Another fantastic episode. I really enjoyed the montage at the beginning of everyone finding out about Johnny (what was that tune - I recognized Portishead as the sample but I’d never heard that version).
I was confused about the phone messages. Here’s my take on it:
[ul]Tommy hears that gutwrenching message from Johnny[/ul]
[ul]Then after Johnny is already dead, Tomme leaves more or less the same message for Johnny.[/ul]
[ul]When he tells Johnny’s body that he left him a message, (with Janet listening), Johnny’s ghost snaps to life, because Tommy’s lying to score points with Janet.[/ul]
[ul]Tommy plays the message, and it works - Janet starts to get all sympathetic.
[/ul]
OK, then WHY did Tommy say he was quitting the FDNY and moving in with Sheila? It seemed odd to do such an evil thing as to steal your dead brother’s sympathetic phone call to get Janet back, then we see that tactic actually start to work, then he brushes her off for Sheila? Huh?
I got it that Tommy left the message for Johnny at around the same time Johnny left one for him.
Which is why Tommy hit the bottle after hearing Johnny’s message, cuz it was obvious Johnny didn’t get the first message.
It wasn’t a ploy or anything. We just didn’t see Tommy leave the message. Johnny snapped up in the coffin (and scared the bejabbers out of me, btw) because Tommy always sees dead people when he’s under stress.
They went to get Johnny’s phone because he wanted, HAD to know whether Johnny got the message before he was killed.
Also, the appearance of Tommy’s son at the funeral was heart-breaking.
Killer ep though. The wedding on top of the funeral was inspired. (A deaf sister? Huh?) Tommy’s family is full goose bozo.
That was the only part I didn’t like – the wedding, not the deaf sister, she’s cool. Nice touch that Sean “Gavity” and Tommy both know how to sign.
What happened between “You make me throw up” and “I do”?
I didn’t get Franco’s new girlfriend freaking out that she resembles Keelah (as a child), but I guess the writers won’t let Franco have an uncomplicated relationship.
Loved Sean – “Who died?”
Bad Tommy for not realizing Sheila needs no encouragement to plan the rest of their lives. Dumb Sheila for not realizing Tommy can’t be counted on.
Can we get some more votes here from the SDMB? I absolutely thought the implication was that Tommy never let Janet hear that message, and instead swapped it for one of his own, that he left himself after Johnny had died.
It would be a pretty serious plot point to misunderstand, so I’d love more clarification.
Tommy didn’t let Janet hear the message that Johnny left on his machine. The one where Johnny said (paraphrasing) “it’s your wife, I love her man, I’m sorry, but I’ll bow out”
The message that Tommy played for Janet was a message that HE left on Johnny’s phone. It was Tommy’s voice - it was not the phone message we heard before.
My understanding is that Tommy intentionally left a similar message on Johnny’s machine AFTER he died, to curry favor with Janet, not that Tommy really did leave that message before his brother’s death.
This was after the funeral. Tommy played another message holding his cell phone and using it as a speaker phone as they were standing in the street. Listening were Lou, Tommy and Janet. As Janet listened to Tommy say how sorry he was, and “I love her man” and all that, she started warming up to him. As I was listening to it, I though “Oh wait - he’s not playing the message Johnny left him last night - he’s playing a message that HE left, and he’s stealing Johnny’s material!”
The phone he played the message on was Johnny’s- they got it from the police just before.
I figured Tommy hit the bottle because after he got the bottle out of the cupboard, they showed him waking up face down on the couch- classic drunksleep position.
After you guys explain it, I can see the manipulation idea, too. I guess I’d like to think even Tommy wouldn’t pull that kind of sleazy trick on his dead brother. But yeah, it would explain the sharp look from Johnny’s corpse.
Probably it was intended to be unclear, and will be revealed sometime in the future.
Ahhhh, now I get the confusion. You (Dooku) thought Tommy, Lou, and Janet were listening to Tommy’s messages, when they were actually listening to Johnny’s.
All right then. I’m not confused anymore. Except about Sean and Maggie.
There was no timestamp on the “message” that Tommy left for Johnny, which leads me to believe that it was not the heartfelt speech it was meant to represent.
Our satellite reception was disrupted by a huge storm Tuesday night, so the first 10-15 minutes of the episode were lost. We cut back in when Tommy was in the kitchen with Lou (or is it Lieu?) listening to Tommy’s message. I should try to TiVo one of the replays so we can see the opening montage.
Unless I missed something critical about the phone messages in those missing minutes, the impression I got was that Tommy and Johnny left each other those messages at about the same time, and neither of them heard the messages until after Johnny was shot. So they were on the verge of reconciling, but didn’t quite connect in time. I didn’t think Tommy was making a play for Janet with that message.
Auntie Pam: my voicemail calls them “unheard” messages rather than new as well.
Yes. And my main point was that Tommy left his message on Johnny’s machine after Johnny died, knowing that Janet would hear it and think Tommy was the bigger man.
Put much better, thanks. My understanding was the exact opposite - Tommy didn’t leave that message at the same time, but left it after he heard Johnny’s message, which would make it really sleazy.
I honestly don’t think that’s the case. Not that Tommy wouldn’t stoop so low, but I don’t think he did in this one instance. Subtlety isn’t this show’s strong suit – I think they would have made that more explicit if Tommy was really playing her with a post-death message.
The song was “Hell Is Just Around the Corner” by Tricky from the album Maxinquay. Both this song and Portishead’s “Glory Box” use the same instrumental sample from “Ike’s Rap III” by Isaac Hayes.