A mobster passes out at a family barbecue and seeks therapy to understand why.A mobster passes out at a family barbecue and seeks therapy to understand why.A mobster passes out at a family barbecue and seeks therapy to understand why.
- Hunter Scangarelo
- (as Michele de Cesare)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaJames Gandolfini's voice is distinctly different in this first episode than it would be in future ones. After this episode, Gandolfini used a dialect coach to sound more like a mobster from Newark, New Jersey.
- GoofsWhen on the footbridge with Alex, Hesh and Pussy, Alex is wearing a cast over his pant leg. A cast would never be applied over clothing.
- Quotes
Tony Soprano: Carmela, something I gotta confess.
Tony Soprano: [sees Carmela moving her wine glass] What are you doin'?
Carmela Soprano: Getting my wine in position to throw in your damn face!
Tony Soprano: You're always with the drama, you.
Carmela Soprano: Go ahead and confess already, please! Get it over with!
Tony Soprano: [covers his face] I'm on Prozac.
Carmela Soprano: Oh - Oh my God.
Tony Soprano: I've been seeing a therapist.
Carmela Soprano: [gasps] Oh my God! I think that's great! I think that's so wonderful! I think that's so gutsy!
Tony Soprano: Alright, take it easy.
Carmela Soprano: I just think that's very, very wonderful!
Tony Soprano: You would think I was Hannibal Lecter before or something.
- ConnectionsFeatured in The 51st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (1999)
So it wasn't really a jarring experience late in the 90s to see mobster Tony Soprano, overwhelmed by his unique professional and rather routine private lives, taking his troubles to a psychiatrist. The pilot opens rather abruptly with Tony meeting his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), for the first time. That meeting intersperses Tony's actual life with what he is telling Melfi, and although he gets the point across to her, he is leaving out some of the details. Such as when he discusses a delinquent debt owed him and how he and the debtor "had coffee". You see the actual meeting which is Tony running down the debtor with a car and then giving the guy a brutal beating.
Tony and Melfi have a complex relationship. Tony is initially a reluctant patient, but that changes with time. I think that Melfi, although she knows what Tony does for a living, initially thinks she can help this man, but that changes with time as she sees he really would never choose any other life than the one he has.
Rewatching this I was wanting to give it a 10/10, but I'm not sure if that just isn't because I am impressed with the series as a whole. So I knocked it down to a 9/10.
- AlsExGal
- Apr 22, 2022
Details
- Runtime59 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1
- 1.78 : 1