OTH: The Sopranos- "46 Long" / "Denial, Anger, Acceptance"
Meth is a hell of a drug.
Season 1, Episode 2
Aired January 17, 1999
Directed by Dan Attias
Written by David Chase
Synopsis: Christopher and his buddy Brendan Filone have just robbed a trucker delivering DVD players (hello 1999) in hopes of making a profit on the streets. While Tony and his crew are happy, he’s less impressed with Brendan, particularly his meth problem. But Tony has a bigger problem to deal with, when he calls Livia and she accidentally sets her kitchen on fire. He urges his mother to call 911, while he calls Carmela to drive down to check on her, since his strip club is too far away from her house. After helping her deal with the mess, Carmela brings up the retirement community again, which Livia balks at, as well as her daughter-in-law’s suggestion that she comes live with her and Tony, refusing to leave the house she and her husband raised her children in. While Tony is inclined to believe that her mother is still able to live alone, it’s clear that Livia cannot be totally unsupervised, so he hires a nurse to come and check on her. After settling the nurse in, Tony meets with Uncle Junior and Jackie Aprile, the acting boss of the DiMeo family. It turns out that the trucker Chris and Brendan robbed is actually protected by the family, Junior in particular, and he needs their cargo returned. Tony agrees to help Junior out, especially after it’s noted that Jackie has cancer and is mulling over a possible successor to the family. Tony calls Chris and Brendan into his office at the Bada Bing (the strip club Tony owns as a front if you need a refresher), where he chastises the two for their reckless behavior and demands that they return the DVD players. Brendan starts getting out of line and insults Jackie, which enrages Tony enough to throw him out of the room and over a table stacked with raw meat in the kitchen. Tony also asks for Christopher’s tribute, in hopes to receive his button- 15 grand, although Tony takes five of it for himself, and leaves the rest to Junior. That evening, Chris and Brendan, still upset over their encounter with Tony, are smoking meth and have the bright idea to rob another truck, this one hosting fine Italian suits. Chris later meets up with Brendan, where he’s sobered up and decides to back off from the heist. Brendan, meanwhile, insists on sticking to the plan and brings two friends to take it down with. It starts off well, but one of Brendan’s friends drops his gun, which fires and shoots the truck driver. A distraught Brendan runs to Chris and tells him what happened, so he tries calling Tony, who is busy taking his mother into the retirement community. Earlier in the episode, her nurse quits after Livia makes some racist remarks and accuses her of stealing. She later makes Tony concerned when she drops a friend off home and accidentally rams into her instead of backing out of the driveway. Enough is enough, and she can’t live on her own anymore, despite Livia’s objections. When Tony and Carmela make it home, he finally hears from Chris and meets up with him and Brendan. He furiously demands that they return the truck and offer restitution… but not before Tony and the crew help themselves to a couple of suits. When Tony returns to his old house to pack Livia’s belongings, he looks at old photographs of his family, which causes him to have shortness of breath and rush to sit down on an empty table. He tells Dr. Melfi about what’s going on with his mother, and noting that Tony constantly dials down his frustration with her, his psychiatrist suggests that it would be healthy for him to admit that he he feelings of anger, possibly even hatred, towards her rather than letting his anger out elsewhere. Tony leaves in disgust, although he proves Dr. Melfi right at the end of the episode when he attacks a bartender at the Bada Bing who has trouble adapting to the new telephone system.
Also this week, A.J.’s science teacher has his truck stolen, so Carmela suggests to Tony that he asks Big Pussy to look into it, as he “runs a body shop”. In actuality, Pussy and Paulie search for the car, and find a lead for a couple of wanna-be gangsters, who left it in a lot where it’s broken down into parts.
You can tell that David Chase is learning the ropes of his own show with just the opening sequence- this is the only episode of The Sopranos to start with a cold opening. From here on out, the immortal HBO opener will cut straight to Tony driving through the Jersey turnpike.
“46 Long” does feel like a second episode, by which I mean that now that the show is set in motion, Chase and the crew are trying to figure out what did and didn’t work from the pilot and expand on that. Rightfully, they realize that one of the pilot’s standout elements was Tony and Livia’s dynamic, which is at the heart of the episode. Tony’s complicated relationship with his mother is explored further, while his father’s contribution to the family continues to linger to the side. Right now, we don’t know too much, other that Livia calls him “a saint” after his passing despite his ties to the mob. Tony doesn’t reveal much about his old man, but it’s clear that he and his mother have long had a complicated relationship.
And it will remain complicated, as Tony has no choice but to send her to the “retirement community”, a move that almost hurts him as much as it does her. Nancy Marchand continues to remain intimidating while not hiding her patheticness. It’s clear that Livia was once able to command authority but has lost her touch due to diminishing age, a notion she laments and Tony is conflicted on. While he appears to still resent her for being cruel and distant, this is still his mother and he tries to remain loyal to her. That’s the duality of loved ones, parents especially, even the most abusive or manipulative, it’s hard to separate your feelings of who they are, who they occasionally were and who they could be when their time comes. Livia may not be dying, but she’s not able to live without supervision anymore, or she may run over someone else. This will be a driving force for the early part of The Sopranos, and I think this is what works best about the episode.
Not that I mind Chris and Brendan’s story, as it’s fun to see fuck ups continue to fuck up. Besides being much younger, we’re seeing how Christopher’s immaturity and inability to read the room causes his struggling to make his way into the DiMeo family. His drug use and close ties to Brendan, who is far more of a questionable junkie, are hurting his chances, and he hasn’t done much to prove his worth, going for random acts of violence and debauchery to try to prove his worth. All Chris is doing is making himself look like a fool, and it’ll be interesting to see if he grows up or stays inept.
“46 Long” is directed by Dan Attias, a television veteran who has worked on an impressive selection of programs over the past 30+ years (we’ve seen his work on Buffy and will see him again on The Wire), and he does a fine job of keeping the pacing active, even if the episode isn’t as visually handsome as David Chase’s work on the pilot. Luckily Chase offers a solid follow-up script that should keep viewers interested in seeing how this crime opera will expand.
Season 1, Episode 3
Aired January 24, 1999
Directed by Nick Gomez
Written by Mark Saraceni
Synopsis: Although Christopher and Brandon have returned the truck from the previous episode, Junior isn’t happy with the two, or Tony, who he believe is trying to sidestep his uncle’s position by warming up to Jackie Aprile before his likely passing, and he begins to weigh his options. To be fair, Junior is right about Tony, who has made frequent appearances at Jackie’s hospital bed, including hiring a sex worker to appease him. In between, Tony meets with Silvio, who comes with an offer- a Hasidic Jewish friend of Silvio’s, Shlomo Teittleman, will offer Tony 25% of his hotel business if he’s able to convince his son-in-law to agree to divorce his daughter without taking half of the business. He likes the idea, but is warned by a Jewish friend to not get involved with the Hasidics. Hesh, Tony’s friend, turns out to be right as Ariel, the son-in-law in question proves to be a tough customer, initially refusing to accept Silvio and Paulie’s demands. Even when Tony gets involved, Ariel won’t budge, and he struggles to find a way to intimidate him until he calls Hesh, who suggests that cutting straight to the jugular- literally- will get him to back off. It works, but Shlomo ends up backing off on his deal, only offering Tony a cash settlement, as he suspects violence was involved. Tony asks for the original arrangement, but Shlomo responds by calling himself a golem and referring to Tony as a Frankenstein. This weighs on Tony, who snaps when Dr. Melfi asks him to expand on the insult during an appointment.
During this week’s escapades, Carmela has the Buccos cater a function she’s hosting. After his restaurant blew up in the pilot, Artie has been struggling, as the insurance company is undergoing a second investigation before he receives a settlement. Tony knows what happened, but he keeps his mouth shut and tries to cheer Artie up, resulting in the two having a silly food fight. Charmaine, meanwhile, appreciates Carmela’s financial help but is incensed when Carmela starts treating her like “the help”. She eventually tells Carmela about a long-lost secret- when she and Tony were on a break, long before their marriage, he and Charmaine slept together. She doesn’t regret her choice to not pursue him and marrying Artie instead, but she wanted to get this out in the open.
Additionally, Meadow and her friend Hunter struggle to study for their SATs while practicing for their upcoming choir recital, not having enough hours in the day to do both. Meadow decides to ask her cousin Christopher if they can buy some speed from him, but he refuses, knowing how badly this will induce Tony’s wrath. His girlfriend, Adriana, however, suggests that it would be better for him to offer the girls cleaner drugs than to have them buy potentially more harmful doses elsewhere, so he agrees to give the two a sample batch on the condition that they never ask for more. The bit of pep to their step helps, as Meadow and Hunter’s performance goes off without a hitch, although Carmela refuses to hold Tony’s hand at the recital, even though he doesn’t understand why. Their performance is cut to Christopher and Brendan receiving visits from some of Junior’s men- while Chris is only threatened to be shot down, with the men only having blanks in their pistols, Brendan isn’t as lucky, as he’s shot in the bathtub.
If you can’t tell, The Sopranos is obsessed with The Godfather. The characters, obviously- Carmela brings up how often Tony returns to the Italian scenes in the second while Pussy corrects Christopher as to which character sleeps with the fishes in the pilot, while in “46 Long”, Silvio pulls out the unforgettable “just when I thought I was out” quote. But the ending of this episode goes for something different, directly invoking the first film’s legendary baptism sequence, using Meadow’s recital as a compliment to some good old fashioned mob violence.
Of course, not everyone dies this time- Chris only comes out with a warning, thanks to Livia’s intervention, her only scene in the episode. Brendon, however, isn’t as lucky, but we haven’t seen anything to indicate that this was a big loss. While Christopher isn’t the most mentally developed of the DiMeo family, Brendon has even less going on in his head, takes the job even less seriously, and spends his downtime doing hard drugs and hitting on high school girls. Maybe if this was Breaking Bad, he could become an interesting sort of antagonist, but he wasn’t long for this world. If Junior didn’t put a hit on him, Tony probably would at some point.
I bring the comparisons to The Godfather up because it seems that Chase and co were welcoming them more than anything, which is audacious when you’re trying to stack up against one of the most acclaimed works in cinematic history. Fans of The Sopranos know that it will hit those highs over the course of the series, and while I’m not sure if we’re quite there just yet- I don’t see this episode as significantly better than the previous ones- I give credit to the ending montage, even if it’s a little on the nose towards its reference. Considering the state of television in 1999- nothing was really looking like this and wouldn’t regularly well until the 2010’s- it’s a beautifully shot sequence and fits the show’s developing mentality well.
The problem with episodes like “Denial, Anger, Acceptance” is that it’s hard to talk about them on their own when they’re meant to develop into something bigger. I had this problem with plenty of Buffy’s “pawn episodes”- pieces on a chess board to be moved in hopes of achieving your strategy- that even when they’re quite good, it’s difficult to discuss them as individual episodes when we know that they’re meant to move into something bigger. We’re still learning about the family now- both the DiMeo and Soprano families, that is- and this largely feels like another third episode of a series, good enough to keep audiences around after an exciting concept and promising pilot, but there are still cards in the crew’s sleeves.
Personally, my favorite story of the week may be Tony and Carmela helping the Bucco family. Tony and Artie’s relationship might be the most genuine one we’ve seen in the series thus far. Tony really appreciates his longtime friend and does his best to keep him out of his more intimidating world, going so far as to blow up Artie’s restaurant rather than having it marked as a place for activity to occur. While there isn’t a doubt that Tony loves his family, it feels like he has ulterior motives for seemingly everyone else he interacts with, including Dr. Melfi and his own mother, but hetruly seems to like having Artie around.
Carmela and Charmaine, however, reveal something darker with their final sequence. Charmaine’s story of long-lost passions reveals to Carmela something she’s dreaded since we’ve met her- her husband’s infidelity. While his and Charmaine’s time together occurred well before either pairing were married, this is all Carmela needs to hear to assume the worst. And I’d like to see what this offers for the character, as Carmela hasn’t received the strongest material just yet, although Edie Falco is clearly game to find her range.
“Denial, Anger, Acceptance” was handled by one-timers Nick Gomez and Mark Saraceni, both television veterans with impressive history, and they more than get the job done- I’d go so far as to call Gomez’s direction an improvement over the previous episode’s, using spaces and blocking to its advantage better. Yet I think we can still do better, and I hope we do soon.
Dr. Melfi's Notebook:
Apologies for taking the week off, working at a movie theater during Barbieheimer will make it hard to have much free time, especially if you crave OT.
I don’t know why, but the image of one of the Bada Bing strippers asking Tony if his mom is okay, with her titties right next to his face, is hysterical to me.
It’s very telling that the only good memory that Tony can recall of his mother during childhood involves the two of them laughing at the expense of someone else, ie his mother. Also, we learn a little about Tony’s sisters this week, as he tells Melfi that they don’t keep in contact with Livia. They will show up eventually, however.
“Kundun, I liked it!” It’s great how The Sopranos had to deal with a Scorsese impersonator, but Curb Your Enthusiasm will get the real Marty.
One serious criticism to make of The Sopranos is that it’s not very welcoming to Black people. Whether that’s to reflect the mindset of predominantly white Italian-American mobsters or a general apathy to fair representation is up for debate. While the car thief and Livia’s temporary live-in nurse weren’t treated wonderfully, I’d rather wait to expand on this point with a later, more egregious example.
Irina, Tony’s mistress, has a change in actress between the pilot and “Denial, Anger, Acceptance”. I haven’t brought her up yet because there isn’t much to say about the character as of now, but she will stick around over the earlier part of the show.
I give Paulie points for trying, but using a service bell as a weapon wasn’t the most effective tool.
Next Week: Doing two a week is working for me (and I do hope to finish the show before The West Wing), so let’s assume that I’ll stick to this from here on out. If so, first we’ll see whether Tony decides to nominate himself or his Uncle to take Jackie Aprile’s position when it’s time for him to pass, followed by him and Meadow checking out campuses over an eventful weekend. If you’re familiar with the show, you’re probably looking forward to this pair. I know I am.
Spoiler Corner: Not much to add this time, but it’s worth noting that Fanny, the friend of Livia’s that was run over, will be the only person to stand up and speak kindly of her at her funeral. The woman who became permanently disabled because of her could say a few nice words, but her own children couldn’t. To be fair, I’m already starting to see why Tony wouldn’t.