initiated by sonali on September 06, 2008 (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0705292/)
Before the fourth season of The Sopranos went into production, actor Tony Sirico underwent back surgery. In order for him to recover, David Chase decided to place his character, Paulie Walnuts, in jail, where he spent all of the first six episodes of Series Four. Now he finally returns, and is happily welcomed back by everyone. The happiness won't last long, though, for two reasons.Firstly, Paulie more
Before the fourth season of The Sopranos went into production, actor Tony Sirico underwent back surgery. In order for him to recover, David Chase decided to place his character, Paulie Walnuts, in jail, where he spent all of the first six episodes of Series Four. Now he finally returns, and is happily welcomed back by everyone. The happiness won't last long, though, for two reasons.Firstly, Paulie still tells stuff to Johnny Sack, but that's a minor preoccupation; the real problem is another person from the past who has returned. That person is Irina, Tony's former mistress, who is now dating his business partner Zellman (Peter Riegert, aka Boon from Animal House). Unexpectedly, Tony responds in a quite brutal manner to the news, shamelessly kicking the sh*t out of Zellman.But hey, that's a small matter compared to Adriana's complicated status: urged by the feds to gather evidence, she sees on a TV show that a wife can't testify against her husband, and vice versa, and starts pressuring Chris to marry her as soon as possible. However, she is soon informed of the fact that real life isn't a TV program, considering there are at least three loopholes in her plan the FBI can exploit.TV serials making fun of TV serials is nothing new: the fourth season of Seinfeld was almost entirely about Jerry and George coming up with a fictitious version of the show itself, with hilarious results, while the likes of The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park have made it their trademark to lampoon major networks and programs (mostly Fox-related). And yet having an episode of the best show ever being titled Watching Too Much Television is an intuition so clever it immediately gets past the point of self-parody: there is real emotional power in Drea de Matteo's performance as her character comes closer to a stage from which there will be no return.Once again, the intelligence sets it apart from anything else. Well, that and Tony Soprano beating a cast member from Animal House.
