Opening with the same aria that closed the last episode, we find Carmela and Meadow at an art gallery where a menstrual Mrs Sop' is overcome with emotion and insight at Jusepe De Ribera's portrait The Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine Of Alexandria, in which a babe is cradled by a doting new mother. This seems unusually brooding even for the Queen of North Caldwell. Later we are reassured this is purely hormonal when we find her weeping over a Pedigree dog food commercial. The realisation that the ducks are leaving her has hit home but she attributes her menopausal anxieties to ovarian cancer. The intense fear of her children leaving home is internalised by her as death. What is she besides a mother?
No such concerns cloud the mind of her husband's latest mistress, Gloria, a woman who thrives independently in a man's world without any maternal attributes. Although Tony comes to see something morbidly maternal in her here, when she taunts him with the same slights his mother did. Her voice almost sounds as though it was dubbed by Marchand when she purrs "Poor You..." Unlike his wife and previous comari, this one cannot be placated with gifts and days out on the yacht. She wants him, needs him... What Melfi describes as amour fou (French for mad love) and Tony will misquote later on and perhaps more accurately as 'a mo-fo' (or subliminally, a motherf*ck).
Exactly the opposite of which qualities attracted him to her in the first place. When she threatens to reveal their affair to Carmela, whom she incidentally drove home from the car dealership the other day, Tony reacts violently as she had hoped he would ('attempted suicide-by-Tony' to paraphrase Melfi). It would be the first and last time in the show that he would strike a woman but certainly not the first time he thought about it. The intense look of hatred in his eyes as he nearly strangles her to death is reminiscent of the memorable pillow-fluffing scene from Season One's 'I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano'.
But she's not the only one he'd like to throttle. Jackie Jr, in his constant pursuit of respect through instant gratification, has p*ssed off the wrong people for the last time. Taking his inspiration from a similar heist perpetrated by Tony and his father years earlier Ralph told them about, Dino and himself stick up Eugene Pontecorvo's card game unsuccessfully, killing the dealer and wounding Furio before Jackie flees the scene, leaving his buddies to die. Tony leaves the wayward youth's fate in Ralphie's hands, after imploring his caporegime 'do the right thing'. We come to know what he meant by this in the next episode.
Carmela meanwhile learns to "live on the good and forgo the bad" after a face-to-face confessional with a Priest who isn't Father Intintola, or even Italian for that matter. A medical exam reveals her feared ovarian cancer to have been a thyroid problem, something in and of herself overstimulating her hormones. The aphorism prescribed to cure her spiritual cancer by the Priest is a placebo she will keep on popping, as it allows her to feel morally upright while leading her parasitic and ultimately sinful life (taking off her more expensive jewelry once in a while and refusing a dress maybe). Gloria's doesn't seem so different in that respect, with her statue of Buddha and equally religious adherence to her career not quite filling the spiritual vacuum of her existence.
The closing montage of Tony returning home to a momentarily mollified Carmela who has foregone the blue sapphire ring; Ralph to an already-distraught Rosalie with the news of Jackie's disappearance; and Patsy Parisi assuring his wife he's picked up the groceries on his way to the car after threatening Gloria Trillo with death if she approaches TS again, is scored with Bob Dylan's (a fan of the show) rendition of Dean Martin's 'Return to Me'. The oath these men swore to uphold with their other families is just as tenuously upheld as Omerta. But of their duplicitous love lives, which is true? Whose love is mad?
30 out of 35 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
