AJ comes home from the hospital. Tony holes up in a safehouse. It is an exciting episode, full of drama and pace. The hour is unique in that it could be seen as the first part of a two-parter, something that David Chase has never given us before. I noticed a curious phenomenon when I was doing my research for this hour: several fans and reviewers misremembered events that occurred in this hour as happening in the next hour, and events that happened in the next hour as occurring in this hour.
But in , for this final season, they took Memorial Day weekend off as usual but then aired the final two episodes over the following two Sundays. Many viewers were by now equating white shoes with death.
I believe it was episode 6. Silvio strangles Burt Gervasi with a wire. Gervasi was talking to New York about bringing in some new management to the New Jersey famiglia, and he pays the price for his betrayal. In the next hour, Carlo is believed to be talking to the Feds, and perhaps the death of his cousin here helped push him to start cooperating. Phil, in probably his most quotable scene ever, gives the order to extinguish the rival family across the state line.
We know that Phil is all about projecting a tough-guy machismo maybe because he is trying to hide a closeted homosexuality, but more likely because he is just an old-school mobster.
Tony saw Phil at a moment when his usual masculine posturing was down. Tony sits with him for a moment, and the imagery expresses the complicated relationship between the two. They are cordial enough to share a table, but the vertical elements in the shot underscore the divisions between them:. But there is no time to be sentimental nowβthings are moving fast. On the sidewalk in front of the pork store, Harris delivers the news that Tony and his top leadership are possibly being targeted. Moments later, a claustrophobic shot hints that the walls are closing in on the New Jersey boss:.
