Old Arrangements - The Sopranos: Media Club Plus S03E03
Transcriber: jay (8325)
Introduction        1
Episode 5 [00:04:07]        3
Episode 6 [01:54:37]        77
Introduction
[“Shame About It” by Jack de Quidt begins playing]
Sylvi: Welcome to Media Club Plus, a podcast about diving into the media that interests us and the stories that excite us. As always, we're brought to you by Friends at the Table, and this season we are watching The Sopranos. I'm your host, Sylvi Bullet. You can find me on most social media platforms @SylviBullet, and you can support the show over at our Patreon, uh, at the easy link friendsatthetable.cash. Joining me as always is Keith J. Carberry.
Keith: Hi, my name is Keith Carberry. You can find me online at carberry.deals. Uh, as promised in the last recording, I went to Dune Brothers and got a lobster roll, and it was the highlight of my whole month. It's the best lobster roll in the world, Connecticut style.
Sylvi: Wow.
Keith: It's gotta be Connecticut style for me. That's hot butter instead of mayonnaise.
Sylvi: Does it have to be Connecticut style for you, Art Martinez-Tebbel, or?
Art: I mean, that sounds better, but I don't know that it has to be.
Sylvi: Okay.
Art: The restaurant with the good lobster rolls in Los Angeles, which is like a kind of a fancy joint, is closing down in a month. So my lobster roll—I mean, I haven't been to that restaurant in 8 years, but also I just don't feel like a lobster roll is in my future.
Keith: Damn.
Art: Like immediate future, not like ever.
Sylvi: Okay.
Art: I plan to keep living.
Sylvi: Good, good. Do you also plan to keep living, Andrew Lee Swan?
Dre: Well, that's a loaded question to just start off the show with.
Sylvi: Yeah, I was gonna do some lobster roll related shit, but we got off that too fast and I kind of just took the segue that was in front of me.
Dre: Mm-hm. Um, I was trying to pull up information about Bates College to make some kind of joke, and I got nothing.
Sylvi: You know, it's fine. We'll, we'll be getting plenty of jokes off regardless. I'm just going to go straight into the nitty-gritty of this because these are good episodes and I want to, I want to get into them as soon as we can. This week we watched the episodes College and Pax Soprana, episodes 5 and 6 of season 1. And I think, you know, we're going to do—We're going to stick to what we've been doing, of talking about the first episode, then taking a little break and then talking about the next one. So without further ado, let me talk about College. Something that I usually don't like doing 'cause it's kind of a sore subj—Sore topic sometimes, but it's fine. This is the one time it isn't. This week we watched College.
Art: Asher Roth over here.
Sylvi: Like I said—Oh man, I'm kind of a reverse Asher Roth most of the time. But yeah, no, right now I do love college. Wow. Sorry, I remembered when Asher Roth—Sorry, it's time for a detour. You've given me a detour already. I remember what I—So I love this old prosthetic makeup competition show called Face/Off. It's really fun, but there's also an episode—
Dre: I remember that show.
Sylvi: There's an episode where Asher Roth is a guest judge, and it's a body painting challenge where they have to make a cover for his new album. And if you told me that Asher Roth had more than one album, I wouldn't believe you unless I had seen that show. Anyway—
Keith: Who is Asher Roth?
Sylvi: A white rapper.
Keith: Okay, got it.
Art: His hit was I Love College.
Sylvi: It was bad.
Keith: Oh, I do know that song, and it is bad.
Sylvi: Yes. Okay, this week we started with College. Not I Love College, just College. The 5th episode of season 1, directed by Allen Coulter, uh, with James Manos Jr. and David Chase being the credited writers. Alik Sakharov is still our director of photography, and this was edited by Sidney Wolinsky, who I did not credit when we watched 46 Long but was also the editor on that. Going forward, I'm going to try and remember to include editors too because editing's important in this show.
Keith: Not to me.
Sylvi: Shut up. Shut up. You punk. Okay. 
Episode 5 [00:04:07]
Sylvi: This episode starts with Tony and Meadow up in Maine touring a few different colleges that she's considering applying to. With Carmela sick at home, this is the perfect opportunity for some father-daughter bonding, especially if your definition of bonding is confirming your daughter's suspicions about being in the mob and leaving her to get drunk with college students. But I am getting ahead of myself on that second bit. While at a rest stop, Tony catches a glimpse of someone he recognizes—Fabian Petrulio, a former associate and informant who's living in witness protection. Tony obviously wants to whack the guy, calling Chrissy a few times with updates so they can organize a hit once Tony is sure it's him. Tony keeps trying to balance his time with Meadow and this hitman mission that he suddenly found himself in, with the two of them having a nice dinner, uh, and—that he leaves halfway through to continue scouting out his target. At the dinner, they talk a little bit about Meadow's previous suspicions about Tony being in the mob, whether or not AJ knows, and even Meadow doing speed, which Tony does not take well. After that is when the aforementioned college students run into them, and Tony is like, hey, yeah, you should hang out with them so I can go do my murder recon. He scopes out Fabian's house, having to run off when the dog starts barking and tipping—Tipping the rat off to his presence in town. This means that both Petrulio and Tony are looking for each other, with Tony getting his confirmation that it's who he thinks he is when he sees this really goofy-looking Ronald Reagan wood carving at the travel agency that Fabian now owns. Uh, however, when Petrulio sees Tony with Meadow at the motel, both, uh, in the morning and the night before, he opts not to go through with killing Tony himself. He does try to hire a couple locals, uh, to do it, but then that falls through. And before you know it, Tony's strangling him to death so forcefully that the cord he's using cuts his hand. I think it's, uh, just some—it looks like cables to me? We can talk about that later, but I wasn't entirely sure what it was.
Keith: It was like, wires.
Dre: It was bungee cables, it looked like.
Sylvi: Oh, it was bungee cables? Okay, cool.
Dre: That’s what it looked like.
Keith: I thought it was like, telephone cables. Like, because it seemed like there was copper in there.
Sylvi: That would make sense. In the aftermath of the murder, Tony watches some ducks fly away before going to pick up Meadow, read a thematically important Hawthorne quote at the last college they're visiting, and then return home. Speaking of back at home, during all of this Carmela's come down with the flu. That's why she's not with them. Home alone with AJ after AJ goes to a friend's house, she gets a surprise visit from everyone's favorite horny/hungry priest, Father Phil Intintola. The rest of the night is—
Keith: Talk about Monsignor Jughead.
Sylvi: Kind of charged? Yeah, Monsignor Jughead. Yeah, it's charged. Father Phil eats an entire tray of baked ziti, drinks a lot of The Sopranos' wine, and Carmela is apparently pretty into that. He spends the whole night at the Sopranos' home, which means he's there when Carmela finds out Tony's therapist is a woman, who also has the flu, by the way, and is calling to reschedule. And Father Phil is quick to push all of the responsibility, uh, for Tony's actions onto Carmela herself. Is it clear yet that I don't like this guy? I don't like this guy. As the night continues, the two of them move on from discussions of faith and family to watching Remains of the Day, during which Carmela breaks down into tears. Father Phil's suggestion is to have her confess, leading to Carmela baring her soul about her complicity in Tony's work and her fear that God will exact retribution on her and her family. He also administers one of the more sexually charged communions I've seen on TV, before the two fall asleep sitting on the living room floor together. This is when Carmela gets a call from AJ—not the one that she's been expecting from Tony all episode—asking if he can stay at his friend's overnight. She says yes. This leads to Father Phil and Carmela almost kissing, but then the priest has to vomit up all that ziti. Carmela, left all by herself again, calls Tony but hangs up without saying anything. In the morning, Father Phil wakes up on the Sopranos couch, makes things awkward as hell for trying to apologize for not sleeping with Carmela, and then leaves after she paraphrases Casablanca in a way that's really funny to me specifically. The episode ends with Tony getting home, the two of them arguing about Father Jughead, as Tony calls him—sorry, Monsignor Jughead, I messed that up I guess—staying over, before Carmela reveals she spoke to Tony's therapist. Our last shot of the episode is Tony trying to explain why he hid that from her while Carmela walks away, giving him the silent treatment. This is one of my favorite episodes of this whole show.
Keith: This is a great episode.
Dre: Mm-hmm. It's really good.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: It's, um, it reminded me a lot of the pilot in that it felt very like—it felt like it could have been a self-contained sort of like, film, uh, in a lot of ways. There's obviously some continuity stuff that, that…
Keith: This weirdly could have been a Mumblecore movie.
Sylvi: Yeah, like a little bit. The Charlie Kaufman version of this could have existed.
Keith: Um, this could have been made for $1,200 and a camcorder.
Sylvi: You're like not wrong though, right? Like it's all character drama.
Art: Well, $1,200 and a camcorder, if they didn't pay for any of the locations they definitely had to pay for.
Keith: Yeah, yeah, totally. Yes, this is a—there's a version of this where they used free locations.
[“Shame About It” by Jack de Quidt starts playing]
Sylvi: Um, I think they need more than free. There's a few places they go to.
Art: Oh my God.
Sylvi: Let’s go!
Art: Good night everybody.
Sylvi: Thank you everybody. Shortest episode yet. 
[“Shame About It” by Jack de Quidt stops playing]
Sylvi: Uh, I figure we—because this, this one's also kind of a blessing because there's only like 2 major plot lines. Um, yeah, most of these episodes have an A, B, and C plot. This one's just got an A and a B. It's what's happening in Maine and it's what's happening at home. I figure the Maine stuff's kind of meatier, so we should start with that. Does that sound good to everybody? I don't—
Art: They're both pretty meaty.
Sylvi: They're both really good. So I guess—
Art: There's a lot of meat on this.
Sylvi: My dear co-hosts, you tell me what you want to talk about first, because I'm fumbling around here trying to find something to latch on to because there's so many things in these episodes—This episode that I enjoy.
Keith: I think that the episode starts in Maine and we should start in Maine with the episode.
Sylvi: Shocking that Keith wants to start in New England. Anyway, yeah, I would, I would, I think that's the right move.
Dre: Sure thing, East Coast elite.
Keith: I don't even give a fuck about New England. Whatever.
[Sylvi bursts into laughter]
Sylvi: Uh, he's so mad at me.
Keith: Maine's the second worst one anyway.
Sylvi: Wow, okay.
Art: Wow.
Sylvi: Oh, I'm sorry. I did just remember something about the director of this episode is he did, he—One, he worked on The X-Files and Sex and the City. He worked on one of The X-Files episodes that has an angel in it. One of those, those ones around Scully's faith.
Keith: Oh, the, the swaps where Scully's right about everything and Mulder is wrong about everything because despite believing in aliens and werewolves and ghosts, he doesn't believe in God, even though he also believes in the devil.
Sylvi: Yes. Yes. He directed one of those. And then he also went on to direct—and this is just for me—he directed that movie Remember Me where Robert Pattinson suddenly dies in 9/11 at the end.
Keith: That's really funny.
Sylvi: It's just like a relationship drama, and then there's a shot of him in, in the World Trade Center looking at the plane coming at them. It's wild. Anyway, uh, yeah, I—
Art: How do you know about that movie?
Sylvi: Um, if we're starting up in Maine, I guess like the most obvious thing to say here is that, um, Jamie-Lynn Siegler and, uh, James Gandolfini are so good on screen together. They are such a good father-daughter pairing. Um, I, I kind of like got at this when we were talking about that conversation they had in the church in the pilot, I believe. Um, but there's like a real natural chemistry that from—Between these two, and like, um, Meadow in particular is really able to sort of like go back. Like, she has some really good moments in this episode of trying to feel out where her relationship with her dad is.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, and it's like, it goes—it kind of like, flip-flops between being really funny and really like, sad.
Keith: Yeah, mixed results. Mixed results.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, Tony passes and fails some, uh, secret tests that she was putting up for him.
Dre: How do you know if they're that secret?
Keith: They're—well, they were unstated until she stated them, but then when she did another one, they didn't talk about it because he failed.
Sylvi: Yeah, he's—You really got to be upfront with Tony is the thing, because even though he knows about Freud [Keith: And Augustus.] He definitely doesn't pick up on cues. Yeah.
Keith: His uncle also doesn't pick up on cues.
Sylvi: That—it's a family trait.
Dre: True!
Keith: It's a family trait. Yeah. Um, he can give cues, but he can't take them.
Sylvi: Uh, should we start with the scene in the car? Like, there is a little bit before that of them talking about the, the college that they go to, but I—There's not much we need to linger on there. I think the car is when this episode, like, you know, no pun intended, hits the gas. I was gonna say that, and then I was like, you just talked about a car, you have—You can't say that.
Dre: So I do want to highlight—
Sylvi: Highly pun intended.
Dre: Uh, Tony's line where, uh, Meadow tells him that the girls at Bates say nobody has sex, and he goes, what, so the girls at the other colleges just put out all the time?
Sylvi: He is, he is, uh, dadding the fuck out in, uh, derogatory in a few, in a few moments here, especially at the beginning when she also talks about the, the transfer, uh, programs they have. And he, one, says some, uh, racist shit about Indian food, and two, is like, what, we just got here and you're already trying to leave? Which is so Tony. That, that's, uh, that's also so Livia. You know?
Keith: Uh, the—I don't even know what the implication is when she calls, uh, Bates College contraception. Like, what does that mean? Like [Dre: They're not fucking!] It's a bunch of nerds that go here?
Dre: Yeah, I guess so.
Art: A bunch of nerds go here.
Keith: I knew that. I knew that that means they're not fucking. I just want to know why. What is it about Bates College that makes the kids there not horny?
[“Shame About It” by Jack de Quidt starts playing]
Sylvi: Uh, I mean, it's they're taking care of it themselves. It's in the name of the college.
Dre: Oh yeah, everyone gets a Master's there.
Sylvi: Thanks everybody, that's the episode again.
[“Shame About It” by Jack de Quidt stops playing]
Sylvi: Um, put in applause every time we end the episode early, by the way.
Keith: Uh, sure, here we go.
[applause sound effect]
Sylvi: Thank you, thank you! We'll be back next week with special guest star Al Pacino!
Art: Great, now we got to get Al Pacino.
Sylvi: Yeah, sorry, my bad.
Keith: He's available.
Sylvi: Also, we got to be out next week. That's not the schedule!
Keith: That's not the schedule. Uh, okay, so I really like the car scene. I have a button for it. Tony does like a limited hangout on, uh, on, uh, what the fuck is her name?
Sylvi: Meadow.
Keith: Meadow. Okay, uh, one of my fa—Actually, so this is weird. I'd seen this scene before. I didn't know that I had seen it until I had—Until I was watching it, but I was like, oh, I've seen her interrogating him about whether or not he's in the mafia. And it stuck out to me because he tries to claim that there's no such thing as the mafia, which is like, okay, Tony, your head is in the 1960s. No one is even trying to say there's no mafia in the '90s. Like, that's crazy.
Art: I think it's possible this is also the first scene I saw from this show. 
Keith: That's funny. 
Art: All the way back. All the way back.
Keith: All the way back.
Sylvi: So like, if I'm remembering right, this, this episode was kind of like one of the things that kind of put it on the map, really. Like, this got a lot of positive buzz. But again, this is like looking at it like, 26 years in the future, so I might be—that might be apocryphal without me knowing.
Art: No, no, this episode is—This episode wins an Emmy.
Sylvi: Yeah, for best writing, correct?
Art: Yeah. And this is also the episode Edie Falco submitted, and she won Best Lead Actress in a Drama.
Sylvi: Good. Good. Because she's great in this episode. She's fantastic in this episode.
Keith: I—Yeah, I agree. I think that her, her plotline is kind of weird. I don't know. But I do—but I do think that everyone involved did a good job with it. Um, here, do we want to listen to the car scene?
Sylvi: Yeah, sure.
[audio starts and stops quickly]
Keith: Nope, that's for Run Button. That's the wrong page. 
[Sylvi laughter]
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Meadow: Are you in the mafia?
Tony: Am I in the what?
Meadow: Whatever you want to call it. Organized crime.
Keith: Never even heard of it.
Tony: That's total crap. Who told you that?
Meadow: Dad, I've lived in the house all my life. I've seen police come with warrants. I've seen you going out at 3 in the morning.
Tony: So you never seen Doc Cusamano go out at 3 in the morning on a call?
Meadow: Did the Cusamano kids ever find $50,000 in Krugerrands and a .45 automatic while they were hunting for Easter eggs?
[MCP cast laughter]
Tony: I'm in the waste management business. Everybody immediately assumes you're mobbed up. It's a stereotype, and it's offensive. And you're the last person I would want to perpetuate it.
Meadow: Fine.
Tony: There is no mafia.
[more MCP laughter]
Keith: She's looking disappointed.
Tony: All right, look, Med, you're a grown woman. Almost. Some of my money comes from illegal gambling and whatnot. How does that make you feel?
Meadow: At least you don't keep denying it like Mom.
[audio ends]
Keith: I really wanted to include that last bit of, how does that make you feel? Because that seems like such a thing that only is being said because of his—Him being in therapy.
Sylvi: Absolutely.
Keith: There's no world where he's not in therapy and he tells her this. And then maybe full stop, he doesn't tell her if he's not in therapy, but he definitely doesn't go, and how does that make you feel?
Sylvi: There is, um, a couple things I really like about this. One, I—it was pointed out last time, I believe, how ready Tony is to talk. Um, I can't remember, was that—Dre, did you point that out, or was that Art? I'm sorry.
Keith: I think it was me.
Sylvi: What? Fuck me, I, I missed completely. Um, but, uh, like, he's so ready—Like, he pushes back on it at first and then just immediately crumples and is like, yeah, well, yeah, some of my money comes from illegal gambling.
Keith: And whatnot. A very, very loaded whatnot.
Sylvi: And then I'm pretty sure, like, a, like, a, like, a little bit later, he says something like, listen, some of my money still comes from legitimate businesses, which I think is interesting how he, like, hedges it both ways.
Keith: Yes, he shifts it from being like, maybe it's 90/10. He's like, oh, maybe it's 10/90.
Sylvi: Yeah. He's just like—I don't know, it's such a, it's such a well-written character. It's so interestingly done. And it's also just like, I love that he is kind of, uh, right that once he started talking about his feelings, he couldn't stop. But like, it's not a bad thing, Tony. The bad part is that you're in the mob.
Keith: You maybe shouldn't tell your daughter about your crimes.
Dre: Yeah. That's the bad part. The bad part is, is treating your daughter as a confidant. That's not great. [Keith: Well…] That's not who you tell your feelings to.
Sylvi: Yeah, fair enough.
Keith: Well, it's a hard line to walk because she already knows, and it might be—It might make it worse to deny it when it's obviously true. Um, it's that he didn't do a good job of hiding it to begin with that might be the bigger problem. But then later on, the thing that he doesn't tell her about is like, oh yeah, I had to whack this guy while you were at college, that's where I was. Like, he won't tell her that, and like, she's upset, and it—Like, he doesn't keep up the honesty thread that is like, running through this episode with the two of them. But like, it doesn't make it the wrong thing to not be like, I had—I saw this guy, I had to whack him.
Dre: Yeah, and I guess it's not—I'm not saying that it—That Tony should—Like, that shouldn't—Should lie and like, shouldn't tell her that he's in the mob and stuff. But it's more of like, I don't know, man. It felt like that conversation was like him being like, really vulnerable in a way that I don't know if we've seen him be with another character, like outside of like, Melfi, honestly. And, and for him to view his daughter as that is like, (disgusted) ooh.
Sylvi: It's, yeah. I'm sorry, I'm thinking about some stuff in the next episode where they talk about his like, relationships with women and how this—Yeah, this kind of bleeds into that in a weird way. Um, where it's like because she's going off to college, she is like an adult now, which means he can like, put this sort of like emotional like, like, strain onto her. Um, could be—I think it's kind of one way I'm looking at that now.
Dre: He really wants women to fix him and who will also let him fix things for them.
Sylvi: Yeah, they need to be his caretakers. Mm-hmm. And he needs to be—he needs to be the—he needs to be the big strong provider. 
Dre: Mm-hm. No, like Tony Soprano is a scared little boy, and there's a part of that that's really sad.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm.
Dre: And then the rest of the show is it making him an awful person.
[Sylvi and Dre laughter]
Keith: And, and one of the things that I think you see in this and then also in like, Goodfellas is, uh, when you're in the mob being like, there's something powerful and glamorous about being able to just get things done. Like, Pete, you know, uh, the way that he in the next episode with the car, which we'll get to, um, or in the last—In the first episode, the way that he gets that table at the restaurant for Melfi. Um, and, uh, and so there's, yeah, there's this part of where it's like, he just wants everyone to be quiet and also to be gentle with him and then also to be impressed by him.
Dre: And to be accessible.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: But only like—Accessible only on his terms too.
Dre: Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah, it's—
Sylvi: I mean, don't be too open with me.
Dre: The next scene after this, this car is him calling one of his mistresses and like, literally saying like, well, I don't know why I bothered to call you. You're a bummer.
Sylvi: Yeah, Irina, his, uh, his, his goomah, Irina, who was—we talked about being recast already.
Keith: Yeah. Um, this is the same, this is the same actress as in the second two sets of episodes.
Sylvi: The second set of episodes.
Keith: Yeah. Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, the whole, like, he—I think something that's really telling and kind of speaks to what we were just talking about is how she's talking. She's like, getting into like, I'm so upset. My, my cousin's been here for 2 months and she's already met a guy and they're engaged to get married. And he, he did this. What's the story? She—Her prosthetic leg fell off in a department store and he like, carried her out like a princess is how she puts it.
Keith: Yeah, he “Officer and a Gentleman”ed her. Because her prosthetic leg fell off.
Sylvi: And then Tony is just kind of trying to get the thing back to like, well, did they get that jacuzzi tub installed? Hey, that thing I bought for you, does that make it better? Oh man, no, you don't—You're not good at this human relationships thing, huh?
Keith: Yeah, it made me wonder—
Sylvi: Kind of the thesis of the show, I know—
Keith: It made me wonder why he even called her.
Dre: I mean, like, you’re supposed to. You're out traveling, you call your girlfriend. You're supposed to.
Sylvi: He's also just needy. Like, that's kind of the thing about Tony is he's a very needy guy. Like, it's—It comes up in the next episode, but I think it's also shows—Shown here.
Keith: Like, yeah, couldn't you just have been happy that I called?
Sylvi: Okay, I put in the bare minimum.
Keith: Um, the—so the thing that happens while he's on the phone, 'cause he then calls Carmela, right?
Sylvi: And he calls Carmela, they barely talk, um, because he gets distracted seeing the guy, like, right away when they're on the phone.
Keith: Yeah, this guy's not in our doc, and I forget—He has, like, 3 names. He has his mafia name, his witness protection name, and then also people call him Fred, and I don't remember why.
Sylvi: I mean, Fred is his, his, uh, cover name, I believe.
Keith: But does he no longer have a cover name? Because he's got kicked out of witness protection.
Sylvi: Yeah, but I think he's still living—I, I think he's still living under the, the—'Cause his business is Peters Travel.
Keith: But they call him Fred.
Sylvi: Yeah, 'cause his cover name is Fred Peters.
Keith: Oh, okay. Okay, that's why. [laughter]
Sylvi: Yeah. I just called him Peter Petrulio because I mean—
Keith: I thought it was P, E, T, E, R, apostrophe, S. Peter's travel?
Sylvi: No. [Keith: Okay.] No. So there's a gag about that when he's trying to find—When Tony's trying to, to track him down, he goes to a place that's called—That's Peter, like, uh, Peter's—Peter apostrophe S Hardware Store.
Keith: I must have missed the gag and that, and then got confused why his name is both Peter and Fred.
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah. Um, there's a lot going on. Uh, I kind of just stuck with the name that they, they know him by because it made things easier.
Keith: I don't even remember what that name is. Fabiano something?
Sylvi: Uh, Fabian Petrulio.
Keith: Fabian Petrulio.
Sylvi: Um, yeah, he sees—He like, is trying to—He's calling Carmela to—I don't even know. The conversation never even starts. He like, immediately sees this guy and, um, like, straight up just starts going burnout revenge mode, like uh, he, he runs to the car, he makes Meadow get in it, and just starts speeding down, driving in the wrong lane to get, uh, around traffic.
Keith: Yeah, into oncoming traffic to try to get around cars in front of him. Meadow is terrified.
Sylvi: Understandably so.
Keith: Yeah, being in the car with someone who's driving like a maniac is terrifying.
Dre: And is like, not acknowledging that he's driving like a maniac.
Keith: Yeah, he's pretending everything is fine and then also being like, I'm only driving like this because you won't shut up.
Sylvi: Yeah, it's—He loves gaslighting his daughter.
Keith: He loves gaslighting his daughter. There's a second big one later on.
Sylvi: Yeah, there's a—Oh my God. Yeah, there's a—He's such a piece of shit. What a good character [agreement from Dre] Um, eventually, yeah, uh, eventually, uh, while they're trying to chase them down, they, they drive past the motel and that's like—Tony can't keep up the, the ruse anymore. So he has to just be like, yeah, okay, okay. And then stops at the motel.
Keith: Super subtle. He just told her, yeah, I'm sort of in the mafia. And then he's following this guy like a maniac. Like, oh yeah, I think I know, I might know this guy. And then he gets away and he's like, ah, it turns out I didn't know him. Like, okay. Yeah, extremely subtle. And then he calls Christopher from the payphone, and she—This is like a recurring gag of like, why do you keep calling Christopher from the payphone, often in the middle of the night? And he's just like, I don't know, just taking a walk. I was near the phone. I thought I'd give Chris a call.
Sylvi: Saw the payphone, thought I'd give Chrissy a call. It's also—It's doubly funny too, because every time it cuts back to Christopher, he's getting fucking like, doused in rain.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, it's storming back in New York is like a recurring, um, thing. And like, more of a visual motif when the Carmela plot's happening, but.
Keith: You mean New Jersey.
Sylvi: New Jo—well, New York and New Jersey. Yeah, I did mean New Jersey. My mistake. I'm sorry for being disrespectful, everybody.
Keith [as New Jersey] It's okay.
Sylvi: Thank you, New Jersey. You have such a small little voice. Um, not what I would have expected at all. That's adorable.
Art: One of my favorite jokes in the episode is the, if you didn't want to play in the If you don't want to work in the rain, go play for the Yankees. It's just a very like, dumb joke.
Sylvi: There's some good dumb jokes in, in, uh, this set of episodes, I think. Uh, yeah, there are—Like, just like, like legit, just like jokes that the, the characters are telling. I mean, um, uh, there's the Potsdam Conference.
Keith: Oh, that one is really, really bad.
Sylvi: That is classic dad joke.
Keith: That is so bad.
Art: Pot's damned if I know.
Sylvi: Pot's damned if I know. I don't think there's much else to talk about at the motel. They kind of just go to, go to like get settled, and then it cuts back to the Carmela stuff. I think the next thing with them is the dinner scene, right? Does that sound correct?
Keith: Yeah, they're at dinner. This is another like, really intensely shot scene.
Sylvi: I love this.
Keith: This is like—Though, what they're doing with the lighting here is, like, so... good.
Sylvi: Mm-hm.
Keith: Especially with how this episode ends, with the poster that he—the poster—The, like, sign in the college that he's reading about the Two Faces. And we get, like, so many shots of, uh, Tony and Meadow talking, where she can only see half of his face, because the rest of it is concealed in shadow.
Sylvi: Mm-hm. Yeah.
Keith: But when it cuts to her, she is not—She only has the one—It's on the edge, but it's definitely more revealed than his face is. It's not the same—
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Like, the vibe of these two is like totally different.
Sylvi: Well, I love the blocking for that reason because it's like when you cut between the shots, the shadow on Meadow's face is on the same side and about the same amount of light that's on Tony's face. Um, and it just, it, it like really plays up the like—I don't know. To me, I, I read this as like—And whether it's intentional or not is how I read it. Um, like she's only a little bit in shadow 'cause she only knows a little bit about what the family's up to and things like that. She doesn't really involved. And Tony's just completely subsumed by it basically, aside from this little bit that he, uh, of, of like fatherliness that he shows to his kids.
Keith: I had a similar reading, but I thought I—It was more about how she wants to reveal something to him because he revealed something to her. So she tells him about doing speed at school to study better.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: And, you know, he doesn't get as mad as a normal parent might if you say, by the way, I've been doing a lot of speed, so much that it got scary and I had to quit. And so this is the start of the honesty is a two-way street subplot that these two are having. Well, I guess not just these two, but it is the main thing that's happening with them. And then it's a sort of undercurrent of what's happening with him and Carmela.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Because this is around the time when—You know, her plotline starts with the call from Tony. She's mad because he won't talk to her, like, won't make time to talk to her on the phone. Uh, but it really starts when Dr. Melfi calls and Carmela learns, oh, his therapist is a woman. He has been calling his therapist a man for months.
Sylvi: Yeah, we don't even know, like I'm assuming months at this point. The-—It—For however long as it's been going on, he's been lying to her about it, even though she was like supportive about it.
Keith: I think there's been so many weekly sessions, it has to have been months by this point.
Dre: Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah, you're, you're probably right.
Art: Although there's something in the second episode that suggests that they might be meeting more than once a week.
Keith: Um, maybe. Yeah.
Sylvi: Oh yeah, yeah, the like, see you on Tuesday thing.
Art: 'Cause I'll see you on Tuesday, I think is a weird thing to say if it were in fact Tuesday. But I might be.
Sylvi: No, you're not wrong.
Keith: Yeah, I'm not sure. Yeah. Um, the, uh, this part is so funny. I, I don't really understand what was happening here. Uh, Meadow goes to the bathroom and comes back with two girls from Bates or from the other college, I don't remember.
Sylvi: I think it's Colby College?
Keith: Yeah, Colby.
Sylvi: The one they're going to next. Yeah.
Keith: Uh, and she introduces them to Tony and then Tony's like, why don't you hang out with them? And she's like, ugh, Dad, like what? Like, shut up. But why else would she have brought these girls over if not to be like, can I hang out with them? Is she just being a weird teenager? Is that the deal?
Sylvi: It might also just have been like, here's why I was gone so long thing. I don’t know.
Keith: I guess. You just bring them over, like, these are the girls.
Art: It is weird, I think, to bring them over and then be embarrassed when he's like, why don't you spend time with them? But also, like, being 16 is being embarrassed by everything your parents say or do.
Keith: Yeah. Um, by the way, I feel like I—This is like, this girl in the middle is extremely doing like, Disney Channel movie. 
Dre: Oh my God.
[group laughter]
Sylvi: Oh yeah, right.
Dre: Yeah, it's the pearls and the headband, man. You're so right.
Sylvi: She's the mean rich girl at camp.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: She's about—Oh, she wants to take down those pesky kids at Camp Rock so badly. That hit for somebody, I promise.
Keith: I know—I know Camp Rock was big, but that was after my time.
Sylvi: I mean, it was also after my—
Dre: She’s gonna steal Demi Lovato's love interest.
Art: Oh, was that her?
Sylvi: Sure.
Keith: That was her?
Dre: Demi Lovato was Demi Lovato.
Keith: She does have that look.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Um, and it was just like a very weird thing that I couldn't stop thinking about when she was on the screen. I was like, this is—this kid is straight out of Disney Channel.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Um, and it's crazy—Like, okay, so he's like, okay, you have fun with these random girls. Don't let her drink. They do not follow that rule. They don't even try to follow that rule.
Sylvi: She—They are like chanting chug, chug, chug the next time you see them. It's really funny.
Keith: Yeah. 
Art: And it’s such a—It's like It's one of those things that's, that's very, feels very kid-like to me. Cause like, you're going to get caught.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: Your dad is going to know that you drank when you show back up, when he shows back to the bar and you're completely hammered.
Dre: I kind of feel like, I don't know. I feel like obviously Tony said like, don't drink, but it very much felt to me like he was like, I mean, I gotta say this, but we both know what's going to happen.
Sylvi: Maybe…
Art: He doesn't seem thrilled.
Keith: He doesn't seem happy with the drinking. He doesn't seem—Again, not as mad as like my mom would have been if I was drinking and she caught me. I mean, she really couldn't stand. She was passed out on her feet, basically. She had way too much alcohol, and kids aren't supposed to have alcohol, even a little, so. But yeah, it's, it's very funny how like, no consequences they were being—it was really, really funny—Because they're also—they're just at a restaurant. They're like not at—it's like they went to like a dive and they were drinking at a bar. They were at like, a local small town Maine tavern.
Art: Yeah, yeah, perhaps the nicest restaurant in this town. Yeah, totally.
Keith: I went to a town—I went—When I briefly went to school in Vermont, there was a place between where I lived and where I went to school that looked just like that, that had really good stuffed lobster. And it just looked exactly like that place. And it was like, yeah, this place has a pretty good menu. And it's kind of a family place and kind of a nicer place. And also there's a bar. And that's exactly what this place was.
Sylvi: The thing that kind of stood out to me during this scene was how there's like a weird, um, this—Tony's plot in this is almost like a Riverdale, like, like an Archie Comics, like, oh, I gotta be in two places at once thing, except one's murder and one's being a father. Uh, and then I felt like it really stood out here with the way he's like, oh, you should hang out with them so quickly.
Keith: 'Cause he wants to go follow Peter Fred Peters around.
Sylvi: Yeah. He wants to figure out if Peter Fred Peters is, um, is who he thinks he is. 'Cause he only saw him from across a gas station.
Keith: Yeah. Although pretty much looking like a guy from the mafia.
Sylvi: That's anti-Italian discrimination.
Keith: I'm sorry, but he just had the look.
Art: But like, he sort of goes over that. He's gotta be sure. He can't just go through New England killing everyone who looks like they might be in the mafia.
Keith: Yeah, sure.
Art: Um, I don't think because of like an ethical concern, but because—
Keith: Just practically.
Art: Yeah, it's not good to commit murders places.
Keith: Yeah. One murder, one place is fine.
Art: Right. Yes, that is how I feel about the number of murders you should commit.
Keith: You can—You get one. You just get one.
Sylvi: Is that true? Everybody gets one?
Keith: Everybody gets one. Morally.
Art: I saw this mentioned in the—
Sylvi: Bible.
[Keith bursts into laughter]
Art: I've been reading more of The Sopranos—
Dre: Thou shalt not kill, except the one time.
Sylvi: Thou shalt not kill twice.
Keith: Yeah, thou shalt not kill excessively. Uh, sorry, what did you read in The Sopranos book?
Art: I forget how they get into this, but they get into like You know, “Sammy the Bull” Gravano is a famous mafia turncoat, right? He was a hitman, and he flips, and he puts a lot of guys in prison. And he also drops out of the Witness Protection Program because he can't stop committing crimes.
Keith: Pretty common for mafia guys.
Art: And then he's just, like, in Arizona, and, you know, no one ever goes and kills him. And the way they explain it in this book is sort of like, who's going to go do it? You know, like, the people that he hurt are in prison or very old.
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Art: And like, a young person might like, see it as a point of honor, but also would probably see it as, this is how I'm going to go to prison. And that's why a lot of famous rats in this way just sort of get to be, because the—I mean, as we're going to sort of learn in this, the rules are important until they're not. And Peter Fred Peters is sort of just unlucky because the person who runs into him is someone who has a—Maybe not personal stake in it, but a more—
Keith: A near personal stake in it.
Art: A near personal—
Keith: His friends have a personal stake.
Art: And, you know, he knew Jackie, and Jackie—Maybe if Jackie hadn't just died.
Sylvi: Oh yeah, that definitely seems like it is a big motivating factor for Tony.
Art: Uh, I think he would have called Jackie instead of telling Christopher not to come, he might have told Jackie to come.
Keith: Um, I think Henry Hill's the same way, just like kept on doing crimes instead of being in witness protection, and they kick him out, and then, you know, he just dies like a broke loser.
Art: Yeah, I mean, Henry Hill also had the, the book and the movie. I think he might have made some money.
Sylvi: I think, yeah, that might have helped.
Keith: I think he was a—I think he was broke. I don't know.
Art: Uh, they, they mentioned in, uh, the book—The—I've—I also read Wise Guy, the book that, that is about Henry Hill and, uh, that Goodfellas is based on—That the thing about mafia guys is they make a lot of money and then spend it immediately.
Keith: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Art: Like, all these guys don't have a penny to their name. And I don't think that you, like, develop those habits after you leave.
Keith: Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, he was doing a bunch of, uh, crimes and drugs and, uh, he, he—I think he eventually gets kicked out of his family and then also out of witness protection. It's been a long time since I heard about Henry Hill, but, uh—
Art: Oh, he doesn't really get kicked out of the family so much as he also turns on them.
Keith: On his own? No, sorry, his own fam—Like, wife and children.
Art: Oh, his own wife and kids. I don't know, the book doesn't get into that.
Sylvi: Makes sense. Hmm.
Keith: I don't know.
Sylvi: I just—I'm just going off Goodfellas, but he did not seem like a great spouse in that.
Art: The book doesn't make him a better spouse. No. Anyway. 
[Sylvi laughter]
Sylvi: Damn, if I was writing a book about my life, I'd make myself sound better.
Art: Someone else is writing it.
Sylvi: Oh, it's someone else. Okay, never mind. If someone else was writing a book about me, I'd just—
Art: There's like a whole chapter about like, his relationship with his mistress, and it's It's all bleak. I don't understand any of these people. None of them seem like they're having a good time, and then a lot of them get murdered or go to prison. It just seems awful.
Keith: Yeah, it seems bad. Crime doesn’t pay.
Sylvi: They're really, um, they're really innovating in the life sucks and then you die department.
Keith: Um, where are we in this episode?
Sylvi: We are—I think we are just—I—We kind of started talking about, uh, Tony scouting stuff out after, uh, slash during the dinner.
Keith: Oh yeah, they're like scouting each other out because…
Sylvi: Tony gets like, caught, right?
Keith: Yeah, Peter Fred Peters definitely knows that someone saw him and was following him, and so he's going around asking like, people who know him, hey, has anybody been looking for me? And then he goes to the motel and sees the name Sopranos on the—Whatever they call a manifest, but for a motel. Register? The registry?
Art: Well, no, it's because it's from the—It's from the housekeeper. It's like, the list of rooms to do.
Keith: Oh, okay. Okay. I thought it was like the motel front desk registry. Um, which I don't know, it was the '90s and you're writing that down on a piece of paper for a motel in Maine. That makes sense to me. He's just got an old weird gun. Kind of sick little weird gun.
Sylvi: It's like, uh, it's got a silencer on it, right?
Keith: No, it just has a really long barrel.
Sylvi: Oh, what? Really?
Keith: Yes, totally. Yeah, it's just a lot. I mean, okay, I could be wrong, but it looks like a really long-barreled pistol and not—
Art: Yeah, I also thought that, but—
Keith: Uh, I have pictures of it, but I accidentally scrolled, and so now we'll never know. I love this guy's fucking wood—The thing that makes Tony sure that this is the guy is his wood carving of Ronald Reagan.
Sylvi and Dre: Well, he can't get the lips right. Yeah!
Art: Which they cover earlier where it's like that bust of Sinatra and he's like, Sinatra? I thought it was Shaquille.
Keith: Okay.
Sylvi: Right. Yeah. Guy needs to work on his lips. Um, that's also, yeah, I think when we established that Jackie like did time with, uh, Peter Fred Peters. Um, and that might also be a factor in why Tony is so gung-ho about this too.
Keith: Um, what do you think about this gun? You think this is a—You think this is a silencer, or you think this is just a weird long barrel?
Sylvi: Oh, you know what? No, that is an old-ass long—
Keith: it looks like a World War II—It's like a German pistol from like, World War II to me.
Sylvi: The Krugerrands mention was foreshadowing.
Dre: Yeah, it does look like a—Yeah, this looks like a Castle Wolfenstein-ass pistol for sure.
Art: Damn it, Krugerrands are South African. How many times do you gotta learn this?
Sylvi: Yeah, I just found that out. I didn't know.
Keith: I wasn't gonna say it.
Sylvi: That's a German-ass name.
Keith: It is a German name.
Sylvi: I think that's a Dutch—
Dre: You're thinking of Luger. Luger is the word you're looking for.
Sylvi and Keith: Oh, Lugerrands. 
Sylvi: High five, Keith. Hell yeah, man. I really love when, uh, one, when Tony's watching, uh, Peter Fred Peters being like, kind of like him in the like, hot tub with his, his wife and like, he's just trying to have fun. And then, uh, his daughter wakes up.
Keith: They give you this great moment where you're thinking you might see some growth from Tony Soprano, like maybe not wanting to kill this guy because he has a family. And actually, no, it's Peter Fred Peters that doesn't want to kill him because he has a family.
Art: That's not why Peter Fred Peters doesn't kill him.
Dre: Yeah, it's not.
Keith: Uh, well, it is a little bit.
Sylvi: No, it's why he doesn't kill him himself.
Keith: It's why he doesn't kill him himself.
Art: No, he doesn't kill him himself because those people are in the parking lot. He's gonna get caught. That's why he doesn't do it.
Sylvi: Okay.
Art: You sentimental idiot.
Sylvi: Yeah, I guess we are kind of taking Peter Fred Peters at his word. Well, you know, you can't really listen to somebody when you're garroting them.
Keith: It could be multiple things. And he leaves. He doesn't like, stick around and try again to kill him.
Art: No, you're—you're—No. Mm-mm.
Keith: Doesn't, uh, doesn't try to—doesn't try to hire the guys.
Sylvi: He tries to hire people to kill him.
Keith: I thought, I thought that that happened first. That happens—
Art: No, no, it's after.
Sylvi: It's after. It's after he doesn't kill them in the morning, I believe, because he's The—he talks to these two, like, local criminals slash, like, people he sells drugs to is kind of like, a throwaway line. Makes us—
Keith: It looks like they're former volunteer firefighters who are addicted to his drugs.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: And who maybe committed some insurance fraud.
Sylvi: Mild arson. Yeah. Uh, interesting. Who, who would burn down a building for the insurance money in this show?
Keith: These people are maniacs.
Sylvi: That's just barbaric.
Keith: Um, yeah, he tries to hire them and they're like, no, man, we're not killing a guy with a shotgun in the middle of the day. Fucking, fuck you. Uh, and, uh, I can't remember what else I was gonna say about that. 
Sylvi: Alright, um, that's fine. I do think it lends some—It lends a lot more to Art's reading of that, though. 
Art: Yeah, you gotta stop taking criminals at their word.
Keith: Never.
Sylvi: What? Why not?
Art: They're liars. They lie.
Keith: I don't know. Undeniably, Tony Soprano tried a lot harder to kill him than he tried to kill Tony Soprano. Because he died.
Sylvi: That is fair.
Dre: That's true.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah. Okay, I remember what I was saying. Uh, one, I really just like—super quick—really love the shots of Tony's car driving off at night over the hill. Looked great. Um, that whole nighttime sequence, again, they're really good at working with shadow, uh, in the show right now. Like, um, yeah, yeah, I like the late shadow.
Art: I like that it's misty all the time, and I know that must have just been coincidence.
Sylvi: Um, it, um, it makes it feel like noir-y, right?
Art: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: And these tight shots, these like handheld shots that are really in through this whole set.
Keith: There's a lot of handheld—
Art: And it's such a contrast to the shots we get in the, in the Soprano house.
Keith: Yeah. There's a lot of handheld, like almost documentarian style shots in these two episodes.
Art: Yeah. They, the—This director, they brought in because he had that kind of style to him. And then he ends up working on the show a fair bit. He does 12 episodes.
Keith: This, uh, this style is going to become the Russo Brothers, and then the Russo Brothers are going to become the worst thing in the world.
Sylvi: Yeah, they sure are.
Art: You'll always—We'll always have that first paintball episode of Community.
Keith: Yeah, and all of Arrested Development.
Dre: Hmm.
Keith: And the second paintball episode of Community.
Sylvi: I don't like Community that much. Um, hot take? Probably a little.
Dre: I did when I watched it, but whenever I see clips of it now, I'm like, oh, I don't know.
Keith: Nah, it's really good still.
Art: Yeah, it's really good.
Sylvi: Yeah. Um, should we talk about the murder? I feel like that's—Tony takes Meadow back—Takes Meadow up to the next college they're gonna go see and just kind of like, leaves her there. Yeah, makes up like a really bad excuse about leaving his watch somewhere at the restaurant or at the motel.
Keith: The undercurrent of this, by the way, is like—I'm sure this will come up later because I've heard the two of you mention it—They're trying to get her to go somewhere that isn't California.
Sylvi: Yeah, because she's really like in on Berkeley. That's kind of the one thing that, um, Carmela is able to say to Tony before he, like, abruptly hangs up on her is, uh, uh, are you able—Were you able to get her off this Berkeley kick? Um, and, uh, yeah, they definitely want her closer to home.
Keith: Yeah. I mean, she could consider Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.
Sylvi: Wow. We saw her singing.
Keith: We saw her singing. Look, if it's—I mean, I don't know her reasons for wanting to go to Berkeley, but if it's the word Berkeley, then it's the same school as far as she's concerned.
[Sylvi and Keith laughter]
Sylvi: That is the funniest possible reason to want to go to school somewhere, is just liking the name.
Keith: It's got a great—It's got a great mouthfeel. Berkeley.
Sylvi: I'm not going to dispute that. Berkeley is fun to say. Should we talk about the murder now though?
Keith: Um, yeah, he's spooked. He's hearing noises.
Sylvi: He's also like, calling someone. I think it kind of felt like he was calling someone to like—I thought maybe like, get another person who might, uh, do a favor for him in the way that the two people he talked to weren't. But the conversation doesn't start because he gets like, an answering machine and then hears something outside.
Keith: Oh my God, okay, here's one of the funniest details of these episodes to me is he has this like, travel agency. It's a shitty trailer in what looks like the middle of nowhere that says Peters Travel. And in the totally unkempt yard is like, a little model Statue of David.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: It's so funny that he's like, gotta show off my Italian roots by having a terrible replica of the Statue of David in my horrible yard by my weird trailer.
Sylvi: Did you also see the print ad for his travel agency? 'Cause—
Keith: I'm sure I did, but I don’t remember.
Sylvi: Guess what was there? It was—He was advertising, uh, Italy tours.
Keith: Oh my God.
Sylvi: And it was just—it was just a picture of Italy on there. Um, very funny.
Keith: You get the sad little streamers like, in the hanging up. Oh yeah, like flags, like a bad car dealership.
Sylvi: I was gonna say, it feels like a used car dealership in a lot of ways. I do love how all of this looks. It's shot during the day, so you get these like really vibrant greens because they're surrounded by like, the forest and like, like, lush greenery and stuff. Um, you get the—Like at first, uh, when he's looking around, like, he's got the gun in hand, uh, Peter Fred Peters does, and, uh, he's trying to figure out what made the sound. He sees a deer, uh, and relaxes. And then right when he relaxes is when Tony is able to get him with this sort of length of cord and start choking him out and talking to him, sort of like in Assassin's Creed when you kill a guy and you get the cutscene where you get to talk to each other.
Keith: Yep.
Sylvi: Um, that's kind of what I went to.
Keith: Shout out to Assassin's Creed 1.
Sylvi: Yeah, shout out to Assassin's Creed 1. That was a cool game.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, there are like—
Keith: Least improved game series.
Sylvi: Yeah, man, I, I, I'll, I'll leave that.
Art: I like the 2s.
Keith: I like—
Sylvi: Yeah, I like two of the three 2s. Yeah, that's about where I'm at too.
Art: Yeah, most of the 2s.
Sylvi: Most of the 2s. Where do we want to start with this scene? I have like a ton, tons of little things I like about it, but I kind of want to like make sure we're staying, staying a little focused.
Keith: Um, I think it's important—I think it's important—Oh, two things. One—
Sylvi: Do you have any buttons we missed, by the way?
Keith: I was just about to say, I missed one button. Yeah, I have, I have two main buttons, and we played one of them. The other one was during the dinner scene that we were talking about.
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Meadow: Dad, I have something to tell you.
Tony: Yeah? You're not—?
Meadow: No. Jesus. A couple of weeks ago, me and some friends, we were doing speed. We did kind of a lot of it for a while.
Tony: You what?
Meadow: It was just between homework and SATs and just the general pressure of life. We needed something to keep going.
Tony: That crap will kill you.
Meadow: I know.
Tony: I oughta slap the shit out of you. Where did you get it?
Meadow: If I thought this was gonna be a lecture, I never would have told you.
Tony: Take a reality check. What do you think I'm gonna say? Where did you get it?
Meadow: No way I'm telling you, especially after this reaction.
Tony: Well, why did you tell me?
Meadow: You were honest with me today. I won't be doing it again. It got too scary.
Tony: Jesus, right under my nose. Think you’d know.
Meadow: No, you wouldn’t.
Tony: I'm glad you told me, in spite of everything.
Meadow: I’m glad I did too. I'm glad we have that kind of relationship.
[audio ends]
Keith: And then immediately precedes Tony Soprano sneaking all around to try to kill a guy.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Kill a random guy in Maine.
Art: Oh, before we get too far ahead, I would also like to call out the—Tony's like, leaves her at the college. It's like, get me a school—A student paper, which I think is just a very dad request.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: If my dad was on a college tour with me and he had to go do a murder, I think he would have also asked for a student paper.
Sylvi: And someday you'll do that with your daughter.
Art: Yeah. I can't wait to figure out who I'm going to murder.
[Sylvi bursts into laughter] 
Keith: Oh yeah. That's going to be so fun. When you figure it out, will you let us know?
Art: Well, I have a joke answer, but Keith won’t cut it.
Keith: I'll cut it. I'll cut it.
Art: I'll have to go kill [bleep]
Keith: Uh, yeah, I'll cut that.
Art: You're not gonna.
Keith: I have to cut that. I can't not cut that.
Dre: Yeah, you have to cut that.
Sylvi: He has to.
Keith: I want to say this about that scene. You know, what is it doing?
Sylvi: The dinner scene?
Keith: The dinner scene. What is it doing when he's like, right under my nose, you'd think I'd know. And then Meadow is like, no, you wouldn't. To me, what it makes me think of is the campaign over the last, like, 20 years to get parents and children to rat each other out to the police if they think that they're doing drugs, which has been a sort of big police project since the '90s. Uh, I can't think of any other reason why that line would be in there besides part of this thing was like, yeah, you should really—You won't know if your kids are doing drugs. You should really go like, search their rooms.
Sylvi: I kind of took it more broadly, just like, about like, her growing up in general. And like, her, like the things that like, her and her brother are gonna get up to, like he's not there enough to notice. That's, that's at least how I read it. But I think I definitely see where you're coming from too.
Art: I just thought it was just like, you—Kids do drugs and their parents don't know.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: Like, kind of a lot.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah, it's true. But then, but why would she say that to him?
Dre: I read that as kind of like the, the Tony Soprano in her. Like, she's just telling her dad, like, I mean, I'm gonna do it.
Keith: And you're not gonna know. Yeah, she does just do more. I mean, it's a—It's alcohol, not speed, but still, she does just go right back to doing it. Um, anyway, that is sort of like the, the scene that underpins kind of this whole plot. So I'm glad that we went back to play it. 
Sylvi: Yeah. Thank you.
Keith: Again. Fast forward to he's in the, the, the forests of Maine choking a guy out with a—
Dre: Right in front of a baby deer.
Keith: Right in front of a baby deer, he would kill someone with a horrible grin on his face. Um, you know, this guy's begging for his life and wheezing and dying. He's cutting into his own hand.
Sylvi: Oh my God, that is my favorite part about it, is choking this guy so hard that he cuts his own hand with the, with the cable.
Keith: Yeah. He really like, really gets it. This is why assassins wear gloves.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: And fingerprints, I guess.
Sylvi: Oh yeah, those, those probably—
Keith: Who cares about fingerprints. It's TV.
Art: Um, um, there's—they go on a lot in The Sopranos Oral History about how HBO did not want this to happen.
Sylvi: The murder?
Art: Yeah, HBO didn't want Tony to do a murder personally. They thought it would, like, turn the audience on the character, showing that HBO really did not understand the era of drama that they were bringing in with this show.
Keith: Sure. Yeah. Well, I, I, it is notable as like, he's been connected to murders, but he hadn't done a murder. And there is a difference between running someone down with your car and breaking their ribs and “Hitman 3”-ing someone.
Sylvi: Sure.
Dre: I mean, I would argue there's even a big difference between shooting someone versus strangling someone to death.
Sylvi: Oh yeah.
Keith: Yeah. Well, he was a rat.
Dre: Well, sure. Yeah. I didn't say it was wrong. No, I said it was different.
Keith: Yeah, it is different. This is the only shot that I got of the David statue and it's, it's pretty obscured, but I mean, this is—What a horrible place.
Sylvi: Did you get any shots of the wooden ducks on the railing for the the, the travel agency?
Keith: I didn’t, I didn't get that. What I got was the ducks in the sky.
Sylvi: Yeah, flying away.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, there's a real, like, nature as a stand-in or, like, a symbol for, like, civilian slash peaceful life going on here. There's the deer that he sees and, like, that softens him before he gets killed. There's, like, the Tony—Tony's like, like—Tony's tied the ducks to his family already in therapy, right? That is already a thing that's been stated by the show. So like, being on this trip with your daughter that you step away from to straight up kill a guy, uh, who is related to your criminal enterprise, and then seeing this, this group of ducks flying away in the sky, like, how am I not supposed to read something into that? You know?
Dre: Oh yeah. 
Sylvi: Like, that feels like a very intentional decision, and I really like it. I love that he's surrounded by these like, reminders of things he could have in a lot of ways, or like—
Art: Especially in the—Because we're about to have a scene with—We're about to have another Meadow scene in the car where the contrast is drawn, right? Where instead of being honest with her, he is very dishonest with her, very transparently dishonest with her, and sort of like, dares her to know more than she does? And that's very like, he has this moment of openness with her, he has this good trip, and then he puts the wall back up and shows her he's putting the wall back up. And these ducks are flying away.
Keith: Yeah. Because one of the best things about how they set up the duck metaphor isn't that it's—You know, it's not a metaphor about ducks. It's a metaphor—The ducks are either coming or going. And we literally watch them, like, flying away. And then talk about Tony Soprano being a little boy. Look at this picture of him from, from the perspective of the sky as he's watching the ducks. He looks 1 inch tall.
Sylvi: Yeah. Knee-high to a frog.
Art: Oh, can I tell y'all this duck story?
Sylvi: Sure. Please.
Art: Okay, so I sent you all the picture, and I—Maybe it's in this post, maybe it's somewhere. Um, I went to a friend's house on Memorial Day, and they had baby ducks in their pool.
Dre: Whoa.
Art: It was very cute. We got to see them like, struggle to climb up a little thing. Um, their mom—They were like swimming around, and then people and babies started getting in the pool, and the ducklings got like, more and more comfortable to getting closer and closer to the people. And then the the mama duck came and was like, absolutely not, get away from this, and shepherded them all up this little slide that they had built for them and into the thing. And then, um, you know, skip ahead a few seconds if you don't want to hear about the tragic end of these ducks.
Dre: Oh no!
Art: They were all eaten by squirrels.
Dre: What?
Keith: By squirrels? What the fuck, squirrels?
Art: The squirrels in the yard came and ate the baby ducks.
Keith: These are not like, 1-day-old ducks. These are—
Dre: Do squirrels eat meat?
Keith: Anything will eat anything.
Art: Squirrels are apparently opportunistic carnivores.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: That's crazy.
Keith: Because to a squirrel who will eat—they eat bugs, right? What's the difference?
Dre: That's true. That's—yeah.
Keith: To them, they have no idea that there's a difference to us between a big bug and a duckling, except that the duckling has a lot more food on it.
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Gross. Poor ducks. Sorry about that, ducks.
Art: Yeah.
Dre: Art, did you ask them about how they keep the pool filter clean with the ducks in there?
Art: No.
Dre: We just established it's a huge problem within The Sopranos.
Sylvi: Yeah, Tony apparently did get very mad about that, even if we didn't see it.
Keith: Do you think those ducks like, represented something? Is there an omen happening somewhere?
Art: I hope not.
Sylvi: Do you think, um, are squirrels gonna eat your family?
Keith: Are squirrels gonna eat your family? Are whatever squirrels gonna represent eat your family?
Art: Um, I hope not?
Keith: Yeah, fingers crossed.
Sylvi: Probably the right answer.
Art: Or that giant squirrels don't come and—
Keith: It might help us figure out who you're gonna kill in the future.
Art: Hmm.
Keith: Whoever eats your family.
Dre: Uh, is the squirrel a person?
Keith: Well, they represent something.
Sylvi: They could.
Keith: In the same way that the ducks represent the family, the squirrel must similarly represent an external threat that then Art will need to kill. For his one allowed murder.
Dre: Okay, I'm caught up now. Okay, thank you.
Keith: Uh, yeah, this ride home is like the last, um, uh, note that I have for this episode. His gaslighting again of Meadow, where—I can't—God, I wish I wrote down what the exact gaslighting line was. Um, Oh, right. She's like, you were on the phone with Christopher at 1:00 AM, and he was like, how would you know? You drank so much you're seeing pink elephants. Like, I don't trust whatever you have to say about whatever. And that sort of shuts her up. She's like, oh yeah, maybe I'm going crazy.
Sylvi: Yeah, I don't know if it's her thinking she's going crazy.
Dre: It's, it's probably more of like, okay, no, when Dad does this, there's nothing I could do.
Keith: No, just a gaslighting joke.
Dre: Oh, okay, I see, man. I'm off today. I'm missing all the jokes, guys.
Keith: That's okay. You're in an empty room, so you're probably going, uh, insane.
Dre: It takes me longer to hear them because they echo off the wall before I can catch up.
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Extra processing time.
Keith: Do we have anything else about—Oh, oh, and then yeah, there, there's the last, the final shot. He drops her off into the, the admissions office and the guy says, yeah, as he's closing the door, like, would you like to discuss your future? Which is such a weird thing to say. Very, very TV line. Um, and then he sits on the bench and he looks up and there's a quote: No man can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
Sylvi: You guys think that like, might be thematic in some way?
Dre: I don’t know.
Keith: Nope. I think it's stupid.
Sylvi: The curtains are blue.
Keith: I mean, I, I—[laughter]
Dre: No, they're gold. 
Keith: It's definitely thematic. I don't know if the quote is entirely correct, but it certainly should mean something to Tony.
Sylvi: Yeah, I mean, like, it definitely speaks to the, the blending of family life and mobster life, right? And yeah, like, it—We see a few different people that he has to have different faces with during the episode on the phone and stuff. Um, just off the top of my head, there's obviously—there's Irina, Carmela, there's Meadow he has to be someone else for, and then Livia. Um, oh, I just meant in this episode specifically. Oh, in this episode, like Livia as well. Yeah, there's the, the good son thing that he has to do throughout the rest of the series.
Keith: Junior.
Sylvi: Um, Junior. Oh my God, I mean, the stuff with Junior I think speaks to it. 
Keith: Yes, they have to put on a little play for Junior in the next episode. It's unbelievable. It's one of my favorite scenes in the whole show so far.
Sylvi: Oh, I'm so happy. I'm really excited to talk about it.
Art: But to segue here, I think it's possible this quote refers more to the other main character of this episode.
Sylvi: Oh, and then let's talk about what—
Keith: The priest?
Sylvi: What she's, she's up to. No, what? No, Carmela. Put some respect on her name. Poor Carmela. She's home sick and AJ doesn't know how to poach an egg.
Keith: He doesn't even know what that means. 
Art: What did he do?
Keith: He boiled an egg.
Dre: I think he hard-boiled an egg, yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: But it wasn't, it wasn't hard-boiled. It was like, raw in there. I thought like, she cracked it and it wasn't, it didn't look cooked. Yeah.
Dre: I don't think he did a good job. No. My, my note on there was just, oh, so no fucking eggs.
[Sylvi laughter]
Keith: Uh, it was so funny in that first episode where I was like, my favorite line in this is in this scene, and everybody thought it was gonna be the no fucking ziti.
Sylvi: It's 'cause it's a funny line.
Keith: And I didn't even remember how the line went. It was a funny line. Um, okay, so we have—Carmela's mad at Tony in a bunch of different ways.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: He's cheating on her and she knows this. This is the least of her worries, it turns out, but it's still not her favorite thing in the world. He's suddenly got a girl doctor. That's pissing her the fuck off.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Um, she's sick. She wants—
Sylvi: That is the first thing we learned.
Keith: Yeah. She wants to be in the loop on what's happening with this college trip, and she's out of the loop. Because Tony's busy killing a guy instead of keeping her updated. And then look who comes by but the hungry priest.
Sylvi: Father, uh, Monsignor Jughead.
Keith: Monsignor Jughead, aka, uh, Father Intintola. Yeah, Phil Intintola.
Sylvi: Let me add his first name to our sheet here. There we go. I also added the, um, more important character who shows up in the next episode to our character sheet.
Keith: Great.
Sylvi: Yeah, he shows up, uh, and I know like there's like weird energy from the get-go, obviously—
Keith: Recast, by way. This is not the same Father Phil that was in the pilot.
Dre: Okay, I was wondering that.
Sylvi: Yes, this is a different guy. This is Paul Schulze.
Keith: He's sly. He's way slimier seeming.
Sylvi: Yeah, he's great. Like, I will say he's doing a great job in the role as a slimy priest. Slimy priest.
Keith: ‘Cause I thought that the other priest was going to end up being gay, but this guy's not gay at all. And actually they make it a plot point that he definitely isn't.
Art: And then use a slur question mark?
Keith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they use a slur question mark and then they use a slur.
Sylvi: Happy Pride, everybody. It's our Italian word of the week.
Keith: What was the slur [inaudible 01:11:40].
Art: Googling weird Italian words.
Sylvi: It's fanouk, which I can say. I'm allowed. Which is basically the equivalent of another, uh, another word that begins with F and is about the same length.
Keith: They said—they already said it. They said fag later in the episode.
Sylvi: They did say fag later in the episode.
Keith: Yeah. I can say it.
Sylvi: Yeah, you can say it. Um, the quote she get—The Casabl—I'm getting ahead of myself, but of her saying, of all the priests in the world, why—Of all the fanouk priests in the world, why did I have to get the one that's straight? It makes me cackle every fucking time.
Keith: It's crazy—It's a crazy line.
Sylvi: It's a—It's an insane line. Um, anyway, yeah, Carmela's sick. She's already been feeling like—
Keith: God, I wish my not-that-handsome priest was gay. So that I wasn't interested in him. This guy's not that good looking.
Sylvi: No, he's not.
Keith: No. And which is not even to say he's sort of good looking. I think that he's like a kind of regular looking, kind of slimy guy.
Sylvi: He's an average man. Yeah. He's like very—Average to a tee.
Keith: Uh, with some slime. Average plus slime.
Sylvi: Well, yeah, the, the, the priest vestments will do that.
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: He kind of looks like the current U of L basketball coach to me. That means nothing to anyone else, but I'm going to post this picture here because I—
Sylvi: Father Filch at a hoop. Oh my god.
Keith: He does kind of look like that. He does. It's the—a little bit of the facial hair, a little bit in the hair, a little bit in the brow. Yeah, this guy looks kind of like that guy.
Dre: Even younger picture looks even worse.
Sylvi: Oh wow.
Keith: Oh, and maybe looks even more like this priest.
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Keith: Um, but like, uh, maybe buffer. He looks buffer than the priest.
Sylvi: Yeah, probably. Something that I—Maybe I was misinterpreting this, but, uh, and please correct me if I am—the way that Father Phil sort of like, enters the scene being like, he's coming from an event and he says—First he says like, I thought you were in Maine. Uh, and then like a, like a sentence or two later, he's like, um, well, I heard you were sick. Um, which like, kind of felt like letting it slip that he knew that she would be here and that's why he came by anyway, even though he was talking about like, I saw the car in the driveway. 
Keith: Maybe he heard—I guess it's possible that he heard she was sick and also that she was going to Maine. You can go to Maine when you're sick. It's not that big of a deal.
[Art laughter]
Sylvi: I'm sure people do it all the time. Yeah.
Keith: Um, but I also, I wouldn't put it past this guy to have like thought that this was his shot to do something weird. 
Dre: Oh, 100%. Yeah.
Keith: Um, I mean, cause this guy, he's a, he's a sleazeball. He like, pretends that he's going to leave to invite her to ask him to stay.
Sylvi: Yeah, and also just constantly like, there's a real, um, you guys have the fancy alcohol here, can I have some, vibes.
Art: Yeah, only if it's open, but they definitely drink like two bottles of wine.
Sylvi: Uh-huh.
Keith: Yeah, he's like stumbling and puking. They, uh, they had to have each had a bottle at least.
Art: Well, yeah, because he originally says like, oh, this Chianti is good, and then later he mentions a different Italian wine.
Sylvi: Oh, sorry, he says this Chianti is—Hold on, I got it.
Keith: Yes, I do.
Sylvi: Oh, perfect. 'Cause it's such a funny thing
Keith: It's so funny. Okay. 
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Father Phil: Why, this Chianti though is beyond reproach. Word up.
[audio ends]
Keith: Why did you say that?
Sylvi: Word up. Why did, why did you say that?
Keith: Monsignor Jughead, why did you say, well, this is beyond reproach, word up?
Dre: This wine is 6-7.
[Keith laughter]
Sylvi: Oh my God. The thing is like, he does have that energy of like, trying to prove that he's the cool priest. 'Cause he comes in and lends her like a book about Buddhism and is like, oh yeah, there's, there's, um, um, they got some interesting ideas, but what's he call them? He says, don't go over to those zanies. Uh, which is a, uh, a game show in the Mega Man universe. Um, and then also there—Later on, he's like talking about the, um, talking about like, growing up with like a, a very like cultured neighbourhood.
Keith: He's a cultured priest.
Sylvi: Yeah. He's really trying to come up, like be, come across as like a man of the world.
Keith: Woke priest.
Sylvi: Um, he is that very much.
Keith: Monsignor Jughead the woke priest.
Sylvi: Oh my God. 
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Father Phil: This Chianti though is beyond reproach. Word up. 
[audio ends]
Sylvi: Word up.
Dre: Word up.
Sylvi: Um, fuck. Every time I think about him saying word up, I get like, a little flashbanged.
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Tony: Hey, let him cook. You'll feel better, go ahead.
[audio ends]
[burst of laughter from Sylvi]
Sylvi: Uh, what was the—I'm trying to think. It's when they're talking about—He, he brings up, he's like, um, you must think I'm a schnorrer, I think is the word he uses. Uh, he explains as just like, someone who comes over whenever there's food. Um, which, you know, is true. It's true. It's what he does.
Keith: Yeah, because fucking Tony comes back and there's no ziti and he immediately says that the hungry priest came by.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: He’s like, there was a whole tray of ziti.
Sylvi: Yeah. He ate the whole tray. I can't believe I ate the whole thing. That's why he got sick later.
Art: Yeah, if you drink a whole bottle of wine and a whole tray of ziti, you're gonna throw up.
Keith: By the way, that's gonna be the worst tasting throw up of your life is a big tray of baked ziti and a bunch of red wine that is going to burn. It's going to be so bad.
Dre: Ohhhhh.
Keith: Just really sit with that flavor.
Sylvi: I'd rather not. I'd really rather not. Um, this scene when he is like, you don't see me for who I really am, right? Uh, is when she gets the phone call from Dr. Melfi. Am I, am I correct? I'm gonna say I'm correct if no one's correcting me.
Keith: Uh, sorry, you don't see me for who I am? What is that? 
Sylvi: Well, no, like, he—Uou don't—Sorry, I was I was being, uh, more—I was being mean to, to, to Dr. Phil—To Father Phil. Um, when he's like, uh, you think I'm a schnorrer.
Keith: Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Um, yeah, she then receives that phone call.
Sylvi: That's when she gets the phone call. Um, there's like a really—It's—One, I really love her reaction to this at first when she's like, uh, when Melfi's like, it's Dr. Melfi, or it's Jen—I think she just says it's Jennifer Melfi. 
Keith: Yeah, she's Jennifer Melfi.
Sylvi: Um, it's like his nurse. His nurse, yeah. And then it's like, no, this is, this is Dr. Melfi, his therapist. Um, could you tell Tony I need to reschedule? I've come down with the flu. Which also makes me think that Tony is, is, uh, the vector for—
Keith: He's a flu carrier.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Um, patient zero.
Sylvi: But, uh, one, she has the, the line of, uh, when, when she's like tries to take him—When she asks if she—If, uh, Carmela can take a message, Carmela says, sorry, I lost my pencil up his ass, and then hangs up. Um, she tries to talk to like, Father Phil about this, but instead of getting like, any sympathy though, his whole energy is like, you need to be a better wife. Um, and there's a moment from Edie Falco that I really love performance-wise where she's like, uh—About like—She gets worked up and then she just like cuts herself off. She's like, ah, shit, why bother? Um, and it just felt very like, I don't know, it was a very like realistic like, oh yeah, that is someone who is at the end of their rope just stopping themselves before they burn up the energy on getting mad about something that they've—They, like, they're already basically ambiently mad at.
Keith: It's interesting because there's—There's obviously—They're—They've been together for a long time, and, uh, you know, resentment builds up from a bunch of different sources when you're in a relationship. But the show doesn't start until Tony has basically a medical emergency related to stress. And so the only side of this that we see is like Tony going to a therapist. He's still a piece of shit. He's doing things that he shouldn't be doing. She has like, the right to be mad at him. Uh, but like, the show is inherently weighted against her built-up resentment and towards his trying to deal with his own problems and having a difficult time because of how mad Carmela is at him all the time. And this is like one of those things where it's like, you know, Phil is kind of an outlet for her to talk about what it is that's bothering her that we haven't gotten like a lot of directly addressed from her.
Sylvi: He's, he's her like, equivalent to Dr. Melfi.
Keith: Right, totally.
Sylvi: And in like multiple different ways, like both in the way that she—The, the sort of like way that Tony is, is clearly attracted to Melfi. She's got that with him.
Keith: Totally.
Sylvi: Also, it's an advisor thing. Anyway, yeah.
Keith: It's, it's, it fits in. Um, we'll talk about it more in the next episode, but they have like—They—They're—Melfi's talking a lot about sort of displacing your feelings, uh, when—Because Tony's coming on to her and is like, being extremely inappropriate. He's having sex dreams about her. He's confessing his attraction and love to her.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, and so—and she's like, you are trying to make me into your wife or your mother. And in the background of this, uh, Carmela is trying—Basically trying to have sex with the Father, literally the Father. And so they're sort of both kind of swapped in this way that's really interesting. I mean, they couldn't have put a finer point on the oral sex visual metaphor of the Eucharist scene in this episode.
Sylvi: It's crazy.
Keith: It's crazy.
Dre: It's nuts.
Keith: It's nuts.
Sylvi: A great—They shot it great.
Keith: They shot it great, but it's crazy. Uh, like, this is—He's—She's on her knees, he's putting it in her mouth directly under her tongue.
[inaudible Art]
Sylvi: The way he grabs her head afterwards. Uh-huh.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Sorry, what was that?
Art: There's an insert close-up on the tongue?
Keith: Yeah. Two. Yes.
Sylvi: There's—yeah, there's two different angles on the close-up on the tongue.
Art: Yeah. And then he, he gives her the wine. He gives her like, a little sip. He does this big dramatic finishing of the wine. And then he grabs her head.
Keith: That's canonical, by the way. You're supposed to do that.
Sylvi: Oh, really?
Keith: Yeah, that's real. You're, you're because the, the, um, the wine is the blood of Christ. So you have to finish it. It can't like, go down the drain or anything. Okay.
Art: Are you saying that no matter how many people are doing it, you have to pour a whole glass of wine?
Keith: Yeah. So that's the part that I'm like, I don't know about that. It seemed like, yeah, he poured a whole glass and she had one sip, which is right, and then he's supposed to finish what's left, but there was a lot more left than there typically would be. But yeah, you are supposed to finish it, and then you even have to wipe out the, the cup with like, a special cloth.
Sylvi: Wow.
Keith: That's real. Catholics are weird.
Sylvi: Catholics are very weird.
Keith: It's the blood. You have to be special with the blood.
Sylvi: You gotta be special—I'm always saying this, you gotta be special with the blood.
Keith: Well, because it's been transmogrified.
Sylvi: Of course.
Keith: Um, transubstantiated, technically.
Sylvi: Um. Oh, we kind of jumped around a bit. We're—
Keith: That's okay, that's okay. We—So—
Sylvi: Do you have any buttons for this storyline, I guess, is kind of like, a good way to get us back on rails.
Keith: Yeah, so one of the things that—so actually, the place that I was leading with what I was talking about with Phil being sort of her analog to Melfi, both in the fact that he's a confidant to her, but also he's an object of desire, is that, like the therapist, Father Phil is trying to get her to consider her problems from other perspectives. The problem is that he's not professionally trained to do that, and also he has ulterior motives, which Melfi seems to not have.
Sylvi: Yeah, he—There is, there's a lot of like, I don't want—There's an energy of like, not wanting to ruin a good thing coming from him, as well as just like the typical Catholic misogyny.
Keith: Yeah, typical Catholic misogyny. The fact that he is interested back in her in a way that Melfi is not in Tony, or at least seems to not be. Um, there's that, uh, like, yeah, it's dangerous, potentially, to become involved with Tony Soprano's wife.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Um, uh, there's the fact that he doesn't want them to get a divorce because you're not allowed to get a divorce if you're Catholic.
Dre: For weak people.
Keith: It's for weak people, he says.
Sylvi: Um, which is like, also crazy because he says that in the second episode after she's, uh, told him that, uh, her husband has hurt people, which like, obviously it's an open secret in the community, but still.
Keith: The mafia community, you mean?
Sylvi: It doesn't apply.
Keith: The, uh, uh—And so, like, it's funny to me—Interesting, anyway—The way that when Melfi tries to turn Tony's explanations of his problems around onto him to reconsider them, it seems productive. But when Phil does it to Carmela, it seems counterproductive, even when, like, on a surface level, you can kind of see what he's getting at in some ways. Like, she's kind of—In this clip, we're gonna play this clip, and like, I think that she says something that's like, wrong, and then he corrects her is basically what happens. But he does—It's—He seems to do this in every encounter, like, not giving her the benefit of the doubt, not like working with her words as said, and instead like always trying to kind of get one up on what she's saying. It's very weird. But here's, here's them—here's him helping her become a better Catholic. 
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing] 
Father Phil: Of course, it wasn't just what Christ said. I mean, it was his deeds.
Carmela: See, that's my question. I understand what he did, but a lot of what he said, I don't get. Like the sun rises on the just and the unjust alike? Why?
Father Phil:  Because Christ was saying that we're all—
Carmela: What, that whores will go to heaven before a lot of the righteous?
Father Phil: Uh-huh.
Carmela: Well, that's not right. Well, let's face it, Father, we got some major contradictions here.
Father Phil: It's about love. Think about it like that.
Carmela: What does that mean?
Father Phil: It means hopefully someday we will learn to tolerate, accept, and forgive those that are different. Change through love.
Keith: The woke priest.
Sylvi: Fuck you.
Father Phil: Well, oh man, I better get going.
Carmela: Uh, uh, where are you going? You just got here.
Father Phil: Oh, I'm—It's getting late.
Carmela: It's pouring rain out. Oh, and I know you love that DVD player. I just got Remains of the Day.
Father Phil: Mm.
Carmela: See? Do I know you?
Father Phil: Anything with Emma Thompson, I'm there.
Carmela: Father Phil, I didn't know you looked.
Father Phil: What? To take in through the eyes a beautiful woman? Is that so different than a sunset? A Douglas Fir? Any of God’s handiwork?
[audio ends]
Keith: Listen, to me, women are trees.
Dre: Is it not righteous in the eyes of the Lord to want to fuck down nasty style?
Sylvi: Oh, brother.
Art: That was before the communion scene and is certainly a signpost.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: It's weird to me. I am not Catholic. I'm not Christian. But it's weird to me to hear, especially a Catholic, reject the idea of salvation through faith rather than deeds, because that seems to be like a pretty central part of it. It's like getting to this point in your life and being like, but how was he also his—How was he the Father and the Son?
Keith: Like, it's just like—you're saying for Carmela?
Art: For Carmela to be struggling with this idea of salvation through faith.
Keith: Yes, it does sort of make her saying he's helping me become a better Catholic in the first episode ring a little true. Like, whoa, she's really square one with this stuff. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that he's doing miracles, but all this stuff that he says is so confusing.
Dre: Hold on, hold on, hold on. He likes poor people too?
Sylvi: Guys, you're just describing the average American Christian.
Keith: No, I agree. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But well, maybe it's even worse—Because at least—Because the average American Christian, at least they can conceptualize, or a lot of times some of them can conceptualize, that in the Bible, you—Poor people are okay. It's just then in real life—Something else is happening. Well, they're poor because they're bad.
Sylvi: Yeah, I don't know. I, I really like this scene personally. Um, I like how hypocritical she comes across. I like how, uh, like emblematic her viewpoint feels to how a lot of people view like, the Bible in general these days. Um, I had something else and I, I lost—If it's important, it'll come back to me. But there was something else here that—Oh, I really enjoy—This is more of a performance thing. She has like, some real like high school girl flirting with crush, uh, like, body language going on here.
Keith: Oh, they're sitting on the floor, like at a coffee table. It's very strange.
Sylvi: Yeah, well, you know, they've been drinking. Um, but, uh, it's, it's again just like you can—I can—She won for this, you said, right?
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: Oh yeah, yeah, I can see why. I just, I couldn't remember if it was just a nomination or not. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's good. Um, she also—yeah, she does clearly need to become a better Catholic because she's not really. and it comes up like, you know, his—
Keith: And it comes up like, you know, his—His advice to her is not like—It's pretty realistic for what a Catholic priest might want to tell you. It, you know, it verges on the less upsetting side of what Catholic priests want to tell you about things. Um, uh, but also like, laying the groundwork for continuing to flirt on her with no—Flirt with her with no repercussions.
Sylvi: No, zero consequences, please.
Keith: And then they do the, the confession scene where they try—
Art: Well, first they go watch the movie.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: And they're sitting so close.
Keith: Yes, they are fully touching.
Art: Which is like… yeah.
Keith: And he's like constantly touching her back and her arms.
Dre: Uh-huh.
Keith: Uh, and she like, breaks down, I actually don't—I don't know this movie, um, Remains of the Day. I know it's based off a book. I don't know the book.
Dre: It's a good book.
Keith: Uh, and she like, breaks down over a scene with Anthony Hopkins not wanting to show Emma Thompson, uh, his own book that he has. I don't know what that book is. I don't know what it signifies. I don't know why she wants to see it.[Sylvi: I also don’t know Remains of the Day.] Uh, but she then, uh, Carmela then like, freaks out about like, hey, I've, I've been harboring a maniac in my home, and I'm pretty sure that God's going to punish me for it. Everybody's talking about Tony Soprano being in the mafia today. Meadow learns, the priest learns. He probably already knew. It's funny that she says that she has a confession. It very quickly turns to her confessing for Tony.
Sylvi: Yeah, it's—
Art: Yeah, but she's, she's correct. She is participating in bad things.
Sylvi: Yeah, this is her, like, like, talking about how complicit she is with this stuff. Like, like, she talks about how she just looks the other way to these things. And we get just, like, a masterful cut at the end of it of, like, I fear that God will bring retribution down on me and my family. And then it cuts to Peter Fred Peters fucking cocking his gun.
Keith: Yeah, it's a POV down-the-barrel shot.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, aiming at, um, Tony Soprano and Meadow at the motel, which is great.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: What's really interesting to hear you say that, Sylvi, about the, like, uh, the—oh, what did you say? My brain just turned to mush. Um, you were talking about, like, stuff going on in the background and people, like, pacifying other people?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: Um, so the main plot of Remains of the Day is about a butler and a woman who also works as a housekeeper, and their kind of like, romance that never becomes to be. But in the background, the British nobleman who like, owns this house where they work, in the background, this is in the lead-up to the Second World War, and this guy is trying to basically like wine and dine the Nazis out of being Nazis.
Sylvi: Oh my God.
Dre: And so it's a lot of like, acquiescing and being like, well, come on, they're the nobility. They wouldn't do all that. Um, so just, just interesting parallels here that Remains of the Day is, is the movie they watch. Also a crazy pull for a movie that you're just like, casually watching when somebody came over.
Keith: Well, people used to watch real movies in this country.
Dre: That's true. That's true, especially in The Sopranos.
Sylvi: The way she talks about it makes it sound like it was a recent, like, at least DVD release. 
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: Um, I mean, at that point everything's probably a recent DVD release.
Sylvi: It's also the thing, right, is like we've talked about the stuff, them talking about movie formats and stuff. We're still in the era of like, oh, they're re-releasing stuff on DVD, so it becomes a new release again. Yeah.
Keith: Shout out to DVD. We love it.
Sylvi: I'm trying to remember, 'cause they've sort of established the movie stuff with them in the—
Keith: In the first and the second episode. 
Sylvi: In the second episode. It's the second one where they have the conversation about The Godfather because it's this actor who has that conversation.
Keith: In the first episode, they're watching Field of Dreams together. So there's been—
Sylvi: Right.
Keith: In 5 episodes, they've watched 3 movies at least together.
Sylvi: Man. All right, hell yeah. Carmela, join Letterboxd.
Keith: What do you think her favorite movies are?
Sylvi: Oh man, I don't know. Um, I'm trying to think of like, what they would be today, and I feel like Carmela Soprano would love The Blind Side. Um, but I'm just trying to—That's the most uncharitable thing I could think of.
Dre: I think she probably loves Pretty Woman. It’s a good movie.
Art: Um, we're gonna get so much in this.
Keith: About movies? 
Art: We're gonna get so much movie. We don't, we don't need to speculate. They're gonna give it to us.
Keith: Yeah, okay.
Sylvi: It's just It's—I can't say—I can't say no to a little hypothetical bit. Is there anything either button-wise that you haven't mentioned, Keith, or is there anything that the rest of us that we want to talk about within this stuff that hasn't come up yet?
Keith: No, I don't have a button until towards the end of the episode. The next thing is the Communion scene.
Sylvi: Yes.
Art: So when do we have her complaining about—hold on, let me check my—She complains about Willem Dafoe as Jesus.
Sylvi: I believe it's the same scene as the God's Deeds.
Keith: That immediately precedes the, like, I don't understand about what God's words or Jesus's words mean because he's, he's like—She says something like, all of Jesus's words add up to like two hours of dialogue. And then she's like, yeah, and the same with the Beatles, but it's like 10 hours of music. And I'm like, that's not the same thing. And Phil seems—
Art: I think Phil says the two hours thing.
Keith: Well, Phil seems as perplexed as I was about this.
Sylvi: His reaction is really funny, him just going, hmm, yes, I've heard that.
Keith: Um, uh, we've, we've already kind of talked about the scene. It's crazy. I mean, this is, uh, could not be a clearer visual metaphor.
Sylvi: It's really, it's really well done. And then it's—It—Immediately, they fall asleep next to each other after this, right? On the, on the floor still.
Keith: They do a—
Art: No, they're gonna—They're about to, they're about to kiss and he throws up.
Keith: They're about to kiss and he throws up, and then it does cut to them like on the couch. Um, uh, later, after other scenes with Christopher, where by the way Christopher says, I am your soldier, Antonio, this is my duty, about wanting to come kill—Uh, by the way, fucking figure out, is he Antonio or is he Anthony? I know it's the same name, but everybody's calling him something different. Pick one.
Sylvi: It's Anthony. He's just being dramatic.
Art: Yeah, he's being, he's being dramatic.
Sylvi: Um, I do like how he—
Art: We also, uh, we also missed my, one of my favorite jokes in the, the other plot, which is, uh, Tony's like, what do you got? And Christopher just says, wet shoes. I died.
Keith: We did. We mentioned the second half of that joke earlier about going to play for the Yankees if you don't want to work in the rain.
Art: That was also me. I really, I really love that 40 seconds of this episode.
Sylvi: That was the thing. Every time Chris is on screen in this episode, it makes me laugh.
Keith: He's really funny. He's just there for comic relief in the episode. 
Sylvi: Yeah, and he's great at it. Um, but also, we, uh, a little minor thing, like we talked about how he, he's unhappy that he didn't get made after killing—Like doing his first hit for, uh, for the family. Now he's like, give me another one. 
Keith: Please let me kill again.
Sylvi: Yeah, he's like, he's really, really trying to get his, his stripes.
Keith: Um, I don't know why, it seems like a fucking headache.
Sylvi: Like, uh, money, bro. Um, the thing that I, I guess we—The timeline got a little fuzzy in my head because, you know, that's just how things are. There's a couple things that happened that I wanted to touch on. One is when they do fall asleep for like a little bit and then they wake back up, and then I think that's when the communion scene happens. But they're woken up by a phone call, um, from AJ, uh, asking to sleep over at his friend's. But like, there is a real like, energy of, oh, this is the phone call I've been waiting for. Tony said he'd call me when they got back to the motel.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, not, not at all. Though she also does the thing of saying it out loud that, uh, oh, you're gonna stay over at your friend's? And then looking back at the priest.
Keith: Yeah, the priest—So the priest knows that he's in the clear to stay longer.
Sylvi: Yeah. But then the other thing is when he goes to—When he starts vomiting because of all the ziti, we get this like, really like, sort of like, quiet, um, the ziti spews, they call it. The ziti spews. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, Carmela left alone in this empty house. It's—we didn't—haven't mentioned it, it's like thunderstorming the entire time. So in the background, there'll just be like flashes of lightning that illuminate the scene. Um, and then, uh, when she's left all alone, there's like a pause for a bit, and she calls—She calls the motel. Tony picks up. And she doesn't say anything. She just, uh, she just hangs it up. And, uh, my partner pointed out to me, I was like, oh great, that's her confirmation that he just forgot about her again. Um, and it's really sad because then you get this shot, Keith, that you just linked in here of her sitting alone in the kitchen, like, just trying to kind of holding it together, uh, in this—
Keith: Illuminated by lightning.
Sylvi: Dimly lit house, illuminated by the lightning. It's really great. Like, the, the craft here is like, really impeccable, I think.
Keith: Yeah. Um, it's, uh, you know, the, the—I was so impressed visually with the first episode that, um, the next three episodes didn't really impress visually, and I was very pleasantly surprised to be impressed visually again with these next two. 4 and 5 especially—sorry, 5 and 6, especially 5.
Sylvi: Very happy to hear it. Yeah, 5, I think it looks fantastic. It's a real, um, a tour de force. That's the term. Um, do—I guess all that's left now is the conversation when they got home. [Art: Well—] Unless there's something else I'm—yeah, please interrupt me if I'm missing things you guys want to talk about.
Art: In the morning, Phil is like, you know, my car was out front. And she's very much like, nothing happened. If nothing happened, nothing happened. And we get—to me, this is Carmela the mob wife is back. That Carmela, like, had this very real moment of reckoning with her life and her choices. And because she knows that Phil would've kissed her, and who knows what else, that it, like, breaks this peace for her.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm.
Art: And so, instead of seeing him as this, like, ally, friend, confidant, she just puts back up—we just get, like, regular Carmela back here. Um, and then we get the Casablanca line.
Sylvi: The funny Casablanca parody.
Art: The funny Casablanca line. But I think we see this, this opportunity for Carmela to have real growth snatched away from her by, um, the priest being, you know, low-key a sex predator.
Dre: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, a priest? What?
Keith: What?
Art: Maybe, maybe medium-key a sex predator. I don't, I don't, I don't know what—I don't have the chart of all the sex predators in front of me.
Sylvi: You don't know which key it is.
Art: And I think that that's, you know, interesting and terrible.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm.
Dre: Carm does not have the best taste in men.
Sylvi: No, not particularly.
Art: Um, and you know, the, the, the priest would have been a bad way to get out of there—As we see in the next episode, you know, uh, it turns out Catholicism is actually not equipped to handle a lot of these sorts of problems.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Hold on...
Keith: It's specifically—
Art: I don't mean to be a hot take machine here today.
Keith: It's specifically equipped to not handle them.
Art: Yeah. Yeah. 'Cause, 'cause, 'cause she is having this like revelation, like, oh, my husband's bad. The things we do are bad. And the next episode she's like, maybe I shouldn't be with my husband. He's like, don't even think about it.
Keith: Although to be fair to the writer's ability to make her—To give her complicated and not extremely black and white reasons for doing things. The thing that she's mad about isn't as much that Tony Soprano is a bad guy who's cheating on her. It's that she's jealous of Dr. Melfi. That's like really the final straw for her.
Sylvi: Yeah. She's jealous that he doesn't have like, a good job.
Art: It's a shame that this one is something that's not happening.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm.
Keith: For her? Or for the show?
Art: For her.
Keith: For her. Yes. Yeah. Because there is, there really isn't anything. Actually, it's only in this episode where her jealousy of Melfi is exacerbating her marital troubles with Tony, that Tony then goes for Melfi in a way that he hadn't in other episodes. You know, it's, it's, you know, that's how you line up a TV show, I guess. 
Sylvi: Should, should we call it for this episode then and then get to the new one? So we can keep focus here.
Keith: I actually have one more button. [Sylvi: Okay.] I have a last button because we didn't—We didn't end up getting to the, to the scene of Tony coming home.
Sylvi: Yeah.
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Tony: Monsignor Jughead was here.
Carmela: If you are referring to Father Intintola, yes, he was. He spent the night here.
Tony: Yeah, right. 
Carmela: Okay. 
Tony: The priest spent the night here. What happened?
Carmela: Nothing.
Tony: Where was Anthony?
Carmela: He was, uh, sleeping over at Jason's.
Tony: The priest spent the night here. Nothing happened. And you're telling me this because—?
Carmela: You might hear something, take it the wrong way. His car was out front all night.
Tony: You know what? This is too fucked up for me even to think about. What'd you guys do for 12 hours? Play, uh, Name That Pope?
Carmela: He gave me communion.
Tony: Oh, I'll bet he gave you communion.
Carmela: Excuse me?
Tony: Well, Carmela, a guy spends the night here with you and all he does is slip you a wafer?
Carmela: That's verging on sacrilege.
Tony: Oh, I didn't mean to verge. [inaudible because of MCP cast laughter] I don't know, but the whole thing sounds—
Carmela: Would I have told you about it voluntarily if there'd been anything to be ashamed of? Do I look like the friggin' Thornbird over here?
Tony: He's a fag. That's it. Because otherwise I gotta question what I'm hearing here.
Carmela: Oh, Tony, you are a sketch. Oh, by the way, your therapist called. Jennifer?
Sylvi: His face.
Tony: Carm! I just thought you'd think it was weird if I saw a woman psychiatrist, that's all. Oh, come on, it's just therapy, that's all. We just talk.
[audio ends]
Keith: Um, fell into her trap. She laid it right out, he fell for it. That's very funny to me. Yeah. And, uh, I'm curious about, um, if he had been honest about Melfi from the beginning, would it have been a big deal? Would it have been a festering thing for Carmela? And does her laying out a moral trap for him justify his hiding of that information?
Art: I think that based on the next episode, we can assume it would have been a problem.
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: Maybe.
Sylvi: [whispering] I think it would have.
Keith: I think it would have been.
Dre: I don't think it would have been nearly as big a one. Because it's him lying about it seems like is the thing that really tips it over for her.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Because the more he lies versus she—
Art: I mean, the coverup is always bigger than the—
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: Um, and of course she introduces it, right? She says him.
Keith: And he goes along with it.
Sylvi: And he just goes along with it.
Art: And he goes along with it. So it's an interesting—It’s interesting.
Keith: It's interesting. And you know, I, I, uh, I can see how someone like Tony would be—Who is extremely insecure—Would become even more insecure by, not only am I seeing a therapist, but I'm seeing a girl therapist. What am I, a girl? Does that make me a girl? And it does.
Sylvi: Yeah, it does. Congratulations, Tony. Welcome. The alphabet mafia.
[Keith laughter]
Keith: Uh, it's, uh, it's, it's—I'm happy that the show is finding ways to complicate their relationship, as—You know, just because Tony's not depressed anymore, it does not resolve the issues that led to his—Well, it's not that he's not depressed, just that he is no longer, uh, passing out from the stress of his life and job—Doesn't mean that the sources of those stressors are gone, or that he's necessarily better at dealing with them in the moment. Just that he's no longer so depressed that he's having medical emergencies.
Sylvi: Yeah. Well, did she say sad is good, unconscious is bad?
Keith: Yeah. Yeah.
Dre: True.
Art: I assume that's part of that's part of learning to be a therapist. That's, that's in the textbooks.
Keith: It's the first page.
Art: Yes. Oh, and, and to my earlier point about, about Carmela, she is also seeing that she can only wear one face to herself and another to the multitude without being bewildered as to which may be true. It works for both characters.
Keith: It works for both.
Sylvi: It works for both.
Keith: Do we think she's mad at Phil for not kissing her?
Dre: Yes.
Sylvi: Yeah, probably.
Keith: That was my read on it, was that like she wanted it and he puked instead, and then Instead—
Dre: And then he, he turned his like, failure to give her what she wanted into like a lionizing of himself. Right. 'Cause it's like, you were my greatest test from God.
Keith: Yeah. He's a piece of shit.
Dre: Yeah. He fucking sucks.
Keith: He sucks so bad.
Dre: He sucks so bad.
Art: But I also think that Carmela sees that.
Keith: That he sucks?
Art: That he sucks.
Keith: Well, she's going back next episode, getting more advice from him.
Art: Yeah. She's still Catholic. That's the priest she's got.
Keith: They've got, they have multiple priests at every church, like a bunch.
Art: Not in this show, they don't.
Keith: He's the only priest?
Sylvi: Well, he and the other one.
Art: Do you know what hiring a second actor costs?
Keith: Yes. I mean, but they can afford it. They can afford it. I mean, certainly it can't be a make or break for The Sopranos to have a second priest.
Art: I mean, first season? Maybe it was.
Keith: Maybe. I don't know. They certainly had a lot of money for music.
Sylvi: Yeah, I think that's a better use of the money than getting another priest.
Keith: I don't know. I think maybe it isn't.
Sylvi: Agree to disagree, man. That's all I can say.
Keith: Uh, any final thoughts about this one?
Sylvi: Great episode. Even if you're not watching along, go out of your way to watch this one. I think it stands up on its own.
Keith: Yeah, yeah. Uh, I think that the next—sort of like the pattern of the first two episodes that we watched, this one is a sort of pleasantly self-contained drama, and then the next one is like, a deeply—A part of a serial, like, ending on a cliffhanger of like, a promised dramatic future. Yeah, the upside is that I think this is a much better episode than the 2nd episode of the show.
Sylvi: I think I'm with you on that. Let's get into that in just a second, but I think for now let's take a quick five just so all of us can like, get water and stuff, and then we'll be back with Episode 6, Pax Soprana. 
[musical sting]
Episode 6 [01:54:37]
Sylvi: All right, so let's get into episode two for this week. Well, episode 6 overall, but our second episode this week, uh, Pax Soprana, directed by Alan Taylor as well, I believe. Oh no, sorry, Allen Coulter did the first one. Alan Taylor did this one.
Keith: The Allens.
Sylvi: Yeah, this is the Alan who didn't direct Remember Me. Uh, and this episode was written by Frank Renzulli, edited by Conrad Gonzalez, and still has Alik Sakharov—Alik Sakharov, of—As cinematographer. Um, I'm just gonna jump right into our summary and then we can, we can go, go through things. Um, uh, this episode sort of has an ABC plot of like A being Tony's sort of relationship stuff, B being, um, the stuff going on in the mob, and then C is a Carmela storyline. What I've done for the summary is sort of merge the Carmela stuff into the Tony stuff because they're so connected. Um, but we'll make sure everything gets its time, uh, even if it feels like I'm kind of—I'm kind of giving Carmela short shrift during my, my summary here.
Art: Not enough time, the frequent critique of Movie Club Plus.
Keith: Too short, they say.
Sylvi: I'm, I'm trying to make that—I'm trying to make that a reality. Um, anyway, this episode Tony's got two big problems: his love life and his uncle. Continuing where we left off last episode, Carmela's still upset with him for lying. I guess not correcting her about having a female therapist would be more accurate, but lying.
Keith: A lie of omission. Catholics love that.
Sylvi: A lie of omission. Yeah, thank you. Uh, she's hurt that Tony's able to be open with another woman instead of her, and that is basically tormenting her this entire episode. Uh, also, he decided to use their 18th anniversary dinner as an excuse to meet with his New York-affiliated mobster friend, Johnny Sack. And to make matters even worse, his dick don't work, uh, something that hasn't gone unnoticed by Irina, his mistress, and Carmela. Uh, and unfortunately—
Keith: Sorry, his what? She's his what?
Sylvi: I said his dick don't work.
Keith: No, no, his—She’s what?
Sylvi: His Irina, his mistress.
Keith: His what?
Art: His Carmela.
Keith: His goomah, I think.
Sylvi: Sorry, his goomah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dre: Oh, I thought you meant his, his Tony Cannoli.
Sylvi: That is who I'm talking about.
Speaker F: Okay, okay. Okay.
Sylvi: Yeah. Uh, unfortunately for Big T, when he talks to Melfi about it, she floats the idea that his, quote, diminished libido is not actually a reaction to the Prozac like he suspects, but instead a phys—Uh, sorry, a psychological reaction to something, most likely his depression. Tony, being Tony, has a couple sex dreams about Melfi after—Before and after this, and decides to misinterpret things between them so badly that he starts claiming he's in love with her. Uh, he tries to kiss her during one of their sessions, as well as having someone steal her car and replace the faulty starter with a new one before returning it like nothing happened. Shockingly, Dr. Melfi doesn't take anything—Any of this well. Something about like, an invasion of privacy and like him misinterpreting her therapy—I don't know, there's no pleasing some people. During all this, Carmela tries to get some advice from Father Phil about things, but he kind of continues his trend of blaming her for not performing her wifely duties to the level she should. Um, that is the scene immediately prior to Tony confessing his love to Melfi, who explains—Explains how therapy works and that he is just in love with an idea of her, uh, which goes as well—About as well as you expect. Um, this all ends at the, uh, poolside where Carmela and Tony share this quiet and genuinely kind of sweet moment together, talking about everything that's been going on between them the past couple episodes. And despite her insecurities about his closeness, like, his emotional closeness with Melfi, Carmela still encourages Tony to keep up with the therapy. And Tony tries to—We'll get into it. It's a really sweet scene. It rings hollow because we know who Tony Soprano is, but it's really well done. Um, Tony says some nice things, I guess, is my point there.
Keith: I don't think he has to not mean those things. He's just a bad guy.
Sylvi: Yes, exactly.
Keith: He still has feelings.
Sylvi: Yeah, exactly. That—Hey, you've summed up the show. What if a bad guy had feelings? Um, while all this is going on, Uncle Junior has been causing headaches for basically everybody in New Jersey now that he's the boss. He had Mikey break up a card game that's been going on for years under, I believe the name is Jimmy Altieri. I actually don't remember if that's one of the, the capos that we see in the episode or not. I know it's a name that's been brought up before. Um, anyway—
Art: We do see Jimmy in this episode. 
Sylvi: We do see Jimmy. Okay.
Art: I just, I can't remember which weird little meeting he gets to be in.
Sylvi: Which one's Jimmy?
Art: The fat one.
Sylvi: Okay, cool. I thought, I thought that was Jimmy, but I wasn't 100% sure. Anyway, um, he breaks up this card game [Keith: Violently.] Unceremoniously, like beating up the guy who's running it, um, Mikey does. Uh, Junior puts out a hit on a dealer who sold, uh, drugs to his tailor's grandson, um, and who, who took his own life after doing them. And then after a talk with Livia, notably, Junior starts taxing Hesh's loan shark business. It's that last one that really gets Tony's attention, going behind Junior's back to talk to the aforementioned Johnny Sacrimoni from New York so they can figure out a friendlier deal for Hesh without giving away that Tony is the real power in New Jersey. The whole thing is a very convincing display of bullshittery when executed, leaving Junior feeling like he got the better of everybody, even though he's the one being played. And remember that thing I mentioned about a drug dealer getting whacked? Yeah. So Mikey throws that guy off a bridge, and it turns out he's one of a different capo's top earners. So everybody is unhappy with Junior now, claiming that unlike other bosses they've had, that Junior eats alone, that he's getting all the benefits without letting any of it trickle down. They literally talk about trickle-down economics. Tony also goes to consult Livia, who I think it's safe to say: the real boss of New Jersey. And knowing that—Knowing that Junior listens to her despite her protestations to the contrary. After trying and failing to use Roman history to make his point to Junior, talking about Octavian and Augustus, Tony instead decides to bring up an old joke about some cows.
Keith: I don't even understand what Junior understood about this joke. I don't, I don't know how he got there from that, but we'll get to it.
Sylvi: I—We’ll get to it. Uh, and finally gets him to ease up and spread the wealth some. The episode ends with all the made guys having this banquet to honor their new boss, all while one of the waiters surreptitiously snaps pictures of each and every one of them for the FBI.
Keith: With the world's loudest shutter.
Sylvi: Yeah, but the world's tiniest camera. Yeah, I was gonna say, that's—
Keith: Yeah, it was for us. It's for us. I just can imagine a waiter walking around and being like, some water? [obnoxiously loud camera shutter sound]
Sylvi: Thanks, John.
Dre: Polaroid just starts printing out of their back pocket of their pants.
Sylvi: Oh my God.
Keith: Yeah, they're instant photos. Yeah, they just start accumulating.
Sylvi: They're just gonna start calling him Johnny Polaroid and be like, hey, why does this make that sound when he walks? Um, Yeah, so another good one, right? Yeah, I got the sense earlier on that this one also was a crowd pleaser for the people who hadn't seen it before.
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Keith: I, I sort of like—I felt like this was—I think this is the—It's not as good as the pilot, it's not as good as College, but it's like, pretty close to me.
Sylvi: It's a very good episode. Um, I think, I think I'm, I'm with you on that, honestly. I think, I think that that's a pretty fair assessment so far. Um, yeah, where should we, where should we begin? Um, obviously I figure starting with Tony and all, all of his, his relationship woes.
Dre: [laughing] Self-inflicted relationship woes.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Oh, yeah.
Keith: What is the first thing that happens in these episodes? Is it—Oh, it's the poker game.
Sylvi: Yes, it is the poker game. The poker game does start this episode.
Keith: OK, do we want to start with Tony's stuff? There is actually a lot of Junior stuff first.
Sylvi: Yeah, I kind of—
Keith: Like 3 scenes, actually, in a row.
Sylvi: Yeah, I probably could have written this so we started with the Junior stuff, honestly. Um, but yeah, I'm good with whatever. I just kind of wanted to structure it so it was separate for you, Keith, because I know that makes the button stuff a lot easier.
Keith: Yes, I—Even though there's a lot of Junior stuff, I only have one. It's hard to know because the buttons are longer and we're doing more for The Sopranos than ever before. So, uh—
Sylvi: Oh, really? 
Keith: Yeah, yeah. Well, like, we—Two episodes of The Sopranos is longer than every single M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Sylvi: And Hunter x Hunter, three episodes.
Keith: And way longer than three episodes of Hunter x Hunter. And because the, the scenes have so much meat, the, the individual scenes tend to be longer. So I've been like trying not to overdo it on the buttons. I only have one Junior-related button and three Tony-Melfi-Carmela related buttons for this episode. I wish I had gotten one more. I think I actually, I will drop the little play that they perform for Junior in, I just didn't grab it at the time. [Sylvi: Please do.] But yeah, maybe we'll just like—I'll play the audio for us and then I'll drop it in.
Art: It's so good.
Keith: Because it's so good. It's really good. But yeah, maybe we'll start with the Junior stuff because there's so much of it up top.
Sylvi: Yeah, sure.
Keith: I love—What is my—Michael Palmieri? 
Sylvi: Mikey Palmice?
Keith: Is that how it's pronounced?
Sylvi: Palmice. I think.
Keith: He's such a fun guy to me.
Sylvi: He's a really fun shithead.
Keith: He's a great character. Like, 'cause you have to go—To him, he's Junior's Christopher, right?
Sylvi: More than that though, 'cause I think he's a made guy still.
Keith: I think he's a made guy.
Art: Yeah, he's—
Keith: But relationally, but like—
Sylvi: Yes.
Keith: Junior is Tony and Mikey is Christopher.
Art: He might be Junior's Paulie.
Sylvi: I was gonna say he might be Junior's Pussy, but that sounds, uh, different. That sounds different than what I mean.
Art: I know.
Sylvi: Uh, but like, he—I think, yeah, I think, Art, you're kind of—I think we kind of line up where he's at, where he's not necessarily like Christopher because Christopher is kind of like doing grunt work stuff. He's more like, inner circle than that.
Keith: Is he not doing grunt work? The first time we see him, he's like waiting in the car driving Junior around.
Sylvi: Yeah, I mean, he—Yeah, but yeah, I guess, but like, I—
Art: Weirdly, being a guy's driver is like a good job.
Sylvi: Yeah, especially if he's the boss of New Jersey. Or yeah, is it just upper New Jersey?
Keith: Isn’t the first thing that we see—It's—I think it's New—I think it's New Jersey. They talk a lot about Upper New Jersey, but maybe that's just because that's where most of their business is.
Art: They say North Jersey.
Keith: North Jersey, okay.
Art: Which I think is because North Jersey is basically New York and South Jersey is basically Philly, and I sort of just believe that that's gotta be—There's gotta be a mafia dividing line at some point.
Sylvi: Ah, yeah, I wouldn't be shocked.
Keith: But my point is that Junior is a villain in Tony's story. But not in Mikey's.
Sylvi: No, that's his bestie. That's his old as fuck bestie.
Keith: That's my point about comparing him to Christopher, is that we get a guy who's like, to him, Tony is the thorn in the side that causes headaches that Junior has to deal with. And so, having a guy who's like—It's kind of just his job to work for the guy we feel like is a shithead asshole who's getting in the way of like, all the other mafia guys having a good time. Mikey's just kind of like, I just do what I'm told and Junior's my guy and whatever. Uh, but he's a slimy piece of shit. I just like him. I just think he's great.
Sylvi: I, I, it's a great performance. Yeah. He's always got this, like, he's always got that smile on his face.
Keith: What is the thing that Tony says that he has?
Sylvi: He has fuckfaceitis.
Keith: He has fuckfaceitis. Yeah. Yeah, he—and he does. Later on, he's wearing an absolutely insane mint green suit with a zip-up collared shirt. It's unbelievable. It's—here we go. I got it right here.
Sylvi: Is that the scene where they're throwing the guy off the thing?
Keith: No, that's when—
Sylvi: Oh my god.
Keith: That's when they're telling him about the grandson who committed suicide. Just an unbelievable—
Dre: Oh, this is dripped down.
Keith: Unbelievable. Yeah. High-waisted pants, mint green. He looks like fucking Willy Wonka. He's wearing a Willy Wonka suit, but the shirt is like the most—
Sylvi: It's not that colorful.
Keith: What's that?
Sylvi: It's not that colorful.
Keith: It's the cut of the lapels that makes it Willy Wonka.
Sylvi: Sure. Oh, okay, sure.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: And he's also showing his like, bad bedside manner again, 'cause it's like, my grands—I heard about that. The current bashed his head for days.
Keith: Yeah, and Junior had to be like, shut the fuck up, dude.
Sylvi: Him having no filter is such a good recurring bit.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Like, not only it's like a good characterful detail, but it is so fucking funny every time.
Keith: It's really funny. Um, yeah, again, I mean, if there's a single shot for you to check out the screenshot post for, it is this mint green suit. I had a, I had a phone, I had a Kickstarter phone called the Nextbit Robin. He looks like a Nextbit Robin.
Sylvi: Okay, hold on. I gotta, let me just—[typing] Nextbit Robin. Oh, hey, that's pretty funny.
[burst of laughter from Keith]
Dre: Oh, Keith, I did not know how you were gonna land the plane with that joke.
Art: Yeah, man, that's pretty funny.
Dre: You really fucking did, brother.
Keith: Nextbit Robin.
Sylvi: Yeah, that's Mikey on the left. That's my Mike phone.
Keith: I love the idea. Like, how could a guy look like a phone? He's like, oh, that's how. He looks just like this phone.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: No, you nailed it, brother. Like, damn.
Art: And based on the chronology, I have to believe that the phone actually looks like the guy.
Keith: Yeah, this actor's phone—it turns out that actually this phone was based on Mikey Palmice.
[“Shame About It” by Jack de Quidt starts playing]
Sylvi: Why didn't they call it the Palmice Pilot?
Keith: Oh my God.
Sylvi:  Thanks everybody, that'll be us. We'll see you next week. 
[canned applause]
[“Shame About It” by Jack de Quidt stops playing]
Sylvi: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Dre: I have never noticed the person in the background just screaming, “yeah”! With that sound before.
Keith: That's how it was.
Sylvi: Oh my God. Oh, wow. Uh, yeah. Yeah.
Keith: So shout out to Mikey Palmice.
Sylvi: Actually, it's not the first thing this episode starts with.
Keith: Oh, it's not?
Sylvi: Um, no, this episode starts with, uh, Tony talking to, um, Vin Makazian. Makazian, the cop.
Keith: Right, I have that in my notes, but I don't have a screenshot of it. Yeah. If you, if you remember from the last time we talked about this cop, Tony said, hey, why don't you follow this doctor around and make sure that she's not up to anything weird? And he said, ah, beat the shit out of her boyfriend. Got it. Got it.
Sylvi: Yeah. Say that weird thing about prime rib.
Keith: You want me to tell her what kind of steak I think you are?
Sylvi: Hey man, it's a good steak. Trust me. [Keith: It's a good steak!] Um, I don't know if that changes how we want to do this. I just thought I'd mention that, like, oh wait, there is something I forgot about. I'm down to keep with the Junior stuff.
Keith: I think we should keep with the Junior stuff. That was a very, that's a very short scene. And then it does cut to, um—
Sylvi: Yeah, it’s a short scene—It's that—There's a quick little short Melfi scene and then straight to the card game. Um, yeah, like we go from this card game of like, uh, we got the very clear moment where the guy who's running it name drops Jimmy, which is definitely supposed to be the way, like, um, definitely supposed to be the like, defusing thing.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: Yeah, yeah. It said later the, uh, one of the other captains is like, as soon as he said Jimmy's name, that should have been the end of it. Yeah, I don't know why I—And this is—I'm not the only one doing this, but I always feel like we're doing impressions on this one, and we didn't do that in the Shyamalan season where we would quote someone and do like, an impression.
Dre: It is way more fun to talk with a Jersey accent.
Keith: Yeah, there is no one worth doing an impression of in any one of those movies.
Art: Wow, shots fired.
Dre: Well, there's the kid who sees I see dead people.
Sylvi: That's the only one. James McAvoy when he's pretending to be a 12-year-old. I love Kanye Weth-t.
Art: And there you are doing an impression.
Keith: There you are.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: There we go. I did it.
Keith: Um, we had to have done some. I think I did an impression of Mel Gibson in Signs.
Art: Oh, I think that's right.
Dre: That sounds right. Yeah.
Keith: Um, so yeah, he's beating up these guys and then, then, then, uh, you know, he says, uh, Uh, let's see, let me get the actual line. 
[audio of the Sopranos playing as Keith reads the line also] 
Keith and MIKEY: The party's over. Junior Soprano is the new boss, and he ain't respecting old arrangements.
MOBSTER: You're lucky.
[audio ends]
Sylvi: Yes.
Keith: And then it cuts to him getting his suit fitted. He's really trying to live it up as boss. He's like, I want to enjoy my time as boss. I'm going to screw everybody over and I'm going to get a new suit.
Sylvi: The image of him in his little fucking boxers with the suit jacket on.
Keith: So funny. I mean, again—
Sylvi: Junior is so funny.
Keith: Another guy who is sort of a little boy.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: Oh, yeah.
Sylvi: They all have, like, pretty bad cases of arrested development.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, like, straight up. Uh, the, the—He's so, like—It's so like, oh, I'm getting ready for—I'm so excited for my first communion because I'm gonna get all this money from my relatives. It's like, the real energy he's got in this coat—This, like, suit fitting scene.
Keith: Um, I love these two images back to back. You don't see that he doesn't have his pants on, and he's kind of like looking sharp in the mirror. And then it cuts to the full shot of him with no pants on, on the little box.
Sylvi: It's also like—
Keith: With his shoes on still.
Sylvi: With his shoes on still. It's also like, they specifically chose all the shots that make you see just how magnified his glasses lenses are.
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Sylvi: Uh, how—like, that shit, that shit is so bad. Oh, that's a prescription right there.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, but yeah, the, the sort of crux of this scene is Junior finding out that, um, Taylor's grandson—
Keith: Yeah, little Dominic. [Sylvi: Little Dominic.] 14 years old, his namesake—
Sylvi: Killed himself, threw himself off of the bridge that we had—We have seen multiple times now. This is the same bridge from when we're in the pilot, I believe. When they're threatening the guy who owes them money from the HMO, for the HMO scam—
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: That they want to pull.
Keith: It's the bridge where people die on.
Sylvi: It's the death bridge. Yeah, it's the bridge that makes you dead.
Keith: It's the bridge that makes you dead.
Dre: As soon as the ice cream truck leaves, it turns into the bridge that makes you dead.
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And what people don't know is that Sweet Tooth from Twisted Metal's in that ice cream truck. So it's like, it's good that he left because you would have gotten extra dead on that bridge.
Dre: I didn’t know Samoa Joe was in Sopranos.
Sylvi: I would love that.
Dre: Unironically, yeah.
Keith: Yeah, that was Sweet Tooth's wish when he won the death car competition, whatever it was called, was that every bridge that he goes to is a bridge where people die on.
Sylvi: Yeah, that is—yeah, that is what happens. Um, sorry, I'm just thinking about, uh, Tony taking AJ to like an ROH or ECW show and getting—Thinking it's really funny now.
Art: Um, almost time appropriate, not quite, but in the run of this show…
Sylvi: It’s a little too early. Um, uh, the thing about that I like about this scene is how incensed, um—How incensed Junior gets about all this, paired with the reveal later on that this guy is basically his employee in a sense. Like, much—Far enough down the, the structure of the mob that it's like not one of his direct guys? But like, that dude is paying—Paying him like a cut for the drugs he's selling. He’s also got this—
Keith: Yeah, but he's worth 10—His next 10 earners combined.
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah, every, every—What is it, football season? He's worth more than his next 10 earners combined.
Keith: Are football fans buying a lot of drugs? I didn't get the—
Sylvi: No, he—
Art: I think he's—
Sylvi: I think I think it's on top of the drugs. Yeah, I think it's a gambling thing.
Keith: Okay, got it.
Sylvi: Was my understanding there. That makes sense. He's a multi-vocational criminal.
Art: A drug dealer can take bets. That's—I mean, it's kind of the same skill set.
Keith: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, and the same people that wanna make drug money that they don't have are gonna try and gamble.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: And then, so the real business is debt.
Art: All the businesses.
Keith: All business is debt, actually.
Sylvi: Always has been.
Keith: All of every business is debt. And then—
Sylvi: I really like that Junior is also really hung up on the idea of the, like, honorable mobster in a way here.
Keith: Oh, he's really—
Dre: Oh yeah.
Sylvi: Uh, not just—It's another, like, oh yeah, this is someone who's a—This is a man who's obsessed with keeping up appearances in a specific way in this show. But like, he's also so excited to, to show off the power he has by fixing this problem. And like, yeah, that's, that's how he becomes the problem.
Keith: And it's sort of like, uh, it's sort of a, um, mirror to the first episode. Um, we had Austin on and Austin was talking about the sort of arbitrariness of like, Tony Soprano did a good thing for his friend, but he only really cared about it because it was for his friend. Like, this guy, you know, he can hem and haw about drug stuff, but he's doing the drug stuff. That guy, like, you know, one step removed kind of worked for him. He's the guy that is, at the end of the day, kind of responsible for that kid's death. But because he's like—
Sylvi: It’s Black Dynamite.
[Art and Keith laughter]
Keith: Um, and, and so he's like, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really sad that what happened to your grandson. I'm gonna kill that guy. Not me, though.
Sylvi: But like some guys. Oh, oh no, you mean like I'm not gonna kill me?
Keith: I'm not gonna kill me. And also I didn't do any of that. I'm not responsible for this.
Sylvi: Yeah, it's not my fault.
Art: I mean, it doesn't—I'm getting picked up—I'm getting kicked up to from this, but you know.
Keith: All I'm doing is making money off of your grandson's death. I'm not involved.
Sylvi: I profit off it, but once I hear about it, I'm gonna be upset.
Keith: Yeah. Um, and then he's, uh, talking to Livia at, um, the retirement community.
Sylvi: She seems like she's in a better mood this episode.
Keith: She kind of does seem like she's in a better mood, but it's—It might be because she's actively fucking with Tony Soprano.
Sylvi: I mean, yeah, it's kind of hard to tell.
Keith: Um, do we want to watch this scene? There's another scene that I think maybe we should have in the episode.
Sylvi: Yeah, sure.
Keith: Because she's being very, um, sly. Did I do it right?
Sylvi: Did I? Yeah, you did do it right. I'm in there. Keith is screen sharing.
Keith: I'm screen sharing because I didn't grab—I didn't grab the audio.
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Livia: I'm happy for you, Junior. I know how long you waited to be made boss. Just don't let certain people take advantage of your good nature like they did to Johnny. 
Junior: What certain people? Nobody got over on Johnny. Nobody's gonna get over on me.
Livia: How's your Jewish friend? 
Junior: Hesh? What about him?
Livia: Whoever heard of a Jew riding horses?
Junior: He owns a horse farm.
Livia: Ah.
Junior: He's Tony's friend, not mine. What do you got against him anyway?
Livia: Who, me? Nothing. But Johnny likes him, and my son thinks every word that comes out of his mouth is pure gold. 
Junior: Are you telling me that since I'm the new boss, I should tax Hesh? Boy, Anthony must have really gotten under your collar. Admit it, you're looking to crack his coglione for putting you in here
Livia: I don't know what you're talking about. 
Junior: Yeah, and I'm playing shortstop for the Mets. Oh, all right, watch the balls.
[audio ends]
[group laughter]
Sylvi: Keep that in, keep that in.
Keith: So at the very end, I realized that I did grab that scene, and watch the balls is in the, the, uh, clip that I got.
Sylvi: Well, we're good either way.
Keith: Yeah, watch the balls. Which is exactly what they're doing. They're hitting him in the balls.
Sylvi: [laughter] Oh, sorry. Watch the balls. All right, I'm good. I'm normal.
Keith: This is like the third instance of Livia being like, I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just saying what's going on. I think, I don't know about any of this stuff. I'm just an old lady.
Art: I don't even know what you're talking about.
Keith: I don't even know what you're talking about. All I know is that that guy's not paying his taxes.
Sylvi: It, it rules. Last episode we didn't get any Livia, and I was so glad that we got Livia in this one. [Keith: Yeah, she's great.] Like, as good as College is, I need, I need some evil mother in my life.
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Dre: Do we ever learn like more about her marriage and stuff like that?
Sylvi: Yes, we do.
Dre: Okay. I'm very curious to hear about like, the reality of her relationship.
Keith: Yeah, me too.
Sylvi: Yeah, we're there for sure going to, to get more of that. And, um, I mean, like, we've talked about this, there's like a straight up—there's a, for better or worse, there's straight up a prequel movie that like, takes place when, uh, her husband's still around.
Keith: Neither of you like it, and it seems like most people don't like it.
Sylvi: It's just kind of underwhelming.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: I don't think it's—
Dre: Is it about why he drops out of Seton Hall?
Sylvi: No, it—[laughter] Oh, it's like, well, I want to make this movie, but they won't greenlight it unless it's a Sopranos movie. So here we are.
Dre: Oh, okay. Gotcha.
Art: Yeah, he had a different movie.
Dre: And then we just control F for Jerry and replace Jerry with Tony Soprano.
Sylvi: Yes, pretty much. Um, but no, there is, there is definitely more about both, uh, what she was like when Tony was a kid and like, what her relationship with, uh, her husband Johnny was like. Um, I don't think it's giving too much away to, to tell you that.
Keith: Okay.
Sylvi: The—It like—I really like how these also are kind of filmed in the same way that the other mob negotiation scenes are filmed. Um, the sort of just like, oh yeah, we're meeting at a table like, talking business situation.
Art: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, I think that might just be, you know, a reality of shooting people sitting at a table. There's only so many ways you can do it, but it, it has create—It does create this sort of like, visual throughline that I think, uh, works really well.
Keith: Well, no, I think that you're right. I think that it uses a very similar visual language to—Because that's what they are doing. They're—She's kind of in the mob.
Sylvi: Yeah. And I think it's even more, um, it's more prevalent in the scenes she has with Tony, I think, specifically, uh, like just in terms of like images on screen.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, but the tone is there in both of them.
Keith: The Tone's always there. It's The Sopranos.
Sylvi: Well, no, he wasn't in this scene.
Keith: He was there in spirit.
Sylvi: Yeah, that's true.
Keith: Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you forget what you were saying.
Sylvi: No, it's fine. I'm just like, my, my notes are a little messier for this one because I, uh—
Keith: If we don't have anything else to say, the next thing in this is, uh, Hesh shows up to the card game and pulls Tony out to tell him what Junior's doing.
Sylvi: Yeah, for the—Yeah, yeah, for this plotline. Yeah. Um, I, I really like this one because it's again setting up like a scene later on that I think is like, really interesting in terms of how Tony reacts to this sort of thing.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, but, uh, yeah, Hesh is not happy. I think—What's the figure that Junior's asking for? $500,000?
Keith: Yeah, he wants $500,000 and then like, a percentage of his loan shark business going forward.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: That's like 5% or something, right?
Keith: Yeah, it's huge. And Hesh is, I think, understating how big of a problem this is, because he says something like, the request isn't unreasonable, but the figure is. [Sylvi: Yeah, I think—] And then Tony's mad about the request even, and probably so is Hesh.
Sylvi: Well, the thing with Hesh is that he's been around for so long that like, I got the impression that it's just like, yeah, this is how things work. Like the boss dictates this sort of things. It's normal to pay up to the boss like this. It's just dropping it all on me like this is not—Uh, is, is gonna make me wanna leave the game.
Keith: Yeah, they call it back taxes.
Sylvi: Yes, that is, um—Yeah, I don't know. It's—I do love how heated Tony gets about this.
Keith: What does he say?
Sylvi: Like, uh, already my, uh, my uncle's giving me agita.
Keith: I don't even know what that is. They've said it like 3 times in like 6 episodes.
Sylvi: It’s like heartburn. Yeah, is like my understanding of it. Like, it's like aggravation.
Keith: Okay. Um, and this is like the start of a thread that involves that guy, Sack, the New York guy?
Sylvi: Johnny Sack.
Keith: Johnny Sack. Uh, where, like, Tony's pitch ends up being like, okay, so you can't tell Uncle Junior that I talked to you, and you can't tell Uncle Junior that Hesh talked to me. You've got to be mad on Hesh's behalf, and I'm gonna pretend to be on Uncle Junior's side, and then Sack's like, I knew you were in charge the whole time. You're, you're the real guy. Like, that's really—He's like, I don't care about any of this squabbling. I'm just, you know, I'm just glad to know who's really in charge.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm. Um, I really like this whole scene here.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Where he—Him talking to Johnny Sack, because the reveal in the middle of it that it is not just him going to New York to meet with a guy, it is—He is doing this on his 18th wedding anniversary.
Keith: Yes. Um, and there's a—There's salt in the wound here because they come over and they sing a song and they give them two slices of cake with a 1 and an 8 candle, and Carmela is like, annoyed about it. And then Tony, I think for some reason—
Sylvi: Don't look at me.
Keith: Don't look at me. I didn't do this. It was—
Sylvi: And then the guy says, compliments of, uh, Johnny Sack.
Keith: Johnny Sack. And I think that honestly is worse.
Sylvi: Or it might just say Mr. Sacrimoni?
Keith: Yeah, no, I think it is worse because it's like, well, I don't know why Tony thinks that it's bad to have a singer and some cake at your table for your 18th wedding anniversary. Like, he's like, I didn't do that, I didn't put on this little show. And it's like, oh, so you wasted 10 minutes of our dinner doing work stuff and your work friend cares more about our anniversary than you do.
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah, it, um, it's, it's something we can talk more about when we're talking about the, the sort of relationship plotline stuff. But like, this like, constant sort of taking Carmela for granted or like, putting her last in his list of priorities has been such a throughline these past couple episodes.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: And like, it, it comes to the most like, blatant head it could here. 
Keith: Yeah. Well, here's the question I have is, I'm Tony Soprano, I'm doing organized crime, it's sometimes a life-and-death situation. I think that he's concerned about Uncle Junior being a headache for the mafia in that it's a headache for him to have to deal with, but that also like the story that he tells about Augustus, and then Uncle Junior's like, didn't they stab him? He's like, no, that's Caesar. That's what happens if they don't love you. They stab you to death.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: And so I think there's maybe some latent concern for Uncle Junior's safety in wanting to make him—Make sure that he's making decisions that are popular.
Sylvi: It's like, it's kind of twofold, right? Because there's both the sort of practicality of having him be the lightning rod. They, they have that conversation later. And then also it's like, yeah, that is still his uncle. They still had good times together. Like, he—Despite the, the not having the makings of a varsity athlete, uh, comment, they're still pretty close. Yeah, I think you're totally on the money.
Art: You’re like, four years early on that. This is him talking about how good he was at baseball. He had a swing like Joe Dean.
Sylvi: He says that in the first episode.
Keith: In the first episode. Yeah. In the first episode he says, yeah. But then now he's saying that he could have been a pro baseball player. So he couldn't have been a varsity athlete, but he could have been a pro baseball player. 
Art: Yeah, I'm starting to think this Uncle Junior might be full of shit.
Keith: I think he may be full of shit. Uh, the—Anyway, this is to say I understand how you get to the position of, I can do work for 10 minutes because, because it's dangerous sometimes to not do work.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, sure. And I think it's obvious how you get to Carmela's position of, you shouldn't be doing work calls during our fucking anniversary—On our fucking anniversary. And I think that they continue to have like, these juicy bits of family drama where like—Forget what Tony's actually doing and the crimes that he's committing and murdering people and having people murdered and defrauding businesses. You know, the stuff with his wife is kind of normal stuff and kind of everyone has a little bit of a point sometimes. Um, and like, I don't think Tony's wrong to be upset that everyone's always mad at him, but I also think that it makes sense why everyone's always fucking mad at him. Uh, I just think it's a good—It's good writing. Um, and the—Specifically, I think the scenarios are well executed.
Sylvi: Yeah, it feels like, um—There's never the, like, issue of, like—How do I want to word this? You know how, like, when you're watching something and it's like, the, like, very contrived miscommunication happens between two characters and you know it's just happening to create another conflict for, like, another half hour of a movie's runtime or whatever?
Keith: Uh-huh.
Sylvi: It never feels like they're doing that in The Sopranos. All the conflict feels, like, both very, like, human, very realistic, and also like, there's a point to it in the writing room besides just like, we need to insert some extra conflict here. Um, and yeah, I think, I think they do a great job with, with that. And I, um—Oh, I lost, I lost my conclusion there. But, um, I think it goes a long way having these like interpersonal issues that it's easy to like, both sympathize and also be like, you're being an idiot about this at the same time.
Keith: Yeah. And there's—I, I mentioned this in the last episode, and this is kind of on—In the same vein, where like her resentment of Tony's behavior has built up for so long, but we don't come in until after the majority of that damage has been done. And so it's very easy to be sympathetic to Tony as, you know, extreme—Under extreme duress in his life. Just a couple weeks ago, he was fainting all over the place, you know, short of breath. He could have died. He could hit his head. He could have gotten in a car crash, you know? And, um, I think it makes it easy to be like, couldn't there be a little bit of sensitivity here for Tony, who has to go to the doctor and get an MRI for his medical issues?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: But I think that they're, as a couple, they're currently, I think, past the point where that's possible. And that's only something that you can get if you're taking Carmela's prob—Problems in the relationship seriously and projecting them past the start date of the series, which I think is nice writing.
Sylvi: Yeah, I think it's really well done. It like, makes it, you know, it makes it feel like, alive, right?
Keith: I know that this is it—This is a weird scene because it's got one foot in both plots. Do we want to hear Tony's apology now or save it for later?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Okay.
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Carmela: Maybe you'd like to spend the rest of our anniversary with him.
Tony: I was over there for 10 freaking minutes, Carmela. Don't do this.
Carmela: All right, Tony, at least I know where I stand.
Tony: Why you always gotta be so dramatic, huh? Well, here we go. Look, all right, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry.
Carmela: You don't even know what you're apologizing for. It's our anniversary, Tony. Ours. Not yours, mine, and Johnny fucking Sack's. Ours. Here I was thinking maybe we could get a room at the Plaza like last year, or—I don't know. I don't—
Tony: I'm sorry, Carmela. Huh? I just got a lot on my mind, and I'm not thinking straight. Hey, I'm sorry. Should I call the Plaza? Come on.
Carmela: No, let's go home.
[audio ends]
Keith: Uh, the apology doesn't cut it. I think—I think, you know, I think we've actually seen Tony do a fair share of apologizing in this show. Maybe just a guy who's good at apologies. And—
Dre: I mean, he's not good at apologies, but he's good at telling people what they want to hear.
Keith: That's what I mean. Yeah, yeah, I mean, he's not good at—
Sylvi: He’s good at straight up—Oh, go ahead.
Keith: He's good at the part where he's done something bad and then has to convince you to forgive him.
Sylvi: I mean, he literally says, I don't know what you want to hear right now, at one point.
Keith: I think his last apology is—His last attempt at an apology feels sincere.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: But I don't think he's actually not going to talk to Johnny Sacks. If that happened again.
Sylvi: No.
Art: It’s just Sack.
Keith: Sack.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: He's one sack.
Sylvi: That's the one. Yeah.
Keith: Johnny's sacks. 
Sylvi: That's making it sound like he's got a twin and they're both named Johnny. Let's calm down here.
Keith: But we'll come back to that. Not the twin sack.
Sylvi:  Okay, what is the next mob-related thing after this? Um, I—is it, is it the negotiation scene? The little play they put on?
Keith: It is the little play.
Art: This is the best. This is the best.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, you said you didn't have a button for that, but you were gonna—
Keith: Yeah, I could screen share. Yeah.
Sylvi: Oh, that'd be even better.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Hell yeah.
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Tony: All due respect to New York, I don't think you should be telling my uncle how to run things. 
Johnny: You think I got the balls to drive in from New York and tell your uncle how he should run his family? I shouldn't expect to see the Statue of Liberty again if I did that, huh? 
Keith: He's loving it.
Sylvi: He's—I love it.
Johnny: Hesh is a friend of you guys, he's a friend of ours. Somebody has to step in so he doesn't get fucked.
Hesh: I never said fucked.
Tony: And you, frankly, I'm a little hurt. You should have come to me first. You should know better than airing your dirty laundry in public.
Hesh: Junior knew how I felt. How would it look if I went to you after I spoke to him?
Johnny: Now he’s got a point. Bottom line is, what are we gonna do about this?
Junior: Something tells me you have a suggestion.
Johnny: Oh, Junior, if there are any flies on you, they're paying fucking rent. $500 is a little steep for back taxes, no? As far as 2% of his action, that's up to you to settle. 'Cause after all, that affects Tony as much as Hesh. 
Junior: I'm not out to hurt anyone. God forbid I get in the way of someone earning. I'd say $1,500 on a shy business and $300 on a back tax.
Hesh: $250.
Junior: What'd I tell you? Hold on to your cock when you negotiate with these desert people. $250.
Tony: Alright.
[audio ends]
Keith: God, look how much they all respect him. They're all over there respecting him so much.
Dre: Mm-hm.
Sylvi: Yeah, they—yeah, that's the boss, and they all treat him like the boss.
Keith: Geez, Junior, you're really fucking screwing me on this. Ah, I hate to agree to this deal that I hate so much.
Dre: Oh, well, Junior, I know if I showed up and I wasn't nice, I'd be swimming with the fishes.
Sylvi: Ah, but I respect you so much. I'll go with this deal.
Keith: What a mobster. What a real mobster this guy is.
Art: It's beautiful. 
Sylvi: It's so funny. There's so many little, like, good, um, little bits in there. A visual gag that's not gonna come across for the audience is Hesh's face after he says $250, and he's just kind of like squinting because the sun's in his eyes, completely unmoving while it cuts between him and Junior. And then, then Junior acquiesces.
Art: Yeah, well, Tony giving Hesh the look.
Sylvi: Yeah, the like, we didn't fucking talk about this.
Art: Yeah, what the fuck?
Sylvi: What the fuck are you doing?
Keith: Um, I mean, hey, look, if you can save an extra $50K, I would.
Sylvi: I mean, yeah, made it—Makes splitting it later a lot easier too.
Keith: It made splitting—Yeah, it did make—
Sylvi: I guess it—no, I guess it would all be denominations of five now that I think about it. It's easy to split any round number into five.
Keith: And then he says, uh, you know, we know from what happens later that he always knew that he was getting Tony's share back.
Sylvi: At least he assumed. Yeah.
Art: Yeah.
Keith: Um, that is if Junior ends up giving it to—
Art: Which, I'm not sure we're supposed to believe he knew what he was gonna do.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah. I mean, Hesh seems like a smart guy. Maybe he figured that Tony would stop his uncle from stealing the money from his direct—I don't know. What are they called?
Art: Like, the captains?
Keith: The captains, yeah.
Dre: The capos?
Keith: Yeah. Because if he brings in $250,000 and then doesn't do anything with it but pocket it, that would be insane. I think Tony's right, that would create a bunch of issues.
Sylvi: Um, yeah, I guess it's never really clear how much of the—Like, because we get the conversation with the, the capos after this, it, um, kind of becomes like a little unclear whether this—The, the splitting the money was going to be something he suggested before that, or whether it was something that he had—Was like, oh, this is how I deal with this problem.
Keith: Is it weird that a record producer has a loan shark business?
Sylvi: I think he started as a loan shark and then became the record producer.
Keith: And then kept being a loan shark? 
Sylvi: Yeah, I feel like that might make you some more money.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Not gonna lie.
Keith: He said he had 5 platinum records or something. Maybe it was gold records. I don't remember.
Sylvi: I can't remember specifically. Yeah, but they were successful.
Keith: Which is why—I don't know if they had said that that's what he did before. I had no idea what Hesh was doing.
Sylvi: I think this is the first time it's come up.
Keith: Okay.
Art: Yeah, I do too.
Keith: Um, that's why you get the exposition about how he just put his name as a co-writer on these Black kids' music that—
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Yeah. He's like, I wrote, I wrote these gold records. Like, you didn't write shit.
Sylvi: Yeah. You put your name on them.
Art: Uh, someone crooked in the music industry?!
Sylvi: I know, right?
Dre: I never. 
Keith: Who was also a loan shark? A crooked loan shark?
Sylvi: What?
Dre: What?
Sylvi: The most honorable profession.
Keith: Yeah. I've played Yakuza 4. One of the main characters of Yakuza 4 is an honorable loan shark.
Sylvi: Oh, that is true. Yeah, yeah, Akiyama.
Keith: Yeah, honorable quote loan shark quote.
Sylvi: Uh, yeah, he just kind of just gives people money.
Keith: He just gives people money. He just has money and he gives it to people. But he calls himself a loan shark because he's a weirdo.
Sylvi: He is a weirdo. He's a weirdo.
Keith: This freaking guy is a weirdo.
Sylvi: This guy is such a strange man. Um, what else in that scene did I want to mention that I really enjoy? Oh, um, Mikey is sat in the chair—Going back to your Chris and Mikey comparison, Mikey's sitting in the chair that Chris always sits in in that scene, uh, in the exact same spot where, uh, he sat during the pilot when they're talking about the Triboro Towers stuff.
Keith: Yeah, because Pussy and Paulie would be at the table.
Sylvi: Yeah, I mean, we see Pussy in this scene too. He's also in the background, which I think also gives some credibility. Yeah, he's, he's standing behind Tony by the entrance to Satriale's, which I think—
Keith: Oh, he's standing behind Junior.
Sylvi: Oh, he is.
Keith: Yeah. He’s much closer.
Sylvi: Oh, you're right. He's standing behind Junior and Mikey's behind Tony.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, which is interesting. I didn't think about that until now. Huh. But, um, I, I think that also speaks to what Art said earlier, where that, like, in terms of the actual mob structure, uh, Mikey's probably closer in terms of, like, rank and clout to someone like Pussy than—
Keith: Right, because Christopher's not even there.
Sylvi: Yeah. By the way, I was told recently why he's called Big Pussy, and I don't know if it ever comes up in the show or not.
Keith: Uh, I also—I would—someone left a comment on the Patreon saying this.
Sylvi: Okay. I guess we can say it then.
Dre: Yeah, why?
Keith: Yeah, we'll say it at the same time. Okay. Ready?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: I also—
Keith: He's—
Art: I’ll also say it.
Sylvi: 3, 2, 1. Massive vagina. You didn't say anything.
Keith: You just said it really fast. You said it so fast.
Sylvi: I said it on rhythm.
Keith: It's because he has a massive vagina.
Sylvi: It's also because he is a cat burglar.
Keith: Yeah.
Art: Cat burglar.
Sylvi: He's a big guy, but he's a cat burglar.
Dre: Oh.
Keith: He's apparently named after a real, real—A pair of real mobsters who were also called Big and Little Pussy? Were they maybe brothers?
Sylvi: That sounds right. That's really funny.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: I got new names for Mario and Luigi.
Art:  The Pussy Brothers.
Keith: The Pussy Brothers.
Art: Here come the Pussy Brothers.
Sylvi: We're the Pussy Brothers and stealing's our game. I don't remember the Mario, do the Mario well. enough to—
Dre: Which one of you is the Big Pussy and which one is the Little Pussy?
Sylvi: Happy Pride, everybody.
Keith: Um, anyway, that's a great scene. That's one of my favorite scenes in the whole show so far.
Sylvi:  It's so well done. It's funny. It fits with all the, the mob intrigue stuff that's like, always really interesting and fun. And like, I love that we get a scene of someone from New York kind of exerting some soft pressure onto Jersey because, like, we talked about that's the big—Those—That's the big pawn. Jersey's the little pawn.
Keith: Watching how susceptible Junior is to this flattery is so funny because he makes himself out to be, like, such a loose cannon tough guy, but he's really just a fucking idiot.
Sylvi: The man is ruled in totality by his insecurities.
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: Um, he just wants to be cool like his brother.
Sylvi: Oh my God, he does want to be his brother so bad.
Keith: His little brother.
Sylvi: Yes.
Art: Yeah, there's a—We sort of passed over it, but he's—When he goes to visit Livia, he's wearing Johnny's cologne.
Keith: That's so funny.
Dre: Oh, that's right. Yeah.
Sylvi: Okay, man.
Keith: She insults it too, right?
Sylvi: Yes, she does.
Keith: There's no way she doesn't know.
Art: Doesn’t seem possible.
Sylvi: I mean, no, I think she does.
Keith: I think you remember. I think Livia remembers her dead husband's cologne. It's called Canoe?
Sylvi: I think so. Dre, you had something?
Dre: Did I?
Sylvi: Oh, I thought you went, oh, as in like having to say something, but I think you might have just been remembering a thing from the episode.
Keith: Um, in broad daylight, Mikey Palmice throws this drug dealer into the rocks by the waterfall.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: It's a good scene. I mean, it's brazen. It's a brazen murder.
Sylvi: It's wild how in the open it is.
Keith: There's literally witnesses. They see the witnesses. They don't care. They just go up to the witnesses after and they're like, what happened here? And they're like, uh, he's holding up money. It was like $5 or something. It was like, no, no money.
Art: I think it was $100.
Keith: Maybe it was $100.
Sylvi: I think it was a hundo.
Keith: I thought, I thought maybe it was a very small amount of money. And the guy's like, ah yeah, he jumped. He was talking about how he didn't want to live. It was crazy.
Sylvi: Some sad shit.
Art: And I like him saying, uh, you know, look, we're going to be fair. If you can—If you sprout wings and fly, I won't shoot you down.
Sylvi: It's such a good line. And again, fuckfaceitis on full display. He's so proud of that.
Art: Yeah. He's, oh.
Keith: But again, I, I can see Christopher saying something like that too.
Sylvi: I also can.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Christopher—They're very similar dudes.
Keith: Yeah. Christopher also kind of has fuckfaceitis.
Art: I'm, I'm, I'm the opposite way. I'm saying, I'm like never saying Christopher has fuckfaceitis.
Sylvi: No, I would never say that.
Keith: You don't think Christopher has fuckfaceitis?
Dre: Did you see that man standing in the rain on that payphone? Hoo-hoo-hoo.
Sylvi: Thank you. I agree. He's cute. He's an attractive man. Shout out to fucking Michael Imperioli.
Art: Shout out to Michael Imperioli.
Keith: In his wet shoes.
Sylvi: Yeah. 
Art: And as we saw in The White Lotus, ages very well.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Is he in The White Lotus?
Sylvi: I haven't seen The White Lotus.
Art: He's in the second season.
Keith: Okay, I only saw the first season.
Sylvi: Is that the one with, um, Is the second season the one with what's-her-name who has the funny voice? Sounds like this.
Keith: Ah, that's the first season. Jennifer—
Art: She's in both the first and the second season. Jennifer Coolidge.
Keith: Jennifer Coolidge.
Sylvi: Oh my God, Jennifer Coolidge. I couldn't remember Coolidge. I was like, Jennifer—I kept saying, thinking Melfi.
Keith: I'm like, I kept thinking Connelly, which is a different actor.
Dre: Also different.
Sylvi: Yeah. Yeah. 
Dre: [as Jennifer Coolidge] The gays are trying to kill me. [normal] That's what that's from, right? 
Sylvi: Yeah, I think so.
Keith: So, okay, Labyrinth. 
Dre: Um, I mean, sort of, but no, 
Keith: That's just a Jennifer Connelly joke because that's what that movie is about.
Sylvi: Someone could have said that in Labyrinth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I got you, man. [Keith: Thank you.] Um, it's after this that we get the scene of the rest of the capos coming to Tony, uh, and Tony gives the great line—Oh, usually I'm the only one who makes that face after my own or something like that, um, after dealing with my uncle, uh, and immediately everyone's like, hey, your uncle sucks as boss.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: We are super unhappy. We're not making as much as we used to because he keeps fucking with our stuff and killing our guys, and, uh, he isn't, uh, kicking back to us at all.
Keith: Um, he's not a nice or smart man and not a good leader.
Sylvi: Yeah, um, they talk about how, like—I know they talk about, um, Jackie being fair, and there's another boss they mentioned. Is it Tony's dad? No, it's not Tony's dad because this is the first time a Soprano would—Was the boss. Um, but basically they're like, yeah, the past couple—The past couple people who have been in charge were a lot, uh, more, um, supportive of, of the middle manager class. [Keith: Yeah.] Uh, uh, which of course leads to our scene in the, um—
Keith: Retirement community? 
Sylvi: Oh yes, that is the—that is next. There's, uh, Tony talking to Livia. I actually—I was gonna go straight to the baseball game. 
Keith: Once again, Livia pulls her knock knock knock, who is it? It's me. Who? It's Anthony. Like you don't fucking recognize your own son.
Sylvi: Well, she thought it was the activities lady.
Keith: She did, but I don't think that the activities lady goes, it's me, it's me, Tony, your son.
Art: It's me.
Sylvi: Are you sure?
Art: In a deep male voice.
Sylvi: Maybe she's just like really tricky. Maybe she's—maybe this has happened to Livia before. We don't know.
Keith: She knocks on people's doors pretending to be their son, and then when you open up, she goes, do you want to go to bingo?
Art: That's very funny if she's doing that.
[Keith laughter]
Keith: I would fire her if I was her boss and I found out she was impersonating the children of, of our retirement community members in order to trick them into activities.
Sylvi: You say that, but you have no experience running a successful retirement community.
Keith: No, in fact, I believe that I would fail at running a retirement community.
Sylvi: Spectacularly or just normally?
Dre: I think you could do it.
Keith: I think that it would be a very nice place to live until we went out of business from being bad at business.
Dre: No, fair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Art: Have you seen the, uh, the, the, uh, what's, uh, what's the name of the guy from Cheers?
Keith: Danson. Ted Danson.
Art: Ted Danson. His new show about being in a retirement community?
Keith: I haven't, although I've been interested because of a couple of things about it.
Art: It's a good show.
Keith: Okay.
Dre:  What's it called?
Sylvi: Retirement Community.
Art: Great question. A Man on the Inside.
Dre: Oh.
Keith: Two seasons, right?
Art: Two seasons. The second season is slightly less good.
Keith: Okay. Well, it's really a—Because the first season is based on a thing, and they ran the thing's course. So I assume they had to get another thing to base the second season on or start making it up on their own, which is hard.
Art: I don’t think it was based on anything that happened.
Keith: It is. It's based on a real thing.
Art: Oh.
Keith: Yeah, uh, based on a documentary about a retiree who becomes a private investigator at a retirement community. 
Art: Huh.
Keith: Yep. Based on The Mole. The Mole Agent. Sorry, The Mole Agent. 
Art: Based on The Mole. 
Keith: It said The Mole. It said The Mole dot dot dot.
Dre: What's that?
Sylvi: What is this, Perpetua?
Keith: Yeah, it is.
Sylvi: Based on The Mole?
Keith: It's never too late to become a spy. The Mole Agent.
Sylvi: Um, what do we want to talk about with this scene with Tony and Livia?
Keith: Um, I, I like that he's kind of there for business and is just doing it.
Sylvi: Yeah, he's not there trying to get her approval—
Keith: He brings—
Sylvi: The way that he has in other scenes.
Keith: He brings her biscotti, and she's much more receptive than the last time he brought baked goods.
Art: But then at the end of the scene, she's like, bring the cookies!
Sylvi: Yeah, I mean, listen, it's still Livia Soprano.
Keith: He does the business. She's like, I'm, I'm just old. I don't know about the business. I can't talk to Junior. Talk to him yourself. And then he tries to dance with her again. I wrote down in my section where I was talking about the, uh, the—I almost said undercurrent, but they talk about it openly—the Oedipal current to these two episodes.
Sylvi: I mean, yeah. He keeps bringing up Freud.
Keith: Yeah, but he's dancing with his mom, and he danced with his mom in the pilot too. And I mentioned then, but I just wanted to bring it up again, that he dances with his mom the same way that he dances with his wife. He'll just like, grab her and start dancing in the same way.
Sylvi: Yeah, he does, huh?
Keith: Yeah, he does. Oh, another thing that I noticed is, at the end, he—There's a woman in the hallway who invites her to bingo, and she calls that woman a degenerate gambler, which is exactly what Tony calls the guy in the first episode.
Art: Uh-huh.
Keith: They do such a good job of being like, he came from her.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: He is her son. Like, they share a lexicon. You know, his—He has behaviors that are from her. It's very interesting.
Sylvi: Uh, yeah, there's like the—I think the deftest writing in the show comes when they're doing that sort of stuff. And not to say that the rest of the writing isn't like, very well done, but it's just like, oh, they're like, they're dunking on them right now. They're doing, they're doing like, like, windmills and shit. Uh, this is crazy. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's very good.
Keith: I mean, I think, I think like the, the best thing that they've done so far has been turning Melfi into his mother and object of desire, and then also turning the Father into Carmela's object of desire, and then having Melfi try to explain that to Tony. And he's like, uh, you love me. I bet you do.
Sylvi: Nuh-uh, you love me. Nuh-uh.
Keith: That's so funny. What an idiot.
Sylvi: He's dumb.
Keith: He's so dumb.
Sylvi: And it makes for great watching. Yeah, thanks for being so dumb, Tone.
Keith: Thanks for being so dumb, Tone. Uh, um, so, okay, so this is like the thing that sets up that he should talk to Junior at the baseball game?
Sylvi: I believe so, yes.
Keith: Is it AJ's baseball game? What is that? Yeah, okay.
Sylvi: It's just like a—I don't think AJ's playing. I think it's just like a minor league, like—
Keith: No, these are kids. These are little kids. 
Sylvi: Oh, are they kids? Yeah.
Art: They're not the right age. It's, it's not AJ's.
Sylvi: It can't be AJ's.
Art: It's some fucking little—There are some other—Some stranger's baseball game. It's weird.
Sylvi: It might just be like the high that Meadow goes to or something.
Keith: No, these kids are like 9.
Sylvi: Are you sure, man?
Keith: Yeah, yeah, these kids are—These are 9-year-old boys.
Art: Yeah, I, I have it in my notes, so like, that there's the—This is an unrecognizable baseball team.
Sylvi: Man.
Keith: Is it—I, I mean, I guess sometimes this is just where you go to—
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Do garbage.
Art: Yeah, you gotta be outside so you can't be bugged.
Sylvi: Yeah, it's got to be somewhere public.
Keith: There's a lot of yelling.
Sylvi: Sorry, I'm pulling back up this game to be like, did I think that—Oh yeah, that's like child—
Keith: These are children.
Sylvi: I thought for some reason I thought they were like older than AJ, not younger than AJ, but no, they're younger.
Keith: I mean, you could convince me that these are peers of AJ, but he's not here. They don't like, show him.
Sylvi: No, he's not. The only—Yeah, yeah, it's a moot point.
Keith: Yeah, anyway, he tells the story of Augustus, the emperor that everybody loved, the longest peacetime in Roman history. And it's because, you know, Augustus ate with everybody, you know, he was friends and fucking—he was popular.
Sylvi: The guy who got stabbed?
Keith: He's not getting it at all. Junior's like, what the fuck are you talking about? And then he—
Sylvi: So dumb.
Keith: Switches tactics and he tells a joke, a joke that I don't understand. He says there's a bull—A father and a son bull on a hill, and the son looks down and he says, look at all those cows down there. We should run down there and fuck one of them. And then the dad says, no, son, we should walk down there and fuck all of them.
Sylvi: Fuck 'em all.
Keith: And then now Junior understands exactly what Tony's trying to say, and I understand less what Tony is trying to say.
Art: What don't you understand about this? This is the easiest joke in the world.
Keith: Okay, so I get—I mean, I get that there's something run and then walk, so that's something, I guess. And then there's why would we fuck one of them when we could fuck them all? But how does this relate to the Augustus thing? Who's Augustus in the cow story?
Sylvi: Nobody.
Art: Nobody’s Augustus. What if we worked less and got more?
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: And how does Junior get more by being more generous with his money?
Art: Because he's not gonna get shot by one of his capos.
Keith: But which cow is gonna shoot the bull?
[Dre bursts into laughter]
Sylvi: I don't think it's a one-to-one. I think this is how he flatters his uncle's ego by being like, remember this joke you told me?
Keith: But then how does Junior get the right lesson from this story that isn't—doesn't have the same lesson?
Sylvi: Tony spells it out afterwards, what he's trying to get at.
Keith: No, Junior just says, I get what you're trying to say. Why didn't you just say that to begin with?
Sylvi: Oh, then I don't know, man.
Keith: I don't know. It doesn't make any fucking sense to me.
Sylvi: Yeah. I'm sorry, man.
Art: It's what I said.
Dre: It's a real weird story, man.
Keith: I believe—I believe the “we should work less and get more”, but I don't understand how that makes Junior understand the Augustus thing.
Art:  It doesn't make him understand the Augustus thing. It makes him understand what Tony's point is.
Keith: Isn't Tony's point the Augustus thing?
Sylvi: No, Tony's point is spread the money around so you don't get shot.
Keith: Tony's point is spread the money around so that you're likable so that you don't get shot. And I don't know how he—How Junior goes from not understanding that story to hearing about the bulls to then understanding the story.
Dre: I think Junior was just getting, like, too caught up on the story. Like, which Caesar are we talking about now? Like, I don't understand who these old guys are.
Art: Yeah, he didn't want to hear a story about some old guys. He wanted to hear about fucking a cow.
Keith: And so he hears about fucking the cow, but then why does he suddenly understand about—That he should—
Dre: I don't know if he does or if—
Keith: Well, he then does spread the money around.
Dre: Hey, you remember when you told me this great story that was so fucking funny?
Keith: This great story about fucking—I mean, talk about Oedipal.
Dre: Yeah.
Keith: Hey, Dad, you want to go fuck with me—?
Dre: Junior was like, you know, he, he, he did what they've been doing, right? He complimented, uh, Junior and hammed him up. And then Junior was like, okay, I see what you're saying.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: So I guess the only thing that makes it make sense to me is if Junior always knew what he was getting at with the Augustus story and was acting like he didn't because it was pissing him off. And then when you get—
Art: You're overthinking this.
Dre: Yeah, you're way overthinking this.
Keith: They are underthinking it. These two stories—This doesn't make any sense at all. Nonsensical scene.
Dre: No, you're right. They don't. And Junior is stupid, so it doesn't matter. It makes him feel smart and important.
Keith: But then how did he end up getting it right in the end?
Dre: Because it makes him feel smart. And so he just agrees.
Keith: So you think after the scene's over, then Tony says off-camera, so by the way, all that stuff I was saying, you should give all of the captains $50K.
Art: No, he just understands crime because he's a career criminal.
Keith: But wasn't the point of telling that story that he wasn't gonna do that to begin with?
Sylvi: I thought the point of telling the story was warning him that this is happening..
Dre: Yeah.
Art: This is, uh, it'd be a shame if anything happened to this place.
Sylvi: Yeah. That's also why he went to talk to, to, um, Livia too.
Keith: Right.
Sylvi: Because he was like, because I know he talks to you and listens to you.
Keith: He was trying to get Livia to tell Junior to divvy up Hesh's money or else he might get in trouble with the captains.
Art: Well, it's not specifically about Hesh's money. You're focused on the wrong part.
Keith: Well, I'm focused on Hesh's money because each captain got $50K, which is the exact amount that Hesh gave Junior. And then the exact following scene of the baseball game is Tony telling Hesh, by the way, I got Uncle Junior to spread all your money around. Here's your money back.
Art: But it could have been any money. That's a—That's not—The point of the story wasn't split up Hesh's money. The point is you're taking too much money.
Keith: Right.
Sylvi: Yeah, the point is to—Is you need to spread it around a bit more.
Keith: Which I understand now because of the cow joke.
Sylvi: Yeah. Why don't they fuck all of them?
Art: Why don't they fuck all of them?
Keith: I'm just never gonna—I'm never gonna agree that this makes sense.
Sylvi: So they're spreading the wealth around sort of like the bull is spreading its semen around. [laughing] Sorry.
Keith: We should spread the semen around.
Sylvi: [laughing] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: Yeah, I think that's the best shot. I think that's the best shot at making me say that this works.
Sylvi: I'm doing my best here. Okay, um, that—We get, um, we get the scene where after this it's, uh, Tony goes to see Hesh, gives him the $50K while being the most horse girl, uh, character in the history of television.
Keith: Whoa.
Art: Whoa!
Sylvi: I think that is true for Tony Soprano, but maybe I'm jumping the gun.
Keith: For Tony?
Sylvi: Tony loves animals.
Keith: Not for Hesh?
Sylvi: Loves horses. No, like, did you not hear how he talked about them? He was like, they don't have any worries. I just wish I could be one of them. Like—
Keith: Oh, do horse girls want to be a horse?
Dre: Probably some of them.
Sylvi: Probably, yeah.
Keith: I thought it was Hesh who's like, I just like to come out here and watch them. It's meditative. I thought that was the horse girl in the scene.
Art: No, Tony's like, oh, to be a—The life of a horse.
Sylvi: Yeah, he's talking about the nobility of the horse. I feel like there's a more respect there.
Dre: Well, and how horses don't have to pay bills.
Keith: Was he talking about the nobility of the horse or the base reality of animal life?
Sylvi: The base reality of the horse, but also like, yeah, yeah, I guess, I guess.
Keith: Hesh is talking about the nobility of the horse being like, I love to watch them. They’re beautiful.
Sylvi: He does say it stinks like shit around here, shit and flies everywhere, right before that.
Keith: Yeah, but that's just—you gotta say that so that he doesn't call you gay. I gotta say it stinks like shit and I hate it here before you go like, but actually I love my horses and I love watching horses and I own this horse farm. 
Sylvi: I see. Okay, I wasn't—See, I kind of stopped worrying about people thinking I was gay. So I don't—I can't pick up on these things anymore.
Keith: Hesh is old and in the '90s.
Sylvi: Yeah, um, but yeah, I really—Uh, another good scene of Tony just being like, I need to vent to somebody. That dude loves talking.
Keith: He loves talking. I hope they never get him in an interrogation room.
Sylvi: Oh God.
Keith: Because the guy loves to talk.
Sylvi: The guy does love to talk.
Keith: He's like, look, there's no even such thing as the mafia, but if there was, if there was, here's how it'd be like.
Sylvi: If there was, I'd be kind of depressed the whole time. Um, that—Do you guys have anything to say about the horse scene, or should we keep it, keep it trucking?
Keith: Um, not really. I think it's funny that Tony gives him his $50K back. Yeah, maybe, uh, maybe Uncle Junior did have half a point.
Art: And our last Jew joke of the episode. That Keith is seconding. Keith agrees. Keith Carberry agrees.
[Sylvi bursts into laughter]
Art: Jews are greedy. 
[more Sylvi laughter]
Keith: Businessmen are greedy.
Sylvi: Oh my God.
Keith: He didn't ask for it back. Tony volunteered to give it back.
Art: Uh-huh.
Keith: Because of being Jewish.
[Sylvi still in hysterics]
Sylvi: Oh my God. Oh, this has been an episode.
Art: We're learning things about everyone today.
Keith: Uh, what's the next—is there another businessy scene?
Sylvi: After this, it's the ending scene.
Keith: Oh, the last scene. Yeah.
Sylvi: The very last scene of the episode, which is, um, everybody's like—Clearly they're in better spirits. Like you see some of the guys who were complaining about Junior earlier joking around a bit before Tony gives his speech. Tony like—
Keith: And they're all eating together, get it?
Sylvi: Yeah. Oh my God.
Keith: Like Augustus. Like the father and son cow that fucked all the other cows.
Sylvi: Oh, like the horny cow bull guys.
Keith: Like the horny cow, he's eating with his friends just like those bulls.
Sylvi: Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, like, I like this scene a lot, uh, because it is both like, oh yeah, here's another like, thing going on in the background that like, has been gestured at. The sort of like, the the law enforcement like, trying to crack down on things because of—I'm specifically thinking of in Meadowlands, I believe, is the episode with the funeral where they're they're taking pictures and stuff? But this is like, a way more like there's an ongoing FBI investigation. They have updated the hierarchy back at like, whatever office they're operating out of to have Junior on top. Tony's plan is working. That is the lightning rod that he wanted. Um, and like, now it is very much a cliffhanger of like, where is this going to go next? What's going to happen? Um, now that the FBI are aware that Junior is who's in charge.
Dre: Uh, does this also imply potentially that there's like a, an informant or a rat like, active in the family right now? Because like they knew about this dinner and were able to get somebody on the staff.
Sylvi: Oh, that's a good point. I don't know.
Keith: Interesting.
Sylvi: I wouldn't like—
Dre: Like, they know, like, it's not like explicitly foreshadowed here, but it's, it's part of my mind just going like, well, how the fuck do they like, get in here if they don't have somebody that tells them the dinner is happening?
Sylvi: I'm just in the sort of, um, I'm just kind of like, I'm trying to be careful with, with—
Dre: Oh, for sure. Yeah.
Sylvi: Things here. But I don't think that's like a bad read at all. Like, I think that like, you could easily make that assumption. There's so much talk about rats. Uh, oh yeah, literally the previous episode. Yeah, we—That was why the hit happened in the first episode. That guy was a state's witness. Um, Um, so yeah, something to think about, something to chew on. Um, do you guys have any other stuff for this scene, or should we rewind to talk about, uh, Tony and his cannoli?
Art: Oh, the, the, the music in that scene whips.
Sylvi: The—In the banquet? When the, the sort of like—Um, yeah, it's really good, the ending music. I need to—I should look up what that specifically was because I'm pretty sure that's a needle drop.
[“Paparazzi” by Xzibit starts playing]
Keith: Oh yeah, that's fun.
[“Paparazzi” by Xzibit stops playing]
Sylvi: Anyway, yeah, really, really good.
Art: Really strong scene. The whole end of this episode's very strong. We'll get to the other end scene at the end of the other plot, but it's a very strong set of scenes.
Sylvi: It's Paparazzi by Xzibit, apparently.
Dre: To the Z?
Sylvi: Yeah, the ending song for the episode—For episode 6.
Keith: 'Cause they're taking pictures.
Sylvi: Yeah. Also found out those were not—those picture sound effects?
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: From the song. Not from the—Not created by the waitstaff. Really?
Keith: Oh, that's really cool.
Sylvi: If you click this, you'll hear it.
Keith: Yeah, that makes sense.
Sylvi: Back—Rewinding back at the beginning, we did talk a little bit about Vic Makazian, the crooked cop keeping an eye on Dr. Melfi. Um, we also talked about—
Keith: Doing a terrible job.
Sylvi: Doing a terrible job. Still under the assumption that she's just another goomah and that like, he, um, he just wants to make sure that she's not sleeping with other men. Uh, and Tony just once again does not fucking like this guy at all, does not want to put up with him, tells him to buy an iron. 
Keith: He should stop having—
Art: And we also talked about love buying iron. That was so funny.
Sylvi: It was really funny. It's so funny. It's so mean. It's so bitchy. Like, it's, it's, it's catty in a way. Like, Tony Soprano's kind of cleaning out a little bit there. I don't know how else to put it.
Keith: His shirt's really wrinkly though, for real.
Sylvi: I mean, yeah, but like, I was watching this with my partner and he pointed out like, I can't believe Tony said that. Look at him. His shirts are just as fucking wrinkly in this scene.
Keith: But he's not wearing a dress shirt.
Sylvi: No, no. Yeah, he's wearing like, bowling shirts and stuff.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: But I just thought it was funny.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, we talked about the anniversary scene.
Keith: Yeah, well, what we didn't talk about is the other—Didn't talk—Yeah, at the very beginning, the first therapy scene is like, we get hints of the—Of Tony trying to flirt. He started bringing her coffee. Coffee to start the sessions. Um, coffee that after the first couple of times she starts declining.
Sylvi: Well, [yawning] Sorry. Yeah, they get into it.
Keith: Are we boring you?
Sylvi: Yeah, motherfucker. Uh, no, uh, I'm, I'm just, um, I just yawn sometimes.
Keith: Bullshit.
Sylvi: Fuck. I'm gonna go. Keith keeps being mean to me. Um, shit, I forgot what I was gonna say now.
Keith: Uh, coffee—Bringing her Greek coffee.
Dre: He keeps using the call phone to send boner to my pager or whatever AJ was doing.
Sylvi: Um, yeah, that's the subject of him bringing her gifts, uh, comes up, which is also just like his way of ingratiating himself to people, right? Like, we—It kind of comes up in the first episode when he's talking to Irina, being like, did you get—They installed the jacuzzi tub? Um, there's like—I mean, it's—Look at how he treats his mom. He's always bringing her gifts.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Like, every time he sees her. So like, it's another—
Keith: It’s his love language.
Sylvi: Yeah, it's another pattern that he's bringing—His love language—Nut it is another pattern that he is—That is something that, you know, starts at his mom and trickles into all of his other relationships, especially his romantic ones, and now has, has reached his relationship with Dr. Melfi. Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's good. I—It's good character writing.
Keith: Yeah. 
Sylvi: Um, I think it's also like they're really good at having the sort of like, slow rollout, I guess. So can we—Do you want to talk about some of the therapy scenes as a whole here because like it might be easier? I don't know. I, I can at least just make my point of there's a really good sort of, um, you can see her realizing what's going on as he starts getting more like, friendly and like, smiley and flirtatious with her.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Uh, and her discomfort is like, pretty clear, um, especially later on when they're talking about his erectile dysfunction. Uh, and he makes a joke about, uh, a prostate exam. Uh, I don't even—I don't let anybody wag their finger in my face is the joke.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: And she laughs at that. Uh, and then—
Keith: She really laughs at that, by the way.
Art: Yeah, that's a very genuine laugh.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: She laughs and then she's like, oh, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have laughed at that.
Sylvi: Uh, but then he does—He—It's at that point where he's like, no, but I'm serious. And he's like, smiling and like that. And that's when she makes this like, face like, oh boy. Oh no, something's going on here. Um, yeah, it's, uh, it's uncomfortable. It is, it is—Also, how much of a relief is it for people who were like—I guess I don't know if it is a relief or not yet, but like, I know that there was some concern about this turning into a romantic relationship, and she seems pretty hell-bent on that not being the case. Does that like, assuage any fears for people?
Dre: Um, I mean, I'm very glad to see that she is not interested whatsoever. Um, I think she does a shit job of handling this whole situation.
Sylvi: I was gonna ask.
Dre: Like, uh, it is like—I feel like this is just like all the chickens coming home to roost on the extension of like, all the times where like Tony has kind of like, tested her boundaries in stuff and she hasn't really responded firmly.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: Um, because like, and that's what Tony does, right? He doesn't do what people want him to do. He does what he thinks is best for you and what he should do for you. Um, and I think the coffee is like, a really good example of that, like—And you, if you don't want him to do that, you should have cut that shit off early. Obviously this is not like, her fault or any shit like that, right?
Sylvi: No.
Dre: But, um, it was just interesting to watch that because I, I also feel like—And maybe this is just a pilot versus like regular show thing—Um, I don't feel like Melfi has been as like well-characterized and insightful, um, in some of these later episodes as compared to the pilot.
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Dre: Like at times it seems like she's just like not putting like two and two together with Tony, or is like, maybe just like, overly empathetic and giving him too much the benefit of the doubt, which is kind of a crazy thing considering she started with like, knowing that he works in the mob.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: Uh, I wonder if some of that comes down to we have a season of TV to make. We can't have her like, like, fully on the ball or she'd get through his shit too fast.
Dre: Yeah. And, and my issue with this is less like she's a bad therapist and it's more of I really can't wait to see someone who will not let Tony Soprano get away with shit.
Keith: Yeah.
Dre: And how he is going to respond. And I thought Melfi might be one of the first people to do that, and maybe she will. Maybe she will be more intense and forceful about it. [Keith interruption] Go ahead. Sorry.
Keith: Something I found interesting is that this episode kind of gives her a different tactic than she's had in the past. When he's been testing her boundaries in the past, she has ignored his advances out of hand and just simply dismissed them—Not dismissed them, silently dismissed them and moved on, which I felt was portrayed as being effective, even slightly emasculating, uh, that like, he would flirt with her and she would just like not even acknowledge it and move on to like, okay, let's get back to being serious. And I thought that was—That's like, kind of a strange tactic, I think. But in the fiction of the show, it seemed like it was working until they needed to introduce this sort of unrequited romance thing? Um, and then in this episode, I feel like it's the first time she has tried to put up boundaries. Who knows how many times he brought her coffee? Maybe twice, because he seemed to know her order the first time. He's like, decaf, right? Or maybe he's just very observant and he brought her a decaf coffee.
Sylvi: Hold on, I don't think that's true.
Keith: Well, he, he is kind of observant. You know, he brings his mom her favorite cookies. He knows what—
Sylvi: You're right.
Keith: You know what I mean?
Sylvi: I just needed to get my joke off.
Keith: Uh, and he's observant at least when he needs to be, um, or when he wants to be anyway.
Sylvi: When it's something that could serve him. Yeah, I think is, is kind of the best way to put it, right? Like, because this—The stuff with the—It's—He's—When he's trying to ingratiate himself with his mom, he's observant about things. When he's trying to—Like, it's literally just when he's trying to earn favor with people, he is very locked in on that.
Keith: And so when, when he brings her coffee the second time, she does stop him. When he goes to kiss her, she stops him. And then when he tries to quit therapy, she stops him again, like—And so it does feel like she has some control over like, how he's behaving. It did feel kind of half-hearted, like she was not being very stern with him. The silent dismissal of his advances in the first couple episodes felt more stern, even though she wasn't even saying anything, which I thought was like, impressive performance. [Dre: Oh, for sure.] And editing. And then now that she actually is putting up some boundaries, they feel more brittle to me. Like, that she's not sure how to do it. Or that, like, she's worried about putting up the wrong kind of boundary for Tony Soprano, a guy who she thinks kills people. Because he does.
Sylvi: Yeah. 'Cause he does, and he is dangerous.
Dre: And apparently has had someone stalking her.
Keith: Yes. And she probably now believes that that's the case. Which—And it is the case. Um, and I'm, I'm very curious to see how that develops. I think that if someone can get Tony in line in a way that also isn't deceitful, it would be Melfi.
Dre: Sure. Yeah.
Keith: I think that the other women in his life also can get him in line, but not without being deceitful.
Dre: Sure. I think you're right, Keith, and I agree with you that she has definitely, like, turned down those advances. But I think—and I think this is, like, this is not me critiquing the show, this is me saying, wow, what a really well-written character. You can't not tell a guy like Tony Soprano to stop flirting with you and expect him to understand that you want him to stop flirting with you.
Keith: Yeah, sure.
Dre: Like, you have to—You can't—You have to say no. You cannot, like, politely turn him down. But again, like, that's—Again, this isn't me critiquing the show. This is me saying, no, this is a really accurate portrayal, I think, of a person like Tony Soprano that they've been creating.
Keith: Um, but I do think that you have a point about, like, like, the therapy sessions in the first episode. Everything is extremely intentional. And every subsequent therapy session has a chance of coming across as like, perfunctory.
Dre: Yeah, or just two friends cutting up talking about like, what they did for the weekend. Yeah, which is part of therapy, but you know, and again, it's a TV show, right? Like, I don't want to fucking send them a sense of shit, but I agree with you, Keith. I hadn't thought about it that way, but yes, it is. It definitely feels a lot less intentional.
Sylvi: Mm-hmm.
Keith: It may be—
Art: Did she say the word transference in this episode?
Keith: That's in a previous episode, I think.
Dre: Okay, yeah.
Keith: Or maybe she says a similar word.
Dre: I mean, she does basic—Like, she doesn't say transference, but she basically says like, you're putting your feelings about your mom and your wife onto me.
Keith: Yeah. I have that. I have a clip for this, by the way.
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Tony: So I suggested to her—not demanded, suggested.
[audio ends]
Keith: Oh no, this is later.
Sylvi: Yeah, it is later. We, we need to talk about another scene before we get to that one.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, a different relationship Tony has with a woman.
Keith: Actually, that, that, that dialogue—He has, um, combined two women in his life into one person.
Sylvi: He has, yes. Which he does multiple times because he is notably making—Keeping a secret, uh, from Melfi that he has another girlfriend, right? That he has goomah. He's—He doesn't want that to slip.
Keith: Which is a funny—
Sylvi: Because he is still, like, romantically interested.
Keith: A funny—Yeah, funny reflection, I think, of reality. I believe Tony Soprano doesn't want his therapist to think he's a bad person.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: Mm-hmm.
Keith: And so he's like, I can't tell her about, um, my goomah, she'll, uh, think less of me. Which is funny.
Sylvi: It's like, yeah, man, uh, I think she's gonna think less of you about a lot of the stuff though.
Keith: He did get burned. That's real. I thought maybe he was lying.
Art: Well, he did lie about the burning.
Keith: He did lie about the burning. He didn't lie about getting burned.
Dre: But he did lie about how he got burned.
Keith: When he initially yelled at his mistress that she burned him, I thought maybe he was making it up. Because if you threw a lit candle at me, I wouldn't get burned.
Art: That's it—What? That's—You—
Keith: It's simply the candle would go out before it got to me.
Sylvi: Yeah, man, the wick's still hot.
Keith: Nah, I'd be fine. 
Sylvi: All right.
Dre: Built different.
Keith: Wax isn't even—
Sylvi: Guy like me with Perry.
Keith: Wax isn't even that hot and it cools down very fast.
Art: If you ever see Keith in public, it's okay to throw a candle at him.
Dre: Yeah, it won't hurt.
Keith: 100%. Agreed. Signed off. Legally signed off.
Sylvi: It's like a less intense version of Jerma claiming he could dodge a battle axe.
Keith: Show this to a judge. You could dodge a battle axe.
Art: True, if I'm near Keith. If I'm near Keith, you can't throw a candle at him.
Sylvi: Yeah, don't do that to us. But Keith, Keith can handle it.
Keith: I can handle it. It flies through the air, the wax has so much time to cool. [Sylvi laughter] You ever dip your fingers in candle wax when you're a kid and you're like, look, now my fingers are covered in hot wax?
Sylvi: Yeah, sure.
Keith: It never burned me, not even once, not even close.
Sylvi: All right. Built different. I don't know what else to tell you, man.
Keith: I think we're both built the same.
Dre: He started working kitchens as a, as a 4-year-old. And so he just got those, those chef hands.
Keith: I worked in some kitchens.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Dre: Yeah, I didn't say I was joking, Keith.
Sylvi: Um, should we talk about the stuff with Tony and, uh, Irina next?
Keith: Yeah, yeah.
Sylvi: Before we get into this stuff. Okay, cool. Um, so, uh, watch the balls. 
Keith: Watch the balls.
Sylvi: That’s—We finally got to watch the balls.
Art: We finally get to watch the balls.
Keith: We finally get to watch the ball.
Sylvi: Everyone at Times Square on New Year's Eve. Um, I guess there's just the one ball, but whatever. Anyway—
Keith: It’s the worst ball in the world, too.
Sylvi: Yeah, well, you know, um, yeah, we gotta—It's right after the, uh, I think it's right after the, the scene with the, the card game, right?
Keith: It's right after the scene with Livia. Livia and Junior.
Sylvi: With Livia, you're right.
Keith: [crosstalk] Yeah, because she's like—
Sylvi: [crosstalk] Played the clip—
Keith: He's like, you want me to bust Tony's balls? And she's like, I don't know what you're talking about.
Sylvi: And then he goes, watch my balls—Um, oh my God, I didn't even catch that. That's really funny.
Keith: Yeah, I said it before when we played it. I said it then too.
Sylvi: Yeah, but I was too busy giggling. Okay.
Keith: Yeah, it's really good. Great editing.
Sylvi: We cut to that. It's him. He's at—I believe it's, it's the apartment that Irina has. I think it's implied that he rents it for her, but like, that might just be me misinterpreting the, the um, the hot tub jacuzzi stuff from earlier, right? Uh, going a little too far with that, but you know, whatever, we'll see.
Keith: She's pissed at him this whole episode and last episode.
Sylvi: Well, so like it starts off like, oh, they're just trying to, you know, have a, have a nice time, and then she tries to initiate, uh, sex with him and his dick is not doing nothing, and he's like, can't we just talk? And she's like, what, what's wrong? Why do you just want to talk? What's going on?
Keith: Sorry, do you not know what a goomah is?
Sylvi: Yeah, just like, I'm kind of—This doesn't really seem like it's part of the, the usual lineup.
Keith: I wanted to talk last week and you told me to shut up.
Sylvi: You told me to shut the fuck up. Um, but she keeps trying to, to, to, you know, get stuff going. Tony's—She says, uh, something wrong with Tony's cannoli. Um, very funny line that will come up later when we talk about the dreams that he has. Um, but, uh, the main takeaway here is that when he's trying to like, talk about like, feelings and stuff with her, she just gets upset. And like, is this when he—This is not the scene where he suggests that she dress differently, right?
Art: No, that's a different and very funny scene.
Sylvi: That is later. It—They both have the end result of her thinking he's calling her a sex worker. Yeah, I think that happens in both these scenes.
Keith: In both scenes she's like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Art: In the other scene, first she says, you want me to dress like a man?
Keith: Yeah, yeah, yeah, because he doesn't know how to describe a women's suit.
Sylvi: Yeah, like, it's—He's doing his best, but he's not very smart.
Art: I'm not sure he's doing his best.
Keith: He's doing someone's best.
Sylvi: He's doing his best for himself.
Keith: Yeah. He's doing his best to not have to say, please dress like my therapist.
Sylvi: Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Thank you for landing that plane for me.
Keith: Um, um, have we already had a sex dream? No, no, there's not.
Sylvi: No, it's after this. It's after this. Because, okay, this—The main reason I bring up this scene, one, is because I think this is when he gets burned, right? Or is that the second one also?
Keith: Yeah, she won't talk to him. And then he's like, well, fine, have some money. And she's like, I'm not a whore. And then she throws a candle at him and then tries to throw a lamp at him. And then he grabs her and is like, don't fucking throw shit at me. And she smacks him and then runs out.
Sylvi: Yeah. But really, it's like a whole mess. Tony Soprano is not, uh, capable of having, uh, happy relationships with women at this point. Um, I think it's safe to say.
Keith: Yeah. Um, but, uh, forgot about, uh, Christopher's meat-based flirting in the next scene, by the way. We didn't talk about this because it's nothing, but he just grabs a—He's clearly, clearly flirting with the, uh, deli counter worker who is like, laughing and giggling that he's stealing meat from her thing is very funny.
Sylvi: Yeah, it's good. It's a good little scene. There's not a ton of Christopher in these episodes, but I smile every time he's there.
Keith: And there's not a lot of Pussy, and there's not a lot of, uh, Paulie either. [Sylvi cackling] Sorry, there's a character in the show named Pussy.
Sylvi: Paulie's having some problems, so like, yeah, there's not a lot of the—Anyway.
Keith: In all meanings of the word. There's no cats, there's no sex, and there's no big cats.
Sylvi: There's no large cat burglars.
Keith: Um, but yeah, this is the scene. The next scene with Tony is his, uh, his dream, his first Melfi sex dream where he's hearing his goomah's voice. But then when he takes the blanket off of him, it's Melfi's face. And then he wakes up as if this is a nightmare.
Art: He's also singing the song in the soundtrack, which I think is very funny. 
Sylvi: It's so funny. Um, like James Gandolfini lip-syncing this song and also like doing the face acting so you get the point of what is happening.
Keith: He's Grinching out in this scene, by the way. He's absolutely Grinching out.
Sylvi: Uh, I think that, that James Gandolfini was one of our great, uh, making a come-face actors when it comes to, uh, to TV, especially. Um, he's in his element, you know.
Art: Rest in peace.
Sylvi: Rest in peace, King. You were great at looking like you were nutting. Um, uh, the, the voice—The like, voice syncing with her, uh, saying, uh, oh Tony, I love your cannoli, but coming out, uh, it's, it's Irina's voice coming out of Melfi is so weird every time.
Keith: Yeah, it's very weird. Um, yeah, he wakes up as if this is a nightmare, which I think is very funny. Um, and then we have the anniversary scene, which we already talked about.
Sylvi: Yeah, again, this kind of—The, the—I think we, we mentioned that like this is just like another in the long line of things where Carmela feels like she is, uh, tertiary to everything in Tony's life. Um, but yeah, moving, moving forward from that—
Keith: She buys a bunch of furniture.
Sylvi: Yeah, to try to get his attention.
Keith: Yeah, that's Melfi's theory, is that she's trying to get his attention, even if it's negative attention. Um, one of my favorite shots in any of these episodes is when, uh, the movers are moving a sofa and it isolates their faces in the shot. I shared this in the chat earlier, actually, before we even started.
Sylvi: It's great.
Keith: She's looking away from him at the furniture, and then the, the couch moves, she's obscured by the mover, and then James Gandolfini's looking at her and like yelling. Great shot.
Sylvi: Great shot. Um, what's he say? We might as well move into Roche Bobois if you're gonna keep spending all this money.
Art: Save on the shipping. Save the, uh, save money on the shipping. Yeah.
Keith: What is the name of this store?
Sylvi: Roche Bobois. 
Keith: That's really funny. There's a—I couldn't stop thinking there's a grocery chain, um, in Massachusetts called, uh, Roche Brothers. And so I was just like, they're getting—Buying groceries, they're buying furniture from a grocery store? That's what I was thinking.
Sylvi: Wow, very versatile, uh, versatile chain.
Keith: Yeah, you can get cantaloupe, deli counter, ottoman. One-stop shop. Uh, and then his second sex dream, he's, uh, got—He's dreaming of Melfi in the—In his shower.
Sylvi: Yeah. And then she steps out of the, the shower door, uh, and says Mr. Soprano in the same way that she does when it's time for their appointment. 
Keith: Mm-hmm. 
Sylvi: Um, yeah, it's, it's a lot. Oh, this also leads to the really funny moment of him like, waking up, being like, like, oh, and he rolls over to Carmela and she just wakes up and she's like, what, you want sex? And he's like, uh, never mind. There's just something so funny about all their faces.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Uh, or both their faces in that scene, um, that I, uh, laugh at every single time. Um, and again, speaks to sort of how like, the, the state of the relationship doesn't really have like, much of a spark at all. Um, This—And the scene after that, is that—Is the—Is next up the combo scenes of her talking to Father Phil and him confessing to Melfi? Or is this when—No, I think next is when she says no more gifts, or sometime—Somewhere before that she says no more gifts, and then he does the thing with her car, right?
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Because she—She gets a phone call in the middle of a session. She explains, oh yeah, I don't usually, um, I don't usually have my phone—My answer—I usually have my answering service handle this, but I have—I'm having a bit of a car emergency. Um, and so he's able to listen in and hear about that. Uh, if I'm right, is right after she's like, we gotta talk about you can't, uh, bring me coffee anymore, no more gifts? Um, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that is the—
Keith: Okay, so I think that the—I think that the you can't bring me gifts anymore is an earlier scene with her.
Sylvi: It is earlier. Okay.
Art: No, no, no. Yeah, the no coffee, no, no coffee, trouble with car, same, same scene.
Sylvi: Okay, cool. Thank you. That's what I was—
Art: My note on that scene, Melfi refuses coffee, trouble with car, Tony wants to discontinue Prozac over impotence.
Keith: Oh, sorry.
Art: He's got two laughs from Melfi at jokes.
Keith: That's true that those are the same scene, but the scene that we're at after the two sex dreams is the scene where he tries to kiss her, which isn't the coffee or the phone call scene.
Sylvi: Yeah, I think I was just getting some things, some things confused there. I think I was just conflating a lot of stuff together just because of the jumping around.
Speaker C: And it's the same—It's the same set.
Sylvi: It's the same set. They do sort of run together. I just mostly want to make it clear that the no gifts talk happens and then he does the thing with the car. Yes, like it is—It is violating boundaries in multiple different ways. Not only is it like, a complete invasion of her privacy, like she says when she finds out that it was him, but like, he is explicitly, like, going against what she asked.
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Sylvi: Um, and then, um, like, on top of the sort of, uh, like, like affecting her, her sense of security and safety by straight up just stealing her car.
Keith: Yes, people don't like it when, um, you stalk them and steal their cars.
Sylvi: Yeah… 
Dre: But I'm just fixing it!
Keith: I'm sure that, I'm sure that someone out there likes that, and maybe those people are already married to mobsters.
Sylvi: Yeah, maybe.
Keith: You know, I've—I'm thinking back to, um, the other role that I know Dr. Melfi from, which is Goodfellas. And she's crazy. She liked a lot of fucked up shit in that movie.
Sylvi: Yeah. Yeah, you make a good point. There's a lot of—There's some—There's some crazy broads out there!
Keith: Yeah. Um, and then, uh, do you have—Do we have anything specific to say before we move past it about the will you please dress up like my therapist scene?
Sylvi: Oh, um, I think it's really funny that she doesn't know what diagnostic means on the phone. You're a fucking doctor. Um, she has a line where she's like, diagnostic? What does that mean? I just want to know what's wrong with my car. Jennifer, please, please, you diagnose things.
Dre: Yeah, that's what the D in the DSM stands for, is diagnostic.
Art: I don't think the implication is she doesn't know what diagnostic is.
Sylvi: All right, well, that's how it sounded.
Keith: Yeah, I thought it sounded like that. I agree, Art, I feel like what she was confused about is why am I paying for—Why—She's confused about what exactly the service is.
Sylvi: Fair.
Keith: Because it seems like she already knew it was the starter, and they're like, we're gonna do a whole thing on the car to see what else is wrong. And she's like, no, just tell me what's wrong with the starter. That's what I—That's what I took from that. Um, the—Let me play this scene.
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Tony: So I suggested to her—Not demanded. Suggested. You know, maybe dress a little sexier. But Carmela can be very sensitive.
Dr. Melfi: Well, maybe she felt it degraded her. Not all women are into sexy lingerie.
Tony: I'm not talking about dressing like that.
Dr. Melfi: Then what are we talking about?
Tony: Some women are sexier when they, they dress simple. You know, understated. I mean—
Keith: To be clear, this was not Carmela that this conversation actually happened with.
Sylvi: Oh yes.
Tony: Fuck it, I don't know what I mean. Like you.
Dr. Melfi: How like me?
Tony: You play it down. Now it's obvious you got a killer body under there. Don't get me wrong.
Dr. Melfi: All right.
Tony: Not only do you play it down, but you're gentle, not loud. Sweet sounding, like a mandolin. 
Dr. Melfi: Anthony.
Sylvi: He's trying to kiss her.
Dr. Melfi: It's unfortunate that we have to stop now because I think it's really important we talk about this. Do you think you could come back later this afternoon?
Tony: No.
Dr. Melfi: Till Tuesday, okay?
Tony: Yeah, all right. See you Tuesday.
[audio ends]
Keith: Uh, I think it's sad how colossally he's fucked this up. It's so bad. Like, the, um, the, the—I think that the next scene I have a button—The next scene with Melfi I have a button for, that touches on this a little bit. But like, that she has to go like, you're paying me to listen to you. That's like, that's why you think that I'm listening to you. And you like me because you're mad at all the other women in your life and they're mad at you, you dumb fuck.
Sylvi: It, it's—He just doesn't get it. He just doesn't understand how any of this works.
Keith: He just doesn't understand how any of this works. Uh, and by how any of this works, points at own head.
Sylvi: Oh yeah, yeah, I didn't, no—Sorry, I'm talking about humans.
Keith: Yeah. Um, um, the—I think it's interesting that she invites him back later in the afternoon. It seems like her priority was to get him out of there so that she could figure out what was going on, but also does want to dig into this.
Sylvi: I think I—My—The way I read that was that she had another appointment coming up, right? That they were hitting their time and that she didn't have time. Like, she couldn't just extend this to, like, defuse the situation. And the trying to get him back in in the afternoon is to, like—It would be to like—
Keith: That's maybe true. It felt to me like she was cutting it short.
Sylvi: It does also feel like that, uh, don't get me wrong.
Keith: But—
Art: Well, she says that like, it's unfortunate that their time—That it's over. I think it’s—
Sylvi: Yeah.
Art: I think if they're—
Sylvi: Yeah, that's where I get the like, oh, it's—She has another appointment thing.
Keith: They just didn't—It didn't—I just didn't get the vibe that they were at the end of the session when they started talking about this. Like, it seemed like she was getting into new stuff, and that would be weird. But it's also—it's TV. Uh, it feels weird to have been starting to dig into this whole story at the end of a session. Um, and that it can be unfortunate that they can't continue, not because the session is over, but because you've got to be out of here. You can't be—You can't try to kiss me and then we just—We just sit here for the rest of the session. So come back later. It could be either. I could see it either way. I took it that she cut it—Cut the session early and then invited him back when one or both of them had collected themselves. I don't know.
Art: I don't think so, but I guess there's not enough to be definitive here.
Keith: Yeah. Um, the, the speed at which he goes from sitting to trying to kiss her is insane also.
Sylvi: Yes.
Keith: It happens so quickly.
Sylvi: Yeah, like a fucking like, oncoming train.
Keith: Yes. Um, like, yeah, it's nuts how fast that happens. And then, uh, the very next scene is her being like, is someone fucking with my car? It's like at night and she's at home and she's reading a book because she's smart. And like, so like—Someone like, swears at her car, um, and she goes in and she's like, what's wrong with my car? And they're like, nothing's wrong with your car, you have a brand new starter in here. Yeah, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna rip you off with a brand—And replace a brand new starter.
Keith: He says it's got everything on it but the tags, is I think what he says, which is a good line. Um, do we have anything else about this section?
Sylvi: This—Not really. I think the main—The stuff I really want to talk about, we have to talk about the Carmela stuff to get to because it's that scene at the pool is kind of like, where everything kind of comes together. Um, and we haven't really talked about her stuff. 
Keith: The scene at the pool? 
Sylvi: Her conversation with—
Keith: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the poolside talk that they have at the very end. Yeah, that's kind of where a lot of—I, I just don't want to jump the gun.
Keith: I forgot that they were at the pool and I thought you were talking about her with, with, uh, Phil in the church. I was like, that's not—
Sylvi: No, but I would like to also talk about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Keith: Uh, sorry, Art, what were you gonna say?
Art: I'm just—the pool scene is very good.
Sylvi: It's phenomenal, dude. Oh my fucking God. Um, that, that's, that's fucking acting right there. Um, we are doing the voice a little too much is what I've just realized there.
Keith: I'm not doing anything.
Sylvi: Um, maybe just me. Um, I think that like—Yeah, I don't know. Last thing about the, the therapy stuff is that when she explains that she's like, become an amalgam of like all the women in his life, he's the one who brings up the Freud and Oedipal stuff. And it's just like, Tony, Tony, you keep bringing—You’re the one that keeps bringing up Freud.
Keith: Tony, your semester and a half of college is showing.
Sylvi: Yeah, your semester and a half of college is showing, and so are your mommy issues, bro.
Keith: I think that he, he got her implication. I think that he—She was implying.
Sylvi: Sure, I guess. I don't know. I just think it's interesting that he is the one who, who has brought it up both times it's been brought up, right? Like, he, he does—Like, he imme—When he is talking about therapy the first time, like, he immediately jumps to Freudian analysis.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, which I think is telling. Um, that's all.
Keith: Um, but she's the one in the scene—I could be wrong—But she's the one that brings up his wife and mother as an example of the women in his life, and then he takes wife and mother and turns it into Freud and Oedipal. And I, I see that he's connected a dot more than that he's like, let's talk about your mom. He's like, what, you think I want to fuck my mom?
[Sylvi laughter]
Dre: You think my dick doesn't work because I only want to fuck my mom?
Keith: True or false, do you think my dick doesn't work because I only want to fuck my mom?
Dre: True.
[more Sylvi laughter]
Keith: That's fucked up.
Dre: Gotta hear some harsh truths in therapy, you know?
Sylvi: Yeah, that's coming from a professional. I'm just—I'm just, sorry, I'm just going through my notes to make sure that there's nothing in between here that I missed, but I think—I think it is mostly just we should talk about about—We talked about the stuff with Carmela and the furniture. We should talk about her scene with Father Phil. We also got to see the church for the first time, and that shit is like megachurch vibes. Not like all the way, but it is—It—That is a rich neighborhood church for sure. Um, which, you know, makes sense, but also—
Keith: I just think Catholic churches are like that. 
Sylvi: I've been to some small Catholic churches, man.
Art: Yeah, I've been to some—
Keith: Yeah, this is a particularly nice Catholic church. 
Sylvi: This is—yeah—
Keith: Maybe this is an East Coast thing where—
Sylvi: It might be an America thing, maybe. But, but again, I haven't been to church since I was a kid.
Keith: So just like, you know, the churches here are really old.
Sylvi: Sure.
Keith: And old churches get built like, nice and with a lot of money.
Art: Sure. But I've been to—The only Catholic religious service I've ever been to was a friend's funeral in a poor part of Brooklyn, and it was not like this at all.
Keith: This is nice.
Art: They say in the book that after the first season, the church stopped—The Catholic Church as like a rule, stop letting them shoot in churches.
Sylvi: Because they killed that guy. Um, we should talk about this scene. I also—
Art: Pope John Paul II. They killed Pope John Paul II.
Keith: Yeah, they killed Pope John Paul II.
Sylvi: He had it coming. Uh, he knows what he did.
Keith: Not anymore, he doesn't.
Sylvi: Not anymore, he doesn't. We also did miss the conversation that Tony and Carmela have in their car, which is brief but I think important, where Carmela brings up her feelings of being—She says, I think you skeeve me. And Tony's response is, I skeeve you? You're the mother of my children. And she's immediately like, yes, that's the problem. You just keep treating me like the mother of your children and not your wife. Um, which again, more mother stuff. Interesting, huh?
Art: Huh. You think there's something going on here?
Sylvi: Might be something going on with Tony Soprano and his mom?
Keith: I couldn't even begin to understand what you're talking about. This is a foreign language to me. They seem like a totally normal, normal guy, normal mom, no crime. Normal mom, no crime.
Dre: These websites that he’s one.
Keith: I miss the Nextbit, Robin. That was a phone.
[Sylvi laughter]
Keith: Um, I'm, I'm, we're closing right there.
Sylvi: We just passed the 4-hour mark on my Audacity file, so I'm walking in.
Keith: Yeah. Uh, we're almost done. We're almost over.
Sylvi: We are almost done. The—We also kind of talked about some of the, um, the feelings that, that are, that, uh, are sort of expressed during the scene with Father Phil where she, uh, she—Carmela just straight up says like, I looked the other way with the goomahs because, uh, I still had like a deeper—It felt like I still had a deeper relationship with him. And it was like, a form of masturbation, I think is how she describes it. Um, and like, that her insecurity is coming not from, not from like the possibility that he's like, sleeping with someone else—Sleeping with someone, but that he—This is—This feels more like cheating than anything else, right?
Keith: A meaningful connection with someone that isn't her.
Dre: Yeah, an emotional affair as opposed to a physical one.
Sylvi: Precisely. Also, she's got a great shirt on in this scene. Um, unrelated, but just, it looks good. Um, yeah, it, uh, I—It's, it's so sad that she like, bares her soul like this and his reply is, you reap what you sow. [Dre: Yeah, dude.] Uh, like, you admitted it, that you looked the other way, that you, you accepted his dalliances, blah blah blah. You, again, your wifely duties and shit. I want to strangle this guy. I would—Yeah, I wish I had a husband who doesn't fly off when I'm driving. Um, it does—The, like, Carmela's just, whole arc is really sad in these two episodes. Though, like, the coming back to, like—She's like—She wants to be comfortable in this life still. Um, and like, you know, there is the outside pressure from Father Phil not to, not to divorce Tony, not to leave him when she's thinking about it. Um, and like, he—This—Even though he pushes back on it, she still could go through with it, but she's choosing not to.
Keith: Um, this guy reminds me of Giovanni Ribisi.
Sylvi: What?
Keith: This guy reminds me of Giovanni Ribisi, the Scientologist.
Sylvi: Oh yeah, sure. I thought you were talking about Carmela.
Keith: Sorry, I was just like watching the scene while you were describing it.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: And I was just, you know, just another slimy guy who looks like that.
Sylvi: Yeah, Carmela makes me sad. I kind of—That was kind of my main point here. I'm not sure what else to say. Um, it bums me out that she—It—Seeing someone in a—In, uh, stuck in a relationship always makes me a little sad. But like, it, it makes me even sadder when we get to this poolside scene and you can still see that there's like a lot of love between them despite how much they're hurting each other.
Keith: I mean, it sucks that like, the show is very clear about how Melfi is positively impacting Tony's life, and Carmela's analog to that is this guy who sucks and is probably negatively impacting her life?
Sylvi: Oh, probably? Definitely.
Keith: Yeah, definitely.
Sylvi: This guy sucks.
Keith: This guy sucks.
Dre: Yeah, this guy super sucks.
Art: This guy sucks.
Keith: And so he’s making it worse.
Sylvi: While Melfi's trying to make it better. And Tony is taking things and making it worse.
Keith: Yeah. Um, uh, and that's sad.
Sylvi: We—That's that. We talked about—We already kind of talked about the scene where Melfi says like, I became a sort of, um, I became a—
Keith: You want a button for that?
Sylvi: Empath—Do you have the button for this? Thank fuck. I should—I should have asked. It's so much—She's so much wordier than I am.
Keith: This is our last one.
[audio from The Sopranos starts playing]
Dr. Melfi: Before we run out of time, I'd like to discuss what happened when we were here last week.
Tony: How's your car?
Dr. Melfi: Did you steal my car and have it fixed? We had an agreement, no gifts.
Tony: I didn't want to see you get robbed.
Dr. Melfi: It was you. You had no right to steal my car. I've been scared to death.
Tony: Why?
Dr. Melfi: Why? It's a violation of my privacy. What else have you done?
Keith: We know.
Dr. Melfi: Answer me. 
Keith: The cop.
Tony: I love you.
Dr. Melfi: Anthony.
Tony: I'm in love with you. I'm sorry. It's just the way it is.
Dr. Melfi: Okay, let me talk.
Tony: No, it's not the Prozac. I dream about you. I think about you all the time. I can't get excited about any other women. There's nothing else to say. I love you.
Dr. Melfi: Let me start here. I know this may be very hard for you to swallow, but you're only feeling this way because we've made such progress.
Tony: What?
Dr. Melfi: I've been gentle. That's my job. I listen. That's what I do best. I've been a broad, generic, sympathetic woman to you because that's what this work calls for. You've made me all of the things you feel are missing in your wife and in your mother.
Tony: You're making me out to be some fucking mama's boy. I'm a man and you're a woman. End of story. And this crap about Freud and every boy wanting to have sex with his mother, that's not gonna fly here.
Dr. Melfi: I didn't say that. I want to make sure we understand each other.
Tony: Yeah, we understand each other. You don't love me. You don't want me to come back anymore? Fine.
Dr. Melfi: It's quite the opposite. This is all a byproduct of progress. Has someone been following me? OK, forget it. I'll see you next week.
[audio ends]
Sylvi: Her delivery on OK, forget it is really funny.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: He is such a child.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: I get it. You don't love me.
Keith: You don't love me.
Sylvi: That's like some real 13-year-old bullshit.
Keith: Guess I'll go fucking kill myself then.
Dre: Oh, this is, this is elementary school. This is like you gave a girl a Valentine and she said she didn't want to be your boyfriend.
Sylvi: And the Valentine was stealing her car.
Keith: To fix it! 
Sylvi: Uh-huh. Um, yeah, it's, it's like, really like, uncomfortable. Yeah, I think that comes across in audio, but—
Keith: This is worse than killing that guy.
Sylvi: Yeah, genuinely.
Dre: Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's crazy to me to have this described as like, oh, this is because of progress, when it is just the worsening of all of Tony's worst stuff.
Keith: Are you disagreeing with, uh, her professional opinion?
Dre: I am, unfortunately.
Keith: Wow.
Sylvi: If Dre was Tony Soprano's, uh, therapist, this whole thing would have gone different.
Dre: We probably would have, uh, stopped having appointments after he like, yelled at me and stormed out after two appointments.
Sylvi: Yeah, probably. Um, the thing is though, like—Okay, before I move on, because my, my thing is gonna carry us into the next scene, do we have more about this here? Um, or should I just keep, keep going?
Keith: I think we've cov—We've pretty much covered this.
Sylvi: Okay. We were talking about how it's like he does—It doesn't feel like he's making progress, but then we get this poolside scene with him and Carmela, which does feel like he is making some progress in a weird way. Um, or at the very least, he's able to be a little more open. And like, that feels like—I don't know, after this whole episode, it feels very notable that they are able to have this sort of like really, like, I think tender moment talking to each other on these pool chairs. Um, they're both like—She's talk—She starts it by talking. I mean, I, I do think it sucks that it starts with her being the one who's more apologetic about like, being jealous of Melfi and stuff like that. And like—
Keith: Well, doesn't he start to apologize and she cuts him off?
Sylvi:  I think so, actually. You might be right. I thought that she—I thought that she started, he tries to apologize, and then she cuts him off, but I could be just misremembering things. Um, either way, you are right. He does try to apologize, and then she cuts—She cuts him off so she can like say her piece and like, um, the—The basically, uh—Communicates the stuff that we've been—That I've been like bringing up about how she feels like sort of like, uh, secondary to his life, that she's not really like a major part of it outside of raising his kids. And, um, I'm gonna sneeze. [sneezes] Okay, she didn't say that, I said that. I was the one who sneezed, not Carmela.
Keith: That’d be crazy to include that in the show.
Sylvi: It would be crazy to include that. But, uh, yeah, basically she, she's like, I just don't know where I fit in with your life anymore. And he says something that is not true, but I think in the moment he believes is true. And it's really good performance from Gandolfini to get that across. He says, Carm, you aren't part of my life, you are my life. And he like—The way they look at each other in this scene, like, especially him, the way that he's looking at her, it's like—I don't know, there is like—You, for the first time in like a—Like really properly in this show, you feel the love between them, like actually, like in a palpable sense versus just like—
Art: Yeah, it's a very sweet scene.
Sylvi: Yeah, it's a really sweet scene. You get, you know, there's little moments of them being like, like a loving couple, like, that are very understated. And so to have one here, six episodes in, that is like—You get to sit in it. Like, it literally—the, the shot lingers on the two of them sitting with each other poolside for a little bit. And like, I don't know, I like it. I think it's like a really—It's a—It's—You can only have this show going so long before people are like, why the fuck is she still with him?
Keith: Mm-hmm.
Sylvi: Like, right? And you have to show that like, no, there are—Like, these two have been through a lot together and there are feelings here. Like, there are very strong feelings here despite his frequent betrayal and her like, um, sort of unhappiness with the, the, the way their relationship has been handled lately.
Keith: Um, and it comes from both of them finally saying something that they hadn't been saying.
Sylvi: Yeah.
Keith: With her, it's that he's been frustrated that she's mad at him, and he doesn't really understand why. And she tells him that part of it is jealousy of not being the one who you're trusting with your feelings and feeling insecure. And then he reaffirms what she's been insecure about, which is that, like, he loves her not just because she's, you know, his children's mother, but that they're partners.
Sylvi: Yeah. Oh, and we also get him offering to stop going, and she's the one who says, no, I want you to keep going.
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, genuinely very big of her, given like, how poorly he handled the whole situation of having a female therapist. Um, yeah, I don't know. I've always got a soft spot for things where two—Where like very messy people, uh, like, have that moment of like, reconciling, even if it's, it's brief and like, not a complete reconciliation. I don't know, I—They tug my heartstrings and I can't—I, I won't apologize for that.
Art: I don't think anyone's asking you to.
Sylvi: No, I know, but like, maybe the listener is like—
Keith: Apologize for that. Apologize for it. I'm saying no, Keith.
Sylvi: I'm gonna keep—I have one murder that I'm morally allowed to commit and you're—
Dre: Oh shit.
Sylvi: Shooting up the list, bucko. 
Keith: Better try something stronger than a lit candle.
Art: All right, we're getting a little chippy here.
Sylvi: I don't know. I'm gonna light your candle, motherfucker.
Art: Hey!
Dre: Hey, I don't let anybody wag a candle in my face, let alone put one up my ass.
Sylvi: Oh my God. Okay, I feel like I just like, yapped there for like 5 minutes straight. Do you guys have anything to say about this scene? I don't—didn't mean to just steal the mic there.
Keith: Uh, no, that was all good.
Sylvi: Okay. Uh, I think that'll do it then for this week, unless there's anything I missed that we want to talk about.
Keith: Uh, no. What episodes are we watching next time?
Sylvi: Next time we are watching episode 7, Down Neck, and episode 8, The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti.
Keith: Cool.
Sylvi: I'm—I remember, uh, really enjoying the second of these two, but I think the first one I also—is, is also pretty solid. I just remember more about—I, I'm not hiding it, Chris is like, one of my favorite like, characters in fiction, so of course the episodes that like, have more of him I remember more.
Keith: I mean, that is like the big downside to these two episodes is that he was barely in it. He is the best thing about the show—One of the best things about the show. It's like him and Tony, Tony and Livia...
Sylvi: Tony and Carmela… I don't want to give short shrift to Edie Falco or Carmela. Like, she's really like that. That dynamic, I think, is also like some of the, the, the best.
Keith: Like, I'm sure that it could grow into that for me. I don't dislike those scenes by any means. I just don't think that they're as high as those other two.
Sylvi: Fair enough. Yeah, I, I—we're still early, you know?
Keith: Yeah.
Sylvi: Um, all right, I think, yeah, that's gonna do us. Uh, as always, if you want to support the show, go to friendsatthetable.cash, or just, hey, tell a friend. Uh, leave us a review. I should actually—I should check to see if we got any reviews. I know this is a long-ass recording, but fuck it, at this point let's just keep it Yeah, fuck it.
Dre: Um, I'm gonna go see if there's reviews on Pocket Casts.
Keith: Oh, do they have written reviews? I thought they only had ratings.
Dre: I don't know if they do. I think they only have ratings, but I'm gonna double-check.
Sylvi: Okay, we mostly just have reviews about M. Night Shyamalan, and I'm kind of trying to like, let that be in the past, but thank you everyone who gave us 5-star reviews. I just have like, trauma now. Um, I'm just like, I'm very, I'm very traumatized by the Shyamalan season.
Art: Because only one episode's out.
Sylvi: Yeah, yeah, true.
[“Shame About It (Vocals)” by Jack de Quidt starts playing]
Art: Don't come—don’t worry.
Keith: Next episode will be out tonight.
Art: Let's get the fuck out of here.
Sylvi: Yeah, let's get the fuck out of here. Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye.
[“Shame About It (Vocals)” by Jack de Quidt finishes playing]