Sopranos

and i'm FROM Newark... my parents even moreso.

Man, the Tracie episode was hard to watch. Tony feels sad about it, a girl his own daughter’s age, yet he enables Ralphie and directly profits off the exploitation of Tracie. It’s literally what puts his own daughter in the nice, safe, Ivy League school she’s attending while it all goes down.

Yeah, hardest episode of them all to watch.

Yet I think it serves the show well and isn't just some dark for the sake of dark bullshit. It reminds you who these people really are and what they really do, lest you get too cozy with them.

ralphie disrespected the bing!

Dr Krakower (Carmella's therapist): c/d?

Extremely classic

agree, love him

I'm through S4 Ep5 now.

That Columbus Day episode was hot garbage, sheesh.

one of the greatest screencaps from the show tho

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/VydGxgTKjcT3Lp8WHFtGwb0Nij0=/166x0:1581x1061/920x613/filters:focal(166x0:1581x1061)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/41792380/Screenshot_2014-10-13_15.38.45.0.0.png

irl lol again

haaaaa

Almost done with S5. Maaaaaan it gets dark.

Where are the other first-timers at now?

think flopson stopped watching after he finally got to the ton-carm action

lol

he's missing out on the actually hot tony-carm pool scene then

had a long vacation and the weather's nice and I'm hesitating to finish S6. Maybe I'll just take it slowly.

My wife had never watched this before, so I'm going through it all for the first time since the original run ended. Things happen so much sooner than I remember, but I'm enjoying it so far. Totally blanked on the Favreau episode for some reason. Loved watching Christopher knock Swingers.

I haven't seen Swingers since it came out but I'm kind of guessing it hasn't aged well

Still getting through 6 and taking the darkness in small doses. So good though.

Michael Imperioli and Steve Schirippa are doing a podcast where they rewatch every episode...

https://pca.st/podcast/b6d9fa00-3a41-0138-9723-0acc26574db2

My favourite fact so far is Schirripa having to wear a fatsuit to play Bobby.

My first rewatch since I finally caught up with five years ago. Just finished Season 1. Like many other shows I've rewatched, the first time--because of advance word and heightened expectations--it took me a few episodes to warm up, but second time, immersed right from the start.

I've got to say that Carmela's send-off to Father Phil (probably Season 1's creepiest character) in the season finale is, word-for-word and gesture-for-gesture, brilliant. Killed me: "...I think a lot of it is tied up with food somehow."

If I group The Sopranos, Goodfellas, and the first two Godfathers together, I think the most terrifying guy of all might be Richie Aprile, even more than Pesci in Goodfellas. Couldn't believe when I first found out it was easy-going Tony from Mean Streets.

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

https://i.imgur.com/ZQ2oARQ.jpg https://i.imgur.com/ZQ2oARQ.jpg

One of those throwaway references that makes you happy to be old: Paulie greeting Furio as "chef of the future."

Lol

nothing will ever make me laugh higher than "how many MIGs you shoot down last week?"

"I remember my mother and my father arguing about something, I don't know...She kept talkin' about father's feeble-minded brother, but I always thought she meant you."

http://phildellio.tripod.com/sopranos.jpg

lol

rude

Informal assessment based on the first two seasons: the very worst thing in the world a person can be is a Motherless Fuck.

Great moment from Season 3: Dr. Melfi's "No" at the end of the episode where she's raped--the long pause as she weighs the consequences of a "yes."

Season 3 has its own thread, mostly used for talking about Pine Barrens

Sopranos - Season 3

Finished the rewatch a couple of nights ago.

Pretty great--even more so than the first time (five years ago). I'll stand by Mad Men as my favourite show ever, but the gap closed: Mad Men, The Sopranos, and then whatever I'd put next.

I could go on about so many incredible moments--one from the last season: the shot of Junior that closes the episode where his friend attacks him in the home (the actor that played his friend was great)--but I'll do what I usually do instead, dwell on a couple of things that missed the mark for me. It's a weird sort of compliment with me.

I didn't feel the Tony-Melfi relationship was resolved in a way that justified all the time that was spent on it. I loved Tony yelling "I get it!" at the end of the peyote episode, and then, a couple of episodes later, she ends it because she's miffed over some article. I didn't feel like it was consistent with her character; it felt like they wanted to finish that off somehow but didn't quite know how.

I don't think everything has to be wrapped up--I don't think that at all--but I did want Carmela to find out the truth about Ade and Christopher. I wanted that moment to happen. (I think Ade's story her last season was about as tragic and moving as television gets.)

A.J.--tough one. In the whole series run, through all his different phases, I don't know if I actually liked him for more than 30 minutes. Pretty nervy by the writers to follow that though to the end. Even with all that, I still felt empathy for him that last season.

The music was better than I remembered. The end of that one episode, where Carmela learns of Meadow's engagement, starts crying, looks out at Tony floating in the pool, and Bobby Darin's "If I Were a Carpenter" starts up, that was almost as good as "Both Sides Now" in Mad Men.

20/20 hindsight, but that first season, if you had to bet on one character to be preternaturally indestructible, Paulie would have been the guy.

A.J. is pure comedy

The writers openly mocked him at times, for sure. The bear episode--"Mommy, mommy!" Not sure what I wanted there...something more, somehow.

I always liked A.J. just for being helpless in the face of that upbringing, and I loved the way they leaned into it. That's really how shitheads are made!

I thought he was a great, and touching, portrait of a kid who had been raised to be a failure in his father's eyes - felt like it tapped into the hypocrisy of American values, that they valued toughness, indulged his every whim then condemned him for being soft and expecting things to fall into his lap. In many ways he is the real tragic figure of the series, much more so than Meadow who mouthed platitudes and virtue signalled, but when push came to shove was totally complicit in her privilege and where it came from.

Interesting points that I'll mull over...Agree that they lost Meadow's character towards the end; she became more and more conventional. (I found it moving, though, when she told A.J. that as Italians, he was always going to be the favoured child; her resignation there--and A.J. seemingly not knowing what to make of her words--was perfect.)

I bought a critical book on The Sopranos a few years ago, I ought to read that right now.

See I read that as Meadow tossing another chip on her pile of self-pity, ignoring her massive privilege and advantage. The family is full of people doing that, probably the most penetrating social criticism the show made.

and - duh - I forgot that the talisman of the final series is the "Ojibwe saying" pinned by the writers to Tony's hospital notice board, "Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky." It gets half a dozen callbacks from there to the end, as Tony misapplies it to people he wants to put down.

(I think Ade's story her last season was about as tragic and moving as television gets.)

agreed on this. we watched the series for the first time last year, and from the minute she started working as an informant you just feel, "Jeez, well, there's only one way this ends."

The music was better than I remembered. The end of that one episode, where Carmela learns of Meadow's engagement, starts crying, looks out at Tony floating in the pool, and Bobby Darin's "If I Were a Carpenter" starts up, that was almost as good as "Both Sides Now" in Mad Men.

Christopher getting high at the fairground while Fred Neil's "Dolphins" plays is one of the most moving parts of the series, I think

The closing tracks were always spot on...John Cooper Clarke's "Evidently Chickentown" portending the forthcoming gang war during the christening scene, and Van Morrison's "Glad Tidings" hopping in after Tony Uncle Bobby guns down Tony Uncle Johnny, that jaunty bass line signaling a strange sense of relief/closure...also "This Magic Moment" when Bobby meets up with his family at the lake house, his life having irrevocably changed...

"It Was A Very Good Year" opening Season 2 also an all-timer

"Evidently Chickentown" for me was the show's greatest musical moment (didn't know it at all previously). "Dolphins" was great too. Other favourites: Cream's "I Feel Free," R.L. Burnside's "Shuck Dub," "White Rabbit," "If I Were a Carpenter," a few others.

Tindersticks' Tiny Tears will always be my favourite.

not the subtlest needledrop but I always appreciated them cutting the Tindersticks what I assume was a pretty fat check for the prominent use of "Tiny Tears"

xp!

Love the live version of The Kinks' "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" at the end of "Cold Cuts." So connected to Tony's pathologies.

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