To honor the career of James Gandolfini who suddenly passed away yesterday I have posted the top 10 episodes of The Sopranos from Time magazine's list. Gandolfini's performance as Tony Soprano was an integral part of the show's success and helped usher in a new era of television, arguably the best time for quality television ever. He will be missed. If you have a favorite episode not found on the list, please add it to the comments.
1. College
(Season One)
This gemlike season one episode captured the parallels, and the
tension, between the family and Family parts of Tony's life. He goes to
New England on a college tour with daughter Meadow, whose denial about
what he really does for a living he encourages. ("There is no Mafia!")
After he spots a former wiseguy gone into witness protection, he decides
to work a little business into the family getaway by tracking down the
rat and killing him, with his bare hands. "College" cemented fans'
affection and repulsion for Tony, letting us see him as a caring father
and an unforgivable monster at the same time. And bonus points for the
B-plot in which Carmela nearly cheats on Tony—with a priest. Jesus, Mary
and Joseph!
(Directed by Allen Coulter;
written by Jim Manos, Jr. and David Chase)
2. Pine Barrens
HBO
It's wrong, in a way, to include this most un-Sopranos-like of Sopranos
episodes; in a series that unfolds like a novel, "Pine Barrens" is a
distinctly self-contained short story. Paulie Walnuts and Christopher go
to make a routine collection, from a Russian named Valery, which goes
awry, ending with the Russian in the trunk of Paulie's car. When they
try to dispose of his body in the snowy Jersey woods, they find he's
still alive—and as a former commando, far better off in the Siberian
conditions than they are. The pursuit turns into a brilliant comedy of
violence and bonding moment. The episode (directed by later guest Steve
Buscemi) has taken on a life of its own among fans, to the possible
annoyance of the show's writers, who have said repeatedly: The Russian
is not coming back people—get over it! Dosvedanya, Valery.
(Directed by Steve Buscemi; teleplay by Terence Winter, story by Tim Van Patten & Terence Winter
3. The Sopranos Pilot
HBO
The series became subtler in its themes after the pilot, but the
episode that started it all does a fine job establishing the show's
premise, themes and cinematic look. After having a panic talk—brought on
by job stress, but more so by the demands of family and his toxic
mother Livia—the mob boss begins seeing a therapist on the down-low.
Grousing to Dr. Melfi in his first sessions, Tony lays out the
generational complaints that will inform the whole series and make the
mobster's problems universal: that he can't balance his family and work
lives, that he feels he's come of age after the best times of his
business have past and that men have abandoned the "Gary Cooper"
standard of strong silence (a model Tony's not able to live up to
anyway). The show's richest days are ahead, but The Sopranos starts off with a bang.
(Written and directed by David Chase)
4. Whitecaps
(Season Four)
HBO
In The Sopranos' most searing fight, no one dies, or even
draws blood. And while the series has featured bludgeoning, rape and
dismembering, I'm not sure if any scene has been more uncomfortable for
viewers to sit through than the showdown that leads to Tony and
Carmela's separation, after one of Tony's goomars calls and taunts Carm
on the phone. It is a pitch-perfect rendering of one of those
long-simmering meltdowns in which a couple hurls every grenade in their
marital arsenal of grievances, and Edie Falco proves her Emmy-worthiness
in a performance that's brave, fearful and just the right amount
unhinged.
(Directed by John Patterson;
written by Robin Green, Mitchell Burgess and David Chase)
5. Employee of the Month
(Season Three)
HBO
Dr. Melfi is the closest thing The Sopranos has to a
narrator: the probing, if not all-knowing, voice that walks Tony through
his blood-slicked psyche. She's also a stand-in for the viewer, since
she's Tony's main confidant outside the mob world. Which is why it was
all the more horrible to see her brutally raped in a parking garage, and
then to see her assailant let go on a technicality. Seeing her shed her
professional calm and break down was anguishing; but seeing her wrestle
with—and reject—the revenge fantasy of having Tony mete out justice was
inspiring. When Tony asked the shaken doctor if anything was wrong and
she answered—after a pause—with a resolute "No," she made us confront
the parts of ourselves that so badly wanted her to say "Yes."
(Directed by John Patterson; written by Robin Green and Mitchell Burgess)
6. Join the Club
(Season Six)
HBO
There are Sopranos fans who hate David Chase's
dream-sequence episodes. I'm not one of them. Although "coma-sequence"
episode would probably be more appropriate here. Shot in the gut by
Uncle Junior (during a senior moment), a comatose Tony lives out a
parallel life in his mind. In this world, he's a heating-systems
salesman, whose ID has been switched with someone named "Kevin Finnerty"
on a business trip. This alterna-Tony has no New Jersey accent. He's
faithful to his wife. And when he gets blown off by the hotel staff or
hassled by Buddhist monks, it never occurs to him to head-butt them. The
fantasy sequence (which continues into the "Mayham" episode) inverts
our image of Tony, showing him, on the borderline of life and death,
meek, stranded, friendless and unable to find his way home.
(Directed by David Nutter; written by David Chase)
7. Whoever Did This
(Season Four)
HBO
First of all, severed head in a bowling bag: that gets you into
the top ten off the bat. But this episode stands out not so much for the
shock of Ralph Cifaretto's murder (and disposal) as for what it says
about Tony. Ralph's son is badly injured in a bow-and-arrow accident;
meanwhile, a stable fire kills Tony's beloved racehorse Pie-Oh-My. When
Tony accuses Ralph of setting the fire for insurance money, Ralph make a
denial that sounds like an admission ("It's an animal!"). They fight;
it gets out of control; Ralph ends up dead. But what's most chilling is
what Tony says just before killing Ralph—that Pie-Oh-My never did
anything to hurt anyone—which is almost exactly what Ralph said earlier
about his son. Tony doesn't just kill Ralph, he sends him out of the
world equating his innocent child's life with Tony's horse's, which
pretty much sums up Tony's moral universe.
(Directed by Tim Van Patten; written by Robin Green & Mitchell Burgess)
8. Long Term Parking
(Season Five)
HBO
This season-five episode not only contains possibly the series'
funniest line ("We're in a f___ing stagmire," by the malaproping Little
Carmine Lupertazzi) but its most pitiful whacking. Christopher's fiance
Adriana, pressured into informing for the Feds, is trapped between
ratting on the Family and spending years in prison and makes a desperate
try to escape by persuading Christopher to run away with her. Chris
wavers, chooses Tony over his woman, and one long drive with Silvio and a
short crawl through the leaves later, Ade is snuffed out. In her last
season, Drea De Matteo takes a big-haired, gum-snapping character that
always verged on parody and makes her a fully empathetic person,
exploited by both sides, wanting nothing more than love and a family—OK,
and the occasional expensive gift—and getting two bullets put in her
for it.
(Directed by Tim Van Patten; written by Terence Winter)
9. Funhouse
(Season Two)
HBO
Season two wasn't The Sopranos' finest, but the finale
searingly ended Vincent Pastore's storyline as Sal "Big Pussy"
Bonpensiero, Tony's good friend, captain and rat. Tortured by suspicion
of Pussy, Tony has a dream in which he sees his friend, who will soon
sleep with the fishes, as literally a fish on ice. The whole season has
been an acting showcase for Pastore as the conflicted, trapped Pussy
(recall his anguished breakdown in Tony's bathroom in "D-Girl"), but as
Tony takes Pussy out for one last boat ride, James Gandolfini also shows
how he can take his character from anger to sorrow to self-pity to
brutal resignation with one well-inflected squint of Tony's piggy eyes.
It's Tony's toughest hit and one he, and we, will never quite get over.
(Directed by John Patterson; written by David Chase and Todd A. Kessler)
10. Where's Johnny
(Season Five)
HBO
Most top-ten lists are really a top-nine list, and an eleven-way
tie for tenth. There are probably a good dozen episodes that could fill
out this final slot, but there needs to be at least one place on this
list for an ordinary Sopranos episode, with no big whackings or
stunts, that just moves the plot another three yards downfield. (In a
way, a list of best episodes is antithetical to the novel-like Sopranos—do
you have a top-ten list of Dickens chapters?) This episode from early
in season five advances several storylines, including the succession
battle in the New York Mafia and cousin Tony B.'s doomed attempt to go
straight by becoming a masseur. Meanwhile, Uncle Junior has started
repeating a taunt at Tony's high-school sports abilities: "He never had
the makings of a varsity athlete." As Junior is picked up by the police
wandering Newark, looking for his dead brother, it's clear that the
insult is just one more marble leaking from his head. But it's small
comfort to Tony, who asks, hurt, "Why's it got to be something mean? Why
can't you repeat something good?... Don't you love me?" Junior's words
hurt Tony as badly as the slug he pumps into him a season later: in The Sopranos, the cruelest hits can come at the Sunday dinner table.
(Directed by John Patterson; written by Michael Caleo)
(Top Ten episodes chosen by TIME's television critic James Poniewozik)
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