The Sopranos Season Three, Episode by Episode Review

EDITOR'S NOTE: IF YOU DON"T CARE ABOUT MY PERSONAL STORY BELOW, SKIP TO THE FONT CHANGE AND CLEARLY MARKED EPISODE 1 REVIEW A FEW PARAGRAPHS DOWN, WHERE THE REVIEWS BEGIN

The Sopranos changed my life. It was the cherry on top of 1999, the greatest year of my life. I was fortunate enough to turn 18 that year, the year human culture and civilization peaked, the greatest year in cinema, one of the greatest years in music, and the year The Sopranos, perhaps the greatest television show ever made, premiered. However, by the start of Season Three, I was in college, did not have HBO, and had to wait until the show premiered on DVD to watch it. Season Three was the first in its entirety that I wasn't able to watch as the show was airing, but that did little to dim my enjoyment, when I rented it from Blockbuster and watched it over a couple of days. Being able to watch the show that way felt like magic in the early 00's, far before streaming was even a thought. 

Now, for the first time in over 20 years, and for its 25th anniversary, I'll be running the third season of The Sopranos throughout the rest of 2026, and will post a quick review of every individual episode on this very post. Each new review will appear here on the first day of each month (two in November and December). I can't wait to watch and talk about these episodes. 

Lord above, things ain't been the same since The Sopranos walked into town... 

EPISODE 1 -- "Mr. Ruggerio's Neighborhood"
Written by: David Chase; Directed by: Allen Coulter

Originally Aired: 3/04/2001

Life goes on in The Sopranos' world. Pussy Bonpensiero might be somewhere at the bottom of the ocean, but Tony and his crew keep up the bad work, and Tony's family life continues. The FBI also decide that they've got to let any hope of Pussy still being alive go, along with all their hopes of using him as a rat. None of their tapes of Pussy talking to Tony reveal anything of serious recrimination, and now the FBI wants to ramp things up, by putting a microphone in the one place Pussy told them Tony talked business in The Soprano house: the basement. To do this, they'll have to have The Soprano's home to themselves for two hours. There's one day of the week, Thursday, where Tony is at his headquarters at The Bing, Carmela is at tennis practice, Meadow is off at college in Columbia in New York City, AJ is at school, and the maid is at the park with her husband, studying for the U.S. citizenship test. Thus, the majority of "Mr Ruggerio's Neighborhood" reveals the current status of each Sopranos family member as they're tracked by surveillance, to the strange strains of a musical mashup of the mod spy sounding theme from the old television show "Peter Gunn," and The Police's ode to stalking, "Every Breath You Take." It seems that Tony is still the same charming and powerful sociopath he's always been. His crew is doing great, except for Patsy Parisi, whose twin brother was whacked under Tony's crew several years before. Patsy is drinking heavily, mourning his brother, and suspecting Tony to the point that he shows up at the Soprano's house with a gun, breaks down crying, and pees in the pool, before leaving (a confused, surveilling FBI sees it all). Later on, Tony, knowing something is amiss, forces a seemingly sober Patsy to swear he's moved on from his grief--Tony isn't shown to have thought about his departed friend Pussy once in the episode, so why shouldn't Patsy be able to move on? Patsy swears. Meanwhile, Carmela sees the end of yet another of her quiet romance dreams, as her tennis coach announces he's moving away, and she and new racket-handler, Adriana, receive a new young female instructor who lusts after the scantily clad Adriana almost as much as the spying FBI do. Anthony Junior is still making bad choices, ditching school to smoke with friends, while Meadow is struggling to adjust to the constant noise of Manhattan. Meanwhile, the Polish housekeeper is struggling with her angry husband, who left a lofty engineering job in Poland to work menial jobs in America. The FBI make progress in the Sopranos' home, and even make fun of the soon to explode basement water heater. They aren't laughing, though, when the water heater does explode, severely flooding the basement, and jeopardizing and postponing their Soprano house bugging. They're able to finish the job a week later, but the possible benefits of this are debatable. The first FBI listening session reveals a mild argument between Tony and Carmela over exercise equipment.  T and Carm work it out and fall into a boring conversation about the minutia of life, briefly interrupted by the housekeeper's husband, who Tony is putting to work on an engineering job. The Polish former bigshot is building a drainage structure in the basement, as Tony makes sure that if this NEW water heater explodes, it will drain harmlessly into the yard.

EPISODE 2 -- "Proshai, Livushka"
Written by: David Chase; Directed by:  Tim Van Patten

Originally Aired: 3/4/2001

"Proshai, Livushka" presents perhaps The Sopranos' most significant family plot development, in an episode that is subtly unhinged (and which originally aired as part of a double-premiere, immediately after "Mr. Ruggerio's Neighborhood.") At the start, Tony is passed out in a pool of blood on his kitchen floor. Before Carmela arrives to awaken and treat him (he's badly cut his arm on broken glass), the screen suddenly rewinds, a technique of extreme significance considering that the episode uses Tony's viewing of an old VHS copy of 1931's The Public Enemy as a framing device and possible decoder. "Proshai, Livushka" rewinds to minutes before, when Meadow and both classmate and possible future romantic partner, Noah, are watching The Public Enemy, Tony's favorite film, on VHS in the family living room. Tony arrives as the two are about to leave, and introduces himself to the Los Angeles-born Noah. Tony is racist toward the half black, half Jewish Noah, while Noah is both insufferable and pretentious. Tony intimidates Noah and tells him to stay away from Meadow, and while he uses racism as a method of attack, it's clear through later comments and actions in the episode that Tony would have still found a way to attack Noah even if he was as white as the pure-driven snow. Subsequently, an upset Meadow gives Tony the stink eye throughout the rest of the episode. After Meadow and Noah leave, a spiraling Tony goes into the kitchen, starts prepping some cold cuts, see Uncle Ben on a package of rice, has a panic attack, and passes out. The episode had used a newspaper headline about garbage collection-centric mob violence (and a quick sequence of that) as a red herring cause to Tony's panic attack before the rewind, but now that it's revealed that domestic events are the actual cause, and caught up to the present, Tony does have to deal with the subject of the newspaper article. The recently deceased Richie Aprile has been replaced by Ralphie Cifaretto (played by a surprisingly menacing Joey Pantoliano), and while Junior is high on the latter's earning ability, Ralphie is even more volatile than Richie was, using semantics to bend Tony's orders about halting the violence. Tony's top mob concern, though, is that his mother will testify against him on last season's stolen airplane ticket case. Tony pays Livia a visit, but immediately regrets it when she displays her usual nihilistic behavior. He makes sure to let her know, though, that he should have kept giving her the silent treatment after she attempted to have him murdered in Season One. Livia Marchand, who plays Livia, had recently passed away, and CGI is used to place her face from previous scenes onto another actress' body for this scene. The quality of this caused a minor uproar in 2001, but in the 25 years since, CGI has been used so much to badly attempt similar things, this scene barely stands out now. But whether this moment bothers the viewer or not, it's tough to argue that the show doesn't put its best foot forward with how it deals with Marchand's and thus Livia's death in the rest of this episode. Tony finds out, shortly after his visit to Livia, that his mother died of a massive stroke in her sleep. Tony would have a hard time knowing how to feel in the situation even if he wasn't a sociopath. He visits Melfi, who barely talks while Tony works through his feelings, as he declares that he is a bad son for being happy that his evil mother has died, though he still seems to be in denial about just how negatively she affected his life, and seems more relieved than anything that she can't testify against him now. Tony's non-Mafia involved sister, Barbara, tearfully informs Tony that Janice won't be coming back home to pay respects to their mother. Tony screams at Janice on the phone, dismissing her fears that she shouldn't come back to Jersey because she murdered Richie there, and unfortunately for everyone who has the misfortune of interacting with her, Janice goes back home. Tony's lousy sister immediately makes her presence known, hunting for secret cash at Livia's house, insisting the family gives Livia an expensive funeral despite the fact that the gloomy matriarch declared she didn't even want one, and aggressively telling her mother's caretaker, the one-legged Ruskie, Svetlana, to give back the items Svetlana insists Livia left her. Meanwhile, a barely peripheral gangster, Ray Curto, is shown to have taken Pussy's place as FBI informant. Finally, the wake and funeral come, though clearly Livia was right that a funeral is not needed, as no one really wants to attend, and only does so out of family obligation or out of respect for Tony. Silvio bitterly complains to his wife that he's missing the Jets home opener for the funeral (also a subtle clue that it's the beginning of fall). Christopher, Adriana, and Furio get high at Christopher's apartment. The wake is just a chance for several officials and mob members to talk shop with an emotionally distant Tony. The funeral is a robotic, yet beautiful ceremony that just gives the FBI more opportunity to snap photos of the crime family...but then the episode gets spooky. Earlier, just after Livia's death was announced, A.J. complained to Meadow about having to break down the Robert Frost poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," for school. However, after Meadow explains the poem's death-centric themes and leaves A.J. alone in the Soprano house, Anthony Junior hears a ghostly creak on the stairs outside his door, quietly freaks out, then calls out hopefully for the ghost of his grandmother. Now, in the episode's final act, the funeral ceremony moves to the same house, for a Bucco-catered banquet where the attendants happily avoid talking about the deceased. Tony seems distant, lamenting to Carmela about Meadow's lost innocence (perhaps his outburst at Noah earlier also stems from the fact that Meadow was watching Tony's favorite movie with a man who wasn't him). Tony also barely listens to Furio drone on about a scheme to milk the winner of the television reality show, "Survivor," then shuts a mirrored door, and Pussy's ghost is standing right THERE in the reflection, looking on in disapproval. The specter is gone as soon as it appears, but Tony does a double-take, sure he's seen something. However, Tony is soon called to the sitting room by Janice, along with all other attendees, to offer up a fond memory of Livia--an activity Tony had previously told Janice should by no means happen. This is after Tony has briefly escaped the ghosts inside his house, only to be tormented by Artie out by the pool, as the chef--Tony's oldest friend, since Tony recently murdered his other best friend, Pussy--angrily tells Tony that their secret (that Tony burned down Artie's restaurant in Season One) dies with Livia. Now, Tony angrily tells Janice he forbid this hippie stuff, but it's too late, everyone has gathered. Predictably, no one has anything nice to say, even when pressed by Janice. Tony hangs in the periphery of the room, with the stairs out of focus behind him. A strange, possibly masked figure comes down them, looks over Tony's shoulder for a moment, then walks back up these same stairs where A.J. heard creaking earlier. Is this a ghost? A spirit of another deceased family member? Did this haunting figure hear 1945's "If I Loved You," Livia's favorite song, playing in the sitting room, and come down to investigate? This moment can't be a production error, as despite any comment from the crew, David Chase obviously intended for it to be left in--this shot of Tony is not only lingering, but could have easily been excised if it was an accident--and spectral figures on staircases become a motif as the show goes on. Clearly, The Sopranos' world and this house are haunted. The past itself always haunts The Sopranos and Tony in particular, almost like a conscience that's attempting to break its way into his sociopathic soul. Eventually, Carmela breaks the awkward attempts at positive comments (as well as Christopher's coked out philosophical ramblings about personal appearance and unique identify) with some of her most honest dialogue in the entire show. She declares just how awful Livia was, that everyone there knows it, and that Livia drove a wedge in Carmela's own family by negatively effecting her relationship with her own parents, who are also in attendance. Carmela's father, after angrily down-dressing Carmela's mother's attempt at diffusion, agrees in a cathartic explosion of emotion, and Barbara's husband, less emotionally, but still vocally, agrees with Carmela as well. Carmela reflects that even from the grave, Livia has power to cause turmoil, the Buccos announce that dessert is available, and the morbid shindig comes to a close. That night, Carmela rightfully sleeps more soundly that she ever has, but Tony tosses and turns. Eventually, Tony goes downstairs to watch The Public Enemy, as he's been working his way through the film throughout the episode. As Tony sees the loving mother in the film prepare the house for the return of a son that she doesn't know is dead, Tony suddenly begins to sob. Is he finally processing the death of his mother...or simply responding to the scripted events onscreen? Furthermore, he himself began the episode as if he was a rewindable character in a film. Is this just metacommentary on the fact that Tony is a fictional character watching another fictional character...or is there something deeper here, and is every action that Tony commits--either due to his own sociopathy or because of the harsh events of his youth and his family business--a scripted event over which he has no control? Is it all commanded by the spirits themselves? Or maybe David Chase just likes VCRs.

EPISODE 3 -- "Fortunate Son"
Written by: Todd A. Kessler; Directed by:  Henry J. Bronchtein

Originally Aired: 3/11/2001
Coming Soon...