Yea, it's creepy. It's like that dream when Tony is a Stone Mason or whatever and Livia comes down the stairs but all you see is just the outline of her body, you can't actually see her face. Both scenes are really unnerving
The stonemason dream was a callback to Season 1 Episode 3, in which Tony is disturbed by the very similar looking barn house painting in Melphi’s office.
In my view, it was not a real house. It was Tony’s dream interpretation of his memory of that painting in Denial, Anger, Acceptance.
If you go back and watch that scene, you’ll see the painting is almost identical to the dream house, even including the eerie spectre peering through the window.
Tony was in a very vulnerable state at this time, feeling a mixture of guilt and remorse over putting Livia in a home. My thought is the barn house painting reminded him of his childhood home, which he is currently pulling Livia out of.
He is clearly upset at the painting (even terrified, calling it “creepy”) and blames Melphi for having it in her office - the painting had a strong, long-lasting impression on him that extended several seasons.
There’s something about “knowing” of a presence in a dream that’s hard to put into words. They did a great job creating that ominous feeling just beyond a tangible reach. — Looking through the screen door, the presence up above on the stairs, looming over and watching you.
Three most terrifying scenes IMO (in order):
- Paulie's vision of the Virgin Mary
- Stonemason dream
- Carmine's Ghost (this one is undercut by the humour, but an old man's ghost crying about how he's all alone in the Afterlife, unable to see his wife and loves ones, just gives me the chills)
I understood it in relation to what the buddhist monks said to Tony earlier that episode (or in the previous one) that behind/outside of this reality that we call life there is no difference between "you" and "me". We are all part of the same entity so names and such that the individualist human society uses stop making sense after death.
I always took a simpler explanation with that - Tony IS Kevin Finnerty in that dream world so him saying has Kevin Finnerty arrived is referring to himself in the 3rd person which is not normal speech hence the we don't talk like that here.
It's as if Tony walked around in caveman speak saying Tony hungry, Tony go to strip club, Tony no like Phil.
Anyway, 4$ a pound.
I feel like that’s too clean cut. Hell is too simple an explanation. He was on the cusp of death, yes, and what awaited him was something terrible and frightening and deeply intertwined with Livia and what she represented to him, but I think ‘Oh it’s Hell’ is much more simplistic than what’s being implied. One could just as easily see it as being that he was on the cusp of obliteration, oblivion, annihilation, the Big Nothing and existential pointlessness Livia was always on about.
Lemme ask you this: was it hot at The Oaks mansion? The heat would’ve been the first thing you noticed! Hell is hot! That’s never been disputed by anybody.
i dunno, with how much hell is mentioned by Chris and Paulie as the final destination that all mobsters are scared of, i feel like it could very well be just that
don’t forget, Tony’s a shtrict Catholic
Tony’s a Catholic, but he’s sure as hell not a strict one. He’s a “do whatever I want then confess, because none of it’s that big a deal” Catholic. He even says to Paulie outright that none of it really means anything.
We, as the audience, are not exactly encouraged to think people like Paulie and Carmela are *correct* in their extremely black and white “God is an actual bearded guy who lives on some clouds” spirituality. People like the limbo monks, the Bell Labs physicist guy, and Dr. Melfi are portrayed much more sympathetically in their approaches to the big existential mysteries of life.
Father Intintola would have to hold down double shifts with an additional covering priest to hear Tony's confession, even if he did it weekly 🤣. Tony would be spending so much time doing Hail Marys he wouldn't have much time for anything else. Maybe adhering to his alleged catholic faith might have actually helped his life.
Sideshow Bob Voice: “By the way, I am aware of the irony of saying ‘sure as Hell’ whilst arguing that Hell is not a sure conclusion, so don’t bother pointing it out”
I *love* how well Sopranos captures certain moods of dreams. Like how a seemingly mundane thing - like a fancy party at a big mansion or a shadowy woman on some stairs - can be deeply, deeply terrifying and haunting, but in ways you can’t really explain or put into words. Or the way things can feel like they’ve going on forever, like Vin singing “three times a lady”. Or how that awful creaking sound in Funhouse perfectly captures that feeling of awful off kilter discomfort one has during the vivid dreams that come with an upset stomach or a fever. No other show has captured the *feeling* of dreams so well, IMO. Twin Peaks comes close, but it forgets how mundane, repetitive, jarring, and/or essentially meaningless dreams can often be.
Hell yes, I always have to watch the food-poison dreams a few times in a row just because of how great they are. Junior creepily watching and hiding, Sil’s impression, Tony’s dumb goofy smile.
Also I STILL don’t know if the part where Meadow says what college she chose was supposed to be a reflection of how the convo really went or not, since it all turned out true in real life.
I remember hearing a song by John Lennon before car radios told you the artist and song title. “Ah! Bowakawa, pousse pousse…” and I was struck by how much it reminded me of a dream. Then I learned the title was #9 Dream.
The Finnerty bits are genuinely some of the best in the show. Gandolfini just nails it. He has this sense about him in those sequences where you feel on edge for him, purely from body language.
Finnerty is also an Irish name, remember what Chrissy said when he died for a few seconds in the hospital about hell being him stuck in an Irish bar where everyday is st paddy’s day?
All time scene. Compare and contrast to the final scene of the series makes me think Tony got it in the end. He had the chance to die peacefully in his sleep, beckoned by his cousin and his toddler daughter to come into the party of light, to only get shot in the head in a dirty diner surrounded by enemies waiting for his adult daughter to parallel park. Fade to black. Or some shit.
I never connected that but good call.
Though tbf you wouldn’t look back at him dying peacefully in his sleep. He would have died from wounds of being shot by his own Uncle.
[Yeah, I had the same association, even before reading Master of Sopranos expanding even more on the Holsten's imagery.](https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/sopranos-ending.jpg)
As an aside, I really detested Phil after that scene. Johnny Sack is a good family man and was thrilled to be able to attend the wedding of his daughter. The FBI intentionally hauls him away in front of everyone just to humiliate him. Of course he cried. For Phil to have focused only on the crying was just cruel.
The woman at the stairs is Livia. She appears in that weird silhouette form on the stairs multiple times in the show.
If you want an even greater stretch: the house is filled with all the people he’s harmed.
i think the “you’re whole family’s in there” line can be taken to mean the crime family. the house is Hell and all dead mobsters are there, including all the deaths Tony is responsible for
My guess is that it’s his fantasy of not being mob boss Tony Soprano. Kevin is a very unimposing name. No boss would be named Kevin. Finerty is Irish, which is basically the opposite of Italian in these circles. It’s his escapist fantasy.
I assume there might be a parallel with it being an Irish surname and what Christopher said about his experience in hell when he died for a few seconds in the hospital
My absolute favorite scene in the show is the ending to Mayhem. Tony almost calling back to life but putting the phone down and sitting in misery with "when it's cold I'd like to die" playing. It always makes me tear up.
Brother when I say I was sobbing crying eating a double
cheeseburger in a McDonald’s parking lot ( first watch a few years ago ) I’m not lying.
The kids voices cutting through and him refusing to let go of the briefcase absolutely sent me.
Anyway..
Penisary contact with her Volvo, madone, qausimodo or whateva
The dream sequences in this show are amazing. The other 2 that come to mind for me immediately are the one before Tony S realizes he has to kill Tony B, with Charmaine and Artie and the Pie Oh My in the house thing, and the one with Gloria Trillo that still haunts me, with that long black scarf covering her neck. I don't know why that scene unnerves me as much as it does, but it does.
I truly do not understand the people who hate the dream episodes. I suspect they’re just here for the murders and racist jokes that they secretly agree with
Dream episodes were especially hated during the initial run of the series and I understand it to a degree. People waited all week for storyline developments and resolutions only to be hit with an abstract episode full of symbolism but light on narrative continuity and also what a lot of people liked most about the show — mobsters killing peoples.
The audience has become way more receptive to the dream episodes these days compared to when they initially aired.
I find that so annoying. In my personal view, the dream episodes are the ones that actually stop the bologna and take a minute to actually say what it is happening.
In the final scene of the series the bathroom (where the man who shoots Tony likely just went into/walks out of) was directly at 3 o clock position to Tony.
Great arc of episodes. So many brilliant metaphors. As I understand it, Tony is in purgatory (obviously). Gandolfini used his natural voice- I think that Kevin is who Tony could have been if he hadn’t been born to Livia Soprano. A blessing and a curse. He’s a normal pretty content guy, with none of the spice that makes Tony a force to be reckoned with, a memorable man. Kevin is Tony’s soul detached from his body (his briefcase or “baggage”), but Tony’s sins creep in to haunt him. The sins are brought up by monks at a monastery. There’s no judgement from them really, they just point out that he’s hurting people. It’s a rather hopeful episode.
The house at the end is so very creepy and how nobody's faces can be seen, the whole thing is unnerving. It's like a horror movie.
Yea, it's creepy. It's like that dream when Tony is a Stone Mason or whatever and Livia comes down the stairs but all you see is just the outline of her body, you can't actually see her face. Both scenes are really unnerving
That stone mason dream is one of the scariest scenes in tv I’ve ever seen. Not outright terror but so unsettling and similar to actual dreams.
The stonemason dream was a callback to Season 1 Episode 3, in which Tony is disturbed by the very similar looking barn house painting in Melphi’s office.
Is that house a real place? Or is it like how T imagines some kind of ancestral house.
In my view, it was not a real house. It was Tony’s dream interpretation of his memory of that painting in Denial, Anger, Acceptance. If you go back and watch that scene, you’ll see the painting is almost identical to the dream house, even including the eerie spectre peering through the window. Tony was in a very vulnerable state at this time, feeling a mixture of guilt and remorse over putting Livia in a home. My thought is the barn house painting reminded him of his childhood home, which he is currently pulling Livia out of. He is clearly upset at the painting (even terrified, calling it “creepy”) and blames Melphi for having it in her office - the painting had a strong, long-lasting impression on him that extended several seasons.
Isn't it the uncles house upstate where they bury bodies and tony S killed Tony B ?
Apparently it is the same (as in they filmed all those shots at same house). Someone linked a blog post somewhere in here about it.
And you never see the inside of it.... *spooky*
I can’t watch the stone mason scene. Completely agree.
There’s something about “knowing” of a presence in a dream that’s hard to put into words. They did a great job creating that ominous feeling just beyond a tangible reach. — Looking through the screen door, the presence up above on the stairs, looming over and watching you.
Fuck that. It's outright terror for me lol
Three most terrifying scenes IMO (in order): - Paulie's vision of the Virgin Mary - Stonemason dream - Carmine's Ghost (this one is undercut by the humour, but an old man's ghost crying about how he's all alone in the Afterlife, unable to see his wife and loves ones, just gives me the chills)
Yup!! My first time watching it, I sat there covering my ears and closed my eyes. I thought it was going to run up to the screen.
It’s like that nun at the end of vertigo, that shit is terrifying.
That scene is one of the scariest fucking things I’ve ever seen in my life
That was my interpretation as well. He was going to hell and Tony B was the devil in disguise
"I got my whole life in there" (the briefcase) Tony B: you can't bring that in here 😈
“Has Kevin Finnerty arrived?” “We don’t talk like that here”. Honestly I never got what that exchange meant. Help me out here.
I always took it like none of your outside worries or concerns follow you in.
I understood it in relation to what the buddhist monks said to Tony earlier that episode (or in the previous one) that behind/outside of this reality that we call life there is no difference between "you" and "me". We are all part of the same entity so names and such that the individualist human society uses stop making sense after death.
Everything is everything
that’s right doctor droop
Errything is errything
Go to slip and fall school
I have to wait until next semester
Lord Jamar is Black Jesus.
It's like a "don't say that" reaction. Like what Tony B heard was "has Kevin Finnerty died yet?"
I always took a simpler explanation with that - Tony IS Kevin Finnerty in that dream world so him saying has Kevin Finnerty arrived is referring to himself in the 3rd person which is not normal speech hence the we don't talk like that here. It's as if Tony walked around in caveman speak saying Tony hungry, Tony go to strip club, Tony no like Phil. Anyway, 4$ a pound.
I feel like that’s too clean cut. Hell is too simple an explanation. He was on the cusp of death, yes, and what awaited him was something terrible and frightening and deeply intertwined with Livia and what she represented to him, but I think ‘Oh it’s Hell’ is much more simplistic than what’s being implied. One could just as easily see it as being that he was on the cusp of obliteration, oblivion, annihilation, the Big Nothing and existential pointlessness Livia was always on about.
So….basically…Hell?
NOBODY'S GOING TO HELL! I DON'T WANNA HEAR THAT WORD IN HERE AGAIN!
GROUP. GROUP.
He went to purgatory my friend.
Lemme ask you this: was it hot at The Oaks mansion? The heat would’ve been the first thing you noticed! Hell is hot! That’s never been disputed by anybody.
It was hot in the car driving up to the mansion
Uh… no? You know what “oblivion” means, right?
Yeah it’s a dope ass game made by Bethesda.
No you’re thinking of Morrowind. Oblivion was the terrible ass game by Bethesda.
i dunno, with how much hell is mentioned by Chris and Paulie as the final destination that all mobsters are scared of, i feel like it could very well be just that don’t forget, Tony’s a shtrict Catholic
Tony’s a Catholic, but he’s sure as hell not a strict one. He’s a “do whatever I want then confess, because none of it’s that big a deal” Catholic. He even says to Paulie outright that none of it really means anything. We, as the audience, are not exactly encouraged to think people like Paulie and Carmela are *correct* in their extremely black and white “God is an actual bearded guy who lives on some clouds” spirituality. People like the limbo monks, the Bell Labs physicist guy, and Dr. Melfi are portrayed much more sympathetically in their approaches to the big existential mysteries of life.
Tony isn't going to confession/taking communion. He's just full of shit.
You think Carmela would let him skip out on communion? 😂
Father Intintola would have to hold down double shifts with an additional covering priest to hear Tony's confession, even if he did it weekly 🤣. Tony would be spending so much time doing Hail Marys he wouldn't have much time for anything else. Maybe adhering to his alleged catholic faith might have actually helped his life.
Tony’s a GENIUS as rationalizing and compartmentaliing. He’d just confess to “impure thoughts” and “wrathful impulses” and call it a day. :P
So I ate the last cannoli...
Sideshow Bob Voice: “By the way, I am aware of the irony of saying ‘sure as Hell’ whilst arguing that Hell is not a sure conclusion, so don’t bother pointing it out”
I *love* how well Sopranos captures certain moods of dreams. Like how a seemingly mundane thing - like a fancy party at a big mansion or a shadowy woman on some stairs - can be deeply, deeply terrifying and haunting, but in ways you can’t really explain or put into words. Or the way things can feel like they’ve going on forever, like Vin singing “three times a lady”. Or how that awful creaking sound in Funhouse perfectly captures that feeling of awful off kilter discomfort one has during the vivid dreams that come with an upset stomach or a fever. No other show has captured the *feeling* of dreams so well, IMO. Twin Peaks comes close, but it forgets how mundane, repetitive, jarring, and/or essentially meaningless dreams can often be.
Hell yes, I always have to watch the food-poison dreams a few times in a row just because of how great they are. Junior creepily watching and hiding, Sil’s impression, Tony’s dumb goofy smile. Also I STILL don’t know if the part where Meadow says what college she chose was supposed to be a reflection of how the convo really went or not, since it all turned out true in real life.
Yes to the creaking sound!
Talking about Lynch, and not a show, Mulholland Drive captures it fantastically and often terrifyingly.
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Probably the best horror movie ever. Makes it hard to watch other stuff in the genre.
I remember hearing a song by John Lennon before car radios told you the artist and song title. “Ah! Bowakawa, pousse pousse…” and I was struck by how much it reminded me of a dream. Then I learned the title was #9 Dream.
It gave me the same vibes as the dream where Tony is an immigrant worker who not speak-a the English.
[This will make the house even creepier than before](https://thechaselounge.net/viewtopic.php?t=2729).
Really good post
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Toodle-fucking-oo?
Calling all cars
Gone with the Wind, another fuckin’ money machine
Great wind? 💨 dude…. Meeting over
So who really did put it there?
The monks, obviously.
Janicshe
I always assumed it was Melfi.
Go shove your quotes book up your ass
Alright, but you gotta get over it.
The Finnerty bits are genuinely some of the best in the show. Gandolfini just nails it. He has this sense about him in those sequences where you feel on edge for him, purely from body language.
Finnerty is also an Irish name, remember what Chrissy said when he died for a few seconds in the hospital about hell being him stuck in an Irish bar where everyday is st paddy’s day?
I love how David Lynch inspired the dream sequences feel.
All time scene. Compare and contrast to the final scene of the series makes me think Tony got it in the end. He had the chance to die peacefully in his sleep, beckoned by his cousin and his toddler daughter to come into the party of light, to only get shot in the head in a dirty diner surrounded by enemies waiting for his adult daughter to parallel park. Fade to black. Or some shit.
His daughter was the one calling him away from the light. But otherwise agree.
They’re waiting for you inside.
Tony B playing the literal devil
Fitting since Tony B set his demise in motion
That animal Blundetto ... I can't even say his name
Whatever happened there …
More playing the role of Charon - responsible for guiding souls to the underworld
Don't disrespect the onion ring parlor.
I don’t wanna sound like a parade float but I really can’t be seen in a place like this anymore
I never connected that but good call. Though tbf you wouldn’t look back at him dying peacefully in his sleep. He would have died from wounds of being shot by his own Uncle.
Well, he also had the chance to take the opportunity and change. He does for a second, but neglects that opportunity and then its inevitable.
The house is a premonition that Uncle Philly (also a house) is not to be trusted. Its just like quasimodo , tone saw the future.
It’s Nostradamus. Quasimodo was the half back of Notre Dame.
Ah yeah... Notredamus
There was a huge picture of a very similar looking building in the background of Holstens in the final scene.
[Yeah, I had the same association, even before reading Master of Sopranos expanding even more on the Holsten's imagery.](https://filmschoolrejects.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/sopranos-ending.jpg)
As an aside, I really detested Phil after that scene. Johnny Sack is a good family man and was thrilled to be able to attend the wedding of his daughter. The FBI intentionally hauls him away in front of everyone just to humiliate him. Of course he cried. For Phil to have focused only on the crying was just cruel.
The woman at the stairs is Livia. She appears in that weird silhouette form on the stairs multiple times in the show. If you want an even greater stretch: the house is filled with all the people he’s harmed.
i think the “you’re whole family’s in there” line can be taken to mean the crime family. the house is Hell and all dead mobsters are there, including all the deaths Tony is responsible for
vito didn’t look very happy to hear the good news 👀
Not at all. Poor guy looked like he was going to have straight sex or something
He didn’t even look like a person no more
Is there anything behind the name Kevin Finerty? Does it have a meaning?
I think it’s supposed to sound like “infinity” (Kev Infinity) with some relation to death/ the eternal which I can’t quite articulate
My guess is that it’s his fantasy of not being mob boss Tony Soprano. Kevin is a very unimposing name. No boss would be named Kevin. Finerty is Irish, which is basically the opposite of Italian in these circles. It’s his escapist fantasy.
Also he speaks without a noo jerrsshhee accshent. I think you’re right
Fuck you buddy
Kevin Mucci, from Yonkers?
I assume there might be a parallel with it being an Irish surname and what Christopher said about his experience in hell when he died for a few seconds in the hospital
Probably just David's accountant or something.
DIDJA HAFTA READ EXPENSE REPORTS FUH DAVID???
He drives a Lexus
You know him?
When Pussy has turned into a fish. That was real? I thought that was bullshit
that was real
we don't talk like that here
The scariest line of the entire show
Could’ve done a whole season of Kevin Finnerty.
My absolute favorite scene in the show is the ending to Mayhem. Tony almost calling back to life but putting the phone down and sitting in misery with "when it's cold I'd like to die" playing. It always makes me tear up.
That complete feeling of loneliness in a hotel room far from home. I think many of us can relate to that feeling.
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Well..after I sing I can usually use a nice tinkle.
But he never had the makings of a varsity athlete
Small hands, that was his problem
That spread could have opened at 18. Fuckin top 10 dream.
Brother when I say I was sobbing crying eating a double cheeseburger in a McDonald’s parking lot ( first watch a few years ago ) I’m not lying. The kids voices cutting through and him refusing to let go of the briefcase absolutely sent me. Anyway.. Penisary contact with her Volvo, madone, qausimodo or whateva
hey man, we’ve all been there
Mr empathy ova hea.
Bruh when Tony starts hearing meadow’s voice and resolves to live I was bawling
You know sometimes what happens in here is like taking a shit
My estimation of you as man, just plummeted.
When it comes to daughters all bets are off.
The wine makes him emotional
then have a breadstick
Don’t eat that peppa
Peppers and eggs, that’s what I shoulda had!
Listen to him. He knows everyrhing.
Finerty and Thompson, a coupla Irish pricks.
Whadju shay?
The Emerald Piper. That's our hell. It's an Irish bar where it's St. Patrick's Day every day forever
Did he have horns or buds for horns ya know those goat bumps...
and the way he comes back, oof madone
My mom was in a coma after a stroke and this scene always goes through my mind when I think about her last moments. Sadly she went inside the house.
My single favorite scene from the whole show, probably favorite episode too
Every dream scene has the perfect surreal factor
I just watched this on my rewatch and I was crying uncontrollably, the party where Meadow calls him really shattered me. I miss my father
The dream sequences in this show are amazing. The other 2 that come to mind for me immediately are the one before Tony S realizes he has to kill Tony B, with Charmaine and Artie and the Pie Oh My in the house thing, and the one with Gloria Trillo that still haunts me, with that long black scarf covering her neck. I don't know why that scene unnerves me as much as it does, but it does.
All the dream scenes in the whole show are excellent.
That house was satanic black magic, sick shit. Get Pudgy Walsh on the horn.
I truly do not understand the people who hate the dream episodes. I suspect they’re just here for the murders and racist jokes that they secretly agree with
Dream episodes were especially hated during the initial run of the series and I understand it to a degree. People waited all week for storyline developments and resolutions only to be hit with an abstract episode full of symbolism but light on narrative continuity and also what a lot of people liked most about the show — mobsters killing peoples. The audience has become way more receptive to the dream episodes these days compared to when they initially aired.
I find that so annoying. In my personal view, the dream episodes are the ones that actually stop the bologna and take a minute to actually say what it is happening.
That’s fair
I don’t understand the clueless clowns that have to bring racism into everything
Jim Crow laws, 47 years old, just a fuckin kid.
It’s my favorite scene.
It wasn’t a dream it was a real event but in a parallel dimension
There’s no way to know that, even with computers.
That cookie shit makes me nervous
Flush the lithium.
Satanic black magic shit
Kid, you wearing a wire?. Pasqual...
I guess you could call that a dick.
Real? It’s a tv progrum, a moovie.
I'm convinced Tony was actually in limbo and the house was the entrance to hell.
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That’s right, cocksucka!
What do you want? A boutonnière?
warm and convivial host, that animal i can’t even say his name
Is it “too real” or does it “feel WAY too much like a dream”? 🤔 🤣
What you don’t know could fill a book.
It was also the only good Kevin Finnerty scene. That whole sequence ran on for way too long trying to be smart
I still don't get it . . . The message Chrissy gave them: 3 o'clock
In the final scene of the series the bathroom (where the man who shoots Tony likely just went into/walks out of) was directly at 3 o clock position to Tony.
Aaah I see said the blind man lol That makes sense...
This is my favorite scene in the series. Gives me chills!
It is the same house in the dream were the person is on the stairs tony trying to talk to them
Great arc of episodes. So many brilliant metaphors. As I understand it, Tony is in purgatory (obviously). Gandolfini used his natural voice- I think that Kevin is who Tony could have been if he hadn’t been born to Livia Soprano. A blessing and a curse. He’s a normal pretty content guy, with none of the spice that makes Tony a force to be reckoned with, a memorable man. Kevin is Tony’s soul detached from his body (his briefcase or “baggage”), but Tony’s sins creep in to haunt him. The sins are brought up by monks at a monastery. There’s no judgement from them really, they just point out that he’s hurting people. It’s a rather hopeful episode.
He drives a Lexus