So here we go again.
It doesn’t seem like we are moving to any resolution, only opening new cans o’ worms, but what else would you expect.
So, how does Phil manifest his new power? How does he consolidate New York? If he is the new top guy, he has to assert himself quickly.
Does Tony piss off Sil, pushing away the last wiseguy who doesn’t have an axe to grind?
Ten minutes till Sopranos…
Will Junior show or is he done?
Tony’s gambling is moving to the center…
“You go around in pity for yourself…”
Is that from the poem someone read while Tony was in the hospital? Something from Janis maybe?
Ah!
They gonna BEAT the goth out of him!
'bout damn time.
Short…over in 49 minutes?
Great line from Sil: “never works, get him a dog”
More questions than answers this eppy:
What happened to Hesh’s lady?
Just how wrong will Vito in boot camp go?
Did Tony pay Hesh off at the end?
Notable scenes:
Vito in the shower. Kid needs to be committed instead of sent to a boot camp.
Nancy Sinatra - time has not been kind
I think Renata’s death was related to the migraines. She didn’t have one when Hesh told her to go upstairs and lock the door, but the excuse came quick to him, like she’s had headaches before. Maybe a stroke or a tumor?
I want to know why Blanca dumped A.J. Besides the fact that he’s A.J., what changed her mind?
Silly speculation – the only reason I can think of for spending any time on Vito Jr. is that he’ll end up dead at that boot camp, and Tony will use that as an excuse to go at Phil. The kid was Phil’s responsibility and he dumped him off on Tony.
Where did Tony get the $200K to pay Hesh? Did Carmela share?
I don’t think we’ll ever see Vito Jr. again. Actually developing a storyline involving him in boot camp, this late in the series, seems really unlikely.
I doubt Hesh’s lady was killed. Victims of the Mafia don’t usually die in such a peaceful way. What would they have done, poison her? I also can’t see Tony doing something like that to Hesh, who was apparently his father’s best friend and who goes way back with the Mafia (even if he’s not Italian.) And it’s not like Hesh really did anything to deserve having his woman killed, anyway. He wasn’t even pushing Tony hard for the payment. And since when do the mobsters on the show kill people’s loved ones as a threat? Maybe it happens in real life, but the Soprano crew never did anything like it. The only time they ever killed a woman was when she informed on them.
Who did the closing tune? I’m thinking it was John Lee Hooker or Howlin’ Wolf but wasn’t familiar with the tune.
Howlin’ Wolf, “Goin’ Down Slow” (written by St. Louis Jimmy Oden)
I think the implication was that he got money “from offshore”, ie, presumably money he’s had saved and didn’t really want to dig into.
An excellent episode overall, particularly the interplay between Carm and Tony. But I could have done with one less “Tony bets and loses money” scene. We get it already. (In particular, all of a sudden he’s betting 100 grand on a football game because the kicker got killed, which is public information so it will be reflected in the vegas lines, and the previous football game showed that they understand the importance of knowledge being secret?)
It seems like her passion for him just faded away. It’s how a lot of relationships end - I like that the show made it realistic, instead of having it be some big dramatic thing.
Not necessarily. As soon as that happened, I thought of the novel Sula, by Toni Morrison, in which a young black girl is cornered by some Irish hoodlums. She takes out her pocketknife and coolly cuts a chunk off her own finger. “If I can do that to myself, what do you think I’ll do to you?” Whoosh, they were gone.
I took it as Vito Jr. sending the same message: “This kid doesn’t care what he does, so back off.” Unfortunately, it also got him expelled, but from his perspective, that probably seemed like a good thing. At first. I feel really, really bad for him, Marie and Francesca, especially since Marie might not have known herself that it would happen like that. Good on Tony for thinking of Francesca’s long-term emotional welfare, though.
Tony and Carmella’s scene: As soon as it began, Mr. Rilch said, “Uh-oh, handheld.”
I’m going to have to check the DVD of “One,” as Christophuh calls it, and see if any of the shots in That Scene match the shots in Hesh’s scene with Renata.
I thought of something like psychologically disturbed kids pooping in the public pool. To me, there was nothing calculated about it. The kid is a friggin’ mess.
Push finally came to shove and she couldn’t do it. He had nothing to offer her.
His proposal was rotten. She paused and all he could come up with was, “I’ll own a chain of pizzerias and you’ll never have to work again.”
The whole episode was about the shallowness of money in the face of family. It’s no coincidence that she left him for her brohter and son at the Puerto Rican parade.
Good Tony & Carm stuff. I liked the gambling. It was written pretty well, and I know that feeling of “losing” when you didn’t bet on something that came in. It’s almost worse than actually losing.
I’m sorry, I’m lost on this. Handheld what?
And what is “One”? What is “That Scene”?
Just curious, y’know…
Handheld camera. Any time the camera is moving about, especially if it’s handheld, or “shaky-cam” (think Blair Witch) the scene is going to be intense. (Actually, I didn’t find BW intense, but it was meant to be, so there you go.)
Last season, Christopher referenced the first Godfather movie, only he called it “One,” as if it needed no further identifier. And Hesh finding Renata reminded me of the horse’s-head scene in “One.”
I thought I saw “Southside Johnny as himself” in the credits … how did I miss him?
My vote for he worst story-line in the entire series … Carm’s paranoia about the house falling down because they used the wrong kind of wood.
I think that there is at least a chance that Vito Jr. will break out of that boot camp and come back to kill Tony in the final episode
Sil can steal an entire scene with barely uttering a word. Never has repairing a lamp been so freakin’ hilarious.
VCNJ~