Subtle moments in The Sopranos that YOU only know.

there's a weird shot in the series finale that i'm hoping ppl have some insight on. after tony offers paulie the gig running construction for the crew he leaves the bing, there's a quick shot of paulie exiting, walking right at the camera, and i think he looks toward it and zips up his jacket maybe. don't really understand what it's supposed to mean in isolation, so i assume it's a reference to a movie or something that i haven't seen. anyone know?

I don't remember that scene, but I'm pretty sure the last scene between the two where Tony makes the offer (which Paulie accepts) isn't at the Bing, it's outside Satriales's

There's a theory that Paulie conspired with NY to have Tony killed, or at the very least Paulie got assurances from NY that he'd be taken care of if Tony got taken out. The scene you're referencing could be Paulie feeling conflicted or going through the motions of going along with NY's plan.

yeah there's 2 scenes where they talk about it. the first one is in the back room of the bing iirc, tony offers him the job, but paulie says he wants to think about it. the thing i'm talking about is after that meeting. the 2nd meeting is as you say outside of the pork store. paulie rejects the offer, and then tony manipulates into accepting by saying he'll give it to patsy

yeah that's what was on my mind, think understanding that other thing could be key to explaining exactly what's going on with paulie, one way or the other. or maybe it's nothing lol. but it really does look and feel like a reference to something else

I'll add what I've said before. The last thing Paulie says to Tony after he agrees to accept the offer, "I live but to serve you, my liege" is word for word the last thing Brutus says to Caesar before Caesar gets assassinated in s1 of Rome.

I've read somewhere that jacket probably belonged to Tony Sirico personally. That would explain why he keeps wearing it through the show but never in any scenes where it might have gotten damaged.

No idea if that's true. But I think it's confirmed that some of the older guys actually wore their own wardrobe on set sometimes?

That was supposed to be Sirico's real hairdo for sure.

yeah i've heard that too, but remain skeptical that the culmination of chase's masterpiece lifework is a reference to season 1 of some other show. i also don't think that show invented that phrase

Not the exact quote but Shakespeare's Henry V has something along those lines.

A subtle one I thought was that a lot of the time Tony hugged someone was that he was patting them down to make sure they weren't wearing a wire.

Rewatching the final season when Tony is in the coma... the Tony/Kevin Finnerty dream sequence where he meets Steve Buscemi outside the big house, and Buscemi is all smiling and pleasant and saying "everyone's waiting inside for you". He then keeps trying to get Tony to give him the briefcase, and Tony says "my whole life is in that case" and is afraid to give it to him....

So the big beautiful house represents hell in this case I'm assuming. And if Tony lets go of the briefcase he gives up fighting for life and enters. At one point Tony briefly sees a woman in the doorway, but we can't quite see who she is, we only see her from the back. She doesn't look as old as Livia but I'm assuming it's his mother, perhaps at a younger age?

Anyway, I think I'm in the minority in that I loved these episodes where Tony is in an alternate dream world. The end of "Join the Club", where Tony is just sitting sadly in the hotel room, with the flashing beacon of light on the horizon out the window, is just perfect imo. He looks completely diminished, no longer the big strong mob boss. He looks like a lost little boy sitting on the edge of the bed.

Yep, totally agree revots33. I think the dream sequences are some of the best scenes in the series. The Test Dream is one of my favorite episodes and that particular scene you mentioned is maybe my single favorite scene. Something about how he hears Meadow's voice in his coma but she's actually yelling out loud to him IRL - how it mixes in reality with dreams is hard to describe but it's great stuff.

I didn't watch the show when it aired but I can see why people didn't like the dream sequences as much back then. You wait in anticipation for Sunday night thinking you're gonna get more plot advancement and mob violence only to get a 40 minute dream. Different experience when you can watch it on-demand.

It is possible actually.

Rome is not just some other show, it's mother****ing Rome, one of the best.

Maybe Chase was a fan?

I mean, Pullo is in the top 5 goat TV characters of all time.

+ 1000 to the bolded.

Anyone else have Deadwood>The Sopranos.

I think Deadwood hit higher peaks and remained consistently better until its conclusion.

Timeless dialogue.

As some consolation for not getting a 4th season at least HBO series back then weren't 10 episodes or less seasons so we still got 36 episodes of it.

However I have to admit while the dialogue is very good something of me tells me that Milch got too caught up in the dialogue rather than the storyline. I say that because Milch only is credited with writing only like I think it is 4 to 5 of those 36 episodes. Not saying he didn't edit the scripts of the other episodes but still if he contributed to the writing to a significant degree he would have credited himself with a co-writing credit.

So it tells me that perhaps he wasn't as engrossed in the writing as much as he could have been as a creator and perhaps his editing was exclusive to dialogue only which wouldn't surprise me.

I think for these reasons Sopranos will always be better than Deadwood.

I'm rewatching the Sopranos for the 4th time I believe and my thoughts remain the same.

GOAT level tv in a lot of places..but some of the episodes have bad parts.

It's not consistent.

I think it suffers from not truly having a writer's room - some people just ad-hoc were brought in to write scripts and submit to David Chase (others lived on the other side of the US and wrote scripts (Renzulli for instance; not saying any of his scripts were bad you could just see that Chase was more the person to task someone with a storyline and write a script rather than really nutting that storyline out with all the writers and then it is just a matter for that writer to fill in the gaps and then for that to be reviewed and settled by Chase).

David Chase not being the brilliant mind that some think him to be would not have been able to do much more with those scripts. But that isn't to say that it was unusual as a writer's room in the BB and other series of the day is more of a recent thing.

I'm in the midst of my first start to finish rewatch of the series in short order. Most likely have already done that, but if not, do yourself a favor and embark upon it.

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but one thing I definitely did not realize when I first saw it, nor, of course, watching single episodes or even chunks of a few from time to time, is that so many characters just kind of appear on screen with no introduction or indication of who they are. Vito, Benny, Little Paulie, and I'm probably forgetting a few, plus I'm only at the end of Season 3. I wonder why Chase did that. Not that I'm complaining, but my son (I'm watching it with him) keeps asking me who these guys are and if he should know them, and I'm like....no, not really......just wait.

I heard on AJ and Meadow's podcast that there is a documentary coming out celebrating the 25th anniversary of the show. It sounds like it will be really interesting once it's available to the public. They had David Chase on the latest episode and it had some interesting tidbits. I hope the conversation with the cast that happened after the screening is shown with the doc as well.

https://www.njarts.net/tribeca-film-festival-premieres-hbo-bound-sopranos-documentary/

NJArts.net

Tribeca Festival premieres HBO-bound 'Sopranos' documentary

Various folks have been making the rounds due to the 25th anniversary. The main thing it's served to drive home for me was other than those who already were established, there were arguably no breakout successes from the previously unknown cast members. I guess Hollywood felt they were too tied to their roles on such a high profile show?

Made me happy seeing Ralphie get got.

Mainly because he loves Gladiator.

...

I hate that ****ing movie.

I gave up during my rewatch in s3 but I am back on it because some of the future scenes are too good.

I just saw Tony’s mom in The Naked Gun

I can't remember who it was that I was listening to an interview with recently that was on the show but they were saying that the Hollywood fraternity hated them (when going to the Emmys etc). That was probably a flow on effect of that.

Oh that's right it was Drea de Matteo - here is the interview: