Speaker 1: Dire Way. Who is this, I.
Speaker 2: Don't know, it's me. It's amid the Ruins, this guy
who makes dire Way of Music. It's amid the Ruins
and sense.
Speaker 1: Dire Way Music.
Speaker 2: What I've talked about in you know, probably one hundred
articles of Jason Analysis is the implementation of the AI
smart grit in the giant smart cities, which is what
IBM talks about publicly building. And that's where we're going,
and that's what I think we have to be really
concerned about. So all of these tensions, they are for
a long term strategy to basically get everybody moved into
mega cities.
Speaker 3: That's going. Are you guys doing? Come on, don't get
pitchy now what you trying to start the show?
Speaker 2: I perfected my Tony by the way, as you can see,
I have perfected my Tony. My Polly. It's almost there.
I got a little bit of ways to go with
the Polly, but maybe we can work on our Polly tonight.
Welcome everybody, This is Jason Elsis. We're going to be
covering the Sopranos, as you know, long requested, long forgotten.
I just avoided it, not on purpose, that's kind of
like X Files. I always wanted to watch X Files,
but I never got into it, and then I finally did.
Speaker 4: I've never seen it either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I get you in here. You look better than me.
Speaker 4: I spent an hour and a half trying to get
nineties New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Woman hair, so she looks like Adrian and.
Speaker 4: I think that it is witchcraft because I cannot. I
couldn't do it. This is the best that came out.
I don't think they make hairspray like that anymore.
Speaker 3: Come on, you look good, you look no problem my
life tea.
Speaker 2: All right, So before we get going here, thank you,
Welcome everybody. We're gonna be covering the entirety of the Sopranos,
the whole thing. I was gonna wear my white jacket
over this just to be kind of mobster, but I
decided that's a little too I look like Tony Montana.
I don't look like Tony Soprano. Well you look like
Adriana though, so that you work but look like Tony Monks.
Speaker 4: That's actually one of the themes in the show The
Sopranos is that they glamorize their own lifestyle by watching
Goodfellas and Godfather and all the mobster movies, but the
way that they are portrayed in the Sopranos is that
it's not very glamorous. You know, Tony's just like an overweight,
balding dude who lives in the suburbs and he's got
suburban problems. He wears his bathrobe and he hangs out
and eats ice cream at night. He doesn't really live
this high powered, glamorous Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing with this show is that it's
going to have elements of more realistic mafia type of
living and lifestyle at the same time is having a
lot of unbelievable elements because, as everybody knows, there's no
way that a actual living, existing head of a family
or a dawn would be going to a psychiatrist and
telling her all of his problems. That would be the
end of his career. He would be done. So that's unbelievable.
But that's the fantasy fiction element of this is just
the premise of the show, which is great, which is
what if a mobster did actually go to a psychiatrist,
a psychologist and unloaded all of his problems on her.
You know, what would that be like? What would it
be before we get into this though, let's step back.
What is your overall impression? So this came out, I'm
going to give you my overall impression in you before
we get into the details. This came out starting right
at the turn of the millennium, So it's about ninety
eight ninety nine when the first season starts, so it's
a little bit before the Big Nine event. It's in
many ways it's it's interesting to reflect on that time
period right right before for the Big nine event. And
this actually comes into the show, like they bring up
the Big Nine event after it happens. It becomes kind
of a side plot about some of the Arab guys
in the series who hang out at the Bottoming that
will play into the final season. But aside from that,
a lot of the cultural references of the stuff that
Meadow and aj are into, the pop culture that they're into,
the stuff she's presented with at college, the literature that
they're reading in reference, it was it was interesting to
kind of step back into that time machine to which
I remember vividly. I remember, you know, when nine to
when one happened. I remember what was going on at
that time. I didn't watch the Sopranos at the time,
so I knew about it. I had heard about it,
but it's kind of in the period where I was
kind of not really watching TV shows, and yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Had never seen one episode either, so it was all fresh.
And it's a very interesting transition to have that big
event in the TV show because there were scenes that
they had to take out because of that. I didn't
know that in the credits and other.
Speaker 2: Places in relation to the Big nine event. Yeah, okay,
Now I want to remind everybody that we do have
super chats, so welcome. We got two hundred and twenty
five nerds. There will be spoilers, by the way, so
if you've not watched the full series of Spranos, we
will be spoiling it at the end and maybe then
you could tune out, but don't tune out right now.
So if you don't want to support us, you can
support through superchats, as you know, and we'll be reading
those eventually and let me pull up that link. And
then we got our trustee mods in the house. Shout
out to the mods. They will be helping with that.
But you can ask your superchat questions there. We're going
to get into all of the different layers and elements,
the geopolitical, the historical, the character studies, the archetypes, the
literary references, the espionage references that come up, actually, the
relationship with the FBI, this kind of stuff that all
plays into this show in a masterful way. So my
initial analysis is that when I started the show, I
wasn't sure what I was getting into, and I didn't
know what kind of a show it would be. And
it's a genre defying show. It doesn't it plays on
some of the Mafia tropes in film, but it also
goes in directions you don't expect. It's very comedic. I
didn't expect it to be really funny. A lot of
the episodes are very comedic. Tony is very comedic. The characters,
they're one liners, they're jokes, they're you know, making fun
of each other. This is all kind of a staple
of Mafia stuff. But it's played off really well. Some
of the episodes are surrealist, which I didn't expect, especially
Tony's dream sequences, which I thought were done very well.
I didn't expect those in the middle of, you know,
really serious mafia stories to have these kind of you know,
surrealest dream sequences with talking fish and this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, they had a lot of philosophical questions.
Speaker 2: Yes, and we we'll get into that too. So what's
your initial overall assessment, Because it took me all the
way through season one to really like it. I was
still iffy at the end of season one. By the
time I started season two, I was hooked. So I
didn't initially get hooked. But sometimes the shows that you
like the best, it doesn't initially you don't get hooked
right away. Even songs, like the first time you hear
a song, maybe you don't like it as much as
you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was the same for me. We started it
and the first couple of episodes, I was thinking, what
is the big deal about this show? It almost every
show or episode in that season was set in the
strip club, so it's not really a family show. But
and then I was.
Speaker 2: Thinking, more unless you're from a prominent strip club lineage
your family.
Speaker 4: But I think that's was one of the draws of
an Sally is like, you don't see a lot of
that on TV, and so.
Speaker 2: What on TV? The Mafia on TV? Oh, well maybe
I mean it's the show to let you know, the
show is a dramedy. I would argue it's a it's
a tragedy. It's a comedic tragedy is really what this
whole series is. Tony is a tragic figure in terms.
Speaker 4: Of literally There's also an overarching question in the show
is that can a psychopath be redeemed? Or is Tony
a psychopath or a sociopath? For one? And can he
help himself? For two? So I think we'll answer that
question yes in the show.
Speaker 2: And I do have some knowledge, just cursory of the
whole realm of crime, syndicates and mobsters. It's because it
ties into you know, Espiona's research research, uh, and so
there are different kind of theories and analysis as too.
You know, just like with The Godfather, the series is
kind of based on probably an amalgamation of different families.
There's the Dicabolcante family, which is one of the well
known families as you know or may not know. There's
you know, the Five Families. There's other families connected to
those families, other syndicates and whatnot connected to Sicilian mafia
and so forth. So you know, you've probably heard of
figures like John Gotti or the Colombo family or these
kinds of people. So this is sort of loosely referencing
some of those families. And some of the analyzes that
I read said that they think that Sopranos is based
on Di Cabocante because of the waste management So they
actually had a front that was a waste management business.
That's Tony's business. When you start the show, we don't
exactly know how Tony is really making all his money.
It's not exactly explained that I recall. It says, yes,
eventually they're sort of stealing cars, and then they have
that sequence where they go to Italy and they he
meets with that hot Italian chick and he tries to
sell you know, her cars and whatnot. So we know
they're stealing cars and shipping them off for another price
in Europe, and but there's other things that they're doing.
We don't exactly know where Tony got his initial wealth
because he does live in this pretty nice Jersey house.
He lives in a house nicer than everybody else. Basically,
go ahead, yeah, well, the.
Speaker 4: The money making part is not really integral part of
the show. It's just kind of in the background of
his own psychological dramas and relationships.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean that's this as all good stories are.
You know, they're not just about crime or or heists
or this is about the character. It's about the it's
a character study. Everybody's character arc is pretty fascinating. It's
you get into the characters, which it's it's not easy
to draw an audience and to the characters, especially when
they're bad guys. And I think that that's the good
point the difficult part of a movie, and that's probably
why mafia movies are successful, is because they they're able
to the good ones, are able to get us to
feel sorry for, empathize with and understand how somebody comes
to be that way and live that kind of a lifestyle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was one of the first kind of anti
heroes and TV, so he kind of paid the way
for characters in like Breaking Bad.
Speaker 2: Interesting, I never thought about that. Yeah, that's a great point.
So let's get into where we begin. We see at
the beginning Tony is going to a psychiatrist. As he said,
if you watch the famous kind of YouTube videos that
are going around of Michael friend ZC who's the a
former mob boss. I don't remember what family, But you know,
he's he gives an analysis of different mobster movies, and
he says that that's the most unbelievable aspect of this
whole series, is the whole idea of going to see
a psychiatrist. So, but this is a fictional series. We're
going to set that aside. We're going to suspend our
disbelief for a moment and just figure out what it
would be like if this did happen. And so what
happens is, of course he's immediately kind of at the outsets,
prescribed prozac, and the most important symbolic sequences in season
one that our call it's been a while since I
did season one, but is when he sees different animals
and the ducks. So the ducks are the most important
thing in season one because they're hanging out in the
pool and Tony, for some reason, feels this kind of
association and attraction to these ducks. I'm not exactly sure
what the connection of the ducks is, except that perhaps
they signify an omen because as we know, the series
is going to end in a certain way, and the
ducks never come back, if I recall, unless they're seen
maybe at the end of season one, he season flying,
but they don't come hang out anymore, and there will
be multiple animal references, nature references throughout the show where
we will see the bear kind of wandering into the backyard.
I've got notes, I don't remember time. Last episod oh yeah.
The cat plays an important role in the finale. So
the animal sequences basically signify I think Tony as a
force of nature. Tony is a kind of an agent
of death. He's an angel of death. And the other
unbelievable suspension of disbelief aspect to the show that we're
going to encounter with Tony is that he never loses,
He never gets busted, he never gets caught. He escapes
out of everything. He's He wins, wins, wins, winning, right
all the way until the last season. Then we start
to get the intimations, the omens that pop up, the foreshadowing,
the presignifiers that it's not probably going to go that
well for Tony in the final season. Don't forget the horse.
Tony has the connection to the horse, so he consistently
starts having these associations and deep connections with animal symbolism,
animal forces, the forces of nature. This is for multiple reasons.
But when we get to the end, I'll tell you
why I think Tony has this deep connection to nature
and to animals, because it will all be basically explained
in the final season, and a lot of the recurring
symbolism you want to pay attention to. This will be
key because as you watch the series now, looking back,
knowing what happens at the end, you can see a
lot of the clues that were being laying so that
you could understand and interpret the final episode, and in fact,
the beginning of season six, the first episode is the
pre signifier of the final episode. So the season is
basically just going to kind of lay it out on
the table in a lot of symbolic correspondences and clues,
so you're gonna know by the final season what's going
on here. We got most people obviously speculating in the chat,
so feel free to leave your super chats and I'll
read those if you want to. But so now let's
get into it. So it's waste management. She's talking to
the to the woman, this annoying I can't stand this woman.
It was the whole time I was like, please stop
going to this annoying psychiatrist She's the most annoying person
in the series, next to Janice. Okay, Janice and the psychiatrist.
I cringe. They're revolting people I can't stand.
Speaker 4: And the mom.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. They're all equal, they're all equal.
Speaker 4: The actress who played this psychiatrist was supposed to play
the wife she wanted the psychiatrist.
Speaker 2: Which is that because that actress plays Rayleiota's wife and Goodfellas.
So in Goodfellas she is the mom's wife, and that's
probably why she was up for that role.
Speaker 4: Sopranos shares twenty seven total cast members with good Vellas WHOA.
So they're very closely linked. And it's interesting to study
the mob because the way that they operate is how
the Illuminati operates.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're another mafia exactly.
Speaker 4: And so the families of the Illuminati they also fight
with each other. They're not all on the same yes
page about areas.
Speaker 2: In fact, the big elite, the top of the pyramid,
is who in the modern period will displace these other families, right,
they will come to be the chief mafia. And really
what we're watching in the Sopranos on a big geopolitical
scale that I'll get to is that displacement, right, the FBI,
the CIA, They're mentioned very clearly at the end of
the of the show in season six. That's the big MafA, you,
the big geopolitical mafia that is essentially going to squeeze
out any of these lower less, lesser rival families or mafia's.
But yes, in the sense of secret societies structures, the
elite are structured in this way. It's just that these
families are not going to be at the table in
the new world order. And that's why we're witnessing with
Tony the end. That's another reason why spoiler alert, it's
a tragedy. Tony represents the older way of doing things,
like even his whole attempt to kind of preserve Little
Italy or the Italian culture in New Jersey where he's at.
When he doesn't want to sell certain stores to Jamba
Juice and the big corporate stuff. He wants to to
thanks to say the way that they are, but it
doesn't work. Tony is going to be ousted by bigger mobsters.
That's the key.
Speaker 4: Well, there is one episode where they go to some
kind of Starbucks or something to shake down them for
their neighborhood protection money, protecttection money, and the guy that
works there is like, I can't do anything. I'm just
a manager. There's corporate and they're like, what if we
bust your windows?
Speaker 3: Maybe, yeah, we gotta come by and bust out a
few windows.
Speaker 2: He's like, all right, corporate will just replace something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they'll just replace me.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll let you have a little bit of fists.
He's like, yeah, they're just gonna fire me and put
somebody else in here, dude. So, by the way, if
you watched Fargo season two, that is the exact same
thing in Fargo season two because the black mobster guy, right,
if you remember, he goes and threatens that corporation that
comes in and the corporation just laughs at him. He's like,
he's like, maybe I got to come in here and
bust a few computers up, and they're like, corporate head
office will just send us three new computers the next day.
It's like it's not gonna do anything.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, who's the bigger gangster? Right?
Speaker 2: Yes, So this is those families getting displaced eventually by
the big mafia, and the final season will kind of
make reference to who that big mafia is, and it's
not who you think, right, It's essentially like CIA type people.
That's the big mafia that's going to come into the
picture here. And I got a chakra for you. Guess
who and why that big mafia displaces this mafia. Well,
because there used to be an alliance between these two mafias.
Did you know that? This is the famous book, famous story,
And in fact, it will be referenced in season six.
The FBI agent will talk to Tony about Tony's families, right,
the families connected to Tony that actually helped the Allies
and protected Lucky Luciano and different characters during World War
Two as a result of alliances between the CIA and
the Sicilian mafia. This is well known. Have been many
many times in history where the mafia and the CIA
have linked up, and the problem is that the loyalties
of the CIA are not the same as the loyalties
of the families, and so eventually the CIA mafia will
screw you over. So that's the meaning of the show
basically towards the end on the geopolitical level, but we're
gonna hold that off until we get to the end.
Let's talk about some of the references in season one
that I didn't expect. If you remember, there are interactions
between Tony's family and the Jewish mafia, and so there
is a hotel that they're kind of squabbling over, and
the Jewish mobster refers to Tony as a gollumn, which
I thought was a wild sort of cabalistic reference because
they're sort of ortho. They look like Hasidic. I guess
they're Hasidic Jews that are connected to the Jewish mafia.
They had a with Tony, it didn't go right, and
this is how we see Tony gaining that hotel at
the beginning. So this on the mafia level, what Tony
is doing throughout the first few seasons is basically acquiring
more businesses through mafia tactics. So he gains that hotel,
he burns down Artie's restaurant and then helps Artie basically
rebuild it and ends up eventually with a stake in
Artie's restaurant. If you remember Robert Patrick the T one
thousand or two thousand, whatever it is, I remember dogget
Agent dogg It from X Well. Doggett is a gambling addict,
and so Tony notices profiles. This gets him in on
this big gambling game. Lets him in, but he warns,
hmmy son, I told.
Speaker 3: You you're not ready for this. This is above you.
You're not ready for this game yet. This is a
big game here.
Speaker 2: And oh, Tony, let me in.
Speaker 3: I want to play with the big guys.
Speaker 2: I want to. I want to. And it's because he's
got who's the famous singer his son as they're playing
cards with him. Yeah, Frank Sinatra Jr. Is literally in
the show playing cards with Tony and agent dogg At
Robert Patrick Great from x Fells, who's just this normy
boomer dad. He's like, you know, let me let me
in there, Tony, I want to. I gotta play poker
with the Frank Sinadra Junior. That sounds awesome, and then
he ends up losing everything because he's a gambling addict.
So what I'm saying is that Tony is a master profiler,
so he knows people's weaknesses and he knows how to
get what he wants through people's weaknesses. This is again
possibly why you could have the CIA and the mobsters
linking up, because they have common types of interest. They
know how to profile people, they know how to find weaknesses.
So he knows Dogget or Robert Patrick, the character has
this weakness and he gets them basically to forfeit the
entire business that he owns. He owns this giant sporting
goods store and then Tony just comes in and takes
it over. You want me this now? This is my story?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: Well, that's one of the themes in the show is
that can he be health through therapy or is he
just a sociopath who is learning tricks to manipulate people better.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a key point that I didn't expect
and that's not revealed until the end, which is that, yes,
we're not sure what the therapy is going to do
with Tony, and basically it just it falls apart, right,
It's just a way for him to, like you said,
better become a profiler. Yes, so he learns tactics.
Speaker 4: He's learning more about human psychology, not because he wants
to be a better person, but because he wants to
be better at manipulating yes, well and acting like he
has feelings.
Speaker 2: And the way to understand this, and the way that
you know this is the case is when you notice
in the later seasons all the references to Tony like
a general Tony sees himself as a soldier. He makes
the reference many times.
Speaker 3: He says, you know with soldiers, with soldiers, Okay, this
is a war with soldiers. People for that flat family.
He sees himself as a soldier. He's constantly watching war documentaries.
He's watching war shows on the History Channel. He's studying generals.
If you notice he's watching Ramel right, how Rama. Tony
references son Zoo. And then when Pauli and other people.
Speaker 2: Said, it's like, that is son Tazoo. Don't you read
son to Zoo, And he's like, it's sun Zoo, you idiot,
when Christopher and Pauli have their rivalry. But but yeah,
that's because Tony sees himself as a general. And in fact,
I'm gonna make the argument perhaps that this is a
literary reference to the notion of transmigration of souls or
being reborn literally reincarnation, because any of the great literary
works that we typically think of from the Greeks, especially
somebody like James Joyce and Ulysses, it has the theme
of reincarnation, and most of the time pagan literature does that.
It falls back on that. So there are I think
these kind of subtle references too. Is Tony a reincarnated
general And in fact, somebody in the chat made a
good point that when Tony's beating up the Jewish mobster,
he's wearing a Roman sandals. He looks like a Roman.
Speaker 4: Well remember when he throws away that horse painting and
Polly has it repainting a general as.
Speaker 2: An American general, and when you probably didn't see the sequence,
but there's a sequence when he goes to Italy and
he meets with that woman who's the de facto dawn
of the family because the dad's old, the hot chick.
He has a dream where he's sleeping with her and
he's dressed up as a Roman soldier a general. Okay,
so there's a lot of references to Tony as a warrior,
as a general, and even he brings it up.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the nihilism for a second, because that
or do.
Speaker 2: You want to well, yeah, I do have that on here.
But so what I did was I went, I went
season by season. So there's gonna be can we hold
off on that and let's go to.
Speaker 4: What also thought would be fun is we could go
character by a character.
Speaker 2: And do a character study. It would be, but they'll
problemse that I did my notes like from season one up. Okay,
so what I began to notice in season one was
the manipulative tactics of the mother. I mean, Tony's problems
do stem from his parents. I mean that is clear.
So there are gonna be psychoanalytical points in the show
that are true. His mother is a super master narcissist manipulator.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So at the very beginning, the therapist diagnoses the
mother through the stories of Tony that she is borderline
narciss's personality. Fun fact about her.
Speaker 2: You know my mother, she would she never loved me.
Speaker 4: She was a really good villain. She was one of
those characters that you love to hate. But the actress
actually had cancer throughout the whole time she was filming,
and she died before her character died, and they had
to use old footage and CGI to make up the
last scenes of her.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. But yes, she actually enjoys torturing
and manipulating Tony. This is why Tony is who he
is in part. Now. Obviously the dad played a role too,
but his dad was a flanderer. His his dad was gone,
his dad was out partying and doing mob stuff. So
the mom was kind of stuck home alone raising the kids,
and you know herself was this sort of just arch
manipulator and was just really cruel. The cruelty of the
mom is kind of overwhelming and shocking because she plays
up this character of the innocent little granny so well.
She's she's always is appealing to her victim status. Yeah
you put me in that home, you live up there,
right and you got palace, you in this home. You
don't want me?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, that's the classic like old lady narcissist,
like you don't love me, you.
Speaker 2: Don't love me. Yeah, you put me in this home
to doyle alone.
Speaker 4: And then her daughter, his sister kind of inherits that
victim mentality.
Speaker 2: Yes, Janie is just as just as manipulative, but not
very good at it. She's terrible. She's not very smart.
So Janice Tony got all the smarts. In fact, I
think their reference one or two times that Tony is
believed to have or may have a genius level i Q,
so we know Tony's super super smart. Janis got nothing.
She got no looks, she got no intelligence. She's just
a dumb, fat bitch. Basically, she does have.
Speaker 4: That Rolling Stones tattoo.
Speaker 2: She does have a large Yeah Stowe's tattoo on her
pancake flappy giant breast. Right, I can't say there's just
three characters that are gonna irritate you so bad. It's
the Mom, Janice for me, the psychiatrist, I couldn't stand her, uh,
and Richie. Ritchie will be the the the worst annoyance
of villains for the first couple of seasons and he
will end up marrying Janie ironically. All Right, so we
find out that the Mom is the chief archetype for
manipulating and traumatizing Tony. We're even told that Tony is
traumatized yea.
Speaker 4: Even to the point where she tries to put.
Speaker 2: A hit on Yes, she wants to kill.
Speaker 4: Tony and tries to get the uncle.
Speaker 2: And Junior Junior gets in on it. And that's because
they're They don't like the They resent the fact that
Tony is intelligent, Tony can run things. Junior is envious
and van glorious. He wants to be the mob boss,
but he's kind of incompetent. He's he's in a way,
he's smart and wise, but he's not good at running things.
Tony is good at running things, and that's why he
fulfills the role perfectly. But Junior resents him for this
his older uncle because he's able to run things, and
so they just kind of let Tony's really smart about this.
He lets Junior be the figurehead who can take the
fall when they get arrested, right, and Junior goes to
jail and Tony's fine, and then Junior fin finally figures
out that this is what Tony let him do, which
was kind of genius. Actually, I was.
Speaker 4: Listening to psychologists talk about the characters and they said, actually,
Junior exhibits more narcissistic traits than Tony because he cares
more what people think about him, and he'll actually kill
people just so he doesn't have to look bad.
Speaker 2: That's a good point. Yeah, remember, if you want to
support us, we've got to suit a couple of super chats.
We got three hundred and sixty nerds in the chat
tonight Welcome. We knew this was gonna be a good show,
so maybe we can get up to about four hundred
pretty soon here, But hopefully you're enjoying this. There's references
to the mom castrating him. I thought this was interesting
that the psychiatrist tells Tony that your mom was a
master manipulator. She has helped train you to be who
you are. She has emasculated and castrated you. So she
kind of interprets a lot of Tony's delusions and hallucinations
in relationship to the trauma that the mom inflicted on him.
And I think a lot of that's true. It's just
that as we're going to see as the series progresses,
this goofy psychiatrist woman's solution, they don't work, and the pills,
the lithium, the prozac, which is all referenced in season one.
This is when prozac was brand new, right, so they're
referencing Tony's on prozac. They don't do anything.
Speaker 4: This is also the beginning of big pharma.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you've got Prozac, lithium, viagra, new drugs coming
out and they are all being experimented on, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And there's an interesting scene where the psychiatrist says, I
think I've done everything I can with you in talk therapy,
and we need to implement this new phase of your
healing or whatever, and he's just not into it because
he just likes just talking to her. He thinks that
this is going to change him without him having to
do any of the work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we begin to see in season one the mom
is actually the real villain. In season one, the other
mobsters are mad that they hear about Tony going to
the shrink. They laugh about it. The mom says, isn't
that a Jewish thing? She says, that's a Jewish racket, all.
Speaker 4: That treatment that one of the characters tries to go through,
the other characters make fun of him for it. Remember
when Christopher tries to get sober, mock him continually for it,
and anybody who wants to.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a theme in the show right when
it's a question of who are you? I mean, are
you born to what you are? Are you? Are you
born to fate? Is Tony destined to be Tony? Can
they change? And this will come up when Carmela, Tony's wife,
goes to see a Jewish psychiatrist at one point, and
then she goes and talks to multiple priests, so she
tries to unload and kind of get advice for how
to handle these problems. And she's trying to figure out
can someone like Tony change? That will be one of
the major themes in the show. As you said, we'll
be waiting throughout all six seasons and we're wondering, Okay,
is this gonna be Tony's downfall? Is this person gonna
be Tony's downfall? Tony finally gonna get what's coming to him?
Or is he still gonna somehow miraculously skate around all
of this and get away with it? Uh? And is
he actually gonna start changing? And they do a good
job with In a few instances, Tony does do the
right thing. He does start changing. He doesn't sleep with
the real estate agent, right, he holds off, he doesn't
cheat in these instances. There's cases where he helps people out.
So that's showing that that that humanizes him. He's not
an all bad guy. He actually has human qualities.
Speaker 4: After his near death experience. Right.
Speaker 2: Yes, So the early Tony is no mercy, no bone,
no jokes, no bone. I mean he makes jokes, but
I'm saying, like, you don't joke with Tony, you don't
play with Tony. If you cross Tony, you're dead. So
he sort of enforces a rule of fear right. It's
a Machiavelli kind of the Prince thing, where it's better
to be feared than loved. So Tony runs on that
psychology for the first several seasons, and as you pointed out,
when he almost when he has his near death experience,
when he dies, for several episodes he's in the hospital,
on the bed, in the er. He comes back and
he's different. So he has had a change, But is
he really changed? And that's what we're gonna see towards
the end. I think it's somewhat debatable to a degree,
because he does kind of more and more have a
better appreciation of people and his family.
Speaker 3: You know, he says things, every day's a gift. Now
come out of the hospital. I realize, I look at world.
Every day's a gift. Tennis, every day is a gift.
Speaker 2: And so he knows he's still going, I think, eventually
to his end. And and that becomes really clear, as
we'll see in season six. So we're almost up to
we got three seventy three. Welcome everybody. So Catholicism is
interesting in season one, it's very much a cultural Catholicism.
Nobody in the series except for the old people. This
is interesting. Polly's mom and aunt take their Catholicism seriously. Briefly,
Janie has a phase of evangelicalism where she's serious right
with that goofy guy who has narcolepsy, and they have
an evangelical praise band, remember that. And he falls asleep
all the time, and.
Speaker 3: Tony Tony's always loving it's good, bring your friendo if
you could wake him up.
Speaker 2: And then he throws peanuts at the guy when he
falls asleep at the Turkey dinner. Anyway, So all of
that to say that the way religion is presented in
season one and pretty consistently to the rest of the
show is that it's just a cultural phenomena. There's not
really anyone, even the priest. This is the really interesting
fact in season one was that weird priest that you
think might be gay and then you think, no, actually
he's hitting on Carmela. He's not even actually hitting on Carmela.
He's a weirdo who just wants food and recipes.
Speaker 4: He just wants from women, but he doesn't actually want
to cross the boundary to do anything with them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he basically stays the night with Carmela flirts
with her all night, They cook dinner, they drink wine, communion,
private communion. Yeah, and he leaves or he falls asleep, right,
he doesn't want to he's snoring or something.
Speaker 4: Then there's this funny scene where Carmela tries to bring
the priest a dish of food.
Speaker 2: That guy's that priest, yeah.
Speaker 4: I know, and another woman has already brought him food
that day, so she gets all jealous. Remember, so even
their their religion is a facade.
Speaker 2: It's just something that you do, you know, it's just
another and and Tony kind of sees through that hypocrisy.
I mean, he's not above asking existential questions. He asked
them pretty consistently throughout the series, but he never he
never sees the institutional Catholic church as being anything other
than kind of a ritual or a play. Like he
kind of makes some jokes about.
Speaker 3: It, like, oh, come on, either way, I know this
is a bunch of bullshit, and he says stuff like
that kind of in passing.
Speaker 4: It's just another family obligation thing like going to a
funeral or a wedding.
Speaker 2: Next up is oh and the other thing with two
That was interesting about the priests was that he's very
much a novus ordo Vatican two priests because when he
gives communion that ninety stays over, he actually brings Carmela
a book on Buddhism. Oh yeah, he tells her that
she needs to start reading on Buddhism to find spiritual
So just totally, I mean, this was accurate, right, the
whole idea of the liberalized clerics of the post Vatican
two novus Ordo church.
Speaker 4: Do you remember that episode with the Golden Hat Saint
and the fair, So there's another example of the mom
working together with the church.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is obliquely referenced, there's no I mean, if
you watch Godfather three, there's actually a really clear reference
to the connection between the Vatican, the mafia and the
Cia and all these kinds of P two lodge and
all that comes up really clearly because that was actually
based on the P two stuff with John Paula first
and his assassination. Here it's not as clear. It's a
little it's more, you know, just again kind of cultural stuff.
And then that scene is actually really funny because that
will play into the fact that there's one character in
the show that will survive all of this, and he's
really the only one that we think might actually convert.
And it's not he you expect, it's Polly because Polly
is superstitious. They make fun of him for being superstitious
throughout the show. He walks in the bottom being and
he sees the Virgin Mary. Remember, at the end of
the very last episode he says this, and we get
the impression that it's really just Paulie who has repented
at the end when he goes and apologizes to his
mom or to his surrogate mother, I should say, and
he was the he was the one that was really
upset about the saint and the hat, that stupid hat
because he thought, you know, I mean, he's he's he's dumb,
and he's superstitious, but he's serious and sincere, which is interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, things have meaning to Paulage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't just do that, Tea. I swear on
my life, tee, you don't just do that.
Speaker 4: That's why he gets so messed up when he finds
out his mom was actually his aunt and his aunt
with his mom.
Speaker 2: My old life, it's been a life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I sweit, tea, my whole life, it's all a lie.
Speaker 2: And that's again I like the fact that spoiler alert,
nobody may through this. Not nobody, but basically of the
main character spoiler alert, Pauli is who you know. It's
kind of like he's the one that that goes on
to We don't know what he's gonna do, but presumably
he's probably gonna go to Florida where they were earlier
and just kind of retire.
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe he was the one that made it
out alive of all of them.
Speaker 2: I like that, in fact, that it wasn't who you thought.
You think you And again, spoiler you think Adriana and
Christopher are gonna get out, You keep thinking, Okay, they're
finally gonna you know, he's gonna listen to her. You know,
they're gonna be flipped by the FBI, they're gonna get
witness relocation. You keep thinking this, you keep thinking it,
and no, right, uh, but we'll get to We'll get
to Christopher. Tony, Tony, Tony, you do a good Adriana, Tony, No,
I was doing to do, Adriana, what's the flaw? What's faw? Yeah, Adrian,
I told you to the Buddhism book let's see we
get down to there was another interesting element. I think
this is by about season two, maybe still in season one,
where they start introducing these uh other con men. Okay,
because remember there's an element to Christopher and Tony that's
the conman element, right, So then they bring in these
other characters that they interact with, like the Black Preacher
and this Black Preacher. If you notice the young one,
he's a kind of Al Sharpton Jesse Jackson kind of guy.
And his dad, who was another Black Preacher, was a
serious guy. He was serious about his spirituality. But the
younger guy, who's the you know, the preacher leading the
black guys to strike at the construction site, he's totally fake.
He's like, hey man, I'm just gonna put of money, right,
So he's ready to make deals with Tony, and Tony
he's like, yeah, he's like that kind of a black
TV Preacher guy. But but it's all about race and
it's all about you know, he's an opportunist. That's the
word I'm looking for. And Tony figures that out. He's like, okay,
so his dad's serious. I don't want to talk to
the dad. He's you know, another version of con man.
He's just an opportunist, and if he's that way, I
can buy him off, right, So Tony can profile people
to tell when they're sincere, when they're frauds, and he
knows that if they're frauds, is pretty easy to either
buy them off or to muscle them into doing what
you want. So he really But I like the fact
that they introduce this kind of you know, opportunist, fake
preacher guy, and he's tied into the Union and he's
trying to use the union. And this is funny because
the mobsters have used the union for a long time,
so it's like, you're you're on the wrong territory, hero,
The mob is going to know how to utilize the
union way better than you trying to use the union.
And of course Tony outwits this guy and ends up
oiling this movement. And there's a very similar character to
the opportunist black preacher who is the Native American spokesman
who's also a kind of a We get the impression
that he's kind of a con man, that he's just
leading this cultural movement against Columbus day. Right, this becomes
a big ordeal for the social justice themes. Yes, social
justice themes start coming up about season two and they
want to two or three. They want to get rid
of Columbus Day, and because it's offensive to all the
Native Americans, and this leads to a kind of a
retaliation on the part of syl Silvio and Pauli. They're
furious about this. They go and like beat up the
Native Americans. There's a big there's a big street fight
between the social justice Warriors and the Italians. They've all
got got flags, like Italian flags out there, and they
want to have Columbus Day and all this stuff, and
so there's this big street brawl. And I liked all
these elements because it was showing you that a lot
of this stuff is manipulated.
Speaker 4: Do you remember when Meadow went to college she came
back social justice warrior.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is another great point because it shows that
when Meadow goes to college, you know, she's just kind
of a teenager, you know, I mean, she's intelligent, and
she she early on figures out that her dad is
up to something. Like her dad is not on the
up and up. He's not really what he presents himself as,
just a.
Speaker 3: Harm of just a harmless waste management, businessman. I'm just
a businessman, right, No, he's more than that.
Speaker 2: And she figures this out by the time she's in
high school, and so we get the impression that Metal
is pretty intelligent. She also will be spared interestingly, and
then when she goes to college, she is brainwashed, initiated
into the social justice system. She said, it takes her
while to figure out what her career is. She decides,
I want to be a lawyer so I can defend
the immigrants. So they actually show her as adopting these
positions because that's her way to rebel against Tony. And
she even says this at times when her bike gets stolen, right,
and Tony said, oh, yeah, who was the guy who
stole the bike?
Speaker 3: Huh?
Speaker 2: What was he? Oh? Who was he? Right? So if
you know that scene, then you know what happens. I
won't say it because of you know, getting pulled or whatever,
but it's a funny sequence. And the only reason that
Meadow is doing these things is to try to rebel
against Tony's old ways and his you know kind of
what she thinks are outdated ways of understanding things, because
Tony's in a sense, you could say conservative, even though
he doesn't really care about ideologies. It's purely pragmatic, right.
He knows from the streets that people are different, you know,
He's like, and then when I'm on the street, this
guy's different. He drives around, he sees a mosque.
Speaker 3: These are these guys are different, you know, they're different.
Speaker 4: That was the part in the story after the Big
nine event happened, they wrote that in that Tony is
now informing to the FBI.
Speaker 2: The FBI guys, they asked Tony. Yeah, that's a great point.
They don't make him an official informant, but they ask him,
you know, I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine if
you can, you know, provide us some information on any
of these Arab guys that might be hanging around the
bottom being. And he does. He does so, not exactly
an informant, but a kind of a just a on
the down low passing information back and forth, which Tony
just sees as advantageous to himself for getting out of,
you know, sticky situations. So so moving on, I like
the sequence when he goes to Italy to meet up
with one of the dons in Sicily and as we
as I said, we find out that it's it's the
Dawn is actually has dementia. He's out of ideas and
know what's going on. And his daughter is running things
and she's, you know, the bomb supermodel. So Tony is
immediately sort of smitten by her, has the dream where
he's a Roman general sleeping with her. And then the
most important sequence in all this is that they go
up on this mountain to the Sibiling Oracle. Right, So
they go in this cave where the Sibiling Oracle used
to sit, and she the oracle would would breathe in
the hallucinogen hallucinogenic gases or whatever and would prophesy. And
if you don't know, you know, the Sibiling Oracle is
famous for also having prophetic statements about Christ. Right, this
is a well known thing. If you look up virgils
and ecologue, if you look up the civil there were
these pagan predictions. Also they're related to Christ. I think
that the Sibiling Oracle was even painted I think into
the Assistine Chapel. But the the but the the woman,
the woman Dawn tells Tony, she says, you're you are
your own worst enemy. So she does this Sibiling prophecy
at the Sibiling Oracle about Tony, and they even referenced this.
And then when Tony goes back to a psychiatrist.
Speaker 3: He said, hey, you have voted this to the Sibols.
Speaker 2: The Sibols. She's like the Sibils.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know the Sybils did the prophecies. You know
they would they would sit and breathe in his head.
It would, you know, make them prophecy or whatever.
Speaker 2: Right, And so he basically has been told his fortune
from the Sibyl. I thought that was genius, the way
they did that, the way they pulled it off. And
if you're not familiar with classical lit, one of the
things I studied in grad school, you wouldn't catch those
references to the Sibyl. What do you think? Do you
remember when we were watching it and I told you
that when he went to see the Sibyl, she's functioning
like the Sibyl. She's telling him his future. Yeah, And
she said you're your own worst enemy, and I said,
he will be his downfall. It's a tragic.
Speaker 4: It's a tragedy, yeah, because Tony's navigating such a minefield
with his job and his family, and everything that you're
constantly wondering who is going to betray him or get
him in trouble or like we're always guessing, is it
so and so going to be the downfall of Tony
but himself?
Speaker 2: And it's also not what we expect. What ends up
being his downfall is not who we think it is.
It's a it's kind of a random forgotten dude, you
know that he's screwed over. Is basically who ends up
being the cause of his downfall. It's not one of
the sort of key players that you that you think
it's going to be. It's not the FBI, it's not
the CIA, it's not any of these big agencies or forces.
It's not the family. Even it's not even his family
that's his downfall.
Speaker 4: So I like the episode where they're having to deal
with the rappers, who.
Speaker 2: Well, before we get to that, there was a there's
a really fascinating sequence. We should probably go back and
watch it now that we've seen the end, But there's
the sequence of the Wizard of Oz. This could have
an m K ultra mind control aspect to it because
it has to do with Tony having a car wreck. Uh,
and it's when it's when Tony was having his blackouts,
and there's a there's a you may have missed this
this episode, but the psychiatrist is talking about the psyche.
She hears the Wizard of Oz song, and we see
this vision. I think it's her vision if I recall,
and she sees Tony dead. She sees him in a
car wreck dead. Now, Tony doesn't die in a car wreck,
but it's another instance of the foreshadowing that's gonna tell
us what happens. And if you haven't seen the end,
then you don't know the signific You're not gonna know
until the very end, what the significance of it. Throughout
the whole series, Tony's son is just an idiot. And
this this one sequence where even the idiot can have
this kind of sage, sagacious moment where he says, you
guys are all living in a dream. This is not real, right,
And so again hearkening back to the psychiatrist's dream of
Tony and the Wizard of Oz playing and Tony wrecking.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, I don't remember that one.
Speaker 2: So let's see that's not really relevant. Let's go down here. Okay, okay,
So one interesting reference that the psychiatrist will make early
on is to Carlos Costanada. She will talk about reading
Carlos Castenada, and we don't really know the beginning why
that would matter. It could have reference to you of
the c I A mk Ultra stuff, which is loosely
there with the big pharmoh, the Wizard of Oz theme,
Tony being traumatized, Tony blacking out at times, but she
will talk about, hey, you should you know read cost
Costanata blah blah blah. She mentions it in passing. But
this is foreshadowing for the end of the show where
Tony goes and trips trips out. So he actually has
this Carlos Constanata moment where he goes and does what
does he do psilocybin or something, pot goes and does
peyote in Las Vegas. So that was another foreshadowing that
you don't you're not, you don't know why it's relevant
until you get to the end of the to the
last season. Basically the last season really shows everything. So
what's up? We got four hundred nerds tonight? If you
would be sure and smashed like the gobble gool, what's goul?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: You read all of this from one instance of Goba
Gool when I was a.
Speaker 2: Kid, right, this is what he tells the psychiatrist.
Speaker 3: But she's like, you have a problem with sexuality, and
Ron meet. Uh you read all this from the gobbagool. Yeah,
because uh when it won the interest snack, you read
all of this.
Speaker 4: This is crazy well because the gobbool has to do
it the first time he ever saw dad kill somebody.
Speaker 2: Yes, and uh, sexuality because he says that the weird
mom would be turned on when the dad would bring
home the gobba ghoul because the mom knew that he
had killed somebody or had done so.
Speaker 4: The gobagool for free because they were leaning on the
butcher exactly.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: The mom liked the violence and the danger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And Tony was young and didn't understand this.
He didn't understand what was going on and it traumatized him.
And that's the first time Tony passes out. Remember remember
his episodes and then AJ has these exact same episodes.
Speaker 4: Do your AJ?
Speaker 3: What are gutters?
Speaker 2: What's a gutter? You know what?
Speaker 3: When you you we're gonna clean out your mouth and
then that it is, you're gonna go clean the gutters.
What are gutters? Oh, you're gonna get smart with me.
Now you're gonna talk about what a gut is. You
gonna get smart with me. No, I really don't.
Speaker 2: Know what gutters are. He's really that dumbie, actually doesn't
know what gutters are.
Speaker 4: The best line of AJ when he said, yeah, that
it is.
Speaker 3: You're gonna go do your homework and then you're gonna
study for your dists. Then he then he says something,
I'm gonna I'm gonna make sure that I look at
your grades. You just showed your own ignorance because you
just revealed your own ignorance because we don't even have
grades yet.
Speaker 4: It's such a nihilistic thing to say.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the next thing on my list. Actually
is after the curls costing Alla reference, we start getting
a J asking questions. Right. AJ is this nerdy, chunky
little kid who totally oblivious. He has no clue what's
going on. And then ironically, in the midst of being
a total idiot, AJ starts asking like mega, big level
existential questions. And this is peaked because the grandma is dying,
the manipulative psycho grandma, and she gets she tries to
turn everybody on her side.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: This is every sequence with the Grandmother in season one.
She's manipulating somebody to turn them on to be on
her side. And she gets Aj in there alone and
she says something about we all die alone, right, And
so AJ's sitting there freaking out with his He's always
doing this, right, So then he starts.
Speaker 3: Thinking maybe there's no God all right.
Speaker 2: And so he goes to this existential teen crisis. He
starts reading Nietzsche. All that stuff is pretty funny. One
of the kids he talks about existentialism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one of the kids in that show. His dad
gets killed and he turns totally goth with the whole
black lipstick and everything. You remember that, So.
Speaker 2: This is veto later on Vito, one of the guys
that works for Tony. Uh Vito, turns out to be gay,
and then he doesn't want to get found out, so
he runs off. So he goes off to another city
in the Hampton's or somewhere. Yeah, and uh Vito's son
starts going through a crisis like Aj did and turns goth.
So he just turns to this total goth guy. I
won't say what he says to Tony, but he has
some really funny lines about actually I could see Tony's.
Speaker 3: Like been Toko to your uncle. Oh yeah, is your
butt buddy? Oh yeah, that's really funny. I like you,
you got a mount on.
Speaker 2: You, kid. But yeah, So he goes to that same
crisis that Aj goes through in the early seasons. But
AJ's crisis of faith leads him to reading Nietzsche, Sartra,
and Kirkerguard he immediately goes to the existentialists. And that's
it's not super significant, except that it's tell us that
the show is going to be asking big existential questions. Right,
So Tony, Carmela, even Pauli, even some of the minor
characters are all going to be confronting the reality of life,
death and the afterlife. They're all going to be confronting
these questions. And that's why the big existentialist philosophers come
up early in season one and two. But it's funny
that it's a bit of irony there that it's the
dumbest guy, the dumbest character in the whole show. I mean,
you could argue AJ's even dumber than Janis really who
actually asked the big question. It's not the smartest except
Tony does. Tony asks Big.
Speaker 4: He's the one that sees through all the bull crap,
like you guys are.
Speaker 2: Just well he and Meadow due. Meadow and he both do.
But all right, let's well, we hit four hundred, we
got four oh three. Welcome here, be sure, yes, hitch
like and share.
Speaker 3: Listen. If you don't hit the liking the sh I'm
gonna take you up back. I'm gonna make sure that
you get the lake in the shell. Okay, all right,
so we're done with this.
Speaker 2: Hell is three o'clock in the Near Death Experience vision.
So there's a near death experienced vision early on, a
Hell vision. I don't know what my note's about, but
something to do with Tony starts describing a dream or
a vision, and he talks about how the psychiatrist woman
asks him, like, what do you think your dream means?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to hell. It's for the worst people.
Speaker 3: And that's what the rapers and the murder vision, you know,
all the people that do all the really nasty shit.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to hell.
Speaker 4: Come on, that's interesting that Tony doesn't see himself in
the category of a.
Speaker 2: Bad person, exactly exactly. I also liked the element where
Tony gets neighbors, and the neighbors that he gets are
these really annoying, snooty wasp elite. And then that's one
of the actually the funniest sequences in the whole show
is when the wasp elite who are into stocks, and
this is how Tony and Carmela start getting into stocks.
They take Tony out to play golf. I remember that
They're like, so, uh uh, maybe you know some stories
about John Gottie you could.
Speaker 3: Tell us, And Tony's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: Who? What? Yeah? You know, have you heard any stories about,
you know, any of the famous guys? And then Tony
realizes that they know that he's in the mafia, and
they they think that there's all these you know, stereotypes,
and so Tony tells him this whole ridiculous story with
a ridiculous ending.
Speaker 3: So the marvel at the story is John Gotti. Really
let ice.
Speaker 2: Cream just tell us this nonsense story and they're all like,
oh yeah, and so he's just messing with him, right,
So I thought that was that was a good comedic
twist because you think that Tony's gonna take that golf
club and start beating the crap out of him, and
he just makes fun of him. It was great. But
the wasp elite, right, they use the Italian immigrants. And
this actually comes up, you know, Tony references this about
how you know.
Speaker 3: We used to we used to work for them, right,
we would have we would have grunts for them, you know, No,
we did odds with our stuff.
Speaker 2: Where's a place at the table, right, So it's all
about wanting a place at the table. The different wealthy
power structures, right, the JP, Morgan's, the Carnegie, the Rockefellers,
the wasp elite who used the Italian immigrants as the workforce.
And this is why Tony and I think it's Tony
that says this withre's our piece, we want a piece
of this. I think he's telling it to the psychiatrist.
He's explaining the Italian immigrant experience, right, He's saying.
Speaker 3: This is this is our people, this is we both
this place. We built this country right for them.
Speaker 2: And so he doesn't care for that, you know, snooty,
arrogant Wall Street wasp elite. But they do get the
idea from the wasp elite to set up this little
stupid stock scam, and they put Christopher in charge of it,
which is hilarious because Christopher brings in his two muscle guys,
who are also complete idiots. Right, they end up getting
killed the next season because they're so stupid.
Speaker 4: Another point about this show is the criminals aren't that smart.
Speaker 2: Yes, even the guys that Tony has as his conscilier
or his right hand men, they're not that bright. Even
the other even the other bosses of the family, right,
Johnny Sack Junior, he's incompetent. He can't run the family. No, no, no,
not not Johnny Sack. It's the guy that Johnny sackson
a rivalry with the other guy, what's his name, somebody Junior,
the the old guy that dies and then his son
takes over. He's the guy that makes the movie with Christopher.
That guy, he's funny. Little Carmine, thank you. Yeah, little
Carmine is incompetent. Johnny Sack is kind of competent. He
can run things, but even he can't. Really, he's no
match for Tony. Nobody is a match for Tony. Even
though the other families are jealous of Tony and they'll
diss him. They're afraid of Tony. They don't know how
to handle him, because you can't. Tony's a force of nature.
You can't really deal with this guy. He's unstoppable. We
mentioned Richie and these different characters who are kind of
the key villains. I mean, Richie is just on you
can't He's like Jeoffrey, right, Richie the Grandmother. These are
Jeffrey level characters. You can't wait for them to die.
But the only reason Richie is really interesting as a
character is the clue of the jacket. If you remember Richie,
who am so is totally a psychopath. He kind of
wants to impress Tony, even though he resents him and
fears him. At the same time, he's the guy that
ends up marrying Janice. He thinks, maybe I can win
Tony over by giving him some kind of symbolic thing
that in his mind is important, which is a stupid
seventies jacket. It's this hideous, ugly, you know, nineteen seventy
five leather jacket. And he gives it to Tony and
oh what it is? Put it in the trunk, and
then Tony just gives it away and Richie sees the
jacket that he gave to Tony, which had this significance
for him given away, and he's just infuriated. Right, So
you know in season two or three that there's going
to be this you know, butting of heads between Tony
and Richie. But the reason that the jacket is so
important is that the jacket is going to be the
key clue the end of the show, telling you what
really happened, Right, the jacket, not that jacket, just the jacket.
Just keep Jack, get in mind, it's just telling you
a clue. That jacket's insignificant, but it's just calling your
attention to details in the show, like the jacket, that
are going to be important for deciphering and decoding the
final episode. Of course, as you know, I like the
fact that it wasn't Tony they kill Ritchie. All of
this time, there's Tony and Richie butt heads about five times,
and you're just waiting for Tony to unleash on this guy,
and he ends up not doing it, and you think, well, okay,
now he can't because Richie's married to Janice. And then
who ends up getting rid of Richie Janie? Yeah, because
Janie is just as crazy and psycho as Tony. But
she's she doesn't have any self control, right, and so
she just does it, loses her mind.
Speaker 4: Tony help me.
Speaker 2: Tony has to come over. He's the fixer. He cleans
it all up, and he gives her a bus pass
and says, now you're at here, get lost. I don't
want to see you again. And because Janice really was
just she's just a mooch, right's. Her life is a failure.
She can't find a relationship, she's overweight, she's unpleasant as
a person. She's really annoying. She tries to be manipulative,
but everybody can see through it. She's just a terrible
person and a terrible character. And so Tony just wants
to get rid of her. And so he thinks, finally
he's going to get rid of her. Of course she's
going to come back. But as we end the early
about getting almost to the middle midway of the show,
we see the important vision of dream that Tony has,
and I like that they couch this vision and dream
in the midst of a really bass, guttural, potty humor
element when Tony gets diarrhea yea and because yeah, but
it's but it's on purpose to contrast it with it's
it's a it's a it's a kind of a contrast.
It's a literary usage of the grotesque, where you take
something that would be a profound vision and you couch
it in something ridiculous, like farting all night with diarrhea
because you had bad seafood. Okay, So Tony Is goes
and has aladies. I don't know what, shrimp or something,
and this the shrimp is bad, and it gives him
this awful case of food poisoning. And we both had
food poisoning. We we can sympathize with this. We were
just remembering what it was like to have food poisoning.
It's awful if you've never had it. It's if you
think you're dying. And so in the midst of this
food poisoning, Tony has these prophetic, really deep visions. He
sees the future, a potential future in the future, and
he sees in a way kind of his own demise
and and he sees. He doesn't know how to interpret
it yet, but he sees, and he senses deep down
who the rat is.
Speaker 4: That's when he figures out he's betraying here.
Speaker 2: It's Pussy. So Pussy is the rat. He doesn't immediately
know how to interpret the dream because he's walking down
the boardwalk by the by the beach and he sees
these fish for sale, and the fish starts talking to him,
and it's Pussy, and what is it? He sleeps with
the fishes, So he's seeing what is going to happen,
what he's going to do when he finds out, which
he kind of deep down knows that is Pussy's the rat.
Pussy's going to have to go sleep with the fishes.
I really like that though, that they couched the the profound,
you know, prophetic visions in the midst of this guttural
you know, bloating and gas sequence. That's really kind of hilarious.
So once again, Tony is not just a a general.
He's almost a kind of a king. And if you know,
from scripture and from the ancient classical literary tradition, kings
were oftentimes seen as prophetic characters. The dream that the
king has Nebugineeser and Daniel right Pharaoh's dreams. Kings were
believed to have prophetic dreams, and so Tony also has
this kingly type of role and so he is having
prophetic dreams, but at the same time he doesn't know
how to interpret that. It's just so foreign to his
kind of pragmatic mind. But eventually he's going to start
figuring out that, you know, a lot of what's been
happening to him was kind of synchronicity manifesting, archetypal relationships
manifesting to tell him that he's actually seen the future.
What do you think, I mean, don't you see that
there's these esoteric things that keep coming up, these passing references,
even the literary and there will even be esoteric and
occult refer and says later on.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and another thing about him being the king is
he always has to watch his back because somebody's.
Speaker 2: Yes, because of treachery, treachery and take his position. Yeah,
if you're at the top of the heap, everybody wants
to take you down. Yeah, you know, Caesar right at
two brute right.
Speaker 4: And so in that way, he ends up having to
kill a lot of the people who are loyal to
him and who he's supposed to be sworn to be
protecting in this brotherhood. Tony, I think throughout the whole
of the show he kills more of his loved ones
than he does of his enemies.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, this is one of the tragedy. This is
part of the reason why Tony is a tragic character
is that, I mean, the role of being a king
or the head of an army, so to speak, is
that everybody below you, it resents you. They don't trust
your leadership, They want to take you down, they want
to see you follow when I see you fail. And
so what Tony this even comes up? I think it's
season three or four where there's almost a kind of
a mutiny, right, Paully resents Tony, even sal at one
point kind of resents and criticizes Tony as mad at him.
Christopher resents and is mad at Tony, and so do
even some of the other underlings. And Tony has this
sit down meeting I think with sal or Paully, and
he basically just says, you don't know what it is
to be in my position. He's like, I have to
deal with stuff that I can already read you and
tell you that you can't handle this. And that's how
he's so successful against all of his enemies and against
Johnny Sack, his main rival towards the later seasons, is
that he can already tell that they can't put up
with it, they can't deal with what he deals with.
So it takes you almost feel like it takes the
kind of personality like Tony to handle what he did.
And it's not just IQ. It also requires this kind.
Speaker 1: Of like.
Speaker 2: You have to be like a general almost is what
I'm trying to say.
Speaker 4: They did such a good job or he the actor
did throughout the entire series starting off is like the
second in command under Junior to becoming this really frightening character,
Like he gains weight, he gets meaner, he gets nastier,
he gets darker. The way that he walks changes, the
way that he talks changes. It's just he becomes more
of a monster mobster as the show goes on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that they intentionally are making him more like
a bear, Like that's why that bear comes out of
the woods randomly and Carmela and aj are afraid of it.
They start freaking out, But that's because it's the real
fear Tony. They're afraid of the monster, the bear that
Tony's turning into.
Speaker 4: Because in the beginning you think he's a teddy bear,
but then by the end he's a big bat, grizzly bear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's see what my next note was. By the way,
the sequences where you see Tony, you'll notice the show
episodes will constantly open with Tony lying there in the bed,
and then maybe one as'll open up or you'll see
him kind of like with his hair all messed up.
All of those sequences of him lying there in the
bed are foreshadowing. They're telling you what the show is
going to show you at the end. Because what is sleep.
It's a form of death. Okay, so those are all
versions of foreshadowing. We're watching the transformation of Tony. Like
you said, he just he kind of grows into this
sort of bloated kind of like he just sort of
waddles around and he walks around like a like a
degenerate king. And that's kind of what he becomes because
he can't lose. That's what's so surprising about this character
is that you know, when you're watching any other mob movie,
you just keep waiting, and you know, when you know Scarface,
you know his moment's coming.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: He's sitting there with a giant pile of cocaine and
he's got the machine gun, and you know the Feds
are coming in. He's done for it, or the other mobster,
whoever it is that comes and takes him down. You
know he's at his end. That's a tragedy. How's a
good fellow's end? Does really go to get killed? Or
is he? I can't remember what up to it anyway,
but you know, you eventually know these characters are going
to go down, and you're just waiting the whole the
whole show, Tony. No, nothing happens to Tony. That's bad. Really,
even when the FBI, the FBI keeps making these moves
and you keep oh, now they've got the bug in
the basement, they're gonna get him, and then Meadow takes
the lamp to college. They spent this whole, like three
three episodes just trying to get this bug in Tony's basement.
Speaker 4: A lot of it is through no conniving of his own.
It's just like dumb luck.
Speaker 2: That it's no, it's fake, it's it's fate. He's faded
to be this general, this king that's unstoppable. He's an
unstoppable force until he himself is his own undoing. And
that's the whole point of this tragedy, is that so
the FBI moves against him with the surveillance. And then
other people start taking medication. Uh, this was an interesting point.
Other people are talking about taking medicine's lithium, prozac, all
this kind of stuff. It doesn't help anybody. Adriana doesn't.
Adriana start taking something.
Speaker 4: She got durable boll syndrome, right, But.
Speaker 2: Her and and Christopher get hooked on heroin. Remember, yeah,
they have a whole season of being heroin addicts. And
this is what prompts Christopher to go into rehab. And really,
Christopher is who Tony is grooming to be the number two.
He wants Christopher to run things. He thinks Christopher is
the best potential candidate because he's family. He's Carmelo's cousin.
Speaker 4: In essence, he's the son that Tony.
Speaker 2: You know that isn't right. And and Christopher is a
weird mix because he's dumb and smart at the same time. Right,
he's ironically really talented. If you remember when he goes
and takes acting lessons, he blows everyone away at how
good he is at acting. I mean he even brings
the acting class to tears. They can't believe it. But
he's also unstable, and then somebody in acting says something
to him that he takes serious and he knocks the
guy out. So it's like he just like he could
have been an excellent, amazing actor, and he just runs
out of there because some guy made a joke in
the midst of acting. So you can tell that Christopher
himself is unstable. There's mention of Christopher's life and how
he was kind of raised by a single mom and
his mom was a drunk that actually comes up, so
he didn't have a good parenting. This is part of
the reason why Christopher has fallen into this life of
being a gangster. And there's a couple of times that
This is what I like with Christopher is that there's
a couple of times where you think, wow, he's actually
going to be, you know, the guy that takes over
after Tony. He's going to be running things, right. Tony
eventually promotes him the basically number two, but Christopher himself
is his own worst enemy, right. Christopher ends up to
deal with his guilt and pain. He ends up on Heroin.
This almost destroys his relationship with Adriana, who's the best
thing to haven't him. She is the one that actually
tries to get him out of that life, right, not intentionally, well, actually,
at the beginning she kind of wants him to get
out of it. She's worried he's going to get killed.
But then, just like with Carmela, when she starts noticing
all the fancy shoes, the Gucci, Prada diamonds that come
from this life, doll and this is that the key,
the key reason why in many ways Carmela is more
of a hypocrite than other people is that Carmela knows
what's going on, but she hides behind this I'm a wife,
you know, I'm a wife.
Speaker 4: I don't know pay for him, Yeah, she.
Speaker 2: Hides behind all this piety yea. But Tony actually can
call her out because he knows that she's only doing
all this because she also likes the big diamonds, the
big house, the prestige.
Speaker 4: Of being the first lady of a mob family.
Speaker 2: Well, and and the fancy the shoots, the house and
all the all the goodies.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so she even admits that when she's either talking
to the psychiatrist or the other priest and she has
this gigantic diamond on it, and then she hides it
because the priest or the psychiatrists like, well, you seem
to be benefiting from this lifestyle, maybe that's why you
don't want to get out of it. And she's kind
of like she's confronted with her own hypocrisy, but she doesn't.
She kind of counts the cost. And then we have
that season where briefly they split up, and you know,
she goes and finds the money in the bird feeder
that Tony had hidden, the forty thousand dollars there. She
goes and invests it. She wants to, you know, invest
in these development projects, this house that she has built,
because she knows, as Tony has said throughout the show,
the life of a mobster is eighty percent you're in
the can or what is It's a you're either in
the can or you're dead, right, you're either on the
Morgue table or you're in the prison. So Carmela knows this.
She's basically just worried about her own survival and the kids.
But even her character is a tremendous she's a tremendous
hypocrite because she's always hiding, just like the grandmother, behind
this facade of I'm doing this for the kids. I'm
doing this for the family. But if she really loved
the family, would she have them in this lifestyle.
Speaker 4: No? Well, that's another question about Tony. Is he a
psychopath or sociopath or what Because you think he's doing
this for his family, he's he has to murder people
or they'll come murder his family.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And there's also I mean, and we know Tony
is a philanderer. He's very open. It's it's pretty open.
Speaker 4: They all are.
Speaker 2: Well. But what I'm saying is that there's an interesting
sequence where she falls in love with Furio, this other
you know, Goofy, you know, ponytail guy with the wild
crazy shirts that he wears. She has this this affair
with with Furio in her mind and but she never
actually acts on it because Furio is like terrified of Tony, right,
And Tony there's a hilarious sege where he calls her
out of this.
Speaker 3: She's like, oh, you made him a flangling, you made
me sleeping around? What about you, Infurio?
Speaker 2: Huh, what about you? Emperial Towny.
Speaker 3: It never happened.
Speaker 2: I never slept with Furio. Right. But it doesn't matter
because the whole point is that she wanted to write.
She wanted that. And you know, like Jesus says, if
you're committing adultery in your heart, kimmying adultery. So Tony's
really just kind of a more honest character. It's not
that he's good, but it said he's more honest.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, because she is kind of the moral compass
of the show. You think, you think, but then her
actions are like you said, she's hypocritical. She takes him
back when she shouldn't take him back.
Speaker 2: You know, she likes the riches, Yeah, she is. She
loves the glamour and the money and the wealth more
than she loves the truth of what it would cost
to actually get the family out of that lifestyle. Because
if she really loved her kids, I mean, she has
to know that that lifestyle is dangerous. She's always harping
at Tony about how dangerous it is and what he's
the situation he's putting them in. Well, doesn't she know
that the kids are susceptible to this danger with this lifestyle?
So why is she not running to the beyond? In fact,
when she goes to the psychiatrist and the other priest,
they basically tell her this and she's like, well, you know, ooh,
I don't know if I really want to, you know,
count the cost to get out of this lifestyle because
in a lot of ways, it's really easy and it's
really nice. So from a character study perspective of Carmela,
I think that she is for a lot of people
hard to stomach because she's really hypocritical. And it's not
that some of the moral criticisms she makes aren't correct,
it's that she doesn't. She hides behind the piety, I
think is what makes people really not about it.
Speaker 4: It'll be critical, and she has no backbone when it.
Speaker 2: Comes to standing up to him, because Tony knows her weakness.
Remember when he makes her really mad, what is he
goes and buys her this big diamond.
Speaker 4: Necklace because she found him cheating. So he.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he knows, but he knows her weakness. Yeah,
which is you know, jewels and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's move on as we get we need
to how long were you been going for? Not too bad?
An hour and a half, so hopefully we can keep
this to about two hours. Maybe there's an interesting sequence
where AJ sees the dead when Tony's mom eventually does die,
ghosts appear. There's a sequence where Tony or somebody sees
Pussy in a mirror. AJ sees the grandmother in the hallway. Remember,
so we're starting to see that there's flashes of the
dead being seen, right.
Speaker 4: Well, not only that, but when the AJ sees the grandma,
that's the beginning of his traumatic episode, his panic attacks
like Tony. So the grandma has affected Tony with the
panic attacks. And then again to the grandson a J
panic attacks.
Speaker 2: Yes, because as you put here your note is good.
You said AJ sees the ghost of the grandmother and
this is the beginning of his trauma, like Tony with
the devill ghoul. Then we have the very interesting reference
by the Jewish psychologist to Carmelo when she goes. He says,
have you read crime in Punishment? And Crime and Punishment
is great because it's in many ways it's very similar
to the story of the Sopranos. You have, is it?
Raskolnikov is the main character who has murdered somebody because
he overhears stories of great men and he thinks, well,
if the great men of the world, like Napoleon and
different generals, you know, basically just killed whoever they wanted
to to become great men. Why don't I just kill
somebody and become a great man? I mean, everybody else
seems to do this in history, so why not me?
And then, as you know, if you've read Crime and Punishment,
the rest of the book is basically Raskolnikov dealing with
the guilt of what he did and only finding redemption
at the end of his life through Sophia, who represents
grace and wisdom, the girl who ended up being the prostitute,
who's the one, the only one that truly loves him. Right,
she keeps visiting him while he's in the work prison
camp for murder, and then finally at the end he repents. Right,
So you think that so that there's the reason that
the psychiatrist recommended to Carmela to re Crime and Punishment
is because he sees her as a character like perhaps
a Sophia, or like even a Raskolnikov, in the sense
that she's guilty for being part of this, and so
he's recommending that book to her for maybe for her
to repent or to come out of this life, because
that's what he tells her. The priest basically says the
same thing to you. You need to get out of
this life. It's not gonna it's not going to be
end well for you. And this is another reason why
it is. I think it's true at the end that
Carmela is also killed because she doesn't heed the warnings.
She stays in the life. They're constantly warned. The dead
are appearing to them to tell them that this will
lead to your death.
Speaker 4: Well throughout the show, most of them have a moment
where they could get out, but they stay in and
then that leads to their death.
Speaker 2: Correct, They have an out multiple times, in fact, all
of them really, I mean it, maybe except for Tony,
although I guess, you know, conceivably if they wanted to,
Tony could just fly off the to an island somewhere
if he wanted to. I guess.
Speaker 4: The day that Adriana died, she could have chosen to
leave and go into witness protection, but she.
Speaker 2: Chose the lie and to go to well well, no, actually, well,
chrispher made her choice, and Adriana in a choice because
if Christopher hadn't gone to call Tony, remember, then Adriana
wouldn't have been killed if he had gone. He said
I gotta go back. I'll be back in a minute. Adriana. Uh,
he didn't have to go. He didn't have to go
talk to Tony, right, he could have just left and
then conceivably they, I mean the FBI had it arranged
to where he would have even had a movie deal yep.
I mean he would have had his whole dream to
be a movie producer, even though he does in a
way produced that terrible movie in the final season.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite things about Christopher is that he
never loses his his mob ness, his mafianess. Even when
he's dealing with Hollywood moguls and Ben Kingsley and other
people where he should be polite, he is still one
hundred percent mobster, using his mob to lean on people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he threatens Ben Kingsley when Ben Kingsley doesn't want
to be in his dumb version of Saw. It's ba
Christopher's come up with this terrible idea for a movie
that's like Saw mixed with Mafia. Yeah, and it's a
zombie mobster basically, which the movie actually does get made
in six. Season six is one of the funniest comedic
elements in the whole show. But he you know, he
tries to throw his weight around with Ben Kingsley, you know,
and he ends up him whoever's with him, I forget
who it's Polly or somebody, but basically just he punches
Lauren butcall and steals her, you know, swag bag, you know,
of thousands of dollars worth of material. So that is
an interesting aspect to Christophers that he never alters who
he is with who he's around, right, you know when
he gets around that Hollywood guy that is the screenwriter,
you know, the screenwriter starts trying to throw his weight
with Christopher, and Christopher's like, look, you owe me twenty
thousand dollars, right, I'm gonna give you a week. And
the screenwriter guy's like, oh yeah, you're in the mafia.
Yeah a week, okay, yeah, whatever, Christopher. Christopher shows up
a week later, beats the crap out of the guy
within the inch of a show his life, right, and
then he beats him up again. Right, the guy ends
up getting video him so he yeah. By the way,
I don't forget the sequence And was it season two
or three that was great with John Favreau where you
have breaking to the fourth wall. John Favreau playing John
Favreau in the show shows Up, gets Christopher to tell
him stories, and then takes Christopher stories and puts them
into his show that he's making.
Speaker 4: Right So, I'm surprised he didn't even kill him for that.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, he was. I guess, you know, if you're
an A list kind of person like Ben Kingsley or
a producer famous, you know, like you're maybe that's a
little bit above what Christopher could do. Because even though
Christopher is kind of a number two or three guy, like,
he doesn't have the ability to just go, you know,
kill anybody in Hollywood. He's not that big of a player.
Speaker 4: His attitude is like, you don't know who I am,
and he'll he'll punch anybody in the phase, it doesn't
matter who it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, Christopher does have the right amount
of balls. And that's that's one reason why Tony does
like Christopher is that he sees in Christopher that sort
of fearlessness that he has. In fact, Christopher is so
fearless eventually that he you know, there's a couple of
times where he snaps and he's ready to kill Tony.
You know. You we even think a couple of times
he's going to you know, when it comes to the
situation where Tony gives Adriana a ride home, Christopher is
absolutely convinced that Tony slept with her, that they had sex,
even though they actually didn't because they wrecked. Uh, you know,
he comes into the club to bout it, being drunk,
firing off the gun that Tony takes him out to
outside the city and there, you know, he's about to
shoot him in the head. You think it's all over
with Steve Bashimi basically convinces Tony not to do it.
And so there's there's two or three instances like this,
you know, where where Tony and Christopher have this this
sort of confrontation and you you really you're on your edge,
you or see you don't know where it's going to go,
and you just wait, you just wait. The whole time,
you think Christopher is going to be Tony's downfall. And
that was another thing that was really good about the show.
You keep anticipating, Oh, it's going to be Christopher, it's
going to be Chrisopher and Adriana. They're going to be informants,
they're going to be flipped, they're gonna you know, go
shoot Tony. They're gonna go crazy, you know. And no,
it never happens, and it doesn't end with Christopher the
way you think. Nope, you don't expect Adriana to get killed,
and you don't expect Christopher to die the way he does.
That was crazy.
Speaker 4: But Adrian Adriana has the same problem as Carmela because
she stays with Christopher because he's rising up and up
and up, and she's waiting for the one day we
make enough money, he'll marry me. We'll move out of
this crappy apartment and we'll have a house. You know,
all her dreams will come true. She's waiting on Christopher
this whole time, and she could have got out, and
she has a terrible ending because she put all of
her eggs in the Christopher basket.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and somebody was asking about Luren Bacall. That's who
Christopher punches in the face and steals her swag bag. Yeah, exactly.
There were quite a few interesting cameos. David Lee Roth
made a cameo at the poker game, Frank Sinatra, Junior
Max a cameo, Ben Kingsley, Lauren Baccall, Jon Favreau, and
probably a couple more, but there are some notable you
know Hollywood cameos. Oh the Baldwin at the end, who
went who plays Tony in Christopher's Terrible movie?
Speaker 4: Pretty much the bald playing himself in a bad movie?
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, what is this ecstasy? Oh, there's an interesting
some references to when uh Meadow has her phase of
dating I forget his name, and he sells ecstasy. So
there's a one of the guys who's trying to work
with Tony, who's the son of one of Tony's guys.
I forget the guy's name, but Meadow dates him for
a while. You think they're gonna be together. He's selling ecstasy,
and then he ends up dead because he tried to
kind of do something against Tony. Tony has him killed,
and of course Tony lies about all the people that
he's had killed. And because if Meadow or Carmela found
out all the people that Tony had killed, they would
they would be furious. Right, So we know Tony has
Adriana killed, right, he has sal go kill still go
kill Adriana. But he always tells, you know, there's always
this plausible cover story of oh they got killed through
you know, drugs. Oh, Adriana ran off. We'll never see
her again. She's you know, she got a feeling hurt
something like that. There's an interesting reference when Meadow goes
to college to the Francis Stone or Saunders book that
you've heard me reference many times, the CIA and the
cultural Cold War right, and this is an important book
because shows the all of the CIA and the arts
throughout the entire Cold War period. That book is referenced
on purpose, you see, it's not accident normal that book
comes up, because this is telling you that the people
who are writing this show they know what they're talking about.
They know this world, the psyche, the geopolitics, they know
how this stuff goes down and how it works, or
else they wouldn't be citing books of that caliber, of
that level. It's a very famous academic work about the
CIA's role in the Cold War through the arts and
so the in in there's a flyer for this lecture.
I think Carmelo picks it. Oh, this looks interesting, right
that that's in Carmela Meadows dorm room. And so the
Saunders is supposed to be lecturing at Meadows College, which
is interesting. Then we have the reference to because again
remember the CIA mafia link, right, this is what this
is talking about. Then we have the references to Sunta Zoo, right,
and there's a there's a a little joke trope that
comes up a lot in the show where Tony and
his psychiatrists will come to a discovery or she'll recommend
a book, uh, and then he'll go read it, right,
and then he'll say something that she said or he
learned in the therapy sessions to Paully or to Christopher,
and then they'll repeat it like it was their wisdom. Right.
So that's how you get Paully saying, don't you ever
read some to zoop? Haven't you? Ain't you ever read
sonta Zoop, which we know Paully is an idiot, he
doesn't read books, right, And then you'll get Christopher will say,
you know these tropes to like there was some phrase
that the therapist told, you know, like a cliche, and
then Christopher goes around repeating it like it was his wisdom.
It's just that there's a lot of these kind of
little funny terms of phrases like that. But there's more
seeing of ghosts that comes up in season four. There's
an interesting sequence where when Tony meets the Mercedes salesman
girlfriend and they go to have their affair at the
zoo and it's in the snake reptile room. So you
have this weird Adam Eves symbolism going on here once again,
because as you know, this woman herself is a little unstable.
We later find out that, well, we know that she's
actually going to the psychiatrist with Tony, right, they're seeing
the same psychiatrist. That's how they meet. Tony goes and
flirts with her and they start having an affair. But
then Tony realizes that this woman is way unstable, and Tony,
being the sort of psychopath that he is, like he
is bad for her. Right, so she ends up obviously
you know, dying. She ends up killing herself. And so
once again we see that it's emblematic, it's foreshadowing that
that Tony is a bringer of death. He's almost an
angel of death. I mean, what is a what is
a warrior? But an a version of like an angel
of death. He's a bringer of death everywhere he goes, right,
It's it's almost like he is kind of the serpent, right,
And that sequence where they have the affair in the
reptile room at the Zoo. It's specifically showing you the
snake to associate Tony with, you know, the serpent, the
woman with Eve, and it's in the fallen state. I
thought that was really well done.
Speaker 4: It's interesting that that Tony has made it to the
top of the food chain in his circles, but nothing
he does or has brings him any happiness. Even his gumars,
all of them turn out to be a giant pain
in the butt. So nothing that he has he can
enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all the pleasures end up being pain and punishment.
That's the irony here, is that all the things that
you think are going to be the pleasures that make
you happy to turn into punishments. And that's that's the
irony of the hedonistic life. And even in that episode,
there's I think it's Polly, there's a reference it somewhere
to predators and snakes and they're watching a TV show
and Paulie is funny because he's always saying these stupid
things that really annoy Tony. He's got that, he's got
that laugh that Tony can't stand the joke. He can't
stand Pauli's jokes. He thinks they're really dumb. I swear
t do it, but it's great tea. And then they're
watching some show about snakes or something, and then Polly
has some funny line about it's like the snake in Genesis.
You know, he starts talking about it's like the Bible teah,
but it's actually true what Pauli's saying. What's the funny part.
Speaker 4: Fun fact about Polly is his character, I mean his
in real life. He has a rap sheet that was
longer than his acting credits. So he was arrested they
say twenty eight times. So Polly was a real, live.
Speaker 2: Criminal, so kind of a real I don't know if
he was an actual mobster, but at least somebody with
a big criminal rap sheet. And if you watch interviews,
I watched an interview with the cast present like it
was last year or so, twenty or so years after
the show, and the funny thing was that most of
the characters are kind of what you would expect them
to be. They're more or less who they are in
the show in terms of the way they talk and
the voices and whatnot. But Polly and Pussy are literally
the same, like they're that guy. That's really how Polly was,
and somebody's saying he was really a monster, so I
wouldn't be surprised. But in his interviews, that's how any
he dresses the same, Like he literally dresses just like
that guy. I mean, it's funny. Yeah, yes, the same Harry,
He's got the same you know, big what do you
call those seventies shirts with the big these coloring? But
there's a name for those, like a wing color. The
seventies one.
Speaker 4: The fashions in this show were terrible, like it was
like the worst of the nineties. We fashions for women.
I don't think I liked one of Carmela's hairdoos.
Speaker 2: Well, Cammela had the ultimate wine Mom Karen at one point,
I remember she got the Karen like.
Speaker 4: I didn't think her hairdis could get any worse, and
then she got the Karen haircut. I can believe it.
Speaker 2: My mother's grave tea. Haven't you read Santazo. There was
a great episode where they showed HUD as a scam.
I thought that was fascinating. If you know about the
history of HUD housing urban development, if you know about
Katherine Austin fits her whole many of the things that
she writes about talks about deals with scammery and hud.
That actually comes up in one of these episodes with
the housing development scam that they organize they clear out
the crackheads. That part was pretty funny, how they hire
other gangs to come in and clear out the brackhead
so that they can revitalize these houses. But it's all
a scam because the houses are like way overvalued for
what they are, so it's really just a way to
funnel money. There's an interesting scam that they thought up.
Speaker 4: One season they were all involved in a giant mega
building from the city, a big esplanade, a new construction site.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that becomes the main money making thing from season
four to six where Tony finally gets in on something
really big. Right, So this is this is a common
theme in you know, mafia movies, like in The Godfather
where Godfather won. They're just a local kind of crime family.
Then they expand to Vegas and by season three, Michael
Corleone has gone global. He's making giant land deals that
need the Vatican approval. So he's also created a think tank,
a foundation, a tax refoundation, but not think tank of
an ngo, a tax refoundation to hide money. So the
common thing in the Mob movies is going from the
small time to big time. And so this big water
land deal, the development deal is a big part of
how Tony is finally going to, you know, become a
really wealthy person if all of this pays off, right.
So it's all built up to this big Esplanada land deal,
this big development where they're going to make a big
it's like, I don't know, like a big mall shopping
plaza right by the water in Jersey there. Let me say,
let's go on. Horse is yeah. So Tony the horse
is interesting because Tony eventually really bonds with this race
horse that he bets on. Her name is his name
is Pyo Ma, and the horse wins Tony so much
money that he buys it, and he loves this horse
more than he loves anyone else. This is another interesting
thing where a lot of times I guess psychopathic type
people because they can't bond with humans, they'll bond with animals.
And so he bonds with his horse and then the horse,
you got it, dies, He gets cooked, he burns up.
I mean, it's almost like the horse ends up damned,
so to speak, right, just like.
Speaker 4: Everybody else that loves Tony.
Speaker 2: And so did well, Tony is a bringer of death
and the horse ends up cooked literally, And this is
another foreshadowing obviously what's going to happen to Tony's luck. Tony's fortune,
Tony's luck is eventually going to run out. This is why,
you know when he's betting and gambling in season four
and five, he can't lose, like he's just it's everybody's
kind of amazed at his like he just puts the
tokens down and you knows he wins. Then by season six,
we have that important episode where he starts losing and
he actually loses a lot of money and bets. That's
another thing that's foreshadowing what's gonna happen to Tony, right,
This is on Tony's It's it's the final act of
Tony's story. By season six, then we have the war
with Johnny Sack and all of that. Johnny Sack basically
is the rival in the New York family to running
things with Carmine Jr. Carmeon Junior is kind of incompetent,
just kind of a goofball, but Tony can manipulate Carmine
Junior better than he can manipulate Johnny Sack. And so
this there's this rivalry, and as we know, it doesn't
go well for Johnny Sack. You even think that maybe
Johnny Sack will finally be Tony's downfall. Nope, he gets cancer,
ends up dead. So basically, at that point, when Johnny
Sack dies, Tony's won. There's nobody else to even come
against her stand against Tony. There's no more rivals, there's
no the battle is won. There's nobody else that can
can conceivably take Tony down. But that that's what's so
great about how he does fall is that it's a
random guy. You don't ever even expect. It's nobody, it's
nobody important, it's nobody powerful. It's just some really pissed
off guy. Basically, let's see what else. Tony has a
really interesting dream where he meets with people that he's
killed Ralphie Pussy, and he sees the caterpillar and the
transformation to the butterfly. The caterpillars, i think, crawling on
Ralph's head and then it turns into it transforms into
the butterfly and so I think this is it's a
if it may not directly be an MK ultra monarch reference,
it's possible given the fact that the writers of the
show obviously do have awareness of the CIA's programs. The
CIA is reallylationship to the mafia. It's it's very possible
that they have a knowledge of Project Monarch. Perhaps there's
a Project Monarch element to Tony that's maybe not directly
being done by the CIA. But then again, maybe Tony
is in therapy, uh, and maybe he's been profiled as
somebody useful. Maybe the FEDS have Tony right in therapy
and and they've organized this right That's that's just speculating,
and that's never stated. I'm just saying that, who knows.
What do you think it means that Tony has this
dream where he sees the people that he's killed and
then he sees the caterpillar turning into the butterfly? Is it?
Is it? It is a monarch reference? Or is it
just symbolic? I mean, in a lot of cases in
literature or or imagery, monarchs are just the symbols of
people transforming that they're they're turning into something new. It's
the character turning over a new leaf. It's the character,
you know, coming to a new phase in his life, right,
And this does happen around this time where Tony has
his near death experience two or three. He gets shot
at the beginning of season six. He's in the coma
for several episodes, and then there's the sequence of several
episodes where Tony is in the in between. He's in
this ether, quasi purgatory, realm of the dead middle. We
don't know exactly where it is, but Tony's having to
try to figure his way out of this labyrinth that
he's stuck in, in this half dead, half awake state.
What do you think?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what else do you got?
Speaker 2: This is where we start realizing that the therapy's not
really doing anything, the Prozac's not doing anything. The Satan
there's something some reference to Satan but I can't read my.
Speaker 5: Note episode Yeah, but that was actually kind of just
a joke, remember, because they did a quote seance and
aj played a joke on Video's kid No, I.
Speaker 2: Can't read that note something Janice satan oh Janis plays
the Ouiji board joke where she she instant messages the
kids and pretends she's Satan. That was funny. That's it
where Janis is a Satan character. But even though it's
a joke, what's interesting is that Aj, Janice, Tony, Carmela,
they all sort of exhibit a lot of traits and
characteristics of being evil in a lot of ways. Not
totally evil, but they're definitely an evil family. You could say,
Tony dreams that he is the that he's his grandfather
looking for work. And the reason that I think that's
important is that that's kind of hitting at the possibility
of this being a Ulysses type situation James Joyce reincarnation.
Tony is seeing his grandfather's experience of being an immigrant,
poor with no money and walking around trying to find
a job. Because Tony tells the story to Aj, right,
and that's just showing that he is his ancestors, and
then who's his ancestors all the way back? Well, potentially
he is a reincarnated general. Maybe he's a Roman general.
And now I don't believe recarnation. I'm just saying that
from a literary perspective, this is common in literature.
Speaker 4: I think it's interesting that Tony's son turns out to
be a sensitive kid and there's no way that AJ
could ever take Tony's place. He's taken on his depression
in all of his psychological problems, but he doesn't have
any of Tony's grit exactly.
Speaker 2: He's the antithesis to Tony. He's the failed heir apparent.
He has no intelligence and he has no courage. AJ
is terrified, mainly terrified of Tony, right, And this is
the sense in which we see the sins of the
father passed on to the to the child, because when
Tony's in therapy, he bitches about the fact that, you know,
all the ways that his parents failed him, and he's
totally oblivious throughout his life to the way that he
fails AJ and Meadow. Next comes really important literary references.
So we have Heloe's and Abelard, we have Sons Zoo,
we have Animal Farm being referenced and Lord of the Flies,
and then we have Cold Mountain. So remember, all of
the literary references in the show are very important to
understanding what kind of a show and what kind of
a tragedy this is. Okay, so something like animal Form,
we know that this is about, you know, control, it's
about It's similar to nineteen eighty four. It's you know,
the it's a New World Order critique kind of you
know work from orwell. It was very famously printed and
published by the CIA during the Cold War. A j
has to read this Lord of the Flies. We know
that's about the law of the jungle versus uh, the
law of being ruled by law and order?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Is it going to be might makes right? Or is
it going to be a constitution law, law and order? Uh,
you know, rule by law Cold Mountain. I mean I
didn't read that. That's like a boomer mom book. I'm
not going to read. But I remember it being about,
you know, the Civil War, and it has to do
with you know, dying and love, love death, waiting on
a lover. Yeah, so that could you could see that
as just another tragedy, isn't it a tragedy? Doesn't somebody
and I'm dead? Carmela begins to cheat or she actually does. Well,
they're they're kind of split up. I don't think they
ever get divorced. But she finds uh a guide AJ's
admissions guidance counselor guy, and they have a brief fling
and that's where we get the helloas Abelard reference. Then
we start getting the references to attention deficit disorder IBS,
irritable bal syndrome, new diagnoses that were new at the
time early two thousands popping up once again. Tony has
another dream sequence where he sees the dead. He sees
Carmine sr. Carmine Senor says, I'm worried about the man upstairs.
So there's the direct reference to God. And then Tony,
in this really wild surrealist dream sequence, sees himself on
TV as a TV show. So there's a meta fourth
wall break where Tony is watching Tony on a TV
show and then we see a, uh, there's Carmela in
this sequence is watching a TV show for get what
it changes to something like France or something, and this
presignifies who are going to France. I think the dream
is a premonition something bad is going to happen, right,
So that's what's said in this dream. Then we have
the opening sequence that's very interesting about Egyptian mythology, Egyptology,
the Seven Souls of the Egyptian after life and death
ka Bah. These different references to Egyptology. This is the
key to what I'm talking about. This is the esoteric
significance of the whole show. It's giving you that old
school transmigration of souls James Joyce Ulysses kind of analysis. Again,
that's common to the ancient Greek mind. Read Plato's Republic.
He teaches reincarnation, transmigration of souls. That's Socrates, that's Plato,
that's the Greeks. Presumably other Roman literature as well, probably Virgil.
I'm trying to remember if the India has reincarnation. Probably
it's been a long time, so looked that they needed.
But the point is that that same idea is also
in ancient Egyptian philosophy and theology. Egyptology also has these
ideas as well. I think that's the meaning of that sequence.
That's really weird where you have the episode that opens
with why would you have an episode opening with Egyptology?
I mean that's just like what, right. I don't think
most people would have gotten this unless you knew kind
of about esoteric type of stuff. I made a joke
about or I was thinking of Tony as Dougie, right
when Tony's in the dream world. No, it's when he
first comes out of his coma, right when he's had
his near death experience. He comes back and he's like
Dougie in season three or twin Peaks. Then we get
the fall of Junior. Junior in is up with dementia.
The Junior episode is the key. So let's remember that
by season six, we're now starting to get where the
whole show is going. We see in season actually season six,
episode one is the key to the whole end of
the show, to the finale, and to all of season six,
because Junior, with dementia grabs the gun thinks Tony is
an intruder. Because Junior is basically living in another time,
he thinks it's the sixties, and so he thinks that
all these you know, old whatever operations and scams they
were doing in the sixties is happening now. This this
mental state of Junior basically going back in time. This
is another reference to this whole idea of reincarnation. It's
the fact that Junior is living in another time because
actually the other characters are just it's an eternal return.
They're representing the tragedies of the ancient world. It's all
just recurring. That's the whole philosophy here, that's the Egyptian philosophy.
I think I think that's right. I'm not any expert
on Egyptology, but I think that's correct. If I'm wrong
about Egyptology and the seven souls of the Egyptian after
life and death and after life, somebody can correct me
in the chat. But I think that's right. But where
was that going with? So episode one of season six,
Junior shoots Tony and it ends with Tony dying basically,
not totally, but going into this what you think is
his death. He lays there, the phones next to him,
he barely hits nine to one to one, and then
the camera comes down or up. I forget how it goes,
but you just see Tony laying there in blood, and
then you see Tony laying in the hospital bed. Those
are sequences that will tell you in the final episode
what's going to happen. It's a foreshadowing. It's a almost
death foreshadowing the death it Tony is going to die
the beginning. I think it's the beginning. This is spoiler alert.
The finale. It opens with Tony again laying in the
bed asleep, and some music is playing, some weird music.
I forget what it is. In the Goofy Organs or
something that he hears, and that's foreshadowing that. Again, that
death imagery is like sleep. It's just like season six,
episode one, Sleep and Death right all telling you what's
going to happen. A couple side points. There's more literary
references here that will tell you that Tony's gonna die,
and not just Tony but also a Jan Cremelo. This is,
of course the disputed point, but I think it's if you,
if you really think about this, it's not that hard
to figure out what's going on. But basically we're we're
gonna have to see the death of Christopher first. Tony's
going to finally kill off his main guy. And the
reason he does it is because Christopher has gotten back
into being an addict, right, He's back into doing heroin.
When Christopher wrecks the truck and almost kills them both,
it's because he was high and because Christopher wasn't wearing
a seat belt, which actually Tony had told him to.
But they roll over however many times, and Christopher is
basically bleeding out uh, and Tony realizes that he was high,
so he betrayed the promise that he would not go
back to Heroin. So Tony just grabs his nose right
and suffocates him, and then of course lies, you know,
oh it wasn't me, it was the Wrack blah blah blah.
So now basically Tony has committed his final act of
I guess you could say betrayal. I mean, even though
we know that in many ways Tony was forced to
kind of kill these people, there's still evil actions, right,
He's still this bringer of death. I think the key
to six ironically, in terms of what's gonna happen, there's
a couple of things that AJ does. AJ says, he
starts laying out these weird this sort of spouting out
stuff about geopolitics. It's very bizarre because AJ is a
complete idiot, and we think maybe AJ's realized he's an idiot,
and so he starts going and reading the news and
he starts trying to figure out in the Middle East.
We hear him talking about, well.
Speaker 3: I sat in on these lectures about the Middle East,
and he's really weird and crazy that that kind of
crap's going on.
Speaker 2: And then remember what AJ says, He says, I don't know,
I was thinking, like I could go be in the
Cia or something. I could go like fight the al
Qaeda And then He's like, and then after that, I
could like learn to fly helicopters, and I could be
Donald Trump's pilot. Tony's like, oh, is that right?
Speaker 3: You're gonna go be the Donald's pilot? Is that after
you go fly over to Iraq and killoadas over there?
Speaker 2: Tony just laughs at this because it's ludicrous. But there's
an irony that AJ has actually kind of figured out
some of the problem here. And AJ says America is
like this big consumerist thing, and he says, you guys
talking to the family represent the excessive materialism and consumerism
of America, and you guys are living in a dream
and a fantasy. And so the irony here that if
we were to use archetypes, AJ is the fool AJ Paully.
Those are full archetypes. They're idiots. But good literature will
usually have the idiot fool character have wisdom, right, because
he'll have a perspective as an idiot that nobody else sees.
Everybody else is missing the obvious. And so again AJ Paully,
the two fool characters are going to consistently have.
Speaker 4: Insights it's like that meme where the low iq.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, exactly exactly. Then we see Aja taking on
these you know, he gets really into justice in the geopolitics,
the Middle East and all this stuff, which he's not
necessarily wrong. A lot of what he starts reading about
he's kind of right about. And then he has that
big spill at the at Artie's Restaurant where he calls
their body hypocrites and he says Americanism as stupid. It's
a dream, It's going to end. And this is right
after the Big nine event, and in many ways AJ's correct.
Then we have Aj reading the Yates poem William Butler
Yates Golden Dawn BFF with Crowley, the famous anti Christ poem.
Now and maybe in a big deeper sense there's a
meaning which is esoteric on a in times level. I
don't really think that's what the show is going for.
I think that they've stuck the Yates poem in here
because it's the beast that slouches towards Bethlehem to be
born is signifying the end of Tony. This is another
ominous prediction and reference to the coming death of Tony.
Tony is a kind of Antichrist. Tony is a kind
of beast. He's consistently referred to like a beast. In
the Apocalypse of John, Nero is the beast. Nero is
the Roman Emperor, and so in a way we could
almost see Tony like a kind of Roman emperor. And
Tony is going to meet his demise. Obviously in these
ominous prophetic warnings. I can't read that note something versus.
Speaker 3: Deep.
Speaker 2: I don't know what this says. Something big is coming. Yeah,
that's the reference to the Yates poem. Is that we
get the impressions something has come. It's the end times
for Tony. That's what it means. And then we have
the reference to uh, is this the last page? I
thought I had another page of notes about Tony doing acid.
Now that the acid sequence or the Peyote sequence is
important because it's another indicator of Tony seeing the beyond.
So when he goes to Vegas to party and he
does payote, he it's almost like his after death experience
where he says, has this revelation. Then he goes back
and he tells the psychiat you have it in the Peyotes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you right now, do here This ain't
old a rich, this ain't ash. When I've done the pots.
Speaker 2: I've seen it.
Speaker 3: It's more an ish, It's more than a dish.
Speaker 2: So Tony has seen that there is more than just
the here and the now. And so in a sense
again that Peyoti vision is an indicator of his coming death.
He's about to experience and meet that there's more than this.
And then we have the important reference to the CIA
working with the mafia in season six, in the last episode,
I think it's like it's either the right last couple,
but the FBI agent that is kind of, you know,
talking to Tony and trying to kind of butter him
up and get some info from him. He says, well,
you know, Tony, look, why don't you come tell us
some stuff? You know, come work with us. Look, he says,
your people hid and worked with the CIA when you
guys were hiding Lucky Luciano, right, And so the FBI
is consciously kind of drawing on that old CIA mafia alliance.
It's specifically mentioned does he do ayahuasca or is it Paoti?
I don't remember whatever I mean. He he has a
serious intense trip that he references to seeing the beyond
the spiritual world, the afterlife. So no, so people are saying, yes,
I assure you, if you go watch the show and
you pay attention to all these references, you're going to
find that this is all there. I mean that they're
not just referencing Egyptian the Journey of the Soul after
after death, William Butler yeats is Chrolean poem or whatever.
I mean. This is in there on purpose. This is
not accidental. They're not constantly referencing the CIA's connection to
the mafia for no reason. It's there intentionally, okay. And
I assure you, if you go take graduate lit classes,
they're going to talk to you about the prevalence of
eternal return. If you do Joyce Ulysses, they're going to
talk about reincarnation. So the book's about. So that's what
the Sopranos is about. It's an intent to tell a
tragedy dramedy story that's like great literature and references all
that great literature on all of these different levels. And
it executed it perfectly. And by the way, just to
sum up here, as we come to the clothes, it's
pretty I did not look at other analyzes before I
formed my opinion of the finale. I watched very closely,
and I had taken copious notes throughout the show, so
I was looking for symbols, patterns, recurring things, clues, and yes,
the clue, what do we say the jacket? The jacket
was the clue that Richie you know, gave to Tony
or whatever. And then what do we get in the
final sequence as they enter into the diner. The guy
in the member's only jacket. It's the same gray members
only jacket that Gino had. Gino is the guy that
Tony screwed over. We know that Tony's gonna die because
of season six, episode one, which foreshadows the finale. We
know that Tony is dying again. Obviously if you if
you read other people's analysis, this became very clear because
when Tony is talking to who's the fat guy that
ends up with Jennis? Bobby Bobby and they're out on
the boat and Bobby says, I think it's like, you know,
you don't hear nothing. You just you go black, You
don't hear nothing, and Tony's Tony is sitting there and
he hears him say this, and he thinks about it
and then Tony remembers Syl explaining that when he was
out at dinner and somebody came in and shot the
person he was with, Sill says, I didn't hear nothing.
You don't hear nothing. It's like it goes black.
Speaker 3: You see a you see a blash, a flash.
Speaker 2: Of light, and then afterwards you hear so And the
way that episode was shot is that the gun goes
off and then you hear it. So they wanted you
to have that vantage point that still had in that episode.
They wanted you to pay attention to the member's only jacket.
And it's not Geno that kills because Geno commits suicide.
So presumably this guy with Gino's gray members only jacket, right,
that's his brother, some relative that's furious that Tony is
the reason his brother killed himself. Or presumably he thinks
that Tony killed.
Speaker 4: The guy, right, Because season six, he's got all these
landlines that he has to navigate, and he presumably comes
out on top at the end, But he has not
improved his soul. He hasn't repented of anything. He went
back to his cheating, he went back to lying, start
to killing people.
Speaker 2: Yes, don't forget too, uh, Polly. Polly is key to
understanding the last episode, ironically, because Polly has the vision
of Mary in the strip club. I sink the virgin stript,
I tell you, Tea. I don't tell nobody this usually,
but I sink the Virgin Mary. I seen them in
the club and the butto being on My Life, tea,
I've seen it. So he sees Mary and this is
an omen and it freaks Paulie out. That's not at
the last up, it's but later on. And then Polly
sees this cat and the cat stares at Christopher, the
picture of Christopher in their little restaurant room there and
if and Paulie's really superstitious, and he's.
Speaker 6: Like, get rid of that cat. I don't like that cat.
I don't like cats. I don't like that cat.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna kill that cat. And they're all at that
leave it a cat alone. I like that cat.
Speaker 3: Leave him alone.
Speaker 2: He's just looking at a picture. He's so superstitious were
talking about, and he's I'm gonna kill that cat.
Speaker 1: Tea.
Speaker 2: I sweat got him, gonna call that kit tea And
the cat walks out in the last sequence, and Polly
looks at.
Speaker 6: It, and he knows it's an omen. He's like, something bait,
It's gonna happen. That cat, something bait, it's gonna happen.
I'm telling you tea, Tony's gonna get killed. Now, why
would there be a sequence of the Omen of the
Cat if nothing bad happens. Obviously, something bad happens in
the last sequence, and when Tony walks in and the
guy who.
Speaker 2: Did the show or the whoever produced that director of
the final episode talks about the fact that they intentionally
wanted it to be like two thousand and one, where
Bowman sees he dissociates, he sees himself. When Tony walks
into the diner, Tony's standing in the doorway, he sees
himself sitting at the other end of the restaurant, looking
back at himself. The director says, I intentionally wanted that
to be like the sequence in two thousand and one
with Bowman seeing himself in these different phases of his life.
Tony is dissociating, he's seeing himself, he's seeing that he's
about to die, but he doesn't exactly know how this
is gonna go down. So he goes and he sits
down the dings of the door obviously are the key, Like,
these dings have no meaning if nobody's gonna get killed.
But the ding is telling you that every time Tony
hears a ding, he's got to look up because it
could be somebody walking into killing. This is the life
that Tony's lived. And so the whole point of the
parking sequence with Meadow is because it's telling you that
Meadow is missing. Luckily, she's about to miss this bad
ultimate end times that's coming. So yes, the guy in
the member's only jacket gets up walks into the bathroom.
Why is he going into the bathroom? Because what does
AJ say to Tony? Tony, he says, Dad, Dad, Your
favorite scene in The Godfather is when Michael Corleone.
Speaker 3: Gets to go get the gun in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: That's obviously the key. If you've watched The godfel you
know it. AJ tells Tony that they've watched the movie
a thousand times and it's Tony's favorite scene. That's how
Tony's gonna die. The guy in the member's only jacket
is going into the bathroom just like The Godfather. It's obvious, right,
And then of course the whole point of the final sequence, obviously,
is that it goes black because he doesn't hear it,
and he doesn't hear it because of what Sill and
Bobby told him. I don't think you even hear it
when it happens, you just go black, right, And that's
why the ding of the door is Meadow not being
shot and presumably Carmela and Aj being killed. So Tony, Carmela,
and Aj all end up dead, and it's clear that
a Meadow has for whatever reason, avoided this because I
don't know. I mean, you could argue why she's not.
Is it just fate? Is it just chance? Is it
because she was the first to realize it was all problem.
Speaker 4: Maybe because she got a legitimate job and didn't choose
a life of crime.
Speaker 2: Well there was another Yeah, in the last season, there's
an important sequence where she gets drunk. Do you remember
that she has her drunken breakdown at when they're all
singing songs and she starts she's no, they're at the restaurant,
and she starts throwing things. Okay, but they're at the restaurant, yeah,
and she's she's throwing things that Junior when he's singing, right,
And then she gets up and has her drunken tell
them all off. But what she says is true, right,
So so maybe because she saw what was true and
acted on it, and she she remembers, she distances herself,
she moves out of the house, she goes off, she
wants to be at college. She wants to be away
from them. She goes to California, not even because he
really likes that guy, it's to get away. So maybe
she's spared because the impetus for most of the show
on the part of Meadow is to get out of
that lifestyle and to get away from her family. Even
though she loves her family, she knows deep down that
this is wrong. They're all wrong. There's something seriously wrong
with his family, but she can't get them to admit it.
And aj even though he also kind of starts to
realize this, he's just an idiot. He doesn't do anything
to make a change or to get out of this.
He just is there. He's like a rock. So I
think there may be a couple of the details that
I'm forgetting. Remember the horse getting burned. I mean, basically,
anything that Tony does find an attachment to ends up dead.
I don't think the bear ends up dead, but the
Baron never comes back. But there's other clues I'm sure
that I'm missing. And when it comes to what may
have been the reason for Tony being killed, some people,
I think speculate that maybe the Member's only guy Gino
had been flipped and the members only jacket guy. I
think there's a statement made to Gino that you're the
FBI's top hitter now, so maybe they had turned Geno,
or maybe this is an FBI hit on Tony. I
don't know. You could speculate that The only other plausible
sort of theory is that Tony's not killed. It's just
giving you the sequence the experience of Tony that at
every moment he does fear for his life. I don't
buy that. I mean, there's all of these clues throughout
the rest of the show in season six that are
obviously telling you that Tony's killed.
Speaker 1: I don't think.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's ludicrous to say that he's not. What's
the point of the whole sequence of Meadow not being
able to park on time? If Tony's not killed, that's
the whole point of that sequence. There's no other reason
for that. Obviously right, because it's she's narrowly missing getting killed,
would have been sitting right next to Tony and that
you know, presumably the bullet would have hit her or
he would have shot again all four members of the family.
So yes, that's my analysis. There you go. So it's
a tragedy. It's a tragedy comedy deals with all the
big questions in life, all the great big literature questions.
Ultimately it's still a pagan, psychoanalytical union eternal return psychodrama.
But still if you look at it from a literary
perspective and from a cultural perspective, and from just as
an artistic piece, it's a masterpiece.
Speaker 4: And it was so realistic that real mobsters would watch
it and they thought that somebody from the inside was
feeding the show information because it was really.
Speaker 2: Well. As I said, some of the articles I read
on it did speculate that it was based on the
the Cavalcante family. So I'm sure, again, I don't I
haven't looked into what they were specifically, you know, all
the writers were going to but I wouldn't be surprised.
I mean, I'm sure. I mean, it's just like when
Mario Puzzo did the Godfather novel. He went and just
collected real stories and just kind of kind of, you know,
composited it. So I don't doubt that at all. I
mean we saw that with Godfather three. I mean that
the you know, the Godfather three gets into the p
two lodge, the Mafia working with the CIA working, you know,
the relationship with the Vatican, John Paul the first being assassinated.
Oh that's real, that's all true, you know, historic fact.
Godfather three, the movie even gets into the Vatican banking
scandal with Roberto calve There's a character in Godfather three
that's Roberto Calvie. So I wouldn't be surprised if if
the uh, the Sopranos wasn't as mafia consulted as the Godfather.
But I don't know that for sure. All right, So
I hope you guys enjoyed this full on breakdown. I
think it. I think we broke it down good. I
do apologize because I feel like I'm missing a couple
of details with the finale. I think I've hit all
the highlights though. Oh the cat when Tony walks into
the restaurant, that yellow tabby cat, that Polly says, as
an omen, you see a giant yellow cat up on
the mural right beneath where Tony's gonna die. I don't
think that's accidental, because that's it. That's the omen. Yeah.
Then there's a lot of other details like that. And
I've only seen the show once through, so I would
guarantee you that knowing that if you went back, I
mean there's no you would find I'm sure all kinds
of you know stuff. I mean that you could die
sect this like you could dis sect Twin Peaks. I
mean it would be like a you know, a never
ending that section type of thing. And that's why this
does you know this is up there with you know,
two thousand and one with Kubrick eyesway shut, it's up
there with twin Peaks, David Lynch stuff, for that level
of depth that you really can decode it forever, and
that's when you know it's something good. Jack five dollars,
congratulations on being married. Who's married? Who got married? Oh
you mean us? Thank you, Gerald Norris, one hundred dollars.
Look at that, he said, keep going. Well, you throw
me one hundred dollars, dude, I'll keep going. I will
never stop. But hey, it's nice to know that, you know,
you could put in this much time and effort to
Sopranos because what this took us, well a few couple
of months. Yeah, I mean there was a couple of
months of watching and researching and paying attention. So so
really appreciate that, Drol Norris, that's a really generous super
chat and I really thank you for that. Evan Schultz.
Ten dollars, he's lost it where to go?
Speaker 7: If you touch this it just flies past all of
the super chats. Thank you as always, The Sopranos was
a great TV show and your analysis is insightful. Always
nice to have Jamie on. Congratulations in many years to
you both. Well, thank you Evan Schultz.
Speaker 2: He's a longtime supporter, longtime super chatter, He's been there
for what a few years now, So much appreciated, Evan.
We know you're an og when it comes to supporting
Jay's nel, so so thank you for those kind words.
And I'm glad you liked this stream Anthony for ten dollars.
It's funny. My friend watched this series recently and it
coincided with him going through phases a belief in Reincarnation
told you his other beliefs like Buddhism, nihilism, seeing himself
as a general. Oh that was the other thing. Remember
the painting Polly has that stupid painting with the horse saved.
He saves it out of the dumpster, and then he
has Tony painted as a civil as American revolutionary general.
Once again, Reincarnation Tony is a general. Would you say
that he was programmed? That is I think a potential reading.
That's what I'm trying to say with I mean, we
don't ever get the clear reference that Tony was at
some point programmed unless this was all done intentionally. And
maybe you could say, well, Tony's mom is a psychopath,
his dad was a psychopath. So if they had a
connection to the FEDS or to the CIA or something
like that, maybe, and maybe that's why the FBI agent
at the end says your family, your people, Right, you
guys worked with the CIA to hide Lucky Luciano. Right.
Maybe that's the significance to that reference and to the
MK ultra monarch symbolism that is in the show and
the Wizard of Odds stuff and the drugging. So is
the psychiatrist a handler I don't think so, but it
is interesting to, you know, speculate on is Tony a
a programmed kind of Assassin's It's something you could speculate,
but I'd have to go back and rewatch the show
from that angle to see if you could really substantiate that.
But it's an interesting theory. So that's what I think
about him being programmed. Maybe Dharma poozle seven dollars small beer.
I know, dude, but Ay has broke. Well, you don't
have to if you're broke, dude, don't worry about some
of you super jazz but much appreciated. You want to
read some supergens, We're.
Speaker 4: Here, Mike, Mike Sherman twenty dollars. Paul went to Norway
for a two season Mafia sitcom. Hilarious.
Speaker 2: Maybe he means Paulie.
Speaker 4: Paul's went to Norway for a two season.
Speaker 2: Mafia He probably means Paula. That would be funny to watch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Varsity athlete three dollars. Quasi moto predicted all of this.
The elites are the sacred and we are the profane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's really the the basis of all
the symbology from the elite perspective?
Speaker 4: Is that a quasi motive conversation they had?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: Do they remember? It was like they were making fun.
Speaker 2: Of notre yes. And it was right after the nine
event and Tony was talking to Bobby and Tony makes.
Speaker 3: That oh yeah, you know it's that you know, damas yes,
And Bobby.
Speaker 2: Thinks quasi moto is no stra damas yeah, and Tony
makes fun of him for being really domb.
Speaker 4: It's funny, s bad hastonian ten dollars, great conversation, great impersonations.
Speaker 3: Forget about it, Tony, forget about it, Crystal, that's Adriana.
Uh Carmela, Oh yeah, she can't forget about it? Huh
ye that what you're gonna do? You're gonna forget about it?
Forget about it?
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do? I like that one? What
are you gonna do?
Speaker 4: Forget about it?
Speaker 2: On my life?
Speaker 4: Te okay KEI going? Don John, Don John ten dollars,
excellent show.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Don John, You're an excellent that's an excellent.
Speaker 4: Name, Don John Daniel ya Ania fifty dollars. Oh, thank you,
great stream. We have to check the show out.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, I'm sorry for spoiling it. Although that's how
it goes. If you watch this holes maybe you cut
it off and didn't watch the ending, so you don't
know what happens. But I think you will agree with
mine nelysis if you see the end of the show. Okay, Sean,
But by the way, Daniel, thank you for that fifty
dollars much appreciated. Shout out Daniel and Nia.
Speaker 4: Sean and Finnegan five dollars. Can you explain revelation of
the method and generally why Hollywood does it.
Speaker 2: Well? On an esoteric level, it's done I think to
just prepare people for what's coming, or to kind of
cast a spell that you see something before it happens
in fiction, and so it kind of casts a spell
over you. It might make you. You might be conditioned
to it, right, So from a kind of a psychological
warfare perspective, it's like gaslighting, so you're conditioned to it.
So basically, I think that's the reason for why this
kind of stuff would pop up. It's not always intentional.
Sometimes the arts just have that quality to them where
they can in a way predict the future. So there
could be a higher level kind of divine providence that
is the basis for the arts predicting the future. Sometimes
it's human agency that's intentionally conditioning people to accept messages.
Governments have done that forever, you know, embedding messages into fiction.
I cover that in my books. So you know, you
can have different motivations and actors, so to speak, within history.
So it's not always one thing, right, there can be different.
So but from the psyops perspective, revelation of the method
of functions to condition, and then from the esoteric perspective,
you could argue that it's a kind of a maybe
a casting of a spell where you're, you know, gaslighting
your audience before you do what you're going to do.
All right, Well, there you go, two and a half hours.
I think we covered any other closing remarks on.
Speaker 4: Us Super Sopranos stream.
Speaker 2: All right, everybody, thank you. If you enjoy this, please
like it and share it, subscribe, and if you do
have a chance, definitely watch The Sopranos and tell me
if you think I'm right or if I got something wrong.
Leave me comments below below the show if you're watching
this after the live show, and let me know if
you think I got something wrong. Everybody, have a good
night and we'll talk to you soon. Next up, by
the way, is we will do our top ten X
Files episodes. We've been we've been for a long time
wanting to do a really good X Files breakdown. So
we're gonna pick like the top ten. It's gonna be difficult.
It might not be ten, might be twelve, fifteen, but
we're gonna pick the best ones we think. I've seen
X Files many times through. It's a great show, the
classic for you know, conspiracy TV shows, And that will
be next up for