Unexpected Comedy: The Five Funniest Sopranos Episodes (Seasons 1-3)

The Sopranos might just be the ultimate example of the

premise of this column. Observed clinically, the brutal violence and family turmoil

should be pitch black drama, with nothing more than a snicker emitting from the

withered decay of North Jersey. Yet, I think I laugh as much at The Sopranos as

I do at any sitcom or supposed comedy movie. Plus, there's just so much

whacking.

Boca

One of the things that The Sopranos lost over the years as

it became more brooding and literary is the original conceit: the juxtaposition

of the gangster world with suburban life. In “Boca”, Tony and Silvio are among

a group of parents who are supportive to the point of obsession with their

daughters’ high school soccer team. The Soccer Godfather joke is funny enough,

but becomes darker with the revelation that the coach is sleeping with one of

the players. It's one of those moments when you might actually be happy that

Tony Soprano lives on your block, if just to scare the shit out of the scumbag

diddling your daughter.

The other plot line in the episode is about Uncle Junior's

ability to go down to the well of souls. To score in Happy Valley. To ace her

deuce. To perform cunnilingus, if you get my meaning. Apparently, and you

should know this if you are hanging out with the "boys" anytime soon,

it means that you are gay. I took a logic class in college and I'm pretty sure that

argument is what they call a slippery slope. Junior likes a slippery slope. But

you can't tell anyone, or there will be a whacking off.

College

Where were you when you found your dad was in the mob? I was

probably watching The Brady Bunch or something else all Generation X like. But

Meadow Soprano was touring tony colleges in New England when she confirmed her

suspicions. The scene in the car, when she elicits a tacit confession from

Tony, echoes the garden scene in The Godfather where Vito told Michael that he

never wanted him to be another gangster. It's also the best scene for a Brando

impersonation, like mine. Sometimes, I do Brando doing Gandolfini.

I never

Soprano.  Semiotics major Soprano.

The sight of Tony rushing around between Meadow and hunting

his prey transcends comedy and becomes an insightful commentary on a world that's

too busy for a man to have time for a good whacking.

Pine Barrens

Like Paulie and Christopher, I once had to take a “work

trip” to the Pine Barrens. It didn’t involve killing a Russian, but it did

involve three days of sand in my crotch and returning home to find that my

fiancé had spent the entire time with her new boyfriend. They had it worse:

freezing cold, hungry and waiting for word from Tony like Vladimir and Estragon

waiting for Godot. The Russian who escaped from the trunk was in the Russian

Interior Ministry and once single-handedly killed 16 Chechen rebels, which

leads to this hilarious piece of dialogue:

Paulie: “You're not gonna believe this. He killed sixteen

Czechoslovakians. Guy was an interior decorator.”

Christopher: “His house looked like shit. “

Christopher and Paulie are trapped. If they go after the

Russian, they most likely freeze to death. Or they let him go, and face the

wrath of Tony and a crazed, professional killer seeking revenge. In the end,

they do what we would all do: find a empty van and eat ketchup packets until

the head of the family saves us. Or whacks us.

Commentadori

The guys finally get to go to Italy and Sicily, but they

find that the land that they had conjured up from repeated Godfather II

viewings is not all that hospitable. The episode makes me laugh, but it also

creeps me out, because every time I watch I feel completely sorry for Paulie,

who seems mortally wounded by the way the denizens of his fatherland reject

him. It's sort of the way I feel when I watch one of those countdowns of

One-Hit Wonders. Here are all these people who finally got what they wanted, were

at the top of the world, doing what they love and then whack! it's all taken

away. Plus, like Paulie, they are usually total douchebags.

Funhouse

Matt Tobey and I once had a fairly awe-inspiring Internet

Dork-athon over the last six episodes of the series, focusing especially on the

dream sequences and Godfather references. Funhouse, the final episode of Season

2, sets the groundwork for more complex, ambiguous dream sequences later in the

series but manages to be hilarious anyway. Tony has come to suspect strongly

that Pussy has been talking to feds and his fears are confirmed by a bad case

of food poisoning and talking fish.

"See these fish next to me,"  the fish says in Pussy's voice. "They're

sleeping."

The much talked-out bathroom sounds (that's diaherra and

vomit to us less sensitive readers) don't really play for cheap laughs and are

completely necessary to make me feel like I should never, ever eat seafood or

inform on my Capo or I just might get whacked. And that would be, you guessed it, whack.