Tony: Well, I knew you had this business here, Davey. It's my nature, "frog on a scorpion", you know? Besides, if you'd have won I'd be the one crying the blues, right?
A civilian witness identifies a photograph of Tony Soprano as one of Matthew Bevilaqua's killers. Upon getting word of this, Tony scrambles to secure his family's future in the event that he is prosecuted for the murder.
After the events of "The Happy Wanderer", Davey Scatino is deep in debt to Tony and Richie. They use credit from his sporting goods store to order goods they can sell for cash on the street. Davey is left despondent and suicidal but hides this from his family. Meanwhile, Carmella commissions Davey's brother-in-law, Vic Musto, to redecorate the interior of her home. She becomes immediately attracted to Vic and contemplates infidelity. They begin to flirt and eventually share an intense, passionate kiss in the Sopranos' bathroom.
With potential imprisonment looming, Tony makes an effort to spend more time with his kids, particularly AJ. However, while out at the pool, they are interrupted by the arrival of FBI agents, who question Tony about the shooting. One night a drunken Tony speaks with Meadow in the kitchen, asking if she knows he loves her and admitting he is a hypocrite. In response, Meadow says that sometimes everyone is a hypocrite. In therapy with Melfi, Tony claims he is fine with going to jail, but only once his kids are grown, so he doesn't end up an absentee father. Melfi comments that this is the first time she has seen Tony afraid.
While Janice and Richie have sex (during which Richie holds a gun to Janice's head) she attempts to plant the seeds of ambition to be the boss in his mind. Richie is reluctant to attempt a takeover as Janice suggests but confesses his resentment towards Tony. They are interrupted by Livia descending the staircase. Later they visit Junior and Richie passes along the suggestion of a potential coup against Tony. Junior is largely indifferent but warns Richie about Janice's duplicity.
Agent Lipari confronts Pussy, suspecting him of involvement in the Bevilaqua shooting as the witness identified a "husky accomplice" who accompanied Tony. Pussy attempts to reason with Lipari, claiming that in purely hypothetical terms, something like that would help to endear him to Tony, as Lipari wanted.
Davey's store is finally busted out, and he ends up sleeping in a tent on the premises. He has a candid moment with Tony, who confesses that he saw an opportunity to take advantage of Davey and make a profit from his gambling addiction. Davey later meets with Vic at a bar and reveals that he blew his son Eric's college fund on gambling. Vic is horrified, even more so when Davey explains that he's in debt to Tony Soprano, and describes the fear he lives with. Vic, shaken, avoids returning to the Soprano home, sending his assistant instead, much to Carmella's disappointment.
The witness to the Bevilaqua shooting, who previously assumed the killers were crack dealers, learns it is connected to the Mafia and panics, recanting his testimony. Upon getting the news, a relieved Tony shuts himself in the bathroom and cracks up laughing. Later he takes AJ for a boat ride on the Stugots. As they crank up the engine, the wake in their trail overturns a smaller boat they cross paths with.
Tropes:
- Big Brother Instinct: Vic Musto warns Davey Scatino to pay what debts he can and then move away from his sister, who happens to be married to Davey (for now).
- Blatant Lies: The witness to Matt's murder is led to believe by the police the young man was involved in crack or "Something like that." They obviously knew what would happen if they told the witness who the man he identified really was. They most likely hoped they could hide it until the trial loomed and convince him to testify. Needless to say, the witness is not happy when he discovers the deception after his wife discovers the truth in the newspaper.
- Butt-Monkey: Davey Scatino is back and more pathetic than ever.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Tony and Carmela unleash them on each other when they argue about Tony missing A.J.'s swim meet.
- Confess in Confidence: Despite Tony insisting it was over "something I didn't do", both he and Dr. Melfi are well aware that they are discussing the murder of Matthew Bevilaqua.
- Continuity Nod:
- Paulie trolls Big Pussy over having a suitcase ready on the go, as a reminder that he doesn't completely buy the cover story of having gone to Puerto Rico for a while.
- Richie tries to enhance his Enemy Mine plea by reminding Uncle Junior of his own previous attempt on Tony's life, and Tony squeezing Junior hard for the spoils of war afterward.
- Daddy Didn't Show: Tony misses A.J.'s swim meet.
- Deadpan Snarker: How Tony and the FBI agents interact with each other.
- Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Beansie's initial reaction to Tony's gift of 50 grand to make a charitable donation and get tax benefits in return.
- Double-Meaning Title: A "bust out" is a fraud tactic, commonly used in the organized crime world, wherein a business' assets and lines of credit are exploited and exhausted to the point of insolvency. Richie and Tony profit from busting out Davey Scatino's sporting goods store in this episode. It's also a poker term that Poker News defines as: "To lose all your chips and thus be eliminated from a tournament."
- Enemy Mine: Richie makes another of these pleas to Uncle Junior, with Tony being the target.
- Evil Laugh: After learning that his murder charges are being dropped, Tony locks himself in his bathroom in the dark and has a laugh.
- The Farmer and the Viper: Tony invokes this as a justification for cleaning out Davey's store, but uses a Frog and Scorpion reference instead.
- Fauxshadowing: The airline ticket scam that Tony forces Davey into was meant to set up a larger storyline involving Livia, although that ultimately turned into an Aborted Arc on account of actress Nancy Marchand passing away.
- Fetish: Richie's take on playing the dominant is to hold a gun to his partner's (i.e. Janice in this case) head.
- Fish out of Water: The Elvis-land reference completely flies over Furio's head.
- Foreshadowing:
- Richie's Fetish for holding a gun to Janice's head during sex will foreshadow how she kills him. As does Junior's attempt to warn him about Janice.
- Artie indicates that he got a special deal on the Ramlosa mineral water, foreshadowing a misguided attempt to get a really sweet deal on French vodka.
- Hypocrite: Just about everybody in the episode, from Tony to Davey, and even Carmella, who contemplates infidelity and even kisses another man one episode after she requested that Tony stay faithful to her.
- Vic Musto also claims to "respect the ring" and resist having an affair with a married woman, but breaks this code and only cuts things off with Carmella when he becomes frightened of Tony.
- Meanwhile, the civilian witness who fingers Tony claims to be "fed up with crime", but apparently only drug-related crimes, as he quickly recants his statement when he learns the shooting was mafia-related.
- Meadow sums it up about halfway through the episode when she says "Sometimes, we're all hypocrites." In this instance, it's also an early admission on Meadow's part that she's Not So Above It All.
- Hunk: Carmela immediately has eyes for Victor Musto. He is played by Joe Penny after all.
- Interrupted Suicide: Davey is lying on his pool table with a gun in his mouth when his wife comes down the stairs. He quickly hides the gun in a ceiling tile and angrily snaps at her that he is trying to "fix the light".
- Ironic Echo: A small kid at the fair cries "Mommy!" repeatedly when he is lost. It has a rather unsettling effect on Tony by reminding him of Matthew begging for his life during the previous episode. It moves Tony to try and help the kid find his mother.
- Irony:
- Uncle Junior immediately calls out Richie on letting Janice play him in pursuing a hit on Tony. And yet Uncle Junior allowed Livia to manipulate him just as easily when he went after Tony.
- In the scene where the witness finds out who he called the police on, he's shown reading Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick, considered a seminal text of the libertarian movement. As this article
notes, he's learning the hard way the kinds of people who, in a society with a minimal state governed mostly by freely-entered individual contracts, would seize power for themselves without fear of getting caught: namely, unscrupulous gangsters who see everything as a way to get rich and would happily coerce people into entering "voluntary" contracts.
- Lady Macbeth: Janice starts taking on this role, encouraging Richie to overthrow Tony as acting boss.
- Never My Fault: Davey doesn't admit for a second to anyone that he brought most of his miseries on himself by insisting on joining Tony's card game even when the man himself was requesting him not to join, thus leading to him losing big and causing all his troubles.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Tony's reaction when he learns that a civilian witness saw him at the scene of Matthew Bevilaqua's murder.
- The eyewitness himself has one when he learns that Matthew Bevilaqua was tied to the Soprano family.
- Vic Musto's subtle change in facial expression after Davey describes how Tony collects his debts amounts to this as well. It sinks in that he's Tempting Fate if he continues to carry on with Carmela.
- Parental Abandonment: How A.J. and Carmela both feel about Tony missing A.J.'s swim meet.
- Pet the Dog: Junior tells Richie he plans to give a pair of sneakers to the impoverished kid he pays to wash his car.
- Rule of Symbolism: The episode ends with Tony ploughing forward without a care in the world, overturning a small boat in his wake, tipping two men into the water, an obvious metaphor for his effect on Davey and the Scatinos, the witness to Matt's murder, and many others.
- Run for the Border: Tony briefly contemplates this course of action, at least temporarily, and discusses it with Big Pussy, Furio, and Paulie. They ultimately decide to intimidate the eyewitness instead.
- Running Gag: The civilian characters are often shown with the same items Tony and Richie forced Davey to order as part of the bust-out.
- Spotting the Thread: Uncle Junior immediately figures out during Richie's Enemy Mine plea that Janice is pulling his strings as a Lady Macbeth. He punctuates the point by revealing to Richie that even as a ten-year-old girl, Janice was capable of malice and theft underneath a surface veneer of innocence.
- Stood Up: Carmela makes an elaborate gourmet lunch, and checks her makeup in a mirror, only for the cherubic Ramone to show up for the job instead of Victor Musto.
- The Starscream: Richie firmly moves into this territory with his Enemy Mine plea to Uncle Junior.
- Title Drop: Davey when he describes Tony's debt-collection process to Vic.
- Trapped by Gambling Debts: Davey, and does he ever suffer while trying to squirm out from under his debts to both Tony and Richie.
- Ungrateful Bastard: Richie is still angry about Tony disrespecting his gift of the leather jacket.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Tony, at multiple points, rationalizes his criminal activities as motivated by the need to provide for A.J. and Meadow in the future. He even confides to Dr. Melfi that he's not averse to going to jail at some point, just as long as his kids are provided for first, for which he still needs some time.
