A poster named Don-Charlieone over at the imdb.com board just completed a top 20 Sopranos whackings. He posted them over the span of about a month. Pretty cool. Here is his top 20, with his comments included:
20. Dino Zerelli, in the street after hijacking the card game
This gets on the list for a few reasons. One is the cinematic wide shot of him getting blown away in the middle of a street after begging for his life. Also, the complete lack of hesitation on the part of the murderers, despite potential eyewitnesses, etc. This was pretty intense stuff, and you had to feel for him after ######## Jackie Jr. drove off. All in all, this was a stronger moment in the show than when Jackie himself went down, which was handled with (probably intentional) nonchalance.
19. Emil Kolar in Centanni's
Okay, obviously this gets points because it was the first hit on the series. It had to make the list. But it was very important murder because it set the tone for the show's future violence- bloody, very realistic, with a hint of stylization and sometimes humor.
In fact, this murder is more stylized than, well, any others after the pilot. Many people don't like the cuts to the famous faces on the wall of Centanni's. But that was the type of direction you didn't see on television until the Sopranos. Also an early classic Sopranos touch with Christopher staring back at the faces of the swine, and the murder haunting him in future episodes. The capper is the great Bo Diddley.
18. Donnie "I hear Tony Soprano's own mother wants him whacked" Paduana, shot by Mikey Palmice in season 1
One of the best aspects of season 1 is Junior's ludicrous rampage, which is in full force here. And all Junior has to say is, "I don't like it." Also great is Palmice in this scene, feigning righteousness. "What, you think that's funny? The guy's own mother?" And how pathetic his attempt is to hide his gun behind his back as he approaches the car. You think the guy saw it? But the best aspect is how swiftly this guy was able to dig his own grave. One minute this he's fine, then suddenly he's a dead man walking, for virtually no reason other than Junior's extreme paranoia.
17. JT Dolan the TV writer, shot in the forehead by Christopher
Other people may have claimed to see it coming when JT mentioned his girlfriend was out of town, but to me, this was as out of nowhere as any of them, serving as the unpredictable climax to a conversation with Christopher that had been as engrossing as any we'd seen. When Chris starts rambling about Ralph Cifaretto, the *beep* he's seen, *beep* that, the *beep* he's done, who was thinking about JT? Nobody. Everyone was focused on what Chris might do to Tony. Then all of a sudden, bam, JT's dead.
It was sad to see JT go, who always seemed to be a good guy constantly stuck in bad situations via Christopher. Regardless, he did a good job trying to talk down Christopher in this scene, and ended up paying the worst price for it. A regrettable death. It also became the point of no return for Christopher, and signified his final descent. No coincidence that he wouldn't live another 20 minutes in the show.
16. Febby Petrullio, the old rat strangled by Tony in Maine
What's great about this scene? Well, the creativity of David Chase, in juxtaposing Tony having to murder a guy with taking his daughter on a college trip. That's classic first season material, where the show really concentrated on showing how Tony's two lives intersect. Also, maybe the best part about this is Tony staring at the geese flying away, and the camera staring back at him from the sky. A great little shot, one that really made the series itself feel like a movie, and Tony have a true arc that may have involved ducks. Too bad this "afraid of losing my family" angle eventually got abandoned. And of course, Tony strangling Febby is extremely important, because it's the first time we see him kill somebody, though at this point he's certainly still a good guy. I'm not a huge fan of this scene myself, so if anybody loves it more than I do, feel free to make a case for it being higher.
15. Jimmy Altieri
This hit marked the first time we'd seen a complete transformation in a character. We get to know Jimmy as a mobster, then he gets pinched, then he flips, Tony realizes it, and he's whacked. Doesn't sound like much now, but watching for the first time, this type of thing was a big deal and exactly the type of drama we watched the show for. It also proved that the show was more than willing to knock off establish characters. And it was so incredibly satisfying to watch, not only because this is the first time a rat in Tony's own family gets what's coming, but also because Jimmy was so pathetic at keeping his secret. Everyone in the audience was waiting for him to get it the moment he left Tony's basement in "Nobody Knows Anything."
Also, there's been some discussion as to whether Jimmy was really a rat. I think it's pretty obvious. Not only does the scene in the basement, "so....whattare you gonna do about the Columbian money?" make it clear, but also, once Silvio calls him a rat, he ceases protest. He knows he's been found out, and knows he's going to die.
14. Fat Dom
Fat Dom broke some balls harder than anyone we'd seen in the show, even harder than the famous Billy Batts, and he got what was coming in the most entertaining stabbing scene since the opening of Goodfellas. Though Dom had little to no importance in the show, it was fun as hell to watch him get it in the gut. And the unexpected manner that began the attack, Sil smashing a dust buster over his head and then jumping on his back made this all the more comical. The length of time the murder took adds to its value, as does the end result: Dom, giant gut and all, spread out across the table, bloody stomach a mile in the air, was a sight to behold. This also gets points for the frozen head scene to "Moonlight Mile," that opens Kaisha.
13. Rusty Irish, took a header into Patterson Falls
The guy was thrown off the Patterson Falls bridge. While he was still alive. In broad daylight. With witnesses in plain view. This is one of the craziest/ballsiest things that's ever happened on television, so hats off to Mikey Palmice and company. Not to mention another great line from Mikey, maybe his best. "I'll cut you a deal," he says. "After I throw you off, if you fly away, I won't shoot you down." Brilliant. And to take care of the witnesses? All he has to do is throw them a few bones, and they fall in line.
There's also great direction in this scene. Even though a dummy is actually thrown off the bridge, the whole thing looks real enough to make me stay away from Patterson Falls for a while.
12. Brendan Filone
I'm certainly not going to dump on this scene, because it's a very good scene and one of the early defining moments of the series. It was the first departure of a character we had followed a bit, even if only for two episodes, and got the ball rolling on what I think is the best plot of the entire series, Junior and Livia vs. Tony. I guess where it differs from what follows is its heavy-handed artistic nature, aided by the music that I'm not a huge fan of, compared to most of what I've got in the top 10, which is much more visceral, realistic and typical of the show's portrayal of violence. In Brendan's death, everything is only suggested in a film-schooly way- Brendan's foot twitching, the bathwater turning red, etc.
But I think what makes this whacking great is all the plot elements playing here - a friend of Christopher's – one Tony barely tolerates- causes such problems with Junior that he begins to be manipulated by Livia, and again, I love the feud that this sparks. This incredibly creative yet realistic plot line is another testament to David Chase and his writing team.
11. Mikey Palmice
"I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano" is consistently voted the best episode of season 1, and the death of Mikey Palmice is one of the handful of scenes that's remembered for making it great. Everything about this scene is entertaining, from the moment the loud-mouthed Palmice leaves his house - "Go take a Midol," (his last great line) - to Christopher and Paulie so blatantly tailing him while he's jogging, which I find hilarious. Appropriately enough for Mikey's death, the rest of the scene is touched with humor in Paulie's funny encounter with poison ivy (only on The Sopranos) but also mixed with good action in the chase scene and subsequent shooting. After Palmice is reduced to a begging and lying to remain alive "It wasn't me, it was Junior.... I swear" (he put on a good act too, any layman would have believed him,) it's all serious once the shots start firing. The anger over Brendan's death really shines through here in Christopher. The final touch is the extremely loud gunfire echoing through the woods. It's just loud enough for us to think about questioning the realism of nobody hearing before realizing we don't care
10. Bobby Baccalieri
Everyone watching knew Bobby was going to die from the moment he entered the train store, and there were no surprises at all in this scene, yet it remained heart-pounding tense throughout. This is probably the closest the Sopranos has come to emulating Hitchcock, as it managed to keep us in suspense despite a very deliberate and obvious outcome.
The shot progression in this scene is one of the best in the entire series, and I'm guessing an enormous amount of time was put into the editing of this scene to get it perfect. We see Bobby, we see hitmen approaching, first in the round mirror, then actually, all intercut with shots of the model trains. What contributes most to the tension are the shots with the camera on the train, which is moving very fast and seems like it could tip over on any turn, making the audience feel unstable. The loud model train noises, which seem to get louder, also heighten the intensity. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to construct this scene. The use of trains is reminiscent of North by Northwest.
But its also an appropriate ode to Bobby, who was the only mobster on the show innocent enough to take an interest in model trains. For this reason the scene is also incredibly sad, especially after Bobby remarks that his son "don't care" about trains like he does. Bobby was always the nicest guy on the show, though he may have sold his soul to the devil in "Soprano Home Movies." The final shot of him, dead on the model set, eyes open with blood spilling out of his mouth, is haunting.
9. Tony Blundetto
As long as we're talking about haunting images, who can forget the one from "All Due Respect?" Steve Buscemi is a creepy looking dude to begin with, but the shot of Icabod Crane on the pile of logs, wide-eyed, his lower face covered in blood that's still slowly oozing will forever be etched in my memory, unfortunately. There are a lot of interesting elements about this hit, such as opening the scene with the Van Morrison tune that the episode features, not very indicative of what is about to happen. We're kept in temporary suspense by seeing Tony's footsteps before we know who he is, and we get a great shot from far back on the front lawn to see just how far Tony B flies across the porch once he's hit with that monstrous shotgun. Poor guy, but he had it coming.
But the best part about this scene is Tony, and how he got there. After complete indecision lack of leadership, a great choice was made by the show's writers to have Tony get inspired by the painting of him in a general outfit and Pie-O-Mie, of all things. And not only does he finally make the executive decision that was needed (after we sat waiting for this hit for an episode and a half,) but he handles it with the captain-like efficiency. He rounds the corner, one shot, leaves the gun and gets out of there not even take the time to be emotive over his cousin. A strong moment for Tony, one of his last.
8. Richie Aprile
Richie was a ##### to the end, and watching Janice gun him down - completely out of the blue, of course - was extremely satisfying. Especially after he punches her in the face, the last in a long line of obnoxious, overzealous actions begging for reprimand. What an ### hole. And the shocked, stunned look on his face as he realizes he's been shot is an incredibly sweet sight to behold.
Of course the best part of this whacking is the plot elements in play here. For basically all of season 2, Richie has been Tony's headache, and everyone and there mother figured that as the season progressed it was leading towards some climactic showdown between Tony and Richie. Even in this episode, the typical climax is suggested when Tony tells Sil to get it done. So kudos to David Chase and his writing team for twisting what we expect (the death of Richie) into the most surprising and unpredictable climax in the history of the show.
And for the record, he got it once in the chest and once in the forehead.
7. Matthew Bevilaqua
There's so much going on in this scene it's wonderful. A great job is done making us feel sorry for the pathetic weasel of the character Matt Bevilaqua. In this scene, he's not that obnoxious punk without a brain, he's just a kid who made a mistake, and realizes what's probably going to happen to him. "You guys are gonna kill me..." I'm sure it made at least a few viewers wonder how they would act in his shoes.
And brilliant acting on the part of Tony here. Who didn't, for at least a split second, think he was being genuine when he was fooling Bevilaqua into a safe lull? In retrospect, it comes across as extremely cruel, and the result, when he does make that comment about the Phanta, is very jarring, creepy and one of the first real dark moments for Tony. This could easily be seen as the beginning of the turning point for The Sopranos, when the show began to lose its innocence of season 1 and take a turn towards darkness, as the hero slowly becomes an anti-hero.
But it took me a few viewing to realize that this scene is really all about #####. Will he or won't he participate? This should tell Tony everything he needs to know about #####'s status as a potential rat. Without any words spoken, only a slight look from Tony, it's clear that he's testing ##### and his own suspicions - and ##### responds by taking out his own gun and firing a few angry shots into Bevilaqua, even though he's already dead. He passes the test to Tony's satisfaction, albeit temporarily. This is one of the finer moments of the season, when we can tell what both characters are thinking without either of them saying a word to each other. I wonder how hesitant ##### was. The following dinner scene is great as well, when ##### seems to have won over Tony and they reminisce about the good old times, genuine friends again for the time being.
6. Adriana La Cerva
This was pretty shell-shocking, and a big, big deal. For anyone who jumped into watching the series between seasons 5 and 6 (as I did), this was inevitably the whacking you'd get pissed at your friends for spoiling. People were still talking about it a year after season 5 concluded.
A certain amount of disbelief accompanied the entire second half of "Long Term Parking." For one, the show had been teasing us with this plot for two full seasons, and even introduced it as far back as season 3. Finally seeing the payoff was exhilarating. Also, Adriana was the longest running character to be whacked at the point. She'd been around since the beginning. We'd come to know her well and come to like her quirky, attractive ignorance. It was hard to believe that she would ever go, and hard to envision The Sopranos without her. The scene itself is intense to watch, in addition to the disbelief that accompanied it, because it was uncomfortable to watch Sil rough up a girl we all know and felt sorry for. It was a good decision to refrain from showing us her actual death, as she did deserve more respect than that.
Finally, no matter how much we saw Adriana chat up the FEDS, I don't think many people really thought she'd ever be knocked off. Even if it had been spoiled, it was one of those "you have to see it to believe it" things. She was, for the most part, an innocent woman who let her naivety spell her doom. Maybe it was foreshadowing when Lorraine Calluzo was killed earlier in the season, but before that I don't think the show had ever had women intentionally whacked. That the writers knocked off a character that everyone loved, who nobody expected to go, who was a mostly uninvolved woman is a testament to their sheer balls. This murder was beautifully orchestrated in that it took so long and developed so subtly and likewise believably (don't care about the complaints about the FBI/realism in this episode) and also played such an important role in the entire rest of the series. The entire landscape of the series would be different without the death of Adriana.
5. Ralph Cifaretto
The sudden, violent death of Ralphie is the highlight of season 4, when we finally see what two season's worth of vile, sadistic, terrible behavior was leading to. Tony didn't murder Ralphie simply because of a horse. The death of Pie-O-Mie, was, in Tony's mind, the final straw for the destructive trouble-maker who'd been nothing but a headache for two seasons. (Whether Ralphie actually cooked the horse is another question - I don't think he did.) There's no question that the sadistic murder of Tracee was running through Tony's mind when he was strangling Ralphie. He may have been referring to her when he was screaming "She was a poor innocent creature, and you killed her!"
But, of course, leave it to The Sopranos, in the first episode where Ralphie becomes an emotional and pitiable character, where for the first time we might feel sorry for him, where for the first time we forget about the death of Tracee and all the other sick *beep* he's done, to have it all come back and bite him in the ###. Just when we let our expectations of his demise dwindle, it arrives in full force.
A great aspect of this scene is the sudden, unexpected outburst of violence, in the unlikely setting of Ralphie's kitchen. The intensity of both actors is believable as their characters go at each other with their bare hands. Up to this point, there had been complaints that season 4 was lacking in violence. An outburst such as this was the finest way to dispel those complaints, followed by the most horrific, violent images in the history of the show, ie, Ralph's bald, severed head. Necessary? No. Chill-inducing? Very. As if Chase was saying: "You want you're violence? Here, you got it." An appropriately gruesome end to a gruesome character.
4. Mustang Sally (and friend)
Sheer awesomeness. There's not much else to describe this scene. It's so great that even though it has characters none of us have seen before and that we have little reason to care about, it still lives on as maybe the best moment in season 3. Few nutjobs have ever had it coming worse than Mustang Sally did in "Another Toothpick." And in his one appearance on the show, Burt Young manages to turn Old Man Bacala into a legend - one of the toughest SOBs ever to show up on The Sopranos. Bacala doesn't let horrendous coughing fits or a little thing like lung cancer get in the way of blowing away his Godson.
The action starts off brilliantly, with a calm eeriness as we watch Sally run his hand under the faucet. We can sense the impending storm in Bacala as he tells Sally to "let it run, make sure its cold." Creepy. But in typical Sopranos fashion, Murphy's law is in full effect, and it's actually comical when Sally's friend walks in and sees a gun to his head - "Oh - what the fuqq?!" How Bacala managed to get out of this house alive is a wonder. It gets better, after the writers force the sickly old man to wrestle with Sally a little, when he blows his brains all over the ceiling - a sight to behold. And it gets even better after Sally's dead, when Bacala, coughing horrendously, shows his ruthlessness by rearing back and shooting the pleading friend hiding behind a chair, managing to call him a "fuqqing greaseball" before he kills him. And it gets even better when Bacala, covered in Mustang Sally's blood and still coughing up a lung, coolly decides to to sit down and light a cigarette. No wonder why Tony called him the Terminator.
The question is, does this scene deserve to be this high up? Decide for yourself while I go watch it again.
3. Phil Leotardo
What an appropriate ending for the greatest villain in the history of The Sopranos. How incredibly fitting that the Godfather of New York, the man we all loved to hate since he was released from prison with the rest of the class of 2004, the man who wreaked basically all the havoc in the show for the final three seasons gets the most funny, cringe-worthy, "Ohhh ####" whacking we've seen.
Phil's actual fate is virtually irrelevant at this point in the show, so Chase decides to have fun, and this is David Chase's dark humor at its best. First, he puts a couple of Phil's grandkids in the car - classic use of contrasting images. And Phil's words - "Goodbye, goodbye, Pop Pop," are incredibly prophetic. Not only does Phil say goodbye for good, but he gets a couple of pops along the way. The direction of this scene is great, including little details like the car radio getting louder (the same song Tony wakes up to at the beginning of the episode, I believe) as the scene progresses, the sudden, quick rack focus from Phil's wife to the gun when it first rises into the frame, (watch this again, it's cool), and the great silhouetted shot of Walden from below, looking down as he pops him again.
And of course the best part, what can only be described as outrageous, will leave Phil with a closed casket. Hardly something the character didn't deserve. After three seasons of Phil doing nothing but getting on our nerves, causing chaos, and being an overall ##### bag, this managed to give his villainy a climactic ending, a tall task, no doubt. Great job by the sound guys to create a helluva horrendous sound as the SUV rolls over, and another great decision to show us, of all things, the kids in the car, bumping up and down as the truck crushes his skull. To top it all off, there's the guy who says what we're all thinking, this guy:
2. Big #####
A whacking so significant that it spawned a rule – the "Big ##### Rule," that any character, no matter how prominent, important or loveable, could go at any time. A huge step - up to this point only fringe and supporting characters had been killed off (David Chase even backed out of whacking Livia) - this is probably the turning point for the series and the tipping point for Tony Soprano's morality.
The death of Big ##### marked the descent of The Sopranos into a morbid realm of darkness that the first two seasons didn't have. Now Tony and his crew weren't just killing bad mobsters - eager rats like Febby or Jimmy Altieri or enemies like Mikey Palmice - they were killing their own best friends - characters we had grown to know and root for. Tony became self-destructive and never looked back. Here's where it started, with the whacking of a character that nobody wanted to see die. The show did a great job of putting us in the same figurative boat as Tony, Paulie and Sil. As they did, we loved ##### and did not want to see him go. But as they knew, we knew he had to get whacked, and there was no getting around it. With a reluctant eagerness we watched Sal die.
The best word to describe this scene is "classic." The whole sequence is brilliantly paced, and allows us to realize what's going to happen just as the characters themselves are realizing it, because even they haven't had enough time to let the magnitude of their best friend's betrayal sink in. For the record, I don't think Tony lets any of the deaths around him ever truly sink in. The avoiding of the elephant in the boat, whether through putting in a CD or ##### talking about his girlfriend Puerto Rico, is as comforting to the audience as it probably his to him. Leave it to Tony, of course, in his self-imposed morbidity, to keep the conversation from straying. He feels obligated to twice steer the conversation back to the topic at hand, and can't bring himself to enjoy one last drink with his friend. The "does she even really exist?" line is the final depressing nail in the coffin. Tony, Tony, why do you do this to yourself?
1. Christopher Moltisanti
http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa309/D...FrankenTony.jpg
If the death of Big ##### was the turning point for the show, than the death of Christopher was the darkest moment of the series and the lowest point for Tony Soprano, when his morality jumped ship for good. In retrospect, this could also be considered the climax of the series, since it can be argued that nothing as important happened afterward. And though the final 9 episodes were preceded by nothing but speculation regarding Christopher's potential demise, and though it was safe to say that something big would happen between Christopher and Tony, this was still the most shocking moment in the history of the series, leaving everyone dumbfounded, wondering if what they just saw really happened. Was this actually The Sopranos? The scene, and the whole episode, had a surrealistic quality not found in any other episode, including The Test Dream. A sudden, unexpected, dark, twisted, disturbing and fitting ending to Christopher's "arc."
The scene itself is vile - how murder, especially one of this magnitude, involving people who supposedly love each other, should be. Far from the straightforward, almost romantic farewell for Big #####, Tony's hand reaching into the car and squeezing Christopher's bleeding nose – something few would have thought to even write in a mob drama - is as nauseating to think about now as it was to watch the first several times. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. It felt like another TV show.
Though at first it would seem that this whacking is all about Tony, and that Christopher was simply used as a pawn to convey Tony's final descent into hell on earth, this is a surprisingly proper ending to Christopher. Many may have wanted or expected some sort of "final showdown" between Christopher and Tony in the final episode that would leave the series to conclude on a high note, (and something like this could have been great), but looking back, that seems a foolish expectation, and surely not the Sopranos way. Christopher, from the beginning, when he couldn't get work done because of a stomach ache, was an immature hot-head who, time and time again, (with inadvertent aid from Tony, no doubt) fuqqed up. And regardless of how important a character he was to the series, or how much audiences enjoyed watching him, his pathetic, helpless death was far more telling of who he was than any major "showdown" or conflict with Tony would have been. After one final fuqq-up- driving Tony around high on coke- he finally got the fate he had managed to avoid so many times before.
But what is best (or the worst) about this scene, and this episode, is what has become of Tony. Before our eyes the protagonist of the show eroded into an anti-hero, as we watched him beat up Zellman or damage Georgie's hearing, and strangely we were able to live with it and still like him. But with this dark, gloomy scene, David Chase and Co. show us what we either didn't realize or didn't want to know – that Tony had become a villain, and there was no coming back. After watching Kennedy and Heidi, how could one argue? Snuffing out his nephew was purely selfish, and predicated not so much on Christopher's actions in the past, but his potential actions in the future. Tony made no secret, in his later dream and actual conversation with Melfi (which are virtually identical) that he could now sleep easier at night. He had even fallen deeper than his mob friends, who all seemed genuinely distraught over Christopher's death. Tony was happy and could barely hide it.
And Chase gave us a brilliant ironic touch by further aligning Tony with Christopher's fictional villain Sally Boy, by suggesting Tony's affections toward Christopher's wife and later cementing them with Christopher's goomar. What was the difference between Sally Boy and Tony? At this point, nothing, says Chase. This gave Tony a darkness that we'd never seen before and the result, during Kennedy and Heidi, was disturbing. I know others feel differently, but to me, Tony never redeemed himself of this. The creepy image as he ruthlessly snuffs out his helpless nephew, looking at the road to see if a car drives by, defines the end of his moral "arc," a journey that began at the pilot episode and ended badly.
Thread is here:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141842/board/thread/78053954
Hit ME with some Sopranos trivia, tough guy.
I think this trivia thing is a cool way to keep this thread going, but my suggestion would be to come up with questions that you cannot find the answer to pretty easily online (like at wikipedia or HBO.com).
And the Polident lady telling Tony that Junior once stalked her.
Caught this also, what a great eppisode.
finger: to CNN). Still, I'm looking forward to working my way through the final few episodes.
