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Basebf555 posted:Anyway in my recent Sopranos rewatch I reached the best line in the entire series. Some of you may be able to guess what it is without even clicking it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAbldmqXrVg Expected "GO poo poo IN A HAT" but that works too.
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Mar 13, 2019 18:56
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Some relevant book tips: Killer by "Joey the Hitman" (actually mostly written by Dave Fisher) is the autobiography of Max Kurschner, a New York-born minor gangster. Kurschner is a self-aggrandizing dork, who got killed in 1982, probably at least to some degree relating to the fact that he was writing books about the mob. While you should take Kurschner's stuff about himself with a hefty helping of salt, Killer is nice because it actually tells you how the various old-school mob businesses worked, from the numbers game to the loan sharking part. The Outfit by Gus Russo is a good history of the Chicago-based criminal organization. Compared to the East Coast families, the Outfit was characterized by being less obsessed with being Italian as hell, and evolved into something far bigger than the East Coast families over time, because the Chicago mob essentially ran Vegas and made a shitload of cash doing it. They also helped various presidents get elected. A good look at how the old gangs collapsed during the era of Al Capone, how the end of Prohibition led into the Outfit evolving fast, and so on.
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Mar 15, 2019 06:30
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The NYPD did know, they were just corrupt as poo poo. And since most mob-related violence was always between guys that were in, it was easy enough to ignore most of the time.
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Apr 25, 2019 03:51
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EwokEntourage posted:Paulie robs and murders an old lady because the old lady group doesn’t include his mom (not mom) in their old home activities I rewatched that ep yesterday and he's also doing it because he feels like he's outside Tony's circle for not earning enough, and the old lady had a bunch of cash stuffed under her mattress.
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Jul 1, 2019 09:06
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The whole thing about the Code that the mafia follows and the discussions around that remind me of the TVIV talk about Game of Thrones a couple years back, namely when everyone was talking about who has a legitimate claim to the throne. GOT was very upfront about that there's really no legitimate claim as such: if you can usurp and hold onto power, you can do that and people will fall in line. The Sopranos, on the other hand are up front about how all the rules and traditions get cast aside whenever someone can get away with it. Everyone is stealing from both their bosses, their underlings and business partners alike, whenever they can. Tony shouldn't have laid hands on Ralph, but he did, and what's Ralph going to do about it?
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Jul 2, 2019 09:28
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Jerusalem posted:I often wonder just what the FBI would have done if she'd just run away? Probably nothing. The coke charge would have been flimsy and it going to trial would have tipped the FBI's hand at least to some degree. There's of course the thing that Adriana wasn't a gangster, she was just a hangaround at best, who knew something but didn't know enough to handle the situation. She didn't even ask for a lawyer.
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Jul 28, 2019 12:56
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Tossup between Sil and Little Carmine, Lil' Carmine didn't get shot and is just living the life.
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Oct 14, 2020 05:47
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Looking back at early Sopranos, Season 1 is far more episodic than the other ones, it has a lot of Mobster of the Week episodes. It has a similar structure to something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer's early seasons, where there is a season arch but a lot of it is just Monster of the Week. Random thought that came to mind: the show at several points shows that people who do not understand the stakes of things get it bad later, like Adriana and Robert Patrick's character. When I rewatched the show a while back, it's fairly apparent that the FBI doesn't actually have that much of anything on Adriana, but she falls for the ruse. Demanding a lawyer would have been the right move, but Adriana just didn't know it, unlike the mobsters.
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Nov 17, 2020 17:51
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stev posted:I was surprised to see he's only 89. I pinned him as late 70s when Sopranos started. I guess that's not a compliment but I'm glad he's alive. I think he still has an active singing career, which tend to be indicative of a robust health. Unless you're like, Lemmy Kilmister.
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Jan 27, 2021 06:25
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Max Kurschner claimed in his biography that being an associate and a free agent was better than being a made guy, since while you're not protected by your status, you also don't have a status which makes people liable to gently caress with you, and you're kicking up money on a case-by-case basis, and in some cases not at all.
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Apr 5, 2021 11:46
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I think a fundamental thing that always seems to go unnoticed, that the Patrick Parisi / Meadow Soprano / AJ Failson upcoming generation is still quite a bit different than the previous generation. None of them actually end up inorganized crime, at worst they're adjacent to the mob, but the old school mob is fading out. There's better opportunities out there for all those three. In general, we don't ever see mobsters bringing their kids into the family business anymore, unlike what happened in earlier generations.
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Jun 10, 2021 07:01
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Re: Vito's plot, on my last rewatch I liked that Vito remained a loving awful person to the end. And what I took from it as far as Tony's stuff goes, his main issue is that he doesn't really solve the Vito issue at all before Vito ends up murdered, which effectively is what his guys are mad about. If he would have sent Vito to exile working elsewhere, my guess is that most people in Tony's crew would have grumbled but accepted it, because money's money and out of sight, out of mind. So maybe the therapy ends up at times making Tony indecisive.
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Aug 21, 2021 08:35
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CharlestheHammer posted:They don’t do much with him, but Phil is a weird character, as they seem to waffle on what they want to do with him I think the more interesting stuff about Phil is that he probably would have forgotten about Vito eventually but his wife kept pushing him deeper into some self-loathing hate thing about gay people.
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Aug 23, 2021 08:52
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IRL, the head of the of the family (the DeCavalcantes) which the whole DiMeo family is loosely based on, got murdered over possibly being gay: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/02/usa.garyyounge
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Aug 24, 2021 07:20
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Liked the "got myself a son" which is a nice callback to the Alabama 3 song.
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Sep 9, 2021 10:56
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Now that I think about it, the final scene is fairly similar to what happens at the end of American Psycho, there is no real conclusion to anything or any closure, because things are just the way they are.
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Nov 4, 2021 10:36
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Brendan Rodgers posted:I'm nearing the end on this rewatch and I wish the show was more explicit about Tony dying of a heart attack while watching Meadow try to park the car. He didn't die, he just poo poo himself. David Chase cleared that one up in later interviews.
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Jan 7, 2023 06:26
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I would argue that Melfi is tested and she proves stronger in her convictions than most characters. The old guy who gets one scene might be right but he's also just there for one scene. Of course, the purest character is Little Carmine.
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Feb 16, 2023 08:48
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For the therapy to actually work, Tony would have had to stop being a mob boss. That wasn't something he was going to do, so of course therapy really doesn't help. You can't talk your way out of a material condition.
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Feb 20, 2023 17:23
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Sopranos has affected my watching of Mad Men for the first time: whenever Peggy says something weirdly ignorant, I keep imagining it in Tony Sirico's voice. Regarding Angie and Carmela, I think one of the subtle strengths of the show and why it's still good, is that the obvious and more simple way of describing someone like Carmela is that she'd be simply a victim, and without agency. Sopranos doesn't let you forget she could actually walk, but she won't due to not wanting to give up anything. A thing that never ever happens in the show is her actually objecting to what Tony does, she always claims ignorance of what's going on. It is in many ways a continuation of the theme of the failure of ethics, which is frequently seen in how the crew acts: the "high ideals" and the code of the mob have become just another way for the guys at the top to ensure they're always making a profit (not really saying that this is the reality of it but as it's presented and felt by the characters). After all, the question of "what would happen to Carmela if she left Tony" is never answered with anything like "she could be killed", instead the answer is the same one Chris gets in Long Term Parking: if you leave the mob, you become a regular joe and you're no longer special.
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Mar 1, 2023 06:40
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Dawgstar posted:Yeah, Noah, I'm sure that would have worked out precisely like you think it would have. Noah would have punched Tony, given Tony a split lip, Tony would have stood around confused, Carmela would have yelled, Meadow would have yelled, Noah would have left the Sopranos house in a huff. Later Tony would have beaten up some unrelated guy at Bada Bing or over the course of business for some minor provocation.
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Mar 13, 2023 06:36
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I came to consider one thing that seems to be a fairly common misconception, namely "Meadow just becomes a mob lawyer", when I think the text actually just says she becomes a regular lawyer, and that led me to think that there's one thing Tony is actually successful at, in the end. It's fairly clear in the show that one thing he doesn't really want to pass on to his children is the life in the mob, and in the end, AJ the failson who was never even seriously considered to be taken into the mob fold, ends up fairly well in a production company run by someone who's effectively a retired mobster gone semi-legit. Patsy Parisi's kid who Meadow ends up dating is in a similar position, having become a lawyer. It plays nicely into the thing that Tony says in the pilot, "I came in at the end of things", the mob is a dead end and dying out, there's precious few young people coming in and most of the young associates we meet end up with bad ends, like Matthew Bevilaqua and Christopher. The final image of the family is old-rear end made guy Paulie sunning himself outside Satriale's, the last man standing from the original crew.
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Aug 5, 2023 09:04
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MrMojok posted:I thought her lawyerly goals were pretty clearly stated at the end of the series, by the character herself. I think the correct interpretation for her goals is to always assume that she only weakly lives by any sort of ideal, and her goals are somewhat incoherent anyway. She's no Saul Goodman in training.
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Aug 6, 2023 06:48
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MrMojok posted:I hate to even think about it, but every time I see or even think about that episode, I wonder just how horrifically painful it is to have RAID sprayed directly into your eyeballs. I think I saw a goon once recommend one do this so you don't tear up when you cut up onions.
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Sep 4, 2023 16:07
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I was watching an old episode of Curb last night and Nancy Marchand appears in it in a doctor's office where Larry David is doing his Larry thing. 
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Feb 10, 2024 06:52
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TheKingslayer posted:Last time I looked into that no one could actually confirm that was Nancy Marchand. I felt crazy because if it isn't her it's an amazing lookalike. I'm gonna be a truther about this.
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Feb 10, 2024 06:58
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 13:52 |
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Proval also shows up in UHF and his character is basically Richie.
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Mar 22, 2024 11:22
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