The Sopranos 4x11 Reaction

It’s so funny how much you dislike the characters for being bad people rather than conforming to their world and rooting for them

My fav thing about Carmin junior is he always uses the wrong word for things but it sounds close to the right word and no one ever mentions it to him.

Janice is hilarious. I don’t get why she’s hated when she’s objectively less evil than the men in this show but just as funny (i mean, i do get it, she’s a woman).

"She couldn't even handle a Nancy Drew. It was too mysterious!" lmao

Janice is evil for this, but it's stuff like this that makes her even more hilarious. Idk why. Maybe because she actually has the audacity to go that far is so wild it's funny to me. I can't explain in.

Melfi isn't the most ethical therapist but she was already established as a moral foil and voice for every other awful character in the show. She's the only one who made the hard choice over the easy choice by not telling Tony to kill her rapist. Charmaine is a moral mouthpiece as well but she was never actually tested in a way Melfi was. She is the one hope for Tony to actually change his ways. She actually got Tony to give a slight nod to the fact that he causes suffering while he was vulnerable over his horse's death, which is something he's never ever actually admitted before and is a new avenue and layer for his character (which is also telling that he quits therapy an episode later, it starts to become too real again). She's able to reach him in a way a lot of other therapist wouldn't be able to, especially if they aren't italian-american or a woman (which we know Tony associates with his mother/maternal authority figure but with a softer touch).

Tony's panic attacks and dreams were always his conscience shouting at him. The caterpillar turning into a butterfly in the dream: Ralphie showed genuine possibility of changing after his son had that accident and Tony impulsively cuts it short. Melfi brings up if Tony is even interested in changing in the episode. The therapist Carmela spoke to also mentioned the idea of Tony being able to redeem himself if he does certain things. The ending of this episode is also important to establish that Tony's fate isn't actually written in stone yet. The red lighting in the bathroom gives it a hellish appearance, and afterwards he walks outside into the light where he starts to relax more. It was deliberately shot in a similar way to the end of the episode where he killed Ralphie and saw Tracee's picture and walks outside. A visual representation of his crossroad and a neon sign that he needs to continue therapy.

That scene with the mysterious woman on the stairs is one of the most beautifully photographed scenes in this or any other show. And the creaking of the door should have got the sound designers an award just by itself.

I'm on the same page as you girls - that ending dream sequence with the dark figure in the house is lowkey the most unnerving imagery in the show for me. Very 'Twin Peaks' I would say

This episode even outshone Ver-sails

Also, we met Little Carmine in this episode! Probably my top 5 favorite character for me (and also the funniest)

Tony was interested in changing earlier in the series, finding who he should have and could have been, a normal man with a loving family. But since the beginning of this season (and with the backdrop of 9/11), Tony has been pondering death and now he feels he's ready to go all in on what he knows will be the end of him, so why bother wasting time and more money in therapy trying to find the real him while making zero progress? All this leads to the dream at the end. Livia has always been some kind of a demonic presence looming over Tony, and here we have a terrifying depiction of her embodying that aspect even more. We also see Ralph and Gloria in the house at the end, and together with Livia they are the ghosts whose failures haunt Tony. Tony announces at the door, "I'm here for the masoner job." This is Tony's hell and in Tony's hell he is a poor, immigrant, manual laborer like his grandfather the master stone mason. Inside the house we can see the ghost of Livia standing on the stairs. Tony peers inside the house before he begins to step inside; because now Tony is on the path to his own personal hell. He's no longer interested in changing into a better man.

They only think Janice and Junior are funny in this series? Damn

😈 Vlad666 😈

you two better stop making excuses for AJ!

L&M watch out that the season finale is an extra long episode, it's about 75 minutes, so make time for it. Definitely watch the last two episodes together, and leave 5x01 for another day.

That image of the Livia-like figure on the stairs, frozen in place, shrouded in blackness, is one of my favourite shots of the whole show, and also easily the scariest. Watching this again it actually makes my eyes water how unnerving it is. I would agree with the girls and say this is Janice’s most abhorrent action yet. The psychopathy in making a ‘scary’ AOL username, messaging a child with instructions to get the Ouija board, and to refer to yourself as “Rising Damp” to conjure the image of their mothers decomposing corpse, all to further make their grieving father feel dependent upon you, is really astounding. The Sopranos touches on the supernatural at times, and in this episode we see this again. When Bobby and Janice are sitting eating Karen’s last meal, Janice’s wine glass inexplicably moves on the table. Maybe the dead do have something to say to us after all? If we take Tonys dreams at face value, they certainly do. There is a great deal one can analyse in both this episodes dream sequences but I’ll try to be focus on the second, as the girls basically broke the first one down pretty well. The dream opens with an unknown woman’s pair of legs getting out of the car. Most likely these legs belong to Gloria, based on where the legs are coming out of the car, as well as how Gloria was introduced by her legs the first time we see her in Melfi’s waiting room. The first shot of the series is Tony in-between a pair of woman’s legs in this same room, framed between the statue he finds so entrancing, based on his look. Four seasons in and the pattern of Tony allowing himself/seeking out dark, dangerous, destructive women to be ensnared by is very clear to us. In this dream Tony is an Italian stonemason. This was his grandfathers profession, as he told Meadow in the first episode. The sound in this dream is dominated by the sound of crickets. Tony described how his favourite scene in The Godfather Part II was Vito in the old country, highlighting the sound of the crickets in that scene. The inside of the house may have been reminiscent of Tony’s childhood home but the outside is not. This is a Colonial style house and we have never seen this house before, so what does this house represent? Who’s house is it? Why is Tony working on this house? Why was Ralphie walking towards this house in front of Tony? I’ll come back to this in a future discussion, but this house is clearly important somehow and worth remembering. And then, Livia. Tony calls out to her, but gets no response, just silence. Her shadow seems to be all-encompassing, bleeding into everything around her silhouette. Livia was indeed an all-consuming bottomless black hole, as Tony told Gloria. As the woman herself said to a young AJ: “It’s all a big nothing.” The blackness and silence that emanate from this figure personify this philosophy. With Tony now having quit therapy, he has no one to delve into the meanings of these dreams and images, and is at more of a risk than ever of becoming that same black hole of a person his mother was.

Connie Francis, who Carmela's father tells a story about running into at a store, is a famous Italian-American singer. She was born in Newark, so she is from the same place as these characters. That makes her 'one of theirs' who became a superstar. "Calling all cars" is an over-the-air radio call for when a dispatcher needs to contact every car receiver at once, instead of one specific car or area. It was in common use in the mid-20th century, and the phrase was used as the title for a radio show and several movies. Technically it was used by all dispatchers (For example, taxi cars and fire engines, etc.) but it is in the public consciousness specifically as a police emergency call. It is now used as shorthand for "Something serious has happened, and it needs an immediate reaction". Melfi saying it to her therapist is an explicit cry for help that she needs real support. I'm not sure how clear it comes across the language gap, but Little Carmine is famous for always making grammatical mistakes and using the wrong words when he speaks. He tries to sound intelligent, but messes it up. So if you ever wonder "What did that mean? Is our English not good all of a sudden?" it's not you, he's just a moron trying to sound smarter by using big words.

Please tell us that Severance reaction is tonight, pretty please :D

4:27 David Chase reading James Gandolfini's eulogy at his funeral. "I really feel that, though I’m older than you, and always felt, that we are brothers. Now to talk about a third guy between us, there was you and me and this third guy. People always say, “Tony Soprano. Why did we love him so much when he was such a prick?” And my theory was, that they saw the little boy. They felt and they loved the little boy, and they sensed his love and hurt. And you brought all of that to it. You were a good boy."

And that's why Janice Soprano was on the list of most hated characters...

The Sopranos Halloween special