Sopranos Season Episode Review Tony Comes Home and Carmela Warms Up Baked Ziti
The Sopranos head up to the Baccalieri's lake-business firm
to celebrate Tony'southward altogether.
A Monopoly game turns into a heavyweight tour.
And Bobby "pops his cherry."
Episode 78 – Originally aired April eight, 2007
Written by Diane Frolov, Andrew Schneider, David Chase and Matthew Weiner
Directed by Tim Van Patten
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The great American picture director Robert Altman made a career out of subverting and twisting genre expectations. His 1971 motion picture McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which completely subverts and reimagines the tropes of the "American Western," is probably my favorite movie of all time. Altman himself is one of my favorite directors. Altman passed abroad in Nov 2006 only I missed the news of his death, probably because I was decorated preparing for my blood brother's wedding which took identify that same week. I only learned of Altman'due south death months afterward, just before Season half dozen Role II of The Sopranos began airing, and that must exist why I was thinking of him the first time I saw "Soprano Home Movies." David Hunt had been twisting and subverting our expectations of thegangster genre for six seasons, and he connected to exercise and so in this hour in a mode that might accept made Robert Altman smiling. As we picket the action in this episode motility from the usual north Bailiwick of jersey locale to a lakeside property in upstate New York, we may think that nosotros're in for some peaceful and pastoral leisure and recreation. But that'southward not what Chase gives united states at all. "Soprano Habitation Movies" turns into one of the most unexpected and memorable outings of the unabridged series.
BONUS EPISODES
I'grand not exactly sure why Flavor 6 was divide into two parts. Perhaps HBO was trying to extend the run of its nearly successful series while it sought to fill the void left after Six Anxiety Under had concluded. Or perhaps the network wanted to emulate the formula that had worked so well for them earlier with Sexual activity and the City, which had had its sixth and final flavour split into two irregular parts. I was convinced at the time that HBO was marketing this Sopranos mini-flavor every bit "Role Ii" as opposed to "Flavour 7" because David Chase was going to pick up right where "Kaisha" had left off. (Just that is not the instance; we know that eight months have elapsed since the Christmas Eve that airtight "Kaisha," because the birthday that Tony at present celebrates takes identify in Baronial. [Information technology was in "Another Toothpick" that nosotros learned that Tony's birthday is August 24th.]) David Chase has explained that HBO labeled this mini-season every bit "S6 Function Two" instead of "S7" simply as a fashion to avert giving pay increases to the actors.
I don't really care what the reasons backside HBO's naming and scheduling peccadilloes were, I'm just happy that these "bonus episodes" be. I think that Part Two works very nicely…for the most part. I wasn't thrilled past Chase's determination to use Phil Leotardo and the NY famiglia to create tension at the finish of a season yet once again (although I will acknowledge that I did become a piffling excited, as many viewers did, at the possibility of seeing Tony and the NJ famiglia finally wipe out their rivals from beyond the river for practiced).
Season 6 Part II seems fairly distinct to me. For ane thing, it oftentimes looks different from the other seasons, and this is partly due to the multitude of new shooting locations. New York's Putnam Valley and Lake Oscawana give a bright, sunlit temper to the current episode. The next episode features a much colder color palette: cool greys and whites at the medical center/penitentiary that houses Johnny Sac and the cool blues and greys of Manhattan where Cleaveris premiered (as well equally the chilly colour-graded clips of Cleaver itself). A after episode volition be colored by the severe desert low-cal of Nevada and the saturated reds and yellows of Las Vegas casinos. This mini-flavour too has a more than loosey-goosey experience to it; a number of new, quick, standalone storylines make the overall structure of the season feel fifty-fifty more freeform and unpredictable than what we're used to from Chase—one hour is devoted to Johnny Sac's concluding days, another to the difficulties of Vito Spatafore Jr, and some other to Corrado'south human relationship with a immature, unbalanced Asian man. S6 Part II is also more self-reflexive than preceding seasons. This is partly considering it is very enlightened of itself of as The Final Season, but also because its Cleaver storyline (along with HBO's simultaneous release of a "behind-the-scenes of Cleaver" mockumentary) is the most formally "meta" thing the serial has e'er done. Simply plenty of the fuckin' preamble, permit me get to the write-up…
"Soprano Home Movies" opens to the sound of some dialogue that might sound a niggling familiar:
Johnny Sac: He'south gonna want $fifty, $60k—
Tony: All right, let'south non go backwards, huh?
The joke is that Chase is doing exactly that—going backwards—with this opening scene; just as Tony delivers his line, the opening placard reveals that we are making a visit back to 2004, to a scene that nosotros first saw in episode v.13 "All Due Respect":
We all remember the scene from the final minutes of the Season 5 finale "All Due Respect": Tony is having a wintry-morning meeting with Johnny Sac when the FBI swarm in to arrest Johnny, forcing Tony to abandon his car and hoof it all the way back home. By kicking off this new season now with a scene from the past, Chase is playing to an idea that every Sopranos fan in the earth was thinking about at the time—the idea of karmic justice. We all knew that these episodes were the last nine, and nosotros all wondered how it was going to end: was the by finally going to catch up with Tony Soprano? When this scene originally played in "All Due Respect," there was a moment when Tony got in Johnny Sac's face and told him "I've paid plenty, John. I paid a lot." (Tony was referring to the fact that he had to kill his cousin Blundetto in an effort to appease Phil Leotardo, and therefore was not willing to make any additional cash payment to Phil to keep the peace.) Despite the claim that he had "paid enough," we wonder at present if Tony is going to have to pay even more than—volition Tony Soprano finally be brought to justice? Hunt adds a pocket-sized but meaning shell to the re-purposed scene from 5.13: Tony tosses a gun into the snow, which is noticed past a young man who goes and picks it upward. The gun becomes a consequential affair now as Tony is arrested because of the hollow-indicate bullets information technology contains. With this opening gambit, Chase immediately suggests that Tony may not be able to run from his past forever.
Information technology had become conventional for a Sopranos season opener to feature a shot of The Star-Ledger in Tony's driveway. Chase sticks to the convention at present, and moreover, he uses the newspaper to transport us back into present day SopranoWorld:
The references to the 2007 budget passing and the Carolina Hurricanes victory ostend that it is 2006 in SopranoWorld (although information technology was really 2007 in the existent world when this 60 minutes originally aired). Some other confirmation of the year: Tony celebrates his 47th altogether here, which would have occurred in 2006.
As the authorities blindside on the front door of their home, Carmela wonders, "Is this it?" She worries that the long-awaited neb has finally come due. Simply Tony is arrested merely on a (relatively) minor gun accuse. Meadow reacts to the arrest with characteristic intelligence and advancement, demanding to meet a warrant. (At this early point in the season, her mother believes that she will go to medical school, but we become the sense here that Meadow is destined to become a lawyer.) AJ behaves as expected also. When we last saw him in "Kaisha" he seemed to exist on a path to maturity, just he has gone back to being a whining, hard-hearted wiggle.
Tony is released later on spending a relatively short corporeality of time in jail. He and Carmela decide to go to Bacala'south lake house for Tony'south birthday. As they make the drive up, the sweet groove of James Gang'southward "Funk #49" can be heard on the auto radio, seeming to gear up the mood for some rollicking good times. (Only perhaps the song's lyric "I think there'southward trouble brewin'" is the true omen of what lies ahead.)
As presently as they arrive at the lake house, Carmela says "I've had to pee since Glen Falls" and runs off to the bathroom. It is a common thing for characters on The Sopranosto slip away to the restroom; showing the banalities of everyday life is office of the verisimilitude of SopranoWorld, and helps to underscore that these characters are not so different from you and me. Indeed, the Soprano family gathering that takes identify in this hour is characterized by many of the traits of a typical American family visit: fishing, eating, drinking, shooting guns, gossiping, bad karaoke, and of form, the presence of long-simmering frustrations that chimera their way up into passive-aggressive criticisms. Family gatherings just like this accept place all across America every day. Our own home movies surely have a lot in common with the Soprano'southward home movies.
Merely there are enormous differences between united states of america and them every bit well. Most of united states accept never gone into the forest to trim a tree with an 800 round-per-minute AR-10 assault rifle like the one Bobby gives Tony. And our collection of family unit anecdotes don't include the i virtually Dad shooting a bullet through Mom's beehive hairdo. (It is such a vivid anecdote, I tin encounter almost exactly how it would look as a grainy Super-viii home motion-picture show.) It is during a game of Monopoly that the uniqueness of the Soprano family truly comes to light. Bobby takes exception at a peculiarly nasty insult directed at Janice. "You Sopranos, you lot go too far," he exclaims. When Tony sings a very loose (and dirty) cover of The Drifters' "Under the Boardwalk," all hell breaks loose. Tony and Bobby grapple and swing at each other. Bodies get thrown around the room. Carmela takes a hard autumn. Furniture shatters. (It's a savage and realistic fight-scene. Steve Schirripa really did bosom Gandolfini'south olfactory organ here with a miscalculated caput-barrel.) While it's true that many of the scenes that play out in SopranoWorld houses ordinarily have a lot in mutual with what goes on in our own houses in the real world, rarely do our own houses (or game pieces) get soaked in the same quantity of blood:
Tony can't stand that he got outmuscled by Bobby. He takes pride in his physical strength—we saw him grin at himself in the mirror after taking down Perry Annunziata ("Muscles Marinara") last yr. Tony is getting older (the plot-betoken of his birthday celebration emphasizes this point), and with age comes weakness. Simply this is a difficult matter for him to admit, so he tries to convince himself that Bobby didn't fight off-white. That leaves anybody wondering if Tony is going to seek vengeance, and what form such vengeance might take.
Equally Tony and Bobby drive ostensibly to a business meeting, it seems very possible that this might be the end of the road for Bacala. (When Bobby says that he "should've taken a leak before nosotros left," it is more than the typically banal comment of the sort that Carmela had made earlier in the hour—we get the sense that Bobby, anxious virtually his fate, is trying not to piss his pants.) Chase's camera captures some images of trees as the ii men turn off the main road, possibly recalling the tree-imagery we saw as Silvio collection Adriana to her ultimate fate in "Long Term Parking."
But Bobby was worrying prematurely—he arrives at the meeting unharmed. The mafioso meet with two Quebecois to work out a deal on expired Fosamax pills. The delivery schedule hits a snag every bit i of the Canadians has to take care of a problem with his sis's ex-hubby. Tony, ever the opportunist, figures out a way to go a discount on the pills and wreak vengeance on Bobby simultaneously; Tony decides to have his own blood brother-in-law whack theCanadian's brother-in-law. Just is Tony actually taking revenge on Bobby here? Or is he just focused on maximizing his turn a profit? I call back information technology's probably a little of both. Tony has ever had a talent for managing his affairs, and here he is able to solve his family- and famiglia-affairs neatly with just one stroke. Every bit they drive back to the lake house, Tony looks quite contented. He cheerfully waves to a beautiful h2o-skier who cheerfully waves right back. Simply Bobby is clearly uncomfortable and apprehensive as he thinks about conveying out his beginning hit (or having to "pop his crimson," as Tony had put it earlier).
Regardless of how uncomfortable he is, Bobby is not going to turn down Tony's wishes. Bobby tracks down his mark and uses a photograph (which, notably, has a small child in it) to ostend that he has the right man. Bobby corners his victim in a laundry room and puts a bullet in his breast. The dying human being clenches Bobby'southward shirt before getting finished off with a bullet to the caput. Bobby flees the laundry room, leaving a big piece of his shirt—and a bigger piece of his soul—behind.
The final two minutes of the hour rank among the most powerful 2-minute sequences of the series. Tony sits on his couch at home, watching the old home movies that Janice gave him for his birthday. He has a wait of amusement and nostalgia as he watches himself and his sister play in front end of their childhood home in Newark. In that location is something bittersweet virtually the footage. There is sweetness in seeing fiddling Janice and Tony cavort together merely every bit whatever small siblings in the world would practise, full of innocence and joy and playfulness. The bitterness comes from the knowledge that little Janice and tiny Tony will grow up in an surround of dysfunction, offense and violence that volition exit its marking on their unabridged lives. Hunt cuts from this scene to the scene of Bobby returning to his lake firm after performing the striking. Little Nica excitedly runs to her father with arms wide open as presently equally she sees him. (Prof. Yacowar notes that this imagery maybe calls dorsum the epitome of Meadow rushing to her father when he returned abode from jail before in the hr.) There is bittersweetness hither too: sweetness in seeing begetter and daughter embrace in one of the all-time great embraces of the serial, but bitterness in the noesis that Bobby has crossed a red line—no matter how tightly he clings to his innocent daughter, he volition no longer be able to cling to the idea that he possesses a measure of innocence that the other mobsters lost long ago. And in that location is bitterness in the cognition that Little Nica will now abound upward in the home of a murderer. And bitterness in the fact that the kid of Bobby's victim, who we saw in an before photograph, volition never be able to hold his father the way that Nica does her own dad now.
Hunt pipes in The Drifters' 1960 hit "This Magic Moment" as Bobby looks out at the lake, holding on to his daughter similar his life depended on it. It is a beautiful and moving song, but I think there is likewise something clever in its selection. 1960 was the first yr of what was arguably the most tumultuous, transformative decade in American history, and much of the ensuing music of the Sixties reflected this tumult. "This Magic Moment," all the same, notwithstanding has that sweetness and wholesomeness that we associate more than with the 1950s. The vocal, in a sense, reflects that menstruum in American history when nosotros transitioned from the relative "innocence" of the Fifties to the turbulent experience of the Sixties—and thus poignantly underscores the loss of Bobby's innocence now. (I wonder how many thousands of backseat teenyboppers in the existent world must have lost their innocence—or "popped their cherries"—to this very song?)
When nosotros first met Bobby Baccalieri in episode 2.02 "Exercise Not Resuscitate," he did not command much respect. (Tony threatened to shove his quotations book upwards his fat fuckin' donkey.) And after hearing his Notre Dame/Nostradamus confusion in 4.01, it might have been insulting to rocks to describe him as " dumb equally a rock." Just he has become more of a substantial person over the seasons. Tony even hints to him now that he may replace "someone" in the hierarchy who Tony has been grooming to look after the family and la famiglia should something happen to him. (We know that that "someone" is Christopher. At that place is plainly some sort of beef between Tony and Chris—Tony disgustedly hangs up when Chris calls to wish him Happy Altogether. Perhaps T is still stewing over Christopher's human relationship with Julianna Skiff.) I remember it's possible that one reason why Tony assigns the whacking in this episode to Bobby is because he wants to requite Bobby greater responsibleness now that his relationship with Chris is in a chilly spot. I had previously constitute it a picayune weird that mild-mannered Bobby would desire to marry a woman like Janice (even if he does like "the spitfire type"), simply at present we actually run across how advantageous—mayhap fifty-fifty a trivial cunning—information technology was for him to marry the Boss' sister. Bobby Bacala has steadily been making his fashion up the ladder in SopranoWorld, and volition continue do so through Flavor 6.
You've come a long way, Bobby. But try not to think about the fact that every step you lot accept frontward as a mobster means you lot're taking two steps backward as a human being.
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I of the about interesting things most S6 Part 2 is how we equally viewers approached information technology. Some Telly shows have the misfortune of ignominiously getting cancelled between seasons, and therefore its viewers were never even aware that they were watching its last season. That is definitely not what happened with The Sopranos—nosotros were all very aware that this was gonna be it. And that is probably why we had such a tendency to read into every little item in The Final Nine, tried to read into how every little matter might predict the catastrophe. This becomes even truer on re-watch; we tend to endow the events of these final episodes with great prophetic significance.
In this context, at that place are quite a few things in "Soprano Home Movies" that accept taken on stupendous importance within Sopranos fandom. Some viewers establish a meaning parallel in the fact that Tony now turns 47 years old, the aforementioned age that Eugene Pontecorvo was in "Members Only." [This becomes significant for some viewers because the guy in the series finale who wears a Members Only jacket bears some resemblance to Eugene, and Eugene himself died at age 47.] Many viewers have too retroactively loaded great weight onto Bobby's speculation about what it might exist similar to be gunned to decease: "You lot probably don't fifty-fifty hear it when information technology happens." This line, the argument goes, may exist commenting on the sudden silence that closes out the series.
There is one quick scene hither that seems particularly freighted with significance:
This short prune has an almost mythological heft, it is seemingly filled with all sorts of noteworthy stuff. For starters, there is the h2o, which is endowed with significance on this series because "water" can be linked to the Soprano pond puddle, Pussy's final resting place, Vin Makazian's suicide, etc. Then there is the duck (ducks again!) taking flight behind Tony. There is the appearance of the boat, the aforementioned boat that Bobby and Tony sat in as they speculated about death before in the hour. There is the sound of a bell, which some viewers accept subsequently continued to the bell at Holstens Diner.
Merely are we making too much of all this? In his volume The Sopranos, Dana Polan makes note of this scene, but he calls attention to it because information technology is, in his words, "performing a joke on the viewer's expectations." Every bit the dreamy sound of "This Magic Moment" begins to softly swell, we might retrieve that the music is going to guide us into one of Tony's flashbacks or symbol-laden dreams, but that possibility is apace cutting short when it is revealed that the music is actually coming from a radio that Bobby is fiddling with nearby. Polan cautions u.s. that it may be a fool'southward errand to read too much into the series:
The Sopranos flings seeming symbols at the viewer only then disarms the act of interpretation by making the symbols reveal nothing…The Sopranos tantalizes with suggestions of subconscious significance, simply to show the quest for profound understanding as more than than a bit ridiculous and pretentious.
The tail terminate of the video clip I posted above illustrates just how ridiculous the quest for hidden significance can be, when Janice reads way too much into the manner that Tony is sitting on the dock:
Janice: Fuckin' look at him out in that location.
Bobby: What?
Janice: I've seen that 'sitting in the chair' thing.
Bobby: Come on, people sit in chairs.
Janice probably isn't lying when she says she has seen that 'sitting in the chair' matter—she has likely seen Tony stew in acrimony while sitting in a chair earlier. (I know that nosotros viewers have seen information technology before.) Janice is attempting to make meaning in the aforementioned way that nosotros all make significant: past making connections. She connects her previous experience to what she sees in front of her at present as she tries to figure out what Tony'south intentions regarding her husband are. In a similar style, viewers began scouring previous episodes afterwards the supremely ambiguous Series Finale, seeking connections and links that might help us to make meaning of that cut-to-black. It's only natural for united states to practise so. "Soprano Home Movies" seems to provide some very key links and connections in this regard, but we would be wise—every bit Polan suggests—to be skeptical of how reliable and meaningful these links actually are.
CONNECTIVITY
In add-on to the possible foreshadowing connections to the Serial Finale that I outlined higher up, "Soprano Home Movies" also makes links to other episodes. And it does then in affluence. The opening scene is closely connected to episode 5.13, even using footage from that before hour. The dead "young man" that Janice alludes to hither must be Richie Aprile, who she shot in episode 2.12. The "gardener" that Janice mentions may be Sal Vitro. Janice tells an anecdote apropos Tippy, the family dog first mentioned in 5.07. Tony brings up the underground record recording that Janice fabricated of him when they were kids, a story we remember Tony telling Melfi nigh in 6.10. The "summertime place" that Carmela brings up must exist Whitecaps. (I recollect Tony apace changes the topic because he doesn't want to go downward that item memory lane: information technology was simply as they were trying to buy Whitecaps that goomar Irina fabricated the vengeful phone telephone call that directly led to Tony and Carmela's separation.)
Also, the muddy lyric that Tony baits his sister with here ("Under the boardwalk / With a schlong in Jan'due south mouth") connects to previous blowjob-references: it was at the dinner table in 2.02 "Practice Not Resuscitate" that Tony made a sly joke about Janice's propensity for giving oral sex activity; and it was in five.03 "Where's Johnny?" that Tony mentioned her blowing roadies. ("Roadies?!" Bobby exclaimed.)
I think another noteworthy connection may be found here in Carmela's story about their pharmacist Pradeep, whose trivial male child suffered brain damage subsequently almost drowning in a pond pool. The swimming pool has an nearly mythic condition on this series, information technology has been a site of several significant moments since the Pilot (see my 5.09 entry for a partial rundown). Carmela's story well-nigh the fate of her chemist's son in the swimming puddle seems to portend an result that volition befall her own son in their ain backyard puddle in an upcoming episode.
RX FOR SUCCESS
Fifty-fifty though viewers are meeting the Quebecois for the offset fourth dimension, nosotros larn here that the Canadians had previously supplied the NJ mob with the anti-cholesterol drug Lipitor (is Chase taking a dig at the stereotypical "fat American" with this particular medication?), and at present they will supply the mobsters with expired Fosamax pills. The mob is branching their business organization out into the very lucrative pharmaceuticals market place. At that place is some irony in the fact that Tony had earlier barred Corrado and Richie Aprile from dealing cocaine on their garbage routes (because it was also risky despite the profits, the same reason Vito Corleone resisted trafficking hard drugs in The Godfather) but he at present jumps at the opportunity to sell FDA-approved, legal drugs manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry. During the decade in which The Sopranos first aired, there were get-go to be contentious debates and concerns about Big Pharma'south lobbying power, pricing strategies, marketing practices, and influence over doctors and healthcare professionals. In full general, I applaud the industry (particularly the folks in research & evolution) for reducing the amount of expiry and disease and hurting nosotros must suffer. At the same time, I am made uncomfortable past Big Pharma's part in a massive insurance/industrial/healthcare complex that often seems to prioritize profit over public health. This item type of circuitous is pretty unique to the United States, it doesn't exist anywhere else on quite the aforementioned scale.
Information technology is plumbing fixtures that the Soprano'due south pharmacist is named "Pradeep," equally this detail profession has gained immense popularity among Indian-Americans. I would need about 7 hands if I were to attempt to count on my fingers the number of Indian-American friends and family I have that work as pharmaceutical professionals in one chapters or another. One of my relatives who makes his living as a pharmaceutical sales rep likes to joke that he is a "legal drug dealer." Tony Soprano, different my relative, cannot phone call himself a legal drug dealer (fifty-fifty though the products T is trafficking were in fact lawfully manufactured). Hunt seems to exist showing u.s., withal again, that Tony and the mob have a talent for setting up moneymaking schemes in the margins of very lucrative American industries. There is something almost prescient hither in the Fosamax storyline; in the coming years, legally produced drugs would become as much a part of the American drug crisis as illicit drugs have been historically. I won't dwell any more than on the result of Big Pharma'south power and influence because it is coming out of such a relatively small plot-bespeak, but I recollect it may exist fair to say that the Fosamax storyline here could be function of Chase'south standing effort in Season 6 to wade into social issues and couch The Sopranos within its American milieu.
Some other cultural issue that Hunt puts his spotlight on in a much greater and more obvious way is the effect of terrorism…
THE State of war ON TERROR
Terrorism and its related matters take been recurring subjects in Season half dozen, and Chase brings them more than to the foreground in the Terminal Nine. Just in this episode:
- Paulie compares Tony returning home from jail to the render of soldiers fighting terrorists in Iraq and Transitional islamic state of afghanistan
- Bobby wants to encounter our national borders more secured (even though his father was able to get into the U.S. just because the northern border is and then porous)
- Reports of recent Iraqi and American deaths in Baghdad are heard over a radio circulate
Chase uses the threat of terrorism as a manner to build more tension into these concluding episodes, but I call back Chase's larger objective is to prove that life goes on in SopranoWorld, lavish and luxurious as e'er, despite the threat and our ongoing efforts to defend ourselves. SopranoWorld characters may brand comments well-nigh terrorism here and there, but there is a notable lack of any meaningful political or borough engagement past them. They're not solitary in their apathy—the War on Terror was raging at the time this serial originally aired, merely many Americans, including myself, largely discrete ourselves from it. (I can tell you off the tiptop of my head roughly how many American soldiers died in the Ceremonious War, WWII and Vietnam, but I tin't tell you how many died in Iraq or Transitional islamic state of afghanistan without turning to Google.) SopranoWorld characters may non exist all that different from the remainder of us in how they pushed the threat of terrorism to the periphery of their thoughts while they continued to grab with both hands at all the diverse luxuries and goodies before them. "Gimme Gimme Gimme" remains the prevailing mantra of American life fifty-fifty at a time when American life is existentially jeopardized by terrorism.
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This episode earned an 'Outstanding Drama' Emmy for the series in 2007. "Soprano Habitation Movies" was also nominated for 'Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series' but failed to win. Despite the loss, the episode is an outstanding piece of film-art. Shooting for the episode was a bit complicated, as cinematographer Phil Abraham explains at Kodak.com:
The lake house was a location that nosotros tried to exploit by blending interior and outside scenes as much as we could. The biggest claiming was the endless Monopoly game that unfolds in i boozy night of family fun. Not just was information technology a challenge to light and phase this scene in a small practical location but due to Jim Gandolfini's then contempo knee joint surgery, it became clear that he could not give it his convincing-all during the drunken ball with his brother-in-law. The solution was to lucifer and build the location on a stage six months later. By the fourth dimension the first punch is thrown, we cutting to the stage work where the rest of the fight unfolds. Bob Shaw, our production designer, did an amazing task of recreating the surroundings. I am particularly happy with the seamless integration of the two.
An episode from Rome won the Cinematography Emmy that yr. I haven't really watched much of Rome but it's hard for me to imagine that any episode of that series could be more memorable or gorgeous than this hr of The Sopranos. (I have some comfort in the fact that that winning episode of Rome was shot by Sopranos-regular Alik Sakharov.) "Soprano Abode Movies" is an all-circular extraordinary episode and it gets Flavor 6B upwards-and-running with a bang.
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ADDITIONAL POINTS:
- Real-life prosecutor Dan Castleman reprises his part as "District Attorney Castleman" here. (We saw him in about 8 episodes prior to this one. Dan also worked as technical/legal advisor to David Chase in previous seasons.)
- Back in "Boca" (i.09), we learned that Tony gives Carmela head exactly one time a twelvemonth; I'm guessing it would be on her birthday. In the current episode, we encounter Carm return the favor on Tony's birthday. (The scene is synthetic similarly to the BJ scene in "Cold Stones" (half-dozen.11), in that we think at first that Tony is having some other 1 of his panic attacks, simply and then realize he is just convulsing with pleasure.)
- The fuckin regularness of life…in jail: When a man pulls his pants down and squats behind him, Tony is fabricated to recall that when you lot accept to take a shit in the cell, you accept to have a shit in apparently sight of anybody in the prison cell with you lot.
- Monopoly equally real-life #one: During the game, Carm groans, "Aw fuck! Income revenue enhancement!" (Their whole life is spent in abstention of reporting income taxation.)
- Monopoly every bit real-life #2: According to Soprano family rules, money that should become into the Customs Chest is instead put into the middle of the board where one lucky player tin win it. We've actually seen Soprano family members raid community dollars in their real lives, with Medicare insurance scams, a HUD housing scam, Janice scamming welfare checks…
- Take 5: Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" is fittingly playing on the audio-system when Tony sneaks $500 from the banking concern during the Monopoly game.
- Clever sound editing: Every bit Bobby enters the apartment complex where his victim lives, we hear a kind of repetitive thumping. We assume its coming from a drum set, because it was mentioned earlier that Bobby'southward mark is a drummer. Simply the audio turns out to be coming from the tumbling of some sneakers inside a clothes dryer. Ane of Bobby'southward bullets goes into the dryer, leaving the states to wonder if a forensic investigation volition eventually atomic number 82 to Bacala's downfall.
- Almost viewers besides wonder, on their commencement viewing, if the bit of shirt that Bobby leaves behind in his victim's manus is going to lead to him getting busted (particularly because some dialogue earlier in the hr had Bobby mentioning something virtually "DNA prove.") But Chase is not interested in turning his series into a procedural—there are already enoughLaw & Orderspinoffs out there.
- Steve Schirripa does a DVD commentary rails for this episode. Just as his character delivers the line that prompted so much discussion after the Series Finale—"You lot probably don't even hear it when it happens"—Schirripa mentions that Chase and the writers pay bang-up attention to details and nuances, which further seems to eternalize the importance of this scrap of dialogue. Just then on the other mitt: in a February 2015 interview, Schirripa told Scott Shannon on WCBS 101.1 that "My opinion of the catastrophe was that Tony Soprano was alive… I recall life went on. What you saw is what you got, and that was it. Life goes on, he's back with his family and just keeps movin' on."
- My header pic is a particular from a Robert Rohrich painting of Lake Oscawana, the actual lake that was used in the filming of this episode.
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/lake-oscawana-robert-rohrich.html - Coming back to Robert Altman for a second… I think Altman would have been happy to meet how David Hunt partnered with HBO to produce a series that completely stretches our understanding of what the gangster-genre tin can do. It was with HBO that Altman produced Tanner '88, a show that practically created an entirely new genre: the TV serial-mockumentary. Hunt and HBO produced a brusque mockumentary of their own,Making Cleaver,which (if I remember correctly) aired in conjunction with the upcoming episode, "Stage 5″…
Source: https://sopranosautopsy.com/season-6-part-ii/soprano-home-movies-6-13/