Thirteen on The Sopranos

13 colorful donuts from AI

I recently finished my (third?) rewatch of The Sopranos and probably will not rewatch it again, despite the excellent writing. It's just too bleak and violent. I had remembered it as a comedic series punctuated with a shooting here and there, but that's not really how it is. Funny thing about memory, isn't it? Here are some of my thoughts on the show, in no particular order. If you don't want the show "spoiled" (after 20+ years!), then click away now.

1. Before I forget (again), a stray orange cat plays a pivotal role in the finale (S6, e21). It reiterates the orange/ death theme that appears throughout the series (as an homage to The Godfather), and it also shows again how Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini, RIP) is so considerate and loving toward animals, as opposed to people.

2. It took me all these rewatches to notice that Donna Pescow is the wife of Patsy Parisi (Dan Grimaldi) in the finale. You remember Donna, right? She plays Annette in Saturday Night Fever. (I'm due for a rewatch of that movie soon.)

3. Though Facebook sucks generally, I still enjoy the various fandoms, and the commenters on the Sopranos threads are so funny and insightful. "Always with the scenarios!" Confession: I might watch S6 one more time to pay closer attention to the clues leading up to the finale.

4. If Tony dies at the end, then probably Tony's wife Carmela (Edie Falco) and son AJ (Robert Iler) die too, since they are all sitting at the same table, but Tony's daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) may be spared at the door because she arrives late after struggling to parallel park (totally relatable). 

5. The only character who experiences enlightenment and change is Tony's psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi, in a brilliant performance by Lorraine Bracco. She finally realizes that she can no longer treat Tony, and that she had been enabling his terrible behavior with her therapy sessions.

6. One of my memory fails is that I thought Hesh Rabkin gets killed near the end in the mob war, but he does not. The actor who plays him, Jerry Adler, passed away last year at age 96. 

7. One of the most elaborate plot concoctions is how everything ends up falling apart for Tony because of the repercussions of the fat joke Ralphie (Joe Pantoliano) tells about Ginny (Denise Borino-Quinn), the wife of Johnny Sack (Vincent Curatola). I have loved Joey Pants ever since he played Guido, the killer pimp, in Risky Business!

8. I appreciated Tony's coma fantasy more on this last watch. It was really well executed, especially the final moments when Tony B (Steve Buscemi) tries to pull him into the afterlife.

9. It's always hilarious to me how these guys can be so dumb about so many things, yet morph into math wizards the instant betting odds or calculations of the "vig" come up. 

10. I had forgotten about the bear that appeared in the Sopranos’ yard after Tony moved out, but those are great scenes and of course symbolic of the threat Tony poses to everyone around him. It also foreshadows the fact that Carmela can never be rid of Tony and that they will get back together ~ easy to say when I know they do get back together!

11. My favorite episode is still early on where Tony acts like such an ordinary dad until he discovers "the rat" (Tony Ray Rossi) while he's taking his daughter to visit a college in Maine. It's the same ep where Tony tells Meadow during the drive that there's no such thing as the mafia and tries to convince her that he's mostly involved in legit business. Hilarious juxtaposition.

12. I love the insertion of famous people as themselves into Soprano-world: Nancy Sinatra singing for the wise guys, David Lee Roth sitting at the executive poker game, and best of all Ben Kingsley trying to duck Christopher (Michael Imperioli) and his dopey movie pitch.

13. Livia Soprano (Nancy Marchand, RIP), Tony’s mom, is my favorite character in the whole series because she's so irredeemably, unapologetically awful without ever committing violence herself. Her manipulation of Corrado aka Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) is a thing of beauty.