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The 10 Greatest Episodes of The Sopranos

James Gandolfini in The Sopranos.

James Gandolfini in The Sopranos. Photo: HBO

David Chase'due south gangster thriller/lather opera/satire/philosophical statement The Sopranos turns twenty today. To commemorate the occasion — ground zero for then-called "prestige TV," with an ending that people still fight over — I co-wrote a volume about it with my good friend, Rolling Stone TV critic Alan Sepinwall, who used to share the Goggle box beat with me at the Star-Ledger of New Jersey, the newspaper Tony Soprano routinely picked up from the end of his driveway. The book is chosen The Sopranos Sessions, and it's available now.

When discussion got out that our book contained critical essays on all 86 episodes of the series, fans naturally started request us for our top-x lists. Mine is below, and Alan published his here. Please share your picks in the comments, or tweet them to me at @mattzollerseitz. (Patently, this article contains spoilers, so don't read it if you lot're not already conversant with the serial.)

The Sopranos often had episodes that felt like little cocky-contained ensemble phase productions, in which the about important action was confined to a single location. To varying degrees, "Pine Barrens" (the wood), "Mrs. and Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request" (a wedding) and "Soprano Domicile Movies" (Bobby and Janet'due south lake business firm) all fit the bill, but this gem from histrion-writer Michael Imperioli and the late, great John Patterson might be the best of them all. Information technology'southward the one where Carmela's dad Hugh insists that she invite her soon-to-be ex-husband to his birthday political party. To Carmela's surprise as well equally Tony's, they end up falling into old rhythms and spending the night together, setting then on the route to reconciling. The serene pacing of the party sequence recalls classics by Robert Altman and Hal Ashby, where the plotting meticulously built towards a predetermined event, only it all seemed to happen organically, even randomly, from one moment to the next, considering the characters were so finely drawn and the performances so expertly modulated. The secondary plot in this episode is nearly every bit compelling: Cousin Tony B. (player-director Steve Buscemi) takes his two sons to the party, and they're and so bowled-over by the Soprano family unit's wealth that they make their begetter feel inadequate and foolish, emotions that lead to his relapse into criminality and, finally, his decease.

The just episode besides the airplane pilot that was both written and directed by Hunt, this series finale is remembered mainly for its final 4 minutes, a dreamlike dinner with the Soprano family ending in a strangely timed cut to blackness that inspired debates almost whether Tony lived or died and if that question mattered. That sequence lone — an adventurous gambit worthy of the 1960s art films Chase adored as a young film student — would be enough to secure it a spot on any list of the greatest finales. Merely the rest of the episode is remarkable, too. Packing two hours' worth of incidents into a drum-tight 60 minutes, it's a corrosive and often haunting exam of impermanence, memory, karma and dread, focusing on a crime family and a claret family unit reckoning with the implications of their by decisions while facing a cloudy future. It's too one of the most unnervingly hilarious episodes, mixing absurd-satirical images worthy of Thomas Pynchon or Joseph Heller (A.J. narrowly escaping an exploding SUV while Bob Dylan's "Information technology'due south Alright, Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" plays on the stereo) and subtle bits of character business that, in classic Sopranos tradition, ain upward to the frustrations that Chase has congenital into this script and then many others (the mob lawyer Mink keeps whacking that bottle of ketchup, but nothing always comes out). Chase'due south history of challenging and occasionally teasing the fans reaches a giddy zenith here, with onlookers reacting to Phil Leotardo'due south gruesome expiry by staring in goggle-eyed fascination, and then getting sick to their stomachs, and the family's longtime nemesis, FBI Agent Dwight Harris, reacting with delight because he picked Phil to go whacked next in a Sopranos-themed betting pool.

The Sopranos Sessions

The most ambitious dream-driven episode of a series that did many, the Matthew Weiner-written "The Examination Dream" is built around a about 20-minute, uninterrupted sequence set in Tony Soprano's slumbering mind. It's comical, intellectual, and rough, filled with vehement, eerie, and lurid images and situations that explore the similarities between dreaming and filmmaking. Information technology weaves in and out of reality so deftly that it's initially difficult to effigy out where the "real" leaves off and the imagined begins. It ups the ante on by dream sequences (even flavor two's "Funhouse") by having Tony observe events that are close to things that occurred out in the world while he was dreaming. Merging the witting and subconscious worlds that the testify had kept split up, "The Test Dream" feels like a missing link between season 2's "From Where to Eternity" — in which Chris describes a purgatorial world that he saw while clinically dead, and insists information technology wasn't a dream — and flavor six's "Join the Club" and "Mayham," which permit Tony wander around in that sort of space, being examined, judged, and challenged, minus the comforts that lucid dreaming provides. The episode also has a guest advent by Annette Bening every bit herself, cameos by several deceased characters, and a scene where star James Gandolfini rides a horse through a living room so delicately that you lot'd retrieve he'd been possessed by the ghost of Roy Rogers.

Wherein two main characters, Carmela and Uncle Junior, seek second opinions because they aren't happy with the beginning ones. Inferior is being treated for cancer, and Tony's convinced he's settling for substandard treatment because his oncologist is named John Kennedy. But the more important story is about Carmela. She attends a couples therapy session without Tony, who'southward mentally checked out of the wedlock, and starts to cry when she tells Dr. Melfi that at that place's nothing she tin do to heal Tony. Melfi, who'southward been pushing Carmela to reckon with her hubby'southward misdeed and her complicity in it, sends her to another therapist, Dr. Krakower. He refuses to allow Carmela to avert responsibleness, warning her that she's subsisting on blood money and can merely save her soul if she leaves Tony and takes nada with her except her kids. It'due south a alert to us as well as Carmela: If you permit yourself to be charmed by these murderous bullies, it's considering some function of you wants to be, and yous need to come up to terms with it.

Directed by Sopranos veteran Alan Taylor (who'due south helming the forthcoming prequel pic The Many Saints of Newark), this volition forever exist known as the one where Janice shoots Richie, and it's one of the most influential episodes of any television show ever made. It taught its contemporaries and successors that you could shock viewers not only with what happened, simply how and when. Timing had never earlier been used as such a devastating dramatic weapon. Most people expected that Tony would kill Richie, personally or by proxy, or maybe that Richie's impending marriage to Janice would force Tony to accept him into the family despite hating his guts, setting up another ongoing, deadening-burn feud. But information technology wasn't just the blindsiding upshot of Janice doing the human action that stunned viewers; it was the fact that it happened in the penultimate episode of flavour two, clearing the deck for 1 of the near divisive of flavour finales, the dream-driven, cryptic, scatalogical "Funhouse." Across that, Robin Light-green and Mitchell Burgess'south script is a masterpiece of structure, setting up that big moment and so deftly that you don't realize until you watch it a 2d time that it was the simply right effect, and that the show had spent the preceding eleven episodes building to information technology. Without this episode, you don't go the mind-bending twists in the pilots of The Shield and Justified, the decease of Rocket Romano on ER, and some of the most wrenching episodes of Deadwood, Lost, and Mad Men, to name only a few classics that learned from Chase and co.

Standing up against its ain fan base's power-fantasy identification with Tony and the gang, besides equally four decades' worth of rape/revenge cliches, this episode gives Dr. Melfi an opportunity to use her scariest patient as a edgeless instrument to nail the man who sexually assaulted her. Her decision is expressed in one syllable, "No," followed by the series' showtime-ever cutting-to-blackness ending. Information technology's a denial of an event that the audience, Melfi's son and ex-married man, and possibly Melfi herself (on some level) all craved. Written, similar many archetype Sopranos episodes, by Green and Burgess, and directed by Patterson, information technology stays close to Melfi in virtually every scene, and examines the aftermath of her set on in far greater detail than the assail itself (which lasts nearly xc seconds). It'due south the ultimate Melfi episode, speaking to the practiced doctor'due south rigorous moral code, which bends but never breaks.

Another perfect episode by Dark-green, Burgess, and Patterson, co-written past Chase. Carmela throws Tony out of the house afterward discovering notwithstanding some other of his affairs, setting the stage for a serial of increasingly raw confrontations betwixt the couple that depict on everything from The Honeymooners to Who's Agape of Virginia Woolf? It may be the ultimate showcase for James Gandolfini and Edie Falco's combustible chemistry. And the subplots are strong, too, particular Christopher getting out of rehab, Tony's escalating tensions with Large Cherry'south New York family unit, and Tony'due south attempt to get the deposit back on the second home he was trying to purchase for Carmela, a affair that'due south ultimately decided past Dean Martin.

Written by one of the writing staff's MVPs (and future Boardwalk Empire creator) Terence Winter, and directed by future bandage member Steve Buscemi, this is one of the about visually arresting episodes of The Sopranos besides every bit the funniest and saddest. It'southward remembered equally the one where Chris and Paulie are hunting in the snowy woods for a Russian gangster they'd tried and failed to kill in society to cover upwardly their own incompetence, but there's a lot of marvelous housekeeping stuff woven around that, all dealing with Tony's tendency to shrug off his obligations as a mob boss, husband, male parent, and boyfriend, and run away before anyone tin can call him to account. Like other episodes in season three — in particular "Proshai, Livushka," the one where Livia dies, and "Amour Fou," the terminate of Tony and Gloria's relationship — "Pine Barrens" also intimates that supernatural forces might be afoot in Sopranos-land. But it e'er stays on the right side of plausible deniability, leaving it upwardly to the viewer to make the case for or confronting a world beyond the rational.

Written by Hunt and James Manos, Jr., and directed past Allen Coulter, this was a medium-altering episode of television receiver. It showed its chief character literally dirtying his hands through murder — up till then, Tony had been more of a de-escalator, and somebody who subcontracted the nasty stuff — while touring colleges with his daughter, Meadow. The deft juggling of vendetta and begetter-daughter slapstick would've made the episode stand out regardless, but what makes information technology an all-time classic is the fashion it balances the Tony-Meadow story with another two-hander, where Carmela spends a flirtatious just ultimately chaste dark with the local priest, Male parent Phil, and ultimately consummates with him spiritually, through an impromptu confession of her complicity in her married man'southward evil. The nerviest artistic decision was concentrating on these four main characters and sidelining everyone else, including Chris, who literally phones in his part. It was similar a moment in an ensemble play where the stage goes night and two sets of couples take turns stepping into the spotlight.

The greatest of all Sopranos episodes as well every bit one of the hardest to watch, this is a level up from its inspiration, "Higher" (the similar titles cop to the connection). The A-plot is near Tony failing to nurture and protect a naive stripper named Tracee, who's having an matter with the volatile gangster Ralph, a coked-out swell who ultimately murders her after finding out that she'due south significant with his child. This horrifying story is juxtaposed with Meadow and her boyfriend Noah breaking up after Meadow's roommate Caitlin comes betwixt them—not sexually, but by making emotional demands that neither of them are willing or able to meet, and requiring a level of sensitivity to suffering that's abomination to each of them. Both plotlines are about callousness and dehumanization, illustrating the sickening merely very human tendency to decide that other people's problems have nothing to do with y'all, then rationalize away the tragic issue as a random catholic die scroll. (In therapy later, Tony decries Tracee's murder in vague, dissociated terms, changing her gender and calling information technology a "workplace accident.") "Academy" is also an episode that indicts the misogynistic structure of the larger world also as the insular tribe that is the Mob: Caitlin and Tracee'southward stories are mirrors, though the level of physical deposition varies because 1 immature adult female is upper-middle class and the other dirt poor. Meadow serves as a rhetorical bridge between all the dissimilar moral and philosophical aspects of Terence Winter and Salvatore J. Stabile'southward screenplay, variously reminding us of Tracee, Caitlin, Carmela, and Tony. The Kinks vocal "Living on a Thin Line" comments on the activeness, appearing 3 times on the soundtrack and establishing a link between the disuse of the Mafia, England, Rome (via Ralphie's Gladiator fixation), America, and patriarchy itself. The unifying epitome is the garbage-strewn sewer pipe behind the Bada Bing, reminding us this is a prove nigh waste material and wasted potential, and the roles that ideology, greed, and cruelty play in replicating it from one generation and one era to the adjacent.

The 10 Greatest Episodes of The Sopranos