Recap: Episode 613 'Soprano Home Movies'If you'd caught previews of this episode, you were probably just as apprehensive as I was about how things would turn out. Sometimes you have to keep in mind that this isn't quite Brady Bunch you're dealing with here.
Trouble with the lawThe episode starts off a couple of years in the past. Tony is outside Johnny Sack's home and discards of a gun by throwing it out in the snow. A teenage boy (what the US right wing would call a 'slacker') watches him and later retrieves the weapon.
Back in the present, a mighty knock on the front door wakes the Sopranos in the early hours of the morning. Carmela's first reaction is: "Is this it?" She's probably got fears of yet another inevitable FBI raid on their home. She's close enough though. Its the local county police come to arrest Tony on weapons charges. The kid who found his gun in the opening scene was recently arrested with cocaine and the gun in his possession and he pointed the origin of the gun at Tony.
We later get a very brief, but nonetheless horrifying scene of Tony in a jail cell with countless others. Not to self: don't ever, ever eat anything while watching an HBO show ever again. These lessons are usually learnt the hard way...
Tony makes bail and returns home to a big welcome from family, friends and colleagues - but Christopher, Janice and Bobby Baccala are noticeably absent. Tony soon gets a call from Bobby to remind him that he was invited to join Bobby and Janice at their lake house somewhere near the Canadian border.
Happy Birthday Boss!Besides, its Tony's 47th birthday that weekend and they have some celebrating to do, esp after Tony hears from his lawyer on the way to the lake house that the police have dropped the weapons charges against him.
Back in New York, there's a homecoming of another kind. Phil Leotardo's back after his hospital stay and reacts indifferently to the news that Tony's been arrested. Appears the rest of his crew are still out for Tony's blood.
Things at the lake go swimmingly. Bobby and Tony do as boys do when they're in the wild and get acquainted with an automatic machine gun - a birthday gift from Bobby to Tony. Bobby says he doesn't hunt with the thing, but rather with a bow and arrow, because "it levels the playing fields". You can just about see Tony explode from having to keep the guffaws of laughter in check.
While the women are in the kitchen and talking about the past (Tony and Janice's childhood, the traits they inherited from their parents) the men are out fishing and talking about the future. Tony has plans for a certain someone to take over the business for him should, god forbid, something happen to him. Its quite clear he has Bobby in mind for this job, since he is his brother-in-law.
Bobby's pastI loved that we got much more insight into Bobby's story in this episode. He's always been this quiet operator in the background. He shared some interesting family history. The lake house once belonged to his father, who came to the US illegally through Canada. He was wanted back in the old country. Tony later calls Bobby's father The Terminator, which is set up as a contrast to the fact that Bobby has never whacked anyone before.
Carmela's gift to Tony on his birthday is a morning BJ, which didn't sit well with me for some reason. She just doesn't seem like the type of girl to go that low. I've noticed how the expression on Tony's face when he is getting serviced down there can always be misconstrued as a heart attack. Not a pretty sight at all.
The Baccalas and Sopranos are having a fine time though, enjoying the sunshine, drinking (a lot), eating and even playing karaoke. Janice shares a story from their childhood that angers Tony because it makes them look like a dysfunctional family. One night years ago, on the way home from some club or restaurant, Tony's dad got upset about something and accidentally shot their mother - right through her beehive hairdo! Carm is in stitches, but Tony feels the need to get back at his sister for mentioning it.
The family that fights together...Just when you thought this episode was just going to be about a lovely family holiday, things get nasty and very violent during a drunken game of Monopoly as Tony persistently makes cracks at Janice's past life as a wild child. This pisses Bobby off like you've never seen before, and he and Tony launch into an all-out attack on each other, crashing into walls and furniture, hurting Carmela as she tries to break it up. But Tony can't compete with Bobby and is knocked to the ground.
Bobby's too drunk to drive away from the mess he made and has to face up to his boss, but they decide that they'd had enough and go to bed. At 4am that night, Tony barges into Janice and Bobby's room, telling Bobby he won the fight fair and square.
Next morning, with both men sporting bruisers, Carm's attempts to end the vacation early are futile, since Tony and Bobby have business with some "Canucks" later anyways. The Canucks in question are two French-Canadians who want to sell some black market pharmaceuticals. But the price is a bit too high for Tony.
Good thing one of the dealers is having problems back home. Turns out his sister is fighting for custody of her young son with the kid's dead-beat father. Tony makes a deal: the Canucks can knock 35% off their asking price and they'll take care of the dead-beat father for them.
No guesses that Tony gives this job to Bobby, almost as a kind of initiation into the grimier aspects of the job. "But no bows and arrows now," Tony quips. Hee hee. Really, how Bobby has lasted this long in the business without a kill is a mystery to me.
The highlight of the episode was a brief cameo from Christopher who calls Tony to wish him a belated happy birthday. But perhaps sore after the previous night's drama and his advancing age, Tony just hangs up on him! We don't hear from or see Chris again in the episode. Poor guy!
While the boys are off doing business, the girls are relaxing by the lake while Janice tries to imply that Tony has anger management issues (ya think?!). Carm gets defensive and insists that Tony is not vindictive and has never lifted a hand to her or the kids - except for the one time he slapped AJ and regretted it.
Of course with the parents away, AJ is skipping work and has taken over the manor - entertaining girlfriend Blanca in his parents' bedroom and throwing a pool party for his buddies.
On their return from their business meeting, the women are clearly relieved to see both men return in one piece and, in keeping with their cover story, tell them that Tony beat Bobby in their game of golf, which delights Janice. With business taken care of, Tony and Carm decide that its time to go. The "loss" of the fight with Bobby has wounded his pride somewhat and he insists to Carm that, had it happened 10 years previously, he would have knocked Bobby out without breaking a sweat. He must be going through a mid-life crisis (again!)
Bobby gets initiatedOf course Bobby has other more pressing matters to take care of and storms off to Canada to take care of the assignment Tony gave him. Turns out the guy the Canucks want taken care of is just a kid himself, a rather grungy, bohemian student. Bobby confronts the guy in a communal laundromat, putting one in his chest. As Bobby goes in for the fatal blow to the head, the guy rips off the front of Bobby's shirt and dies a horrible death. A visibly shaken and traumatised Bobby stumbles out of the laundromat and drops the weapon to the ground on his way out.
Back home, Tony gets a phone call from his lawyer. Turns out the weapons case isn't gone after all. Its been taken over by the Feds who crapped all over the public prosecutor for making a ham out of the case at county level when he knew that the Feds have been building something bigger over the past 5 years. The good news though, says Tony's lawyer, is that if the Feds had had anything better, they'd have been talking to each other through a glass partition.
With more trouble on his horizon, Tony winds down while watching DVD home movies of himself and Janice as kids, fighting over a hosepipe, a birthday gift to him from his sister.
The curious case of Janice and Bobby's daughter:
In this episode we see the new version of the Baccala baby, Domenina, only she's not a baby anymore as she was in the first few episodes when we were first introduced to her. Now she's a walking, talking 3-year-old!
At the start of this season, many were questioning the time lapse between seasons 5 and 6 to explain the emergence of Janice's baby. But how did she age 2 years over just 13 episodes?
Has more time passed than it seems? Janice at one point during their holiday mentioned that Tony's shooting happened "last year", but Domenica was still a little baby then.
Am I missing something?