OK, I managed to get the list down to 10, but that’s as far as I go. Taking a cue from What’s Alan Watching, I’ve listed the episodes chronologically rather than tortuously arranging them into some hierarchy of awesomeness. You may say I’m copping out, sir or madam, and you may be right, but I’ve tried moving these titles around and around and it always ends up feeling a little arbitrary. With a gun to my head (bada bing!), 99 times out of 100 I would say “Knight in White Satin Armor” is my all-time favorite. Beyond that, there are some hairs I cannot split.

I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano As far as anyone knew at the time, the final season one episode could have been the end of the series – and although I’m certainly glad it wasn’t, it would have worked. Tony learns that the forces plotting against him are his Uncle Junior and his own mother, the monstrous Livia. There are big fireworks – whackings, near-matricide – but it all ends on a perfectly-pitched grace note, with Tony toasting his family at Vesuvio while a storm rages outside.



The Knight in White Satin Armor The second season’s main threat to Tony’s power, disgruntled goon Richie Aprile (he of the “Manson lamps”), tried to recruit members of the crew for a coup against the boss. Tony got wind of the plan and put out a hit on Aprile, and for a moment we might have even felt sorry for Richie’s fiancée Janice. That is, until Janice – a Soprano through and through – terminated her engagement in the most extreme possible way. Still the series’ most successful blend of free-floating menace and pitch-black comedy, and the aftermath of Richie’s demise may be the richest ten minutes in television history: Christopher and Furio disposing of the remains at the pork store (“It’s gonna be a while before I eat at Satriale’s”), Livia laughing as Tony trips and falls down the front steps, Tony’s farewell to Janice (“We buried him on a hill, overlooking a little river, pinecones all around”), and finally T alone on the couch as Annie Lennox sings “Hey, hey, I saved the world today.”

Funhouse Not since the heyday of Twin Peaks has a series been so adept at mixing the surreal with the mundane, and the second-season closer is a prime example. Tony is bedridden with food poisoning, and we are spared no sounds of gastric distress or mad dashes to the throne. While tossing and turning, T has a series of dreams that ultimately reveal – via a talking fish – that Big Pussy is snitching to the Feds. (Creator David Chase has said that he wanted to steer clear of the usual TV procedural in having Tony come to this conclusion, and he sure did that.) Ultimately Pussy sleeps with the fishes, and the final haunting montage set to the Rolling Stones’ “Thru and Thru” details the human wreckage behind the Sopranos’ comfortable existence.



Pine Barrens The casual viewer’s favorite, “the one where Paulie and Christopher get lost in the woods.” High-concept at its best, as these suburban Joisey tough guys are forced to survive in the wild on berries and packets of ketchup. (“Mix it with the relish.”) Probably the single funniest episode, from Bacala’s Elmer Fudd get-up to the confusion caused by faulty cell phone transmissions. (“Guy killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. He was an interior decorator!” “His house looked like shit.”) I was tempted to penalize the episode because of the endlessly tiresome fan speculation about the fate of the mythical Russian, but that’s not the show’s fault.

Whoever Did This Suspecting that Ralphie is responsible for the fire that killed his beloved racehorse, Tony shows up at his house and ends up beating him to death in perhaps the most brilliantly staged fight in the show’s history. That only takes us to the halfway point of the episode, at which point Tony summons a drug-addled Christopher to help him dispose of the body and a harrowing and hilarious night odyssey begins. Tony lectures Christopher on his drug use even as they dismember Ralph, put his head in a bowling bag and use a backhoe to bury it in frozen ground. The final image of Tony swallowed by light as he emerges from the Bing is one of the show’s great fadeouts.

Whitecaps The underwhelming fourth season concluded with a bang, but it wasn’t a mob hit this time; rather, it was the marriage of Tony and Carmela that got whacked. The brutality was confined to words (aside from one poor wall punched by Tony), but these marital squabbles were more like ten-round prize fights. Edie Falco gives an Emmy, Golden Globe and Nobel Prize-worthy performance, and Gandolfini isn’t bad either. Another great fadeout: Tony’s boat just offshore, blasting live Dean Martin at neighbor-turned-nemesis Alan Sapinsly.

The Test Dream One of the series’ most divisive episodes finds Tony in retreat at New York’s Plaza Hotel. The Kubrickian hotel scenes give way to the most extended dream sequence in the show’s history, a tour-de-force phantasmagoria through every nook and cranny of the Soprano psyche. Tony takes a ride with the departed, has dinner with Annette Bening and a “Three Times a Lady”-crooning John Heard, foresees a murder and ends up in his old high school gym, where Coach Molinaro imparts the wisdom that still resonates over the final episodes: “You’re not prepared, Soprano! You’ll never shut me up!” (Great title, too. I still have the freakin’ test dream.)

Long-Term Parking Speaking of great titles, “long-term parking” rivals “sleeps with the fishes” as a term for the fate of a Mob rat. In this case, the “rat” was an innocent (or as close as The Sopranos gets) – Adriana, ensnared by the FBI, “on a last-chance power drive.” (See my High Hat eulogy for more.)



Walk Like a Man This was a toss-up; I originally had “Kennedy and Heidi” – the episode where Christopher meets his pathetic doom – slotted here. But in the end, I decided to go with the previous episode and the last great turn by Michael Imperioli. Christopher learns the hard way that the clean and sober lifestyle does not go hand in hand with Mob success. With no one else to turn to, Christopher spills his guts to former AA buddy (and Cleaver screenwriter) J.T. Dolan. “I don’t want to hear this stuff,” J.T. says. He’s right.

The Second Coming Apocalyptic imagery abounds and the center cannot hold as the series spirals down toward its conclusion. AJ’s attempt to kill himself in the Soprano family pool is as botched as anything else he’s ever done, yet Tony cradling him in his arms afterward is perhaps the show’s most emotionally overpowering moment. An insult to Meadow leads to one of the most horrific moments of violence (which is saying something). And an unseen Phil Leotardo taunting Tony from his attic is as funny as it is chilling – portending the carnage to follow.


Only one episode remains. I’m in denial.