By LuluBates
The Soprano clan and the extended, uh, family are gathered at a funeral. Jimmy the Rat approaches Junior and tries to small-talk him up. Junior tells him not to bother and brushes past to pay his respects at the coffin. I am so glad that I am not Italian Catholic and don't have to look at my friends and relatives gussied up for death and lying in state. It's creepy. I'm not going to argue my point, but really, it's creepy.
Christopher is trying to bond with Little Stevie and his hair by talking about Tony's depression. Little Stevie and his hair are really having none of it. What does Tony have to be depressed about? Nuthin. Besides, a lot of top guys have dark moods. Napoleon was dark. Short and funny-looking, but dark. Churchill drank a pint of beer everyday before breakfast. Christopher needs to shut it. You know, these wiseguys, for all their banter about trust and family and fidelity, sure have a hard time, I don't know, talking to each other.
Tony is lying in bed somewhere in between depression and death. Carmela bustles in prattling on about wearing mules to the mall and whether Tony needs sweat socks and how AJ's going to his first semi-formal and totally pretending that Tony isn't flat on his back with the blankets over his head. She finally gets an answer out of him and asks him if his "lady psychiatrist" knows about this episode, because it's not normal for a healthy man to take to his bed. And, for the record, I think healthy women "took to their beds" only in eighteenth-century novels. Carmela thinks he may need more medication, and Tony lets us know that he's already on Lithium AND Prozac, which seems kind of excessive. Isn't Lithium for bipolar or cyclical disorders? And isn't Prozac for depression? Dr. Melfi, that's your pager buzzing. Carmela pulls open the blinds and heads out for the Paramus Mall. Which is one of the few malls you can smoke in. I'm just saying. Tony gets up to shut the blinds, and ends up staring into Stupid Neighbor's yard and at the misplaced Italian Beauty who's doing laundry. I always make my guests do the laundry. It's only polite. Tony heads into the bathroom to take a handful pills.
Junior's capos finally show up at the funeral. They let Junior know that the hit on Tony is set for the day at the newsstand. They hired two guys from outside the neighborhood, so it should be untraceable. Junior is uncomfortable with the subject matter, so he switches to one that makes me uncomfortable -- he talks about how the dead woman was the first person to ever give him a hand job. I guess that's a sentimental memory, and sentimental memories frequently come up at funerals, right? You're supposed to remember the person as they were, not as they are now, blah blah blah? Maybe I haven't been to enough funerals, but I don't think that looking at the dead person and remembering hand jobs past is particularly healthy. Maybe Junior wants to keep his voice down. I mean, if someone was talking about my grandma like that at her funeral, I'd be a bit more than peeved. Not that my grandma's dead. 'Cause she's not. But if she were, and at her funeral someone had talked about feeling her up or something, I'd be upset.
Junior eventually comes to his senses and settles down to pray at the coffin and shuts his capo up about the hit. He called for it, but he doesn't want to know. It seems to me that if you're going to instigate the death of your nephew, you'd better be pretty fucking comfortable with the thought. But that's just me. Perhaps this is why I'm not hooked up with the Mob. Well, maybe it's one of the reasons. I'm sure there are other reasons. Like my lack of bloodlust, greed and/or willingness to assault individuals with either my bare hands or a gun.
Anyway.
Tony is still in his bathrobe at three in the afternoon. Christopher is giving him the bullet on the search for Pussy. No one's seen him. No one's heard from him. He's nowhere. Tony does not like this report at all. Christopher continues with the business report saying that Jimmy Altieri was at the Bada Bing, but he couldn't even look him in the eye. If he's wearing the wire he's getting nothing. Christopher is obviously worried about Tony, but, as mentioned above, these boys have communication issues, so he can't do anything logical like ask him if he's depressed.
Tony gets his pants out of the dryer and decides to take a stroll across the lawn. He stops and stares at a piece of ladies' underwear that is lying in the middle of the yard near Stupid Neighbor's house. He stops and stares, picks it up, and sniffs it. Which only makes sense because he's really really medicated. He carries the undergarment to Stupid Neighbor's house, where the Italian Beauty is studying her orthodontics textbook. She's an exchange student staying at the Stupid Neighbor's. Tony says that if his dentist looked like her, he'd stay awake during his root canals. If she were my dentist, I'd want her to trim her long-ass nails.
Christopher is stalking Tony. He waits in his car until Tony pulls out of the driveway and then follows him into Montclair town center. While Christopher follows Tony, the hired hitmen follow him too. As Tony heads to a doughnut shop, Christopher finally figures out why Tony can't lose weight. And the hitmen? Well, they figure out that the hit won't happen that day, because Christopher's car is blocking their path. It was actually a pretty funny scene with the hitmen not realizing that Christopher was one of Tony's men, Christopher not realizing that the hitmen were hitmen, and Tony not realizing anything as he makes his way to the back of the doughnut shop and out into the alley, where he can go into his psychiatrist's office in secret.
Junior is sitting in the back of his capo's car. Well, not "sitting," really -- more like puking out the back door. And you can't really blame him; it must be pretty sick-making to kill your nephew. Junior is upset because the hit hasn't gone through yet. He wants it over and done with. The man who arranged the hit drives up to the meeting point to reassure the capo that the hit will go off tomorrow. They have his guarantee. Which is, I'm sure, not worth a whole lot. Then the hit arranger lets fly a crack about how he knows it's an emergency and that Tony's mom just can't wait to have her son knocked off. The capo doesn't think that's funny. Neither does Junior. He doesn't want the guy spreading that one all over town. So the capo wipes him off the face of the earth.
Tony is meeting with Dr. Melfi, who is trying to explain why she has him taking so many freaking medications. She asks if he's in pain, but he says he can't feel anything. Except whatever he's feeling for the hot piece of Italy that's staying door. She says she's going to up his dosage in order to "jumpstart his system." Then she mentions that maybe he should go somewhere to rest. Like Las Vegas? No, like Bellevue. Tony says no. But not so nicely as that.
Tony zombie-walks his way out of the pharmacy where he got his prescription filled. He spies the Italian Beauty contemplating a sandwich on a bench nearby. He encourages her not to eat the sandwich, and instead takes her to lunch at a restaurant, where they talk about, um, nothing? Really. She guesses where his family comes from in Italy, and then he spends the rest of the lunch in la la land, pretending that the Italian Beauty would reproduce with a paunchy, balding, middle-aged schlep like him. She's a dental student, for crying out loud; she must have some respect for the gene pool.
Carmela calls the family to the table for dinner. Livia is over, and she and Carmela are tag-team harassing Anthony Jr. about his manners in preparation for his upcoming semi-formal date. Carmela lets out one last holler that brings Tony out to the dining room. He's not looking so good. He's wearing his bathrobe, and Livia points out that his breath could peel oranges in Tokyo. He doesn't particularly care. Tony asks about Junior, but Carmela reports that he wasn't feeling well. I'll bet. Can you imagine getting invited to dinner at your nephew's house when you're waiting for the hit you ordered on him to go through the day? Go writers go! Anyway, Livia starts jabbering about why Tony's in a bathrobe and how he has no right to be depressed because he wasn't dumped in a glue factory and had his house sold out from under him. Tony shakes his head and walks back upstairs to hit the Prozac and the pillow.
Tony's standing at the window, staring toward Stupid Neighbor's house. Carmela comes up and asks him what he's looking at. He swears he's looking at nothing, but Carmela pulls back the curtain and sees the Italian Beauty blowing in the breeze door. Tony's depression and the fact that he took the Italian Beauty to lunch is too much for Carmela, and she lays in to Tony like an axe into a tree. And rightly so. Before she storms out, she tells him that if she had any self-respect she'd go Lorena Bobbit on his ass. Well, not his ass.
Livia and Junior are on a date. Livia's asking Junior why he wasn't at dinner last night. He says he couldn't, he's worried about "those poor kids." Dude. If you're worried about the kids, don't put a hit on their dad. Livia pooh-poohs him, saying that they barely have a father now anyway. God, she's encouraging him to do it! It's too creepy!
Tony drags himself out of bed to go to his psychiatric appointment. He takes his usual route, and after he gets his paper and his grapefruit juice, he gets jumped by the hitmen. Who are dressed like prep students, which is either a disguise to blend into the Montclair neighborhood or, when Junior went outside the neighborhood to hire, he went all the way to the Facts of Life set. Anyway, the first shot misses, and Tony dives headfirst into his car, where he grabs the gunman through the window, and the other assailant accidentally shoots the one wrestling with Tony. Tony chuckles for the first time in days and then grabs the other man's gun and peels out, towing the man along and twisting the gun until the man drops to the street. Tony's whooping and hollering at his victory with big ol' shit-eating grin spread across his face like margarine on toast until he notices that his SUV is about to plow into a parked car. He wakes up in the hospital with Carmela, Meadow, and AJ hovering over him while the doctor sews up his ear. Which is his only obvious injury, which is not too shabby for a balding, paunchy, middle-aged schlep. After Tony assures them that he's all right, he sends the kids out to the hallway, and the feds march in. They offer Tony a deal. Immunity against prosecution and relocation of the family if he testifies against the rest. Carmela is interested, but Tony tells the fed not to talk to his wife. Carmela tells Tony to suck her fat dick and asks the fed for the details. Tony hissyfits the fed out of the room. And did I mention that he's pretending that the whole incident was a car-jacking? 'Cause he is. Not that anyone believes him. Paulie and Little Stevie and Little Stevie's hair march down the hall like stormtroopers in matching polyester hawaiian print shirts and oversized navy suits. Shopping in the Oranges again, guys? They look upset. I'd be upset if the costume designer put me in that ensemble too.
Livia and Junior watch Tony get loaded into the ambulance on the local news. The reporter says that one assailant was dead while Tony got away with superficial injuries, and while the victim claims that it was a car-jacking, the FBI says it was a gangland-style murder gone awry. Livia has her handkerchief glued to her eyes. She's crying over her only son. Doncha just feel for her? The poor bereaved mother of the victim of a violent crime? Doncha? I feel ill. Junior feels ill. But not ill enough to put off a visit to Tony's house.
The whole clan is at the Sopranos' house. Carmela and Meadow serve up food and drinks while the men sit around and get fat. Christopher, Paulie, Little Stevie and his hair discuss the likelihood that Junior was the instigator of the hit. They all agree it had to be him just as the doorbell rings and Livia and Junior walk in They settle onto the couch, and Livia decides that now the family is all together, it's the perfect time to start her fake Alzheimer's routine. 'Cause insanity is her only defense, and she'll need a whole slough of witnesses. It's not very convincing, though, when she pretends she doesn't know who Meadow is for about two and a half seconds and then goes back to eating her breadstick. AJ comes down, and he's not dressed for his dance. The whole family makes him go get ready.
Later, Carmela drops Tony off for a fly-by-night, drive-by counseling session with Dr. Melfi in her car that's parked on some Jersey side street. Dr. Melfi says she's sorry about his injuries, but swears she never mentioned his name to anyone. Tony believes that the leak did not come from her. She asks him how he's feeling. He admits that he's feeling pretty good. Getting shot at was the kickstart to his system that they'd been trying to achieve pharmaceutically. Tony then says that he went out to lunch with the Italian Beauty door, and that during lunch he daydreamed that she had a baby that she was suckling, and the baby was named (drumroll please) Antonio. Dr. Melfi whips out her pocket Freud reference book and knocks Tony about the head and boxes his ears with it until he begs for mercy. Tony! The bambino was you! You have issues with your mother! Carmela's car pulls up, and Tony pats Dr. Melfi on the cheek and gets out of the car.
AJ gets driven on his date in a limo with Paulie, Little Stevie and his hair. I'm not sure why they showed that scene at all. ["I'm not sure I believe AJ could get a date in the first place, but whatever." -- Sars]
Junior barges into Livia's room at the nursing home, demanding to know what the hell she was doing with the whole Alzheimer's routine. She says she's been forgetting things lately, it'll happen to him too. Junior looks like he's going to either bitch-slap her or pop an aneurysm. He manages to squeak out that it's mighty convenient that she starts to forget things as soon as a move is made against her son. She says she has no idea what he's talking about. Junior squeaks like a muzzled mouse and bolts out the door.
Tony walks across the lawn to Stupid Neighbor's and asks after the Italian Beauty. Stupid Neighbor has no idea what or who he was talking about. Tony looks confused. He goes to find Carmela to see if she really did threaten to cut off his dick. She also has no idea what he's talking about. He calls Dr. Melfi, who tells him to flush the Lithium. What, so soon? He was just starting to have fun. But then she whips out her desk-reference Freud and whacks him upside the head, pointing out that his mother talks about infanticide all the time and he hallucinates a good mother. You do the analysis.