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