“The Sopranos” premiered 20 years ago today (January 10, 1999).

I am assuming anyone reading this thread has seen the show, so I am not going to put my reply in spoiler tags.


I do not think anyone else in the family would have been killed. The killer would have put one in Tony, dropped the gun and been out the door in seconds. He would not have taken the time to shoot the other members of his family. Remember when the Hairdo was killed earlier in the season in front of Sil? The mafia whacks the target and no one else, even if they are sitting at the same table. I don't think it being Tony's family would have mattered. And even though Meadow was entering the door and could have theoretically been in the killer's way seconds after the hit, her shock and horror would have made her easy to get past or even push out of the way (I doubt the killer puts one in her, but merely sidesteps or pushes her out the way).

I have long bought into the theory that Patsie could have been the one behind the hit, but the question then becomes, what does he have to gain, besides belated revenge, in doing so? With his son marrying Meadow, he'd basically be a part of Tony's family and could very well become Tony's number 2 or even the advisor since Sil was in a coma. He certainly had the brains to be a good consigliere. By having Tony whacked, he possibly looks a bit of power in the Jersey crew since any ties to the boss are now gone since Tony is now dead. Would have become the next boss of that crew? Hard to say. Despite Paulie's urge to do less before reluctantly taking over Carlo's old crew, it's hard to imagine him just sitting by and watching Patsie become his new boss. I never really gave a lot of thought to Paulie have been the one to orchestrate the hit on Tony, but it's always possible that he was angry after being guilt tripped into taking over Carlo's crew that he reached his breaking point and tipped off NY. Back to Patsie, there was that moment earlier in the episode at the house when Tony got him a drink and Patsie had that look that indicated that he was still not a fan of Tony's.

A lot of question marks, and certainly fun to ponder.

 

I know a lot of people do not like The Test Dream episode, since the dream takes up close to half of it, but I think it is brilliant. I love all of the symbolism and hidden meanings that can be found in the dreams. The dream sequences and therapy scenes with Dr. Melfi receive some hate from some, but to me the show isn't nearly as good and deep without them.

 

Good point. I'll do likewise.

Many shots were fired in that Hairdo hit, and many could have been fired in the finale hit. As I said, it's pure conjecture and amounts to whether those behind the hit wanted to leave Carm or AJ alive. We saw how the captains in Tony's crew were not exactly happy at the prospect of taking care of Carm when Tony was in the hospital. So there could have been motivation to take them all out, and there is enough ammo in the gun to do it at that close range. Sil wasn't the target at the Hairdo hit, and Tony reamed out those who gave the order about the danger to Sil. It all really depends if the goal was to take out Carm and the kids, too.

Perfectly reasonable thoughts, and I don't disagree. But as I say, the killer was under orders and it depends what the orders were. Meadow could have also been a target for all we really know. But I do think it's reasonable to assume she survived as a traumatized witness. That seemed to be the point of the extended sequence of her trouble parking, along with the implication that Tony was distracted and looking directly at Meadow walking through the door when it happened.

I believe Paulie and Patsie had agreements with New York to take over and run things on their own. The way they interacted with each other before arranging to flub the Phil hit was very telling. Like all the captains, they were disturbed by the other captains disappearing, separate from their own issues with Tony. All the captains suspected Tony killed Ralphie, and they also knew if he was capable of killing his cousin, Tony B (even though they thought he deserved it), that any of them were in danger for any reason. After Tony seemed to "win" by killing Phil, there may have been some panick by Paulie and Patsie. Tony put a lot of pressure on Paulie to take Carlo's slot--ultimately convincing him to put aside his superstitions and accept by threatening to give it to Patsie--and Patsie may have discussed that with Paulie directly. Patsie would have felt passed over and Paulie would have felt disrespected. One can easily imagine the decision for the hit coming out of that conversation.

Was there any other way the hit could have been planned at Holstens other than the Meadow-Parisi connection? I don't think so. Jamie-Lynn has been working regularly but nothing interesting. She's a good actress. I think if Chase wanted to do a sequel/epilogue as a miniseries with her as the lead, it could be great.

Indeed, every time I watch I notice something new about the dream. Recently rewatching, I noticed Carm's comment, "You can't have your horse in here." Sounds suspiciously like "you can't have your whores in here."

 

I don't there would have been worry about taking care of Carmela if Tony was dead. They didn't like it when he was in a coma because they knew they had to do it then cause if they didn't and Tony came out of it, there would be a lot of explaining to do. Once Tony is dead, she is just another widow of a made guy who was whacked. I doubt Ginny Sac was taken care of once Johnny died in prison (remember Carm saying she had to move in with her daughter, several episodes later). I guess Carm could always check the bird feeder again, LOL.

Yep, that is why I love the brilliance of the last sequence. By getting that continuous shot of the door from Tony's point of view, he looks up and his point of view becomes just black because he is dead. Given all that he done, Tony was probably lucky to get an instant death like that. Dead in literally a second.

Very possible. And we already had seen that Paulie's loyalty was questionable to say the least back in Season 4, and had made it clear on several occasions that he had great respect for the NY families (almost as if he feared them), so it if took whacking Tony to save himself and stay in their good graces, he'd do in a NY minute.

Agreed, but I don't see Chase ever doing a follow-up where it is made it clear that Tony was killed; I think he wants to leave the ending ambiguous.

I do think Jamie-Lynn is good enough to carry it as the lead if they did go that route, but I don't see it. I thought she was underused in the last season, but I get that much more focus had been spent on her future than AJ's in S's 1-5, so much more time in 6 was dedicated to AJ. It just feels like she had evolved into a really good actress and I would live to have seen more out of her on the show once she had reached full adulthood. I did see her in some newer mob movie a while back on cable, but the main character was played by David Arquette. It was awful. But if David Arquette is the main character, the film has 0% chance of being good.

 

I need to watch this show again.

 

God's truth, my wife and I are now watching it for the first time.
It was a combination of retirement and the Pandemic coming together.

We are on Season 4 ... I see what the fuss is about.
Someday maybe "Game of Thrones", we'll see.

 

that's excellent...I'm sure you will have a fun ride!

 

Because of Philly's murder, Patsy always had motive. I think what changed is that he got means and opportunity. It'd be reasonable to think that Butchie and Albie reached out to him. It wasn't in their interest to let Tony stay around. They could hardly maintain loyalty and control in New York while letting New Jersey's attack on Phil go unanswered; Tony's operation was on the ropes and of little use to them; they had zero relationship with Tony (the best word to describe Butchie's encounter with him in Phil's hospital room at the end of the previous season was "chilling"); and they had promised to pay off Janice.

One wonders: what was the point was of the scene where the Parisis came over to Tony's house, and why was Patsy so conspicuously nervous? I suppose it might have been meant to show how remote Tony had become from his crew, and how out of his league Patsy was. But Patsy's nervousness makes a whole lot more sense if he had already been approached by New York.

 

Very true about maintaining control in NY. Butchie couldn't let Phil's murder got unanswered for, even though he had given the go-ahead to Tony. What's hard to believe is that Tony didn't consider that as well, as he was always really good at seeing the big picture and thinking a few moves ahead (when not acting impulsively), but then again he was pretty distracted by Carlo flipping and had his inevitable arrest on the brain, so it is always possible that his attention was diverted enough to not consider the effects of whacking Phil in the aftermath of the whacking itself.

The scene with Tony and Butch outside Phil's hospital room is telling. Butch never liked Tony at all, and I think was going to take any opportunity to take him out. Once Phil was gone and Tony wasn't in hiding anymore, whacking him was probably a mere formality, and it came to down to taking him out at the first opportunity.

I think it was to show once again that even with being related by marriage a soon-to-be inevitable fact (if they both lived), Tony and Patsy still did not like one another. And I think that was Chase definitely planting that as a seed for speculation given how the episodes and series ended.

 

I think Butchie and Albie were genuinely fed up with Phil and saw him as a less effective leader than Tony. For all Tony's faults, he would not go to war over personal animosity, and was practical about keeping the dollars coming in. In contrast, Johnny Sac and Phil were too quick to go to war over nonsense. Phil had hung up on Butchie when Butchie subtly hinted that the war had been botched and should end, which was the reality of the situation. I don't think Butchie appreciated that. Everyone can take Butchie at his word when at the brokered meeting on neutral ground he said to Tony, "I'm not gonna go there (help you whack Phil), but you do what you gotta do." Fair enough. Even David Chase, who has been very tight lipped about the entire ending, is on the record saying, "the walrus is Paul." What does that mean exactly? Paulie purposefully flubbed the Phil hit with Patsy in the loop. Paulie had been trying to get closer to New York for several seasons and feeling increasingly disrespected by Tony. He was the traitor. He would know how to play Patsy like a fiddle over twin Philly, and set up the hit at Holstens.

It was setting up the moment when the Parisis could learn the Holstens location. It was also to show how Meadow became an unwitting accomplice in the hit, by letting the Parisis get too close, but it's hardly her fault.

 

I am not sure I am ready to give Paulie that much credit. Outsmarting people was never his forte, and Patsy always came off like one of the few guys in the crew who actually had a lot of intelligence, probably why he was in charge of the money, so it is hard for me to envision Paulie manipulating Patsy like that. I do think Paulie was fed up with Tony after the latter basically accused him of telling Johnny about Ralph's joke and then the whole guilt trip to get him to take over Carlo's crew, but I just don't think Paulie was smart or savvy enough to orchestrate a hit on Tony.

Edit to add: I do love the idea that someone in Tony's crew had been behind the hit, not just Butch. Tony had done little to gain the trust of his crew for most of Seasons 5 and 6, and the two guys who were most likely to stay loyal to him were Bobby (dead) and Sil (in a coma). Everyone else had plenty of reasons to want to see Tony gone.

 

I think your take on Butchie and Albie is right: one of the subplots is their increasing dissatisfaction with Phil. But that Butchie would sanction Phil’s murder is not inconsistent with a private resolution that he would kill Tony later. That Tony didn’t see that goes to show how blind he’s become at that point.

As for Paulie, if he were the prime mover on the New Jersey end for the killing, then why would he raise with Tony the idea that New York might have double-crossed him, as he did when he mentioned the meeting they’d missed? Wouldn’t that risk putting Tony on his guard? Also, the Paulie-as-New York’s-agent arc ended when he realized that Johnny Sac had lied to him, and that Carmine didn’t know who he was. The show doesn’t lay the foundation for a return to that arc. Rather, it makes a point of showing Paulie as an ineffective doofus, balking at promotion and spooked out by a cat. One doesn’t leave the final episode with the sense that Paulie had the moxie or wit to conspire to kill Tony.

 

It doesn't take a lot of smarts to orchestrate the hit on Tony at the end; just motive and opportunity. Paulie had both. And don't forget his dream that was haunting him about "when it's your time, will you stand up?" where the ghost of Sal was cooking him breakfast.

If Butchie had a problem with whacking Phil, he would have said so at that meeting. The whole purpose was to lay their cards on the table to end the war by killing Phil. While Butchie was hostile to Tony while Phil was still alive, he would have absolutely no motivation to continue that hostility after basically telling Tony to whack Phil and end the war.

Because Paulie was constantly concerned that he himself was being double-crossed, and was wondering aloud for both of them. He was in a tremendous identity crisis and not sure where his own allegiances lay, let alone anyone else's. He may have genuinely wanted to be able to trust Tony more than anyone else, but it was too late and that ship had sailed.

That was ancient history by the time Phil officially took over. Paulie and Phil had been interstate colleagues a lot longer than most anyone else in either crew, and they had also done time relatively recently and had a lot of grudges both could harbor. Paulie never said anything positive to Tony about Phil, but that entire botched hit that Tony explicitly put in Paulie's hands, which was then passed off in shady fashion to Patsy with a sort of wink and a nod. You've gotta wonder if Paul had reached out to Phil separately and guaranteed the hit would go wrong in exchange for something from Phil.

Paulie was messed up and acted as you say--no doubt about it. He often acted clueless and bewildered in the final season. But that was because he was in an identity crisis. This was shown explicitly with his mother who had been so much a part of his sense of self-worth turning out to not be his real mother but also implicitly with Tony knowing that Paulie was a big-mouth and liability, and toying with the idea of whacking him out at sea. Paulie was clueless, but not that clueless. He had to know Tony was capable of the ultimate betrayal. And despite his declining physical and mental abilities, he was still arguably the most dangerous, underhanded, old-school mafioso in the entire show. He was absolutely savvy enough to set up a hit if he thought it was the right thing--even against Tony. And Chase has strongly hinted that the traitor was Paulie.

 

My thesis is that Butchie wanted both Phil and Tony gone. He wanted Phil gone because he wanted to move up and Phil was behaving disrespectfully and erratically. And he wanted Tony gone for myriad reasons: (1) he’d already said he thought they ought to decapitate NJ and do business with whatever’s left; (2) he didn’t like Tony; (3) he would face some constituency in NY who, not knowing about his deal with Tony, would expect retribution for Phil, at least as a matter of honor; and (4) he was not likely to face any repercussions for reneging on the truce — not from Little Carmine, not from George (who’s retired), and not from anyone in NJ, who would have been leaderless, suborned or killed. I actually think (3) is most important here: Butchie would have been a short-term don if he was thought to have allowed some wannabe family to kill his predecessor with no response.

 

@GregM , you make some good points, but I just don't see it, regarding Paulie being the one.

I do think his resentment goes back even further than we have previously discussed. Remember when Tony B took over the casino and Chris was all pouty about it. Referencing that Tony B was now "Tony's (Soprano) favorite," Paulie said, "Now you know what I went through," meaning Paulie held some resentment about Chrissy displacing Paulie as Tony's favorite for quite some time. And even though Pine Barrens was totally Paulie's screw-up, that is when the relationship fractured for good and was never the same, even with Paulie tried sucking up to him once he realized Johnny Sac had duped him, which Tony seemed to sorta see through, although he was unclear at the time as to why Paulie was all of a sudden acting like his buddy again. The "Remember When" episode displays the fracture in multiple ways. Tony comically trying to get Paulie to admit to telling Johnny about the joke is the biggie, but there was Tony chewing out Paulie for running his mouth to strangers, saying that "remember when" is the lowest form of conversation which you could tell stung Paulie, etc. Their friendship was non-existent at that point, and even their attempts at reminiscing seemed superficial and like they were trying hard to fake it, similar to Tony and Chris doing the same when they got drunk on that wine in the last season after stealing it.

Circling back to the macro view of Tony in the last season, his line to Melfi said it all, "You can talk all you want about every day's a gift, but regular life has a way of picking at it." He came out of the coma seemingly trying to embrace the little moments, but that evaporated quickly once regular life picked away (AJ's issues, Vito, the Chrissy relationship crumbling, the feeling of getting older after losing the fight to Bobby, etc.). By the time 6B rolled around, he was tired of everyone and everything, and just wanted to enjoy life's pleasures before he got arrested or whacked, one of which he probably knew was coming sooner rather than later.

 

I agree with everything you say, and it all points to Paulie MORE, not less.

Some good points but Butchie would not benefit by having Tony gone. They weren't competing for territory and Tony contributed a lot of money to New York. Regarding point (1), I think that was actually Phil who said to decapitate and do business with the leftovers. Butchie was posturing to try to stay in Phil's inner circle. (2) He didn't like Tony because he saw how the Blundetto situation had initially been mishandled and resulted in Phil and his brother being shot. But Tony had resolved this by killing his cousin personally, beyond what most bosses would have done. Tony had worked hard to get back in good graces with Johnny and Phil, and by the time this new animosity arose, Butchie had to respect Tony. Even at the hospital, which as you pointed out above was a very awkward moment between Butchie and Tony, there had to be some recognition that Tony was the only adult in either organization by coming to Phil's bedside and telling him to get well, put the animosity behind him, focus on what's really important in life, and get back to business. Phil and Butchie denigrated this in the grudges they held, but they were being childish and they knew on some level that Tony was right.

The matter of fat Dom disappearing had not been Tony's fault, and the jawbreak scene in front of Butchie was understandable--even Butchie knew that insulting Tony's daughter could not go unanswered, and seeing Tony in action personally whereas most bosses would have assigned one of their crew had to command Butchie's respect. Tony was well within his rights to show that no one can make sexual comments to his daughter and expect to keep all their teeth.

(3) Who was Butchie going to have to answer to, and what for? Everyone wanted peace and Butchie did not give up Phil's location or agree to help Tony in any way. He merely said he would honor the peace that they were trying to broker. Turning around and murdering Tony would show him to be untrustworthy and not a man of his word. Phil had made a murderous psychopath of himself, whacking Bobby and Sil (both unsanctioned), forcing everyone to the mattresses and costing both New York and New Jersey a lot of money. He was a rabid dog and needed to be put down for everyone's sake. I don't think Butchie wanted to be boss. He just wanted the war to end so he and everyone else could feel safer and get back to earning. Tony was well within his rights to whack Phil--it was agreed upon by multiple parties and no one would fault him for it.

 

I really appreciated Michael Imperioli's analysis of The Test Dream today. It really filled some of the holes I had.

They also interviewed writer Matthew Weiner on. It's too bad they didn't have him on during the episode commentary since he co-wrote the episode.

 

They didn't happen to say what Weiner is up to these days? I loved what he did on Sopranos, Mad Men, and much of The Romanoffs. I think he may be roadkill on the #metoo highway, although Christina Hendricks still speaks highly of him.

 

I don't recall him saying anything. They talked about how he got into the business, onto The Sopranos, Sopranos stories, and how he started Mad Men. I also don't know anything about him and the #metoo movement.

 

That's cool. I should try to listen to that, but any summary would be appreciated. As far as I know, he was accused by his writing assistant of sexual harassment, demanding to see her naked, which he tried to deny at first.

 

He creates very toxic environments on set. Sexual comments, trying to date cast members etc

 

Okay, but the question is still there, and apologies if I missed it being address already...how did Paulie know Tony and the family were going to Holsten's? Unless he had a tail on Tony, which seems unlikely, I am not sure how Paulie could have known they were going there in order to plan the hit, unless he and Patsy were in in the double cross together, in which case Paulie could have coordinated with NY after Patsy got the info from his son ("where is Meadow?" "Oh, she is going to the doctor and then meeting her family at Holsten's."). Granted, the Members Only guy arriving around the same time AJ did, minutes after Tony and then Carmela had arrived, instead of already being there waiting for them to arrive, tells me that the info as to where Tony would be was gotten late and the guy got there as fast as he could, so who knows? It sure is fascinating to debate and talk about, that is for sure.

 

That's undoubtedly true. But he would say it's because he is trying to get the best performances out of his actors, who are playing characters involved in very toxic and dysfunctional relationships with tons of sexual tension. Christina Hendricks said that the tension he creates on set is not inappropriate and he challenges all the actors to bring the kind of performance he's looking for.

Oh sorry--thought I'd mentioned that already. Paulie and Patsy were working together. They were definitely working together on the botched Phil hit. The only person who knew where Meadow was going to dinner was Patsy's son and so that was the only way Patsy and Paulie could know.

Yeah, I don't think there was any coordination with New York. Tony had resolved that situation and come out on top. The hit was all on Paulie and Patsy, I think.

 

I think this supports the theory that Tony was followed, not that he received the location at the last minute.

 

All very possible. For as much as they never really made it a focus, Paulie and Patsie were "co-workers" in the direct sense more than you would think (going to Chrissy's at 2 am to search his place, Paulie Jr was Patsy's lackey when Paulie was in prison, etc.), so it is possible they went into business for themselves at the end to rid themselves of a boss they both hated by that point.

Perhaps. Tony was usually pretty good at noticing tails, but, as I noted earlier in this thread, he seemed less vigilant about stuff in general in the last season and it's possible he wouldn't have even noticed if a car followed them.