Ah yes, the long awaited second part of the trilogy that I KNOW you’ve been clammoring for!
Before I get into the nitty-gritty, allow me to say that the first two episodes of the new "season" or whatever you want to call it, are at a VERY high level of quality. I mean honestly if it keeps up at this level then we are in for a HELL of a finale!
With that said here are episodes 10 - 6 of my top fifteen:
10) College (5, s1, e5) - This is the episode where things really start to hit their stride during the first season. Tony goes with Meadow up to Maine to visit prospective colleges on one of those trips that is a little less about learning about the schools and a little more about bonding. While up in the woody far northeast, Tony discovers a guy who at one point was a mob informant and had entered the witness protection program. What follows is a pretty intense game of cat and mouse, while Tony tries to keep Meadow unaware…well as unaware as he can control, considering he had been confronted by Meadow about his profession on the way up. Tony is at his best in BOTH of his roles, father and menacing mob figure in this episode. Meanwhile we learn about Father Phil and Carmela’s food and wine driven (a)sexual tension as he ends up staying the night in Tony’s absence.
9) Where’s Johnny (55, s5, e3) - Uncle Junior’s decline into dementia took a steep downward turn in this episode. Known for his snarky manner, Tony seems only mildly annoyed at Junior’s seemingly random mentioning of Tony’s never having "the makings of a varsity athelete". Later on in the episode however it becomes apparent that it wasn’t a one time thing as Uncle Junior mentions it again at dinner with Tony labelling it as "undermining, the kind of thing I’m teaching my children NOT to do" and mentioning that when he said it when he was younger in front of the girl cousins it was hurtful, while also mentioning that he INDEED did play varsity football in high school. So when Uncle Junior says it again Tony leaves in a huff with AJ and proclaims it is his last Sunday Dinner. Junior shrugs it off as Tony being a "hothouse flower", but it’s shown later in the episode that maybe Junior is the one with issues as he goes out and about in the streets of Newark in his slippers and houserobe and among other things gets offered a "half and half" by a horrible looking local drug addict. Junior also has a moment before he leaves the house where he thinks Larry David and Jeff Garlin from Curb Your Enthusiasm are he and Bobby, a great laugh for loyal HBO viewers. Meanwhile as all of this is going on, one of the newly released convicts from "the class of 2004", Feech La Manna, is trying to carve out his niche in the New Jersey lawn manicuring game by assaulting a friend of Paulie Walnuts by the name of Sal Vitro. Events occur which lead to Feech’s nephew Gary either being forcibly removed from a tree or jumping from the tree weilding a chainsaw depending on who was telling the story. All in all for an episode in the middle of the season it had quite a few memorable, if not quite important to the overall scheme (besides Junior’s dementia) moments. It ends with Junior tearfully refusing to answer Tony’s question about whether he loved him.
Luxury Lounge (72, s6, e7) - Frankie Valli’s character Rusty Millio bites the big one at the beginning of this "starstudded" episode. Christopher and the King of Malaprops Little Carmine Lupertazzi go to Los Angeles to give a script of their movie Cleaver to Sir Ben Kingsley (who insists on being called Sir Ben). Chris "chips majorly" while out in Cali, snorting lines of coke off of strippers (magnificent) breasts and drinking champagne straight from the bottle. In the meanwhile in Jersey, Doogie Howser’s best friend Vin…I mean Benny Fazio becomes engaged in a beef with a suddenly tough Artie Bucco. Artie actually wins a fist fight and at the same time intimidates his entire staff at Nuovo Vesuvio after he loses the right to charge American Express cards (due to the scheming of yet another hostess Artie has an unrequited crush on). Benny isn’t Artie’s only competition, as a new restuarant, Da Giovanni has opened and apparently has superior food. Tony is forced to tell Artie some painful truths about his personality that may be at the root of his new found troubles, after first attempting to turn him on to Dr. Melfi and being insulted by Artie for his troubles. Back in Los Angeles, Christopher and Little Carmine are in awe of the "luxury lounge" where they pamper Ben Kingsley with free gifts just for being a celebrity. This leads to Christopher and Murmur punching awards presenter Lauren Bacall in the face and stealing her complimentary "gift basket". The Artie shenanigans and Christopher’s awe and eventual jealousy over the whole luxury lounge concept are the highlights of this episode, another of the midseason/character development episodes that most TV shows would neglect and make into filer.
7) The Weight (43, s4, e4) - Johnny Sack very well may be my favorite character in the history of the show. It’s between him, Paulie Walnuts, and Ralphie. All three figure prominently in this episode. A few episodes back Ralphie made a joke in the middle of a dinner about Johnny’s wife Ginny having a 90 pound mole removed from her ass, the implication being that she’s large enough of a woman to have such a mole removed. The table found it to be pretty funny, so funny that Little Paulie related it to his uncle Paulie who is locked away in Youngstown on a gun charge. Paulie not only fails to see the humor, but in an effort to ingratiate himself to Johnny, informs him of it. Johnny is inflamed when he first learns, but only an episode later do things come to a head. Spotting one of Ralphie’s crew members, Donnie K., laughing about something at a bar, Johnny confronts him as he’s leaving. He punctuates the beatdown that follows by pissing on him. This sets off a chain of events which leads to almost simultaneous hits being called on Johnny AND Ralphie. Only after witnessing his wife trying to sneak candy bars in their basement does Johnny eventually calm down and realize that things have gone too far. Johnny’s intense love for his family and old school adherence to rules of conduct regarding wives in the face of financial implications made the story interesting and one that ONLY a show like the Sopranos could tell. The Furio/Carmela unrequited love affair starts to pick up steam in this episode as well, with Furio’s housewarming party and the dance that they performed.
6) Employee of the Month ( 30, s3, e4) - This episode features one of the most realistic (presumably) portrayals of rape ever shown on television as Dr. Melfi is raped. Due to some legal snafus the rapist gets away scott-free and Dr. Melfi learns that he’s employee of the month at some fast food joint she visits. She is then forced to wrestle with figuratively (and literally in her dreams) siccing Tony on the rapist and ultimately decides not to. Other events on the episode include Johnny Sack buying a house in New Jersey and encroaching on Tony’s territory, despite promises not to "stick his beak in". Janice also gets beat up by Russian mobsters for stealing Svetlana’s prosthetic leg (one of the funniest Sopranos moments), but honestly the other plot points pale in comparison to Melfi’s rape saga. This episode proves yet again that there is no show like the Sopranos, and there likely will never be another.
Stay tuned….I’m going to finish this thing….I promise!!
