She’s basically the love interest for Warren Beatty’s Bugsy Siegel.
On preview: I too hate overly-long, overly-stylized dream sequences, and this one irritated me as well. Mr. Chase, Mr. Lynch, and other directors who wish to mimic them: this sort of thing isn’t avant-garde, it’s annoying. Please get over yourselves. Thank you.
I’m with those who thought this episode was overblown. I would have rather seen Tony B.'s (apparently botched) hit on Phil.
I have to say though, Gloria is smoking hot.
Pun intended? 
I mean, Valentina certainly resembles Gloria and there was one episode where Gloria shows up at the boat in an absolutely fabulous over-the-top outfit involving a scarf tied around her head–if I remember correctly, she answers the phone and then she and Tony get into it–she tosses his present out the porthole. Anyway, the dressing on Valentina’s head in the hospital reminded me of Gloria in that episode. Anyone else?
I liked this episode–all kinds of good references. At one point I was reminded of The Shining but now I don’t remember what triggered that…
See, I feel almost diametrically opposite to you.
I do feel that much of this season has been a too-long, too-slow buildup to all hell breaking loose with Sack and co. But now that the watershed moment has at last come, I think this was the perfect way to bring us there. Tony gets to look around at himself and his families, just as the great catastrophe is breaking. Very much more apocalyptic than simply watching Tony B pull the trigger again.
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree. I couldn’t stand Waking Life. So didactic - at least in David Chase’s dream sequences, the conflicts between characters are brought to the surface in every scene - usually in a very striking way. Waking Life felt like a discussion group from a university class.
YMMV.
Yeah, if by striking you mean hitting you over the head with all of the subtlety and finesse of a sledge hammer. Go ahead, jam these messages about the character’s internal conflicts and troubled relationships down my throat, but be sure to throw in a bunch of non-sensical cuts and surreal imagery in the hopes that you can turn the necessary de-coding of these dream sequences into some artsy-wannabe exercise (in which, I have no interest). Dream analysis can be fun in small doses, but this episode was one part directorial masturbation, 5 parts excuse for a bunch of cameos, and 3 parts cop out. Basically, no fun.
I’d really prefer that important things get said or seen instead of implied and/or masked in a bunch of self-absorbed ambiguity simply for the sake of being stylized. Sparing use of metaphor and symbolism can be highly effective, but it’s like a junkie who takes a thing good in small doses and abuses it until it becomes debilitating. These are, naturally, all relative observations. Not much point in debating - there’s no accounting for taste in matters of opinion, as they say.
*:shrug:*I liked discussion groups when I went to college. Some parts of the movie are more like that than others. I loved the way they suggested that perhaps when we die, it is only our waking life that dies, but we live on forever in dreams. Some parts were better than others, but as a whole, that was one cool movie. Rotoscoping is dope as hell as well. . . .
Just speculation…but I think this is just part of the movies theme that ran through the dream. At one point Carm tells Tony that ‘these things are his life’…or something like that. The dream contains references to or clips from several films (most of them mentioned in previous posts).
I remember reading that actual modern gangsters end up using older gangster films, The Godfather and Scarface in particular, as models for their own behavior. I think this, coupled with Tony’s desire to deny the real effects of his actions, fuel his thinking that his life is, in a way, just a movie.
Additionally, regading The Godfather references…has anyone else seen The Sopranos easter egg on the Godfather boxed dvd set? It’s pretty funny.
J.T. Walsh died in 1998. Makazian is played by John Heard.
I was disappointed at the lack of a backwards-talking dancing midget.
I didn’t need a 25 minute dream sequence to tell me that Tony was off his nut. The fact that he’s stalkerishly obsessed with Charmaine Bucco tells me that he’s even more far gone than I thought possible.
Did I see a Mafia Don being chased by a man in lederhosen?
Then using The Valachi Papers as a reference in an extended urinal scene?
This looks like they were partying with the guy from * West Wing*, the guy who had the hallucinogenics.
Put me down for “worst”. I can watch TV for mindless entertainment, or try to think along with the plot and guess at a mystery, but I do not like to have to psychoanalyze my shows.
The dream sequence had some interesting elements, but dragged on way too long. And the nonsense of the Annette Benning bit, and the Godfather references and that interminable rendition of the goddawful Lionel Richie tune just got irritating. Yes I watch - and enjoy - David Lynch. This was not David Lynch, this was pale immitation.
In a nutshell, Tony’s dread at the idea that he may have to whack Tony B has dredged up barely-suppressed guilt over all the other evils he has perpetrated in his life. There, I did the dream in a sentence, not a 25 minute montage.
By the end, I felt ripped off that I didn’t get to see Tony B go for his revenge. His not-so-slow descent from reformed criminal to revenge-crazy killer has been one of the highlights of the season.
thwartme
If you mean the interior decorator, who says he’s dead?
She played Virginia Hill, who was in a way the ideal gun moll/goomar-- she, echoed by the Mrs. Di Troglio character she was playing in the dream, was totally into her Mob boss boyfriend and his sociopathic lifestyle. Remember how relieved Tony is when he finds out she approves of his career. Maybe that’s his fantasy of what his mate would be like.
Off his nut? I wouldn’t say that. I think he’s locked in a fierce conflict with himself and the dissonance between his still-extant but marginalized conscience and his fucked up life of sin is making it hard for him to exist. Perhaps that is the techincal description of “off his nut,” I don’t know. To me, the dream was the outpouring of years of bottled up qualms and fears.
Also, I don’t think he’s stalkerishly obsessed with Charmaine Bucco, and I’m not sure where you’ve gotten that. He expresses interest in her, which he does not act on, and then dreams about her. The only perverse part of any of that is the fact that she’s the wife of one of his best friends, which should make her off-limits. He obviously feels quite guilty about even thinking about her, hence her role the dream. Also, don’t forget that he already had a sexual relationship with her when they were much younger, so they do have a history. He may on some level regret choosing Carmella over her, which explains the segue from him screwing her to the horse to the whores shitting all over Carmella’s house (he cheated on Carmella with her way back when, and she told Carmella, who flipped).
I can see why you’d say that and I often felt that way about David Lynch (though mostly I like him), but this dream to me was very well-done. It was so eerie how many elements of that dream have occurred in dreams I’ve had–too many to count but a hell of a lot. Whoever wrote that dream sequence (Weiner/Chase) really knows a lot about the conventions of dreams and depicted them with horrific accuracy.
Have the people who hated his episode ever had dreams like Tony’s? Maybe you have, and you still didn’t like it, but I was so damn fascinated to see a lot of my own dream elements on TV, which has never happened before, that I was overwhelmed, awed, and completely enthralled. To each his own.
He did call her and hang up. From Charmaine’s reply, it sounds like he’s done it more than once.
A few questions:
–What did Annette Bening say after she raised her hand from the crown and Gloria called on her? My download cut that off.
–Is money tight for Tony or not? On the one hand, he’s said several times that it is. On the other hand, I can’t even imagine what that suite cost, especially when you add in the room service, the gratuitous use of the mini-bar, and the prostitute.
I think maybe this entire episode was a dream. I only include the word “maybe” there because I don’t see how they’d express that the whole episode was a dream in the… what, two remaining episodes? But the whole damned thing was SO weird. Valentina sets herself on fire? Yeah, okay, maybe it’s to symbolize that she’s no Carmela, who is a tremendous cook and would never torch herself. And Valentina thinks Tony’s a surgeon? Yeah, fine, she’s doped up. But then, after the obvious dream, Christophuh wants Tony’s Toblerone? And Carmela actually tolerates Tony’s weird-ass phone call at 5:24 AM? I’m just not seeing it. Too much isn’t adding up.
Most of you have said that the “thing Tony has to do” is whack the Other Tony. I don’t think that’s it. I think the Thing He Has to do is get back with Carm, because his life is shit without her. Remember him explaining to the Coach that he’s successful, because his house is worth $1.2 million? That’s bullshit self-rationalization. He was bored and miserable in his Plaza suite, his ultra-expensive Plaza suite. I think that, sans Carmela, he’s becoming his mother – incapable of experiencing joy.
I think wanting Charmaine Buco feeds into that too. Charmaine is a replacement Carmela, but deep down, Tony knows nothing can ever happen there (again?*). I say this because the scene where he was banging Artie’s wife with Artie in the room was so ridiculous, it seems that even Tony “I’ll Fuck Anything that Moves!” Soprano must realize that those shenanigans will never happen.
I think this show is the best way ever of de-lionizing the Mafia. Everyone in this show is morally bankrupt. Well, okay, most everyone. And the guy who has the most, who has succeeded the most at the Game of Extortion and Robbery and Murder etc. is the most miserable one of them all! It’s like Citizen Kane, except showing the emptiness that comes from ill-gotten material gains instead of legitimate ones.
Oh, and the dream sequence was too long for me too, even if it wasn’t the entire episode as I earlier hypothesized. Small doses and such.
She said, “There’s something Bugsy about him,” which is a reference to the movie. I don’t want to give you the whole rundown of Bugsy Siegel if you already know it…
Notice the room was billed to Mr. Petraglia, not Mr. Soprano.
I rewatched the episode, and wow, there’s even more in there than I thought. But I’m not going to go off on a rapturous recap when so many people didn’t really like it. Unless someone wants to… 
But she had also said the room was being paid in cash, the card was for a damage deposit, minibar, etc.
Cash is hard to trace; I remember Carmela’s lawyer mentioning getting a PI to investigate his cash transactions, then saying the guy refused to do the job. I take it from that exchange that cash is not the problem, it’s his assets that are the problem, but yeah, I think money is tight and he’s depressed and doesn’t give a damn. That’s pretty standard behavior for someone who’s depressed. That suite must cost a freakin’ fortune.
Please, 'splain.
Ruby, give us what you’ve got. ("I rewatched the episode, and wow, there’s even more in there than I thought. But I’m not going to go off on a rapturous recap when so many people didn’t really like it. Unless someone wants to… ")
I’d forgotten Tony had slept w/ Charmaine years ago, but now that I remember, I totally believed C. when she told Carmela of that event, oh so many seasons ago. My take during Sunday’s episode, though, was “What is Tony’s PROBLEM, that every woman he wants is a complete psychopath?” Charmaine Bucco? Charmaine Bucco? She likes it when you stroke her muzzle? Where’s my digitalis? Charmaine HATES Tony.
Is there any significance to the Petraglia name? Seems like if it was simply a ripped off credit card the computerized approval system would have kicked it out.
In the Godfather DVD boxed set on the disc of “Extras”, there is an “easter egg” accessible from the “Galleries–>DVD Credits” menu. Keep hitting “next” (it takes awhile) and a scene from The Sopranos will play.
Anyway, it’s a bit from Season 2 or 3 where Tony and his crew are sitting around trying to watch a stolen bootleg of The Godfather on DVD (the episode aired well before the DVD sets were available to the public). Funny stuff, especially Paulie Walnut’s attempts to fine-tune the DVD player.