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

Coming Soon...