Sopranos - Season 2

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

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?”