‘The Sopranos’ Reached Its Apex In The Final 4 Episodes Of Season 3

The Sopranos turned 20 this month, which means it’s time once again for everyone to talk about their favorite episodes from arguably the greatest series ever made. As great as they are, though, The Sopranos was at its best when it looked beyond individual episodes, and really leaned into its serialized nature to weave the threads of those single hours together into something more.

Like any serialized drama, The Sopranos ran hot and cold with these threads, sometimes focusing on symbolism and dream logic just a little too much, and sometimes taking a bit too long to resolve a plotline with the violence its viewers so craved. When it was hot, though, there was nothing else like it on television. So, to celebrate the show’s 20th anniversary, let’s take a look at the greatest serialized hot streak the show ever had. It comes in the final four episodes of Season 3, and it’s a perfect symphony of character, theme, and brutality that creates both a wonderful resolution and a brilliant peek at the classic fourth season.

It begins with “…To Save Us All From Satan’s Power” (Season 3 Episode 10), an episode that’s as much about looking back as it is about what’s next. Tony (James Gandolfini) is haunted by memories of Big Pussy and his betrayal, including the intuition that Pussy must have been wearing a wire when he dressed as Santa for a Christmas party years ago. The episode showcases the series’ obsession with the nature of memory and dreams and how symbolism appears in Tony’s life when he least expects it, culminating in Meadow giving him a Big Mouth Billy Bass (which reminds him of Pussy, naturally) for Christmas. Oh, and of course, it also raises the tension between Tony and Jackie Aprile Jr. (Jason Cerbone).

Next comes “Pine Barrens” (Season 3 Episode 11), a common pick for the best Sopranos episode of all time, and it still lives up to that distinction. At first glance, it feels almost like a capsule episode, as Paulie (Tony Sirico) and Christopher (Michael Imperioli) head out into the south Jersey woods to kill a Russian Paulie started a fight with, and end up getting lost when the guy gets the drop on them and bolts. The Christopher/Paulie interplay makes it easily one of the funniest Sopranos episodes ever, and it’s also one of the rare hours of the series you could show to just about anyone to give them a sense of what the show is all about in a self-contained way. There’s more to it than the buddy comedy, though, as Tony’s family and business affairs keep creating tension with his mistress Gloria (Annabella Sciorra) and Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) discovers Jackie Jr.’s infidelity. Plus, future tensions between Christopher and Paulie are teased, even if we couldn’t see that at the time. It’s a masterclass in keeping your story going while also taking time for a brilliant little sidequest.

Then there’s “Amour Fou” (Season 3 Episode 12) another of the series’ best episodes. The title, and much of the hour itself, shifts focus from Paulie and Christopher to Tony and Gloria, as Tony realizes that his passion for his mistress is driven as much by her own madness and insecurity as it is by her brilliance and sex appeal. It packs a lot of fireworks, romantic and otherwise, into its runtime, as Tony breaks it off with Gloria, Carmela (Edie Falco) struggles with her own concept of sin and marriage (again), and Jackie Jr. tries to make a name for himself by robbing a poker game full of made guys and things go horribly, horribly wrong. The moment when Tony realizes Gloria reminds him of his mother belongs on the Mount Rushmore of great Gandolfini acting moments.

It all wraps up with “The Army of One” (Season 3 Episode 13) a season finale that is matched in the series’ run only by the Season 4 closer, “Whitecaps.” With Gloria out of the picture, Tony must turn his attention to his son AJ (Robert Iler), whose hijinks at school have finally gotten him expelled. Tony wants military school, while Carmela would like a softer option for her son, and it all builds to a brilliant scene in which AJ breaks down crying in his cadet uniform. The other major development comes when Ralph (Joe Pantaliano) makes the call to whack Jackie Jr. and make it look like a drug deal gone bad, sending the extended Soprano family into a spiral of grief that culminates in a brilliant funeral sequence. This episode has everything, from foreshadowing Ralph’s most brutal tendencies to Tony’s ongoing internal struggles over his son (something that continues throughout the series) to Janice (Aida Turturro) giving the funeral director her Christian Contemporary demo CD. It sets up Tony’s upcoming conflicts with Ralph and the growing tension with Carmela in Season 4, wraps up Tony’s struggles with the men of the Aprile family, and even foreshadows Johnny Sack’s (Vince Curatola) future role as a force of conflict in Tony’s life. It does everything a season finale needs to do, and it turns the boost given by the previous three episodes into rocket fuel.

Each one of these episodes is a wonderful hour of television in its own way, but that’s nothing compared to the might they muster when viewed together as a chunk of a larger story. There are other hot streaks in The Sopranos run, of course, but in terms of gaining momentum and using it for great storytelling, it perhaps never got better than these four episodes. If you really want to examine what The Sopranos could do when it was at its best as The Great American Novel of television, revisit this quartet.

Matthew Jackson is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire whose work has appeared at Syfy Wire, Mental Floss, Looper, Playboy, and Uproxx, among others. He lives in Austin, Texas, and he’s always counting the days until Christmas. Find him on Twitter: @awalrusdarkly.

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