So many interesting threads running through the same party. I loved Tony's sour grapes at not being invited to Hugh's party, and the ensuing games of telephone and so on (Junior's a prick) that led to him being reinvited despite his wife's and mother-in-law's wishes, and how he milks it for everything it's worth.
There's a subtle contrast to the way that Carmela is frantically trying to keep all of these plates spinning (almost literally) as the party is getting going, and the way that Tony just breezes in when the time is right. It underscores the ways in which Carmela is scrambling without the man she wanted out of her life, and the way Tony (who, as the visit to his hovel of a home indicates, is struggling in a different way without his wife to keep him on track) comes in and starts to fill his usual role with the gregariousness he's known for.
There's been a detente brewing between Carmela and Tony for some time now, not that they don't still have their flare ups, but each is realizing how they're affected by the other, even when apart, and how their worlds make a little less sense without each other. I'm not going out on a limb and calling theirs a healthy marriage exactly, but it's clear that 20+ years of marriage has made them accustomed to certain things, that they worked out a groove, often a harmful one, that they're terribly used to now, and it's a very difficult thing to pull oneself out of it. So they literally drift back together here.
Lord knows if it will be permanent or not, but there's the hint that things have changed a little. Carmella sees the man who gives a thoughtful gift to her father and chats up his guests and is, in the social settings where his magnetism can flourish, resembles more of the man she married. And when Carmella's mom essentially admits that she didn't want Tony to come because she was embarrassed by him, because he evinces the idea of a lower class italian family that she hopes to rise above, Carmela rejects and resents it, hinting at a rebellion that may have helped explain her attraction to Tony in the first place. Whereas her aborted dalliance with Mr. Wegler leaves Carmela lamenting that she'll always be tied to Tony in some way, this episode seems to suggest a certain pride, or at least defiance in the role she's carved for herself, regardless of her mother's classism or that of her friends.
The classism is interesting in Tony B's story as well. He's clearly at a lower station than his cousin, and his vocalized resentments to Carmela ordering him around has shades of the Charmagne story from the show's first season. Tony B. clearly feels a little lesser, even if he's trying not to. And the scene where his kid tells him that they love The Sopranos' house and never want to come back to their grandmother's more modest home again is a heartbreaking one. From the mouths of babes, who don't understand the messed up things that happen under the roof of that McMansion. "Irregular Around the Margins" focused to a degree on how a man's image can drive him to do certain things, if the way he's seen by others makes him feel small or marginalized. Tony B. is one of the few characters on the show who seemed OK with how he was seen, even if he wasn't a big shot gangster anymore, but as his request for bigger work from Tony S., and his kid-motivated agreement to do some wet work for Carmine Jr. indicate, he's starting to feel his stature, and is less and less content to sit idly by and accept it.
The theme of this episode seemed to be having someone there for you...or not. The illusion that you have someone there for support or you don't.
The easiest of these is Christopher. He's patting J.T. on the back with one hand, and punching him with the other. (J.T., by the way, is played by Tim Daly, who folks my age will know best as Superman from the D.C. Animated Universe.) The irony seems lost on Chris, who appears legitimately surprised that J.T. didn't call him for support when he felt tempted to return to drugs in the midst of being shaken down by Chris. Chris doesn't understand being there for someone wholly, and separates his professional life and his personal life in a fit of cognitive dissonance that J.T. is right to be baffled by. To be frank, while I appreciated the theme of this particular story, I thought it actually dragged the episode down. It was a little too blunt, too blatant in what it was going for to work as well as it needed to, and in many ways it felt like the Davey storyline being rehashed only with Chris instead of Tony.
The other instance, which is also fairly on-the-nose, is Junior. I have to admit, I was kind of annoyed by this story at first. It seemed like comic relief in an episode where it didn't fit with Junior coming up with more and more outlandish excuses to attend funerals so that he can skip out on his house arrest. It seemed pretty ghoulish after a while. But then, after the death of his cousin's husband, a mere fifteen days after his cousin, he breaks down at the funeral, and it's clear how upset he is that he has no one. As he points out, he has no children, no spouse, and hardly any friends for that matter. He talks about carrying a torch for his brother's mistress but never being able to close the deal. He's a man who feels like there's no one really there for him, and it devastates him. Surprisingly moving.
And lastly, the main story, which is what bring this episode's rating up so high for me, is the story of Tony and his father's mistress. It's clearly that Tony sees, or wants to see, or hates to see, a lot of his father in himself. His ill feelings for his mother are not nearly so repressed anymore, and so upon meeting this mistress, who seems like a nice woman, his first thought is gladness, that it was his mother's fault for pushing him into the arms of this woman.
And then, he starts to unpack some of the stories he's heard. The way this woman who Tony imagines was really there for his father in a way his mother wasn't, didn't even stop smoking for him. And he starts to think about the ways his father wasn't there for his mother. And though he never comes out and says it, he starts to think about the ways he hasn't been there for Carmela. There's a lot of powerful stuff going on under the hood of Tony's story in this episode - his resentment at realizing his father gave his dog away to another family, and his being able to step outside of his own selfishness for once and imagine what his philandering does to his own family. So much said without writing it on the screen, and in a season that's reflected marginal but meaningful growth from Tony, it's another bit of his learning just a little bit more.
This is an episode about selfishness, or at least self-centeredness. Everyone in the episode is focused on themselves and their people and their situation at the expense of any other. Ralphie asks what's in it for him to support Rosalee. Rather than providing the "honesty and compassion that [she's] known for", Janice breaks up with Ralphie by yelling at him for not taking off his shoes and knocking him down the stairs. The Casino head only welcomes Tony and his crew to his casino in order to get them to try to book Frankie Valli for him. Junior is only worried about his widower helper driving him to his trial.
The same is true of the "who was oppressed the most" contest that everyone is having. The Italians disregard the Native Americans, Hesh is sympathetic to them until his Cuban friend claims his people's suffering under Columbus is akin to the Jews' suffering under Hitler. Everyone is focused on their own problems and grievances at the expense of the slightest bit of empathy for anyone else's.
The lone holdout is Bobby Bacala, who, despite having no hand in his wife's death, is constantly brought to tears by the thought that he wasn't there for his wife when he might have been. It's a hell of a contrast, and highlights how so many people with every reason to be considerate or empathetic only think about themselves, and how Bobby, who has every reason to let himself off the hook, is racked with guilt.
I don't know if Tony's speech at the end is supposed to be the author's avatar. It seems a little more direct in enunciating the point than the show tends to be, but it feels like the writers talking through the character. It's interesting, because in one way, it's a rejection of the cultural oppression pissing matches that consumed so many individuals in the episode--Tony argues that folks like Gary Cooper didn't complain about that sort of thing and that people rise above them-- but it's also another form of self-centeredness because it credits all of their success to their own ingenuity and wherewithal, seemingly ignoring the fact that they stood on the shoulders of giants and by the nature of their business, had many things handed to them that others would not have been able to wrangle. Interesting stuff, to be sure.
