The Sopranos Sessions

by Matt Zoller Seitz

  A lot of old family stories get told throughout “Cold Cuts,” perhaps none more potent than the one Christopher lays on Adriana while packing for a trip upstate to visit the farm of Uncle Pat Blundetto (Frank Albanese), where the remains of Emil Kolar and a few other Family victims have been interred for years.48 Chris recalls a summer he spent at the farm when he was eleven and the two Tonys were nineteen: as an “initiation,” they tied him to a tree and left him there until three in the morning.

  “I worshipped these two guys—Tony Soprano especially,” he says, lamenting that when Tony was by himself, he was everything a younger cousin could have wanted, but that when peers like Tony B were around, he would show off and give in to his worst impulses.

  The story suggests that, as Tony insisted to Dr. Melfi in the season five premiere, there are two Tonys: the good one only comes out when he’s alone with the truly special people in his life, while the bad one is too easily influenced by people not worth caring about nearly as much.

  The rest of the episode runs counter to Christopher’s theory, because they show how often Tony is the one corrupting others, and not vice versa. The more he’s in your life, “Cold Cuts” points out again and again, the worse your life is likely to turn out.

  For all of Christopher’s resentment of Tony B usurping his status as (to borrow Paulie’s phrasing) the teacher’s pet, when the two of them are up on the farm with Uncle Pat and his daughter Louise (Judy Del Giudice), they get along famously. They fish together, work efficiently side by side, bond over old vulnerabilities (the kids used to call Tony B “Ichabod Crane”), and crack jokes about their powerful cousin’s shape (Tony B: “Our bodies are 86 percent water. His last blood test, he was 65 percent zeppole.”).

  Even though Chris and Tony B are on the farm to cover up murders, their scenes are bucolic and peaceful in a way The Sopranos almost never is, and it’s not hard to see Tony’s absence as a huge reason why. The moment he turns up at the farm—desperate to get away from Janice and Carmela and all the other sources of frustration back in Jersey—everything falls apart for poor Chris. Where Uncle Pat commended him on how he’s done in recovery, Tony mocks him for it (“If you recover your fuckin’ balls, give us a call.”), and almost immediately, Tony B joins in a present-day reenactment of Chris’s stories about how the older cousins used to laugh at at the younger one. Christopher drove up to the farm with Tony B, sharing stories and having a grand old time; he drives home alone, crying at the thought that he’ll forever exist outside their club, even all these years later.49

  Christopher gets off pretty lightly, though, compared to some of Tony’s other victims. At the Bing, poor Georgie endures the most savage beating yet at Tony’s hands, all for the minor sin of suggesting the value of living for today while Tony is in the midst of one of his rants about the terrible state of the world. Where his vision eventually recovered from the time Ralphie hit him in the eye, Paulie suggest Tony’s beating may leave the bartender with permanent hearing loss, which finally inspires Georgie to quit the Bing and ask to never see Tony again.

  As usual, Georgie isn’t the one Tony’s actually angry with, but he becomes a useful punching bag one last time, in an episode where Tony has abundant cause to feel mad. Johnny Sack continues to squeeze him over the Joey Peeps situation, simply because he can. Carmela50 drains the pool to keep Tony from swimming in it uninvited, making clear she has no interest in taking him back.

  And then there’s Janice. When last we saw the siblings together, they had forged a tentative peace. Neither of them has ever been great at impulse control, though: Janice turns violent against a fellow soccer mom in an incident that ends up on TV, brings public shame and new fury to Tony, and forces him and Dr. Melfi to confront the roots of the famous Soprano temper.

  “Depression is rage turned inward,” Melfi suggests. Tony and Janice’s parents were both angry people, but their rage pointed in different directions: Johnny Boy’s out, and Livia’s in, at least until she had absorbed so much of it that her anger could be expressed toward others in less overt ways. Janice’s outburst against the soccer mom, and Tony’s against Georgie, are pure Johnny Boy: let the fury build until it has to be unleashed on whoever’s in front of you, whether or not they’re the one responsible. The soccer incident embarrasses both of them, but proves genuinely useful for Janice, whose court-mandated anger management classes51 have the desired effect of making her more relaxed and forgiving.

  It’s perhaps yet another Janice persona, like Parvati—even the world’s best therapist couldn’t pierce so many layers of emotional damage so quickly—but so long as she’s trying, her motivation doesn’t matter. She even manages to convince Bobby’s daughter Sophia not to ruin her appetite for dinner by sneaking a can of Hawaiian Punch beforehand, simply by noting the child’s behavior and staring at her until she complies. This is the kind of de-escalating approach to parent-child conflict that she and her siblings never experienced. “Mahatma Gandhi over here,” says Tony, impressed yet also troubled.

  If Janice’s newfound restraint is indeed merely a performance, it’s one convincing enough to fill Tony with anger and resentment at his own inability to calm down, which leads to a stunning display of anger owing much more to Livia than Johnny Boy. While eating with Janice, Bobby, and their kids, Tony deliberately brings up Janice’s estranged Quebecois son Harpo, letting her discomfort build until he’s openly taunting her by asking, “I wonder what’s French Canadian for ‘I grew up without a mother.’” And in one fell swoop, he’s undone all of Janice’s therapy, inciting her to come after him with a fork and curse at him in front of Bobby Jr. and Sophia. His work done, Tony flashes a smirk terrifyingly similar to the look we saw so often on Livia’s face when she’d successfully pushed his buttons,52 and he strides out of his sister’s house to walk back to his mother’s, insufferably pleased with himself.

  Who would do such a thing? Who would look at a sister who has worked very hard to overcome her flaws—flaws that everyone, Tony included, has struggled to tolerate for so long—and tear down all that work in a few minutes out of petty jealousy?

  Well, it’s like The Kinks song says over the closing credits, which, in a Sopranos rarity, plays out while we’re still watching the action (in this case, Tony walking home): “I’m Not Like Everybody Else.”

  “THE TEST DREAM”

  SEASON 5/EPISODE 11

  WRITTEN BY DAVID CHASE AND MATTHEW WEINER

  DIRECTED BY ALLEN COULTER

  Three Times a Lady

  “Our friend, he’s gotta go.” —God

  One of the most divisive episodes of The Sopranos during its initial run, “The Test Dream” is often described as having the longest dream sequence in any episode of the show. It only feels that way because Tony’s dream here lasts slightly more than twenty minutes and isn’t interrupted by real-world scenes, as was the case with the equally long, but more fragmented, dream sequence in season two’s “Funhouse.”

  This one is a lot more than a glorified retread, though, for three reasons:

  1. It’s not just about a particular problem or subject, it’s about the totality of Tony.

  The dream shows how much has happened to Tony since season two, and how those events and others predating the series continue to affect him, making it a referendum on his entire identity; in “Funhouse,” by contrast, the dreams were only about Pussy as an FBI informant. Much of what’s weighing on Tony is in here, including the possibility of reconciliation with Carmela, and memories of all the people he was close to who’ve died (or been killed, possibly by Tony).

  2. It demonstrates how much Tony has learned about himself and about how to interpret his own dreams.

  If, as we’ve suggested, “Funhouse” marks the first time where Tony Soprano truly learns from and correctly interprets the work of his own subconscious mind, then “The Test Dream” is the dream of a more sophisticated self-analyzer who has a stronger sense of who and what matters most to him. Melfi was Melfi in the
“Funhouse” dreams, but she was also an all-encompassing stand-in for the largely unknown psychic depths of Tony Soprano, the part of himself that he’s only somewhat recently learned to listen and talk to. Tony comes out of the dream knowing that Tony B shot Joey Peeps, which is something he suspected but was in denial about; he is proved right when Chris visits his Plaza Hotel suite to tell him that Tony B killed Phil Leotardo’s younger brother Billy, officially dragging the New Jersey crew into New York’s civil war and possibly sealing their doom. It feels like a premonition, that part of the dream—though in retrospect it could also just be a coincidence of timing, happening the same day Tony visited Tony B at his mother’s house and felt certain that something was off.

  3. This is the first dream in which real-world events reflect what’s happening in Tony’s mind nearly as they’re actually occurring.

  While Tony B was killing Billy, Tony was asleep and dreaming of Tony B shooting Phil—a close symbolic match. All the dreams so far have been about what’s happening in characters’ lives right then and, sometimes, how the past informs the present; but nobody’s dreams have correctly predicted something that could happen or was happening while they were dreaming.

  The episode also offers a sophisticated examination of the dreamlike qualities The Sopranos can have even during waking moments. “The Test Dream” begins with two incidents that feel unreal or somehow mysteriously “off.” One is Valentina becoming disfigured from an accidental grease fire. The other is Tony checking into the Plaza, including the sequence of dissolves as Tony kills time in his bathrobe, looking like the balding New Jersey silverback cousin of Dave Bowman, the astronaut who makes it to the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  Then the episode officially becomes a dream. It starts with Tony waking up in his bed at the Plaza not next to the sex worker he hired, but rather Carmine Lupertazzi Sr., the deceased head of the New York Family now struggling to make sense of itself in a power vacuum.53 Shortly before falling asleep in the real world, Tony learns from Silvio that Angelo Garepe’s been whacked, probably by Phil Leotardo. He calls Paulie, telling him that Angelo’s prison buddy Tony B was “acting all squirrelly” earlier, and that he might seek revenge. “Don’t worry about it,” Paulie assures him. “He ain’t that stupid.”

  Tony might believe that, but his subconscious has its doubts. Moments after he scrambles out of bed with Carmine, the phone rings. Carmine fears it’s “the man upstairs,” looking to bring him back to his final reward. The voice on the other end is, indeed, a higher power: David Chase, the creator and god of The Sopranos universe. His word is law, and his word is, “Our friend,”—Tony B—“he’s gotta go.”

  The anchor of the ensuing dream is its end, an apparently recurring conversation with Molinaro, his high school gym coach (Charlie Scalies),54 which Carmela says is about feeling unprepared.55 The dream is followed by a secondary character (Chris) appearing, as if summoned by the hero’s psychic distress. The episode ends with Tony and Carmela unpacking the dream’s contents. Their scene ends visually (with a cut to black) while the audio continues for two more lines of dialogue, suggesting what it feels like to drift off to sleep mid-conversation. Throughout “The Test Dream,” the flow between scenes, images, locations, and ideas is as sophisticated as anything that’s been produced for American cinema or television. Looking back, it’s difficult to remember what was real and what was a dream, and as the resolution of this one suggests, maybe the distinction was always more porous than we thought.

  The part of the dream that most strongly affects Tony is where he imagines Tony B shooting Phil, first with a gun, then with his finger (perhaps an indication that Tony’s mind somehow knew it wasn’t Phil that got shot in real life; or a warning that Phil would be emotionally “injured” by what happened that night—not “ended” by Tony B—but would be back for revenge soon enough). Tony S gets chased through the streets by villagers, an explicit Frankenstein reference but also an expression of a general fear of mob/Mob retaliation (the Mob will hold Tony S responsible for Tony B’s actions regardless). Tony’s takeaway here is that his cousin is out of control, and at some point he’ll have to fix the situation, and not with a stern talking-to.

  But there’s a lot more going on as well, stuff pertaining to Tony’s current life and his psyche. The phrase “free-associative” gets bandied regarding nontraditional film storytelling, but here it fits. There are visual and verbal puns in “The Test Dream”; images and situations that connect many characters, plot points, or metaphors; and multiple plausible ways of interpreting the same moment—not canceling each other out but coexisting.

  Just look at how it deals with one small aspect, the presence of Charmaine Bucco: Tony’s sort-of-crush, an object of affection that’ll never be reciprocal because of her outspoken disapproval of his gangsterism. Artie is connected to Charmaine, in the dream and in life, for many different reasons. He’s there because he’s Charmaine’s husband (separated, like Tony from Carmela, but not yet divorced). But he’s also in there because, like Tony B fresh out of prison, he represents the capacity to reform and improve. Past episodes have suggested Artie was a hellraiser back when he and Tony were running around the school hallways and Newark streets, a point reiterated here, with Artie replacing one person in a carload of individuals who otherwise all died violently, guiding Tony to the men’s room, rescuing Tony from the angry villagers, and (wishful thinking on Tony’s part) coaching him(!!!) through sex with Charmaine: “She likes it when you rub her muzzle.”

  Let’s zero in on that “muzzle” line. It connects to the horses near the Plaza Hotel (which Tony notices and comments on) but also to Pie-O-My and Tracee “the thoroughbred.” Ralphie, another character in the dream, definitely killed one of them, maybe both. The line also connects with a verbal near-rhyme that was driven home, via repeated use in season three, by all the gangsters who didn’t think Tracee’s death was worth getting upset about: they dismissed her as a “hooer”—a “whore,” which sounds like “horse.” And lo and behold, the dream cuts to Tony in the living room of his former home, high on his horse looking down at Carmela on the couch, animal and rider dominating the space (the equivalent of the elephant in the room—the obvious presence that’s taboo to discuss). Carmela warns Tony that if he’s going to move back in with her, “You can’t have your horse in here.”56 She pronounces the word like “whores”: You can’t have your whores in here. “I’ll clean up after her,” Tony promises. “You always say that,” Carmela counters.57

  This happens sometimes in dreams: a cascade of possible meanings you try to seize, only to see them bleed through your fingers and assume another shape on the ground: a row of droplets, or one large stain. One such bleed happens in the therapy scene where Melfi is replaced by Gloria (who sometimes speaks in Melfi’s voice—Melfi was right to say that Tony has a thing for obstinate, dark-haired women). The conversation between therapist and patient becomes an admission of Tony’s violence against women (“And then you choked the shit out of me!” yells Gloria).

  Another occurs in the long sequence where Tony and Carmela get ready to meet Finn’s parents and then share a meal with them at Vesuvio. He “awakens” in his home and goes downstairs to find Carmela in the kitchen, fully dressed for their meal, and says he can’t go because he doesn’t have anything to wear. He sees Chinatown playing on a TV in the kitchen bookshelf, next to a couple of Better Homes and Gardens cookbooks (corruption nestled comfortably amid the trappings of suburbia). Carmela chastises him for getting lost in the film instead of paying attention to her, telling him, “Your head is filled with this stuff.”

  “It’s just that it’s so much more interesting . . . than life,” he says.

  “This is your life,” she replies, indicating the movie—an acknowledgment that, in certain ways, Tony’s life is like the films he loves so much; but also perhaps that this particular story, Chinatown, fits Tony better than he would admit. (He probably thinks he’s Jake Gittes, but he’s more like Noah Cr
oss, minus the incest: a man who can order other men killed.) The movie then changes to the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, in which a greedy old rich man has a change of heart after being visited by spirits (as Tony is visited throughout this dream).

  Television sets and movie clips recur throughout, connecting the dream with movies, television, Tony’s life, and the notion of being under surveillance. The never-before-seen men’s room attendant in this “Dream Vesuvio” watches a close-up of Tony and Vin Makazian’s feet entering the lounge area outside the toilets. He could be either an FBI agent posing as help, or somebody on a film crew checking the framing of a shot on a monitor. High Noon, starring Tony’s beloved Gary Cooper as a sheriff abandoned by townsfolk to face assassins alone, plays on the TV as he and Carmela enter the restaurant. It’s a comment on the mental state of a man hoping to make a good impression on his possible future in-laws while realizing he’s about to lose his little girl to adulthood. But High Noon also speaks to the fact that, whatever happens with the New York–New Jersey Mob situation, Tony will likely have to face it alone, without allies.

  It’s all bleeding together here: multiple meanings or interpretations, blurred movie and dream realities. Vin Makazian is himself but also Finn’s father (maybe because Vin rhymes with Finn), singing “Three Times a Lady” to his irritated wife, Annette Bening, costar of Bugsy (the title of which she mentions after watching Tony B shoot Phil58). Vin and Tony are both Michael Corleone, excusing themselves to go to the restroom to retrieve a hidden gun à la The Godfather (Bening worries that her husband is going to return with “just his cock in his hand” instead of a gun, paraphrasing a famous line from the film). At the urinals, Tony hands Vin a copy of The Valachi Papers, a 1968 nonfiction book about a mobster that was made into a 1972 Charles Bronson film that got buried at the box office in the wake of the far more popular Godfather. Perhaps the film’s most memorable line is Bronson’s assassin admitting, “I cannot bring back the dead. I can only kill the living.”—a sentiment that resonates with this particular dream, and with The Sopranos as a whole. “Well, the piece wasn’t behind the toilet,” Vin says. “Well, this is real life,” Tony tells him. “No, it’s not,” Vin replies, whereupon there’s a tremendous explosion outside, and the dream shifts into Tony B shooting Phil and Tony Soprano becoming a monster hounded by a mob/the Mob.59