Revisiting the "worst" episode of The Sopranos

September 2002. America reels from the existential dread of the first anniversary of 9/11, My Big Fat Greek Wedding reigns supreme at the box office, and “How You Remind Me” by Nickelback is coasting to become Billboard’s most played song of the year. Perhaps Uncle Junior was right, when urged to take medication to help his memory: “There’s plenty I’d like to forget.”

Against this surreal canvas, The Sopranos dropped “Christopher,” the third episode of its fourth season—the first to scrub the Twin Towers from its intro—and a most peculiar of tangential chapters. As a standalone with little interest in advancing the action, besides tension ratcheted by a two-bit fat joke about a 95-pound mole, it instead dials up explicit acknowledgment and refutation of anti-defamation and criticism of the negative portrayals of Italian-Americans. Or, as Michael Imperioli, who plays Christopher Moltisanti and who wrote the episode, states on his podcast, Talking Sopranos: “The episode was our way of sticking it up their asses.”

With Artie Buco tough-guy-posturing—at least until the slushies fly—and Patsy lemur-climbing a pole to rescue a hanging Christopher Columbus dummy, a Mafia-led rally against Native American dissent of a Columbus Day parade sets the tone. The spirit of protest is high. Or, really, echoing Imperioli, protest of protest. Perhaps that is too many layers of parody. This publication called it the “clumsiest hour The Sopranos would ever produce”; Vox stated it was the series’ “one bad episode.” Critics Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall, in their indispensable book The Sopranos Sessions, go so far as to call the effort the “nadir … of the show, period,” citing mostly the lack of narrative progression.

There’s a certain type of Sopranos fan, though, especially after 20 years of rewatches, that might find the most pleasure in the plotless. In the simple misunderstandings, in the malapropisms, in the low-stakes sight of the fellas getting into a game of license plates over espressos on a sunny day in front of Satriale’s. That lived-in feel allows for feet-up luxuriating in the mind of Imperioli, in the ideas and explorations of all the facets of distinctly American dickheadedness.

Sharp reactions, and real-world bans

The real world didn’t take kindly to the episode, either. In response, both Dominic Chianese and Lorraine Bracco were banned from marching in the Columbus Day Parade in New York City that year, despite having received an invitation from Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Somehow, Christopher Columbus, the skeleton hanging in the closet of this episode’s movement, referred to here both as comparable to Milošević and as a “victim of his times,” was still something sacred. Maybe, for the “he was a brave Italian explorer, end of story” crowd (Tony), what the tale needed was a stronger, more admirable representation of Italian-American leadership and success. On that note, there is this bit on paisano pride from a keynote speaker and professor at Montclair State, a quip that has aged like a fine Barolo: “If they say John Gotti, you tell them Rudolph Giuliani.”

It is even-keeled Silvio with the hair across his ass in this one. “I can’t turn the other cheek here,” he says, and later evokes the spirit of “friend of ours” Joe Colombo, boss of the Colombo crime family, the first American-born boss of a New York syndicate and the founder of the Italian-American Civil Rights League. (Silvio wrongly claims it was the first “Italian-American Anti-Defamation Organization”—the type of subtle screw-up, intentional or not, that is gleaned from endless viewings and subsequent Wikipedia rabbit-holing.) Supposedly Colombo gave his blessing to the script of The Godfather once producer Al Ruddy agreed to remove any explicit mention of the “Mafia.” But the truest definition of “do as I say” sanctimony reflected here may have come from an instance in the filming of The Sopranos’ third season. A permit was denied for the production crew to shoot “Pine Barrens” at New Jersey’s South Mountain Reservation by Essex County Executive James Treffinger, due to the show depicting Italian Americans as corrupt. Treffinger would later be convicted and imprisoned for obstruction of justice and mail fraud.

Imperioli goes on to discuss the idea of the episode, formed in concert with journalist Maria Laurino, as almost a “flight of fancy” and “satirical.” “It gets ridiculous,” he states, somewhat defensively, as if he’s caught the way the cultural wind blows. Indeed it does, absurdity shading each of the mounting grievances and insensitive cultural slights: Montel Williams, playing himself, takes offense to Sicilians using the term “Middle Passage,” Hesh thinks Columbus being paralleled with Hitler is anti-semitic, the Carmela-led mafia wives group is upset that their luncheon speaker sounds anti-organized crime. Furio spits at the name Columbus, but for reasons all his own: Columbus is from Genoa, or the north of Italy. “I hate the north.” Protest leader Del Redclay can’t believe someone might be onto the truth around Iron Eyes Cody, Native American poster child but actual second-generation Sicilian from Louisiana (a “total fugazi,” but a “total environmentalist”). A bunch of toughs, outlaws, captains of industry … everyone has their righteous outrage point. For many, it’s only as far away as the second Monday in October. Silvio even seems pained to be reminded that James Caan is not, in fact, Italian.

Like Carmela describes a distracted, bothered Tony, everything seems a little moosha moosh. Everyone is on their virtues, their signaling, or they are trying, the whole thing such a rotating cycle of characters and grating identity performance it is hard to believe that, at this point, social media hasn’t even been invented. Twinged with vague post-9/11 dread, nationalism, xenophobia, and a new world depression turning toward confused rage, it might all seem chilly, uncomfortable, if not for how darkly hilarious it all is. An indignant Sil: “I’m gonna take action here,” followed by a wide shot of the whole crew, looking sated and beached in front of the pork store. But aside from the humor, at this remove what is evident is the Sisyphean pointlessness. The only one with much of an end game in mind is casino owner Chief Smith, and his motives are trying to land a Frankie Valli performance.

When there are no heroes

For all the critical discourse on Tony Soprano defining the archetype of antihero, what slides is the logical followup that, well, actually there are no heroes. Maybe for a country perched on the precipice of a revenge war predicated on a lie, this is what we deserve: Silvio, petulant and buffoonish; Ralphie, unable to comfort a grieving Rosalie, wondering “what’s in it for me?” and interested mainly in role play and amyl nitrite and vibrators. For every good man, of which there is exactly one—Bobby—there is a Janice waiting to pounce, to exploit, to be moved by an ember of real tenderness and emotion, only for it to succumb to her true inner character, for her to push Ralphie down a flight of stairs because he didn’t take his shoes off, to get him out of the way, to set her back on her path of “compassion and respect.”

“There was a time when the Italian people didn’t have a lot of options,” Tony defends, negotiating with himself and with Meadow at one point earlier in the series. To which she rebuffs him: “You mean like Mario Cuomo?” Even if she is right, for every Mario Cuomo, there is an Andrew Cuomo. “My father didn’t watch The Godfather, and I never watched Sopranos,” Imperioli relates the second Cuomo telling him, accounting for a time when he met the then governor before playing him in Escape To Dannemora. In hindsight, Cuomo may have been better served watching The Sopranos, like the rest of us in 2020, as opposed to manipulating COVID death data and sexually harassing co-workers.

It ends, like so much of The Sopranos, with a shoulder shrug. “It’s all a big nothing.” What are ya gonna do? The episode takes the long way around righteousness and Essex County to get back to the foot of the driveway, picking up the paper and seeing more bad news. Silvio forgets the day of the big parade, distracted by a night of blackjack at a Native American casino. These aren’t complicated men so much as they are a bunch of everyday Joe Jerkoffs: middle-aged half-wit careerists trying to provide for their kids or buy a horse or do whatever thing may distract from the suffering around them, from the suffering they cause, from the pain their friends endure.

Andrew Cuomo was forced to resign in shame, Giuliani segued from unifying mayoral hero to democracy-undermining lunatic, and today it seems few if any true defenders of Columbus’ actions exist. He was an asshole. As powerful men so often are. Time has not been kind, and the tide will continue to lap waves of judgment across their character. Meanwhile, a throwaway episode of a television show still contains layers, acting as funny time capsule and predictor, for our time of outrage and our country of hypocrisy, inanity, and hopelessness. Here lays the rotten core of American greed and nothingness that extends from organized crime to politics and everything each touches, which is to say, everything. But maybe it reveals the best of what the country reflects in an entirely different way. Angered, annoyed, sick of the posturing, eventually Tony lays into Silvio: “Where the fuck is our self-esteem? That stuff doesn’t come from Columbus, or The Godfather, or Chef fuckin’ Boyardee…” Echoing Tony in a way, Imperioli goes on to recap his rebuff of Cuomo: “We should be proud that Italians made The Sopranos.”