"Sopranos Home Movies": An Analysis

Season 7 Ep. 1: "Sopranos Home Movies"
Written by Jonathan Kleier
04/08/07

It just feels so good to be satisfied, content. I love when they do those flashbacks that show some other angle or some little bit of extra information as they did with the gun charge.

Really, I cannot see anyway that FBI will not ultimately get Tony, there’s simply too much. Tony has been involved in many murders. Every single phone call he is involved with is recorded by the FBI (this was revealed in Season 5) and while he is very careful, it’s just too difficult to be perfect at every moment when you’re under that level of scrutiny that Tony is under.

So from a practical perspective, Tony will serve a life sentence, unless he is murdered first. Of course, practicality will probably be thrown out the window for this show’s endgame and anything is possible.

Neil, Tony’s attorney, told him that the Gun charge is shit because if they had enough “we’d be talking with a wall between us,” which is exactly what Neal said to Tony after Tony’s arrest for stolen airline tickets in season 2… they never quite have enough but they’re always building the case. It is clear the FBI wants to put Tony away and in the end they will because there is simply no indication that they desire anything else.

Throughout the series Tony constantly asserts that he is just a soldier following orders. That the people he hurt knew what they signed up for and the risks involved. Generally he held to this moral and if he delineated, it was a necessary though unwanted. But consider here Tony is making a deal to sell medication that is knowingly expired to unknowing cancer patients. These aren’t degenerates, they are would-be good innocent members of society and Tony is now in the business of defrauding them. Tony, breaks, here, with his morality.

Maybe more importantly, Tony describes the scheme in a wide open bar and that means FBI could have the place bugged or whatever. Tony usually doesn’t make these types of mistakes, and I think that he is stressed beyond normal. Something is wrong.

It’s the little things though. I was fascinated when Carmela said, “Goddamn it, it’s the little things.” Referring to her 1 bar of Cell phone service. Come on, read into that. It’s the little things that bring Bosses down. Clever writers. Also, Tony has absolutely no successor. AJ is retarded. Christopher, please. Paulie could never. Silvio, we saw that he is incapable. There is NO ONE. So what does a leader do when in this position? I don’t know, but does anyone know of anything similar in history or Shakespeare etc.? HOW can Tony avoid death or jail when everyone under him is incompetent?

Until Tony and Bobby’s fight it was calm. But it wasn’t. Almost every comment was a backhanded one. Janice wished Tony hadn’t fired the Gardner, but she was still appreciative that Tony gave her the formerly Johnny Sack mansion. Remember the gardener in Johnny’s driveway as he was arrested in the snow?

Janice was really happy they had such a good relationship and it’s all Tony, what a great guy. But Tony correctly points out that, “I changed?” Janice so slickly shifts all blames onto Tony. Tony knows her like the back of his hand though.

All this talk about Tony being old etc. Tony is not old. Phil from NY is 67 (which is specifically mentioned in the episode). Johnny Sack, when he gets out of prison will be in his 60’s as his lawyer says in Season 6, “You’ll still be a young man, John.”

The Sopranos is one of the few stories that straddles the line of off-screen and onscreen. What is part of the text and what is not part of the text because it is not shown and not referred to. One side of film theory argues that what is not seen or mentioned does not exist in the films text. E.g. did anything happen in the year that passed between season 6’s finale and season 7’s premiere? If stuff happens we have to be told, but the only way to tell us is to put it on screen, which then enters it into the show’s text.

What has the gang been doing lately? How’s Paulie? Has Chris sold his film yet? There they go living there lives and doing what they do all the while we watch Tony onscreen.

Can you even imagine the conversations that must have occurred in Tony’s hospital room while he was comatose? We know that Tony was, to some extent, aware of the surroundings. When the doctor shined a flashlight into coma-Tony’s eyes, Kevin Finnerty saw a light tower, and another time he interpreted it as a helicopter with a spotlight. Paulie’s agonizing became Tony’s next door hotel neighbors which became so annoying that he woke up. I wonder how the rest of the coma episode was guided by the conversation in that hospital room. Plenty.

When Kevin Finnerty calls home, meadow picks up the phone and tells Kevin that she “made the volleyball team.” Ok, volleyball can’t be a literary reference, but it does happen to be Meadow’s sport in Season 1, and specifically episode 1. Tony and Silvio discuss the final stages before they torch Vesuvio’s, which they do so that Uncle Junior cannot murder Pussy Malanga. We know Pussy Malanga was the reason Junior shot Tony the previous episode. This is why The Sopranos is the best television show ever. Every single word and every single detail of the show is presented to be read on many levels.