alive and this felt too glossed over for my taste.

i agree with everyone upthread talking about how great carmella became in this season - i loved when she would show her "married to a mob boss" side like when she snapped at janice after meadow was busted having the party at livia's house also the way they ended her thing with the contractor by having her hunt him down just to thank him. the only thing is when she got wooed by the coat - i think in real life that would've made the situation worse but it's a small nitpick. just in general falco was amazing - her stares at the contractor, when she runs away during richie and janice's wedding toast.

my two cents on junior is that he was obv never good enough to be the boss - this is pure speculation on my part but if they chose jackie over junior even tho junior was tony's dad's brother, that must say something - but he was high up enough on the food chain to live well, he just decided not to live like tony. i guess he was still making side deals with richie to move coke and whatever but when his lawyer tells him that it will cost at least 400k to have people review the fbi wiretaps on him he's kind of like "ah fuck it"

also the dream sequences in this are amazing - i think having tony finally come to the decision about pussy in a dream was brilliant - as someone who runs from the facts of life (me!) will tell you, they eventually catch up to you in your sleep.

the best thing that happened this season was dropping the storyline of christopher the actor/screenwriter whatever whatever - shit was mad boring

Is the ep where Tony totally fucks over the T-1000 in this series? That one's great.

maybe this comes back to haunt him but was a bit put off by how easy tony skated on the airline tickets thing - i mean i know he has a great lawyer and whatever but it's great that they balance out tony's skill as a boss with the fact that like anyone else he has to get lucky once in a while just to stay alive and this felt too glossed over for my taste.

they had to scrap the airline tickets plot when Livia died - they had originally had a whole story arc mapped out about it but it hinged on Livia testifying against Tony

thus it makes sense that Livia dying would blow the FBI's case as well (no witnesses)

thank u shakes

Livia's death also explains some of the weird tones/stories in Season 3, they had to really scramble to re-write the entire season and come up with a different direction.

i really liked the alicia witt episode

Great season...I really think Season 3 was the last "very good" Sopranos season before it veered way off into soap opera territory in Seasons 4 and 5 (which despite some saying it was a return to form, I thought was overrated). Season 6, well I never finished as the first half alternated betwen dull and ridiculous.

"Home Movies" season 6 premiere is one of the best episodes in the series

daaaaaaaaaaaaamn jamie-lynn was fiiiiiiine this season

ya any time the sopranos tried to be witty about showbiz it just failed completely... always makes me cringe

― s1ocki, Sunday, June 14, 2009 3:51 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark

"Hey Marty - Kundun, I liked it!" is hilarious, one of my favorite lines from the show

just finished s2, surprised myself by how much i was getting into this season by the end after thinking it started off kinda weak (finale was kind of a microcosm of this - i thought it was gonna be a throwaway finale a la buffy but then it really kicked into gear at the end there). i sort of hated richie aprile and expecially janice but can admit that the guy who played richie did a hell of a job. dude was just a major prick and i never understood why tony put up with him for so long.

parts of this season did seem pretty rushed though and there were some throwaway scenes - like did the italy story really require an entire episode? what became of that, furio joined the crew, beat up that asian lady, and... AJ goes through a lolexistential crisis and then...well we don't know, they never revisit that (it does seem to rub off on tony a bit tho). chris gets shot, almost dies...and then he's not in the next episode at all, only mentioned once, and is out of the hospital the following ep, and now he's about to be made. cool?

my biggest gripe was with the tony/dr. melfi relationship. she was such a highlight of season 1 and then was seriously underused this season. i know they tried to show her 'personal' life a little more, with the alcoholism and general sadness of her existence, but none of that really interested me for whatever reason. her relationship with tony was one of the best parts of the show and it seemed like every episode wasted 5-10 minutes with them sitting in her office staring at each other; each visit was the same. like livia this season, she seemed like more of a plot device than an actual character.

all that said i really just love tony and carmela and christopher and pauly/sil so much i can't help myself. i just wish the plotting were a bit tighter and the whole thing had a bit more, idk, meaning. lol

if anyone replies remember i've only seen through season 2

manson lamps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxT442bSG68

Didn't realize that was David Chase blowing off Paulie.

the tony/richie climactic fight is one of the realest ever

also

"Hey Marty - Kundun, I liked it!"

this pops into my head every time i see scorsese now

hahaha

maybe this comes back to haunt him but was a bit put off by how easy tony skated on the airline tickets thing - i mean i know he has a great lawyer and whatever but it's great that they balance out tony's skill as a boss with the fact that like anyone else he has to get lucky once in a while just to stay alive and this felt too glossed over for my taste.

i agree with everyone upthread talking about how great carmella became in this season - i loved when she would show her "married to a mob boss" side like when she snapped at janice after meadow was busted having the party at livia's house also the way they ended her thing with the contractor by having her hunt him down just to thank him. the only thing is when she got wooed by the coat - i think in real life that would've made the situation worse but it's a small nitpick. just in general falco was amazing - her stares at the contractor, when she runs away during richie and janice's wedding toast.

my two cents on junior is that he was obv never good enough to be the boss - this is pure speculation on my part but if they chose jackie over junior even tho junior was tony's dad's brother, that must say something - but he was high up enough on the food chain to live well, he just decided not to live like tony. i guess he was still making side deals with richie to move coke and whatever but when his lawyer tells him that it will cost at least 400k to have people review the fbi wiretaps on him he's kind of like "ah fuck it"

also the dream sequences in this are amazing - i think having tony finally come to the decision about pussy in a dream was brilliant - as someone who runs from the facts of life (me!) will tell you, they eventually catch up to you in your sleep.

the best thing that happened this season was dropping the storyline of christopher the actor/screenwriter whatever whatever - shit was mad boring

― whiney g. gordon liddy (J0rdan S.), Monday, June 22, 2009 5:48 AM (3 years ago)

i p much agree w/ all this

"Hey Marty - Kundun, I liked it!"

this pops into my head every time i see scorsese now

yeah, this line has taken up permanent residence in my brain.

Carmela's absolute *best* married to a mob boss moment is the scene where she tries to get Meadow a letter of recommendation for college w/ the ricotta pie

Like she starts out just being pushy and then is just flat-out "I want you to write the letter" *smiles and holds ricotta pie*

ya any time the sopranos tried to be witty about showbiz it just failed completely... always makes me cringe

― s1ocki, Sunday, June 14, 2009 3:51 AM (5 days ago) Bookmark

"Hey Marty - Kundun, I liked it!" is hilarious, one of my favorite lines from the show

― ℳℴℯ　❤＼(◕‿◕✿ (Princess TamTam), Monday, March 7, 2011 3:05 AM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me too, not really what I meant

I'm watching this show again from s1 btw

k3vin some of yr complaints re: Livia have more than a little to do with her declining health conflicting with the writers' plans for story arcs

my favorite part of Season 2 is probably the interaction between Tony and Janice when he puts her on the bus out of town

Also a post-9/11 point where I thought, Why does she have to ride a --- OH, no ID needed apparently.

Tony, putting Janis on the bus: "All in all though, I'd say it was a pretty good visit."

been rewatching the whole show for the first time...final scene of this season is one of the high points of the series

that being said, i think i might prefer the more slack, rambling pacing of the next two seasons to the clear, linear path of the season 2. italy episode and d-girl are both pretty blah episodes imo

Those are two of the worst for sure, do love the rest of this season tho

yeah it's a great season. janice/tony/livia is such a great triangle of manipulation and deceit

richie aprile definitely my fave antagonist. w/ the exception of maaaybe mad men is sopranos the funniest of the recent golden age dramas (defining as sopranos, deadwood, the wire, mad men, breaking bad)? tony's at least neck and neck w/ al swearengen and roger sterling (and funnier than bunk and whoever the wit of breaking bad is - jesse?), and paulie walnuts, christofuh, sal, livia, and uncle junior seem much funnier than anyone else the others have.

yeah, i hadn't remembered the show being so funny the first time i watched it.

i love those throwaway jokes like the witness reading anarchy, state, and utopia at home

sopranos is sooooo funny, nonstop

really relishing this season how dominic chianese can play aggrieved better than anyone else ever

those quiet scenes with junior and the woman who comes to visit him while he's under house arrest are really nice too

I just watched the first episode of this season last night, coincidentally. Janice is so despicable.

it's like every character in this show is constantly dissembling and self-righteously rationalizing their greed and laziness

"Picayune stuff."

only 3 episodes into s2, but David Proval's dead eyes are as creepy as his shoeblack hair is hilarious. I recognized him from Mean Streets even tho he looks like that guy's desiccated corpse.

lol at Aida Turturro singing along with "Mother and Child Reunion."

tony... i'm old school

like Pacino on downers

well except behind the wheel or with a coffeepot

proval's so good in this

Manson lamps

My fave tony antagonist

The Happy Wanderer is such an amazing episode. So funny!

http://youtu.be/uNPmBKP95dk

http://youtu.be/5WjwV6xmCq4

Didn't realize that was David Chase blowing off Paulie.

I did recognize him in that Naples episode. Great stinkeye.

The Happy Wanderer is such an amazing episode. So funny!

i am shocked, shocked that Frank Sinatra Jr would sully the family name by playing himself in the poker game.

I've just started on s5 in my rewatch. (First proper series watch, really - I've seen the whole thing, but not in sequence, and spread out over years.) Glad "Whitecaps" lived up to my memory.

hey, cheese fuck
get me some food

I agree that the showbiz shit in "D-Girl" was tedious. While I like Imperioli's performance, Christopher is the least compelling of the major characters thus far too.

Big Pussy's house right next to a cemetery is not a good vibe.

Rendezvous btwn Tony and Paulie at the Lou Costello statue in Paterson was nice til it ended with a closeup of Lou's bird-stained derby.

also one of Nancy Marchand's best moments was Livia's pitiless response to AJ's post-Nietzschean funk. "What makes you so special? Ya die in your own arms!"

those scenes are so great (and get a lot of callbacks)

Richie Aprile mentioned this childhood fave, which i did not know was still in existence

http://turtlebackzoo.com/

Threat, what threatening? I brought you a ricotta pie.

I want you to write the lettah.

I am finishing up this season (4 episodees to go), and just watched the one where Carmela prays in a hospital room for Christopher's "vision" and reform at the time of his near-death after being shot. Very few actresses could pull that off without condescension the way Falco does.

yeah in my mind Sopranos was basically The Edie Falco and Drea De Matteo Hour

the women on this show were all incredible tbh

Never enough Rosie April.

"Fuckin nosey! Eat your manigot'!"

Aprile

Damn phone

that Richie-Janice sex scene with the gun, boy howdy

"I'm gettin' ready for the George Sanders long walk here."

Manson lamps

That was a brilliant episode: Junior and the cop widow (Mary Louise Wilson) too; Melfi sinking

also, Junior lives in the town where i was born

I remember being happy Richie got plugged but was so pissed it was Janice who did it.

Tho Richie was one of the best Tony foils

good thing i already knew that with 2 episodes to go *sigh*

bye threads, see you in a few years

NO YEAR 2000 SPOILERS

Lol bagels wtf

Lol sorry it's 2015 and I'm drunk

I am seriously sorry tho I didn't read far enough upthread.

"I'm in ore of you."

btw Tony explicitly tells Junior to live on "the pile of cash you're sittin' on" in this season

Tony, putting Janis on the bus: "All in all though, I'd say it was a pretty good visit."

I caught many a bus right on that spot (Newark Penn Station).

Bus scene is a beaut. "We buried him on a hill"

Do they check ID on Greyhounds? Or is that the quite obvious reason why she's not flying home.

haven't ridden one in a while but I think they just take your 'boarding pass'. and Greyhound is so disorganized that even if they do they probably forget half the time.

esp pre-9/11 (which this was)

i was fine with the finale, animated talking fish always are a plus, as is Asbury Park in winter.

god that finale was devastating.

lol i thought of 'we buried him on a hill' this morning

always lol at janice's "I loved him so much!" in that scene.

is season two when aj gets existential and livia's 'poor you'?

"Nitch"

i kinda think you guys laugh at the wrong things sometimes at least per D Chase's intentions.

strange, HSB, i don't get "devastated" by these scumfucks

immoral gangsters or not, Tony having to ice his childhood friend was still a rough watch.

i mean no I don't even remotely "root" for Tony in the conventional sense (same w/ Walter White on Breaking Bad), and it's always more interesting watching Tony continually trying to rationalize his shitty actions by stretching his code well beyond its limits. but that whacking was diff than the others cos of who it was. even if Big Puss was also a terrible human being, which by all accounts he certainly was.

The key to the sequence was how wobbly, weak and pathetic all four of the characters were.

Tony having to ice his childhood friend

was Pussy ever identified as such? cuz Gandolfini was about 15 years younger than Vincent Pastore.

yeah i don't think they grew up together or anything. T did refer to him as his "best friend" multiple times tho

yeah Pussy is Paulie's generation

lol thought y'all were talking about tony b at first

...banderas?

NO SPOILERS

Posted this in a different Sopranos thread - pretty sure Big Pussy's name came from a Roth novel published in 1998:

Related to Sopranos origins and Newark, this is from Philip Roth's I Married A Communist (1998):

He got his name (Little Pussy) because he started out professionally as a cat burglar, sneaking across the rooftops and going in through the windows with his older brother, Big Pussy. In grade school they were already up all night stealing. When they even bothered to come to school, they sat sleeping at their desks and nobody dared to waker them up. Big Pussy died of natural causes, and Little Pussy was bumped off in 1979 in real gangland style...three bullets from a .32 in his head. The next day Ritchie Boiardo tells one of his cronies, "Perhaps it was for the best--because he talked too much."
― the one where, as balls alludes (Eazy), Wednesday, 30 July 2014 16:09 (1 year ago) Permalink

Chase:

…people say “What the fuck are these dreams doing in my gangster movie?” Well, from the get-go, this is a story about psychology…so much of psychotherapy has to do with dreams. But because its a psychological show, the dreams often have to be interpreted. Because they have to carry a point. And so – “Funhouse.” That came about because I couldn’t bear the fact that we were going to have to do some kind of procedural in which Tony found out Pussy was a rat. Like he was going to have to call up some cop, or some guy would come to him and then he’d follow up on the lead. And they’d stake out Pussy’s house. And they’d follow him to the FBI. Blah, blah. I fucking would have wanted to kill somebody. So I thought, “How can he just know it?” Can’t we skip all that crap?

http://sopranosautopsy.com/season-2-3/funhouse-draft/

Lol at carmela crushing on the wallpaper dude “anybody ready for another sandwich?”