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The Sopranos 6x08 Reaction

The Sopranos 6x08 Reaction

Comments

AJ finding out hard that he’s not about that life!

Daniel_

You two are so smart. I love you both very much

robert klein

This episode really drove home the idea that they're experiencing the death of the mob. Call back to one of Tony's first lines in the whole series being something like "I feel like I came in at the end"

windyMelon

To me the way the manager acted towards Patsy and the other dude is like when you try to explain an old man how to use the remote. From his point of view they probably come off as almost endearing, like the bygones of a past era that simply can’t adapt to the new millennium, but they give their best.

Gaboxxy

Listen to him, he knows everything.

Carlos Hurtado

It always seems to me like the manager of that store was almost apologetic when telling Patsy that he couldn't pay them protection money. He wasn't scared or defiant, he was practically commiserating with another working guy getting screwed over by the Big Corporations. I find "Johnny Cakes" to be a perfect rejection of all of the Mafia bravado and hypocrisy. He's a gay man who embodies EVERYTHING that Tony and the rest claim to represent. He's a tough, working-class guy who runs his own business, is a fire fighter, and rides a motorcycle. He can win a fight hand-to-hand even against a murderer. He's practically the poster child for Masculinity and Toughness. Yet if any of them were here, to them he would just be a gay man and nothing else.

JBK405

Yeah I'd say degree of intimacy is the difference. Tony is more psychologically mapped out than Walt. We see his damaged psyche brush up against more life situations. We don't know as much about Walt's background and his overall worldview by comparison. Most of Walt's development is funneled through feeding his damaged ego and how that ropes him in deeper into crime and at a certain point it feels like his Heisenberg side is more fleshed out than his Walter White side. It's relatively more single-lane and we can even see this in how they both lie to themselves and their families where there's more layering in Tony's reasons.

Veya

I know you're half-joking, but not really. Even without Mega-corporations the organized families stood no chance against RICO statutes and all the federal resources being spent solely focused on taking them down. Of course mega-corporations did kinda seal the deal to their downfall, but without the FBI they would've been able to eventually adapt to other sources and streams of income, and they would still hold a lot of power through the Unions.

Gaboxxy

🤓☝️ um akshully, the contract tony is signing can't be something different (drastically) than he was told by Julianna, because that would be fraud and the contract would be considered null and void.

Rick

The discussion was great, thank you! Season 6a has a huge focus on identity and alternate identities. Vito and Tony are the most obvious ones (down to having some similar visual motifs: driving through rain and thunder, the inns), but Christopher's Hollywood attempts and Paulie's revelations about his mother are more subtle versions of living alternate lives. Artie works almost as an inversion: it's his obsession with a never-realized identity (one where he's connected to the mob) the one that's killing his true identity.

Simon M. y Atana Sumi

I just realized Vito's in Stars Hollow and found his Luke lol. Not really related but when Edie Falco won her first Emmy and Golden Globe for s1, one of the actresses she beat was Julianna Margulies on her final year of ER.

cheech

AJ didn't have a great dad, but his bigger problem is that he's a lazy idiot

jackpotz

It's funny that it wasn't the FBI that took down the mob, it was corporations 😂

BND

As horrible as Tony is as a person he is trying a lot harder than his father did and even though he isn’t doing a good job obviously he’s doing a lot better of one than his father considering who aj is as a person and who we can imagine Tony was at his age. Its scenes like the one in this episode that show he really does love his children and does want the best for them even if he doesn’t want to make the choices to help them with that or make it easy.

Cole

I love the interaction between the mob and the corporation here in this episode. Guess what Patsy, there's bigger gangsters than you and your crew.

IanJ

it's over for the little guy one of the best lines

Rok

I think difference between Walt and Tony like you said is that Walter was usually portrayed more "badass", especially in the later seasons. But also with Tony we get to know him much more intimately, his childhood, the relationships with his mother, father, uncle, sister, wife, children, nephew, friends and mob, the therapy, even the dream sequences, everything just falls into place. I honestly feel there's no aspect that has been missing.

terrier

If you think about it it's not that unrealistic, all of them had some kind of personal issues and didn't really know who he is, so on a surface level he may even seem like a nice guy, but at the same time powerful. While someone like Melfi (or even Charmaine) would always reject him.

lambo

Wow a 40+ minute discussion after the episode, it's like the good old days of season 1

Abacus

This is one of the best shows of all time for sure but Lola, I could not agree more. The MOST unrealistic part of the show is definitely that EVERY woman finds Tony their type. And not just their type but they become obsessed. I don't know if that was a commentary on something but I could never get over it lol.

Chad Gloria

It's crazy the amounts of times I've wanted to write about something here and then I noticed you basically already wrote the same thing lol. And the "It's wrong" line is not only the first time he's honest about the nature of his business to AJ, but also himself. It's a clear contrast to the "we're soldiers, soldiers don't go to hell" stance in early seasons. David Chase has said he never understood why so many viewers claim therapy had no positive effect on Tony or that it even made him worse. Scenes like this clearly show he has gained significant insight which he clearly lacked in earlier seasons.

Gaboxxy

They're desperate for him to latch onto something that isn't gonna get his brains blown out.

Veya

Not just Robert Iler, David Chase also considers it his best scene.

IanJ

I'd say Goodfellas is more relevant for The Sopranos, but agree they should do one of the movies before the series ends.

Abacus

It's a good thing AJ was so insulated from actual mob violence that he's such a fuck up in this regard. He didn't have the time to internalize it like Tony did, to the degree his ideas and references are from movies. If he had actually succeeded in killing Junior, no connection Tony had would have gotten him out. That insulation is a double edge sword. It helps Meadow strengthen her dissonance but prevented AJ from developing any sort of real killer instinct.

Veya

"It's wrong". That's the single most important thing that needed to be said even if it was far from a perfect talk between the two. One of Tony's biggest failing as a parent is being unable to be honest about the nature of his work to his kids. This was seen as early as season one during the college episode where he had an honest heart to heart with Meadow about being in the mob up until it reached the element of violence and he immediately put up a wall. His own parents would not have said "it's wrong". AJ's childhood was better than Tony's. I think this is very apparent if we compare the abuse Livia and Johnny doled out compared to what Tony and Carmela does. Tony and Carmela's parenting flaws and abuse aside, the general tone is still ultimately loving in the house. This can't be understated. It's a specific touchstone of Tony's and Livia's relationship that there was NO love. Pointedly we never see AJ and Meadow treat each other the way Tony and Janice treat each other as well because there's such a difference of love in the house. Phil brings up in Tony's father's day, a gay man would just be executed and there wouldn't be a conversation. Well there is a conversation now. It's also not a coincidence that the Jamba juice and Vito story-lines are about different avenues of change as well.

Veya

Carmela inceptioning herself into thinking AJ is interested in event planning -- just because he threw a kegger -- is so funny. They're delusional all the way down on this show.

Mike

Please can we get Godfather 2 before the series ends? Dying for that reaction. You are appreciated!

UNC

The chicks Tony pulls while wheezing between every word is really impressive.

Jack Hoff

AJ clearly forgot the part in the Godfather when Vito seems devastated and disappointed at the fact that his son killed those two men. Just like Vito Corleone, Tony never wanted AJ anywhere near the mob life.

Gaboxxy

Robert Iler (AJ's actor) said on a podcast that he considers the scene with Tony after he tries to kill Junior to be his best acting on the show. iirc he said they'd never really rehearsed a scene together before, decided they'd do it together during the drive over, but instead they both fell asleep in the car lmao. there's apparently one take where Tony hugs AJ instead of looking at him disgusted when he dry heaves, and the crew's response was something like "that was great guys...but it's not in the script, can you do it how it's written now" sorta sad detail that idk if anybody's mentioned, but Robert Iler actually can't really watch the show because he finds seeing him and James Gandolfini together too emotionally difficult, as well as not really enjoying watching his own acting in general

castration_rite

I love this channel but I'm disappointed that The Godfather was never followed up with other movie reactions. Just one a month would have been great.

Damien Fenton

I bet you girls are happy you watched the Godfather now because that scene just hits so much more. Now time for Godafther II...

bondbond53

AJ's lucky he's such a fuck up, Junior's a made man...

Jack Hoff

I haven’t watched the video yet but those expressions lmaooo. I bet they weren’t too proud of AJ.

Jack SV


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