Melfi: It's the pursuit that's guaranteed.
Tony: Yeah. Always a fucking loophole, right?
Tony learns that Richie and Junior have been collaborating behind his back to sell drugs along the Barone Sanitation garbage truck routes. He demands that Richie stop. When Richie passes this information along to Junior, the latter refuses to stop, as he needs the financial support of the drug money.
Meanwhile, Tony's lawyer Neil Mink warns him that he still may be facing a Federal indictment even though the Bevilaqua murder case fell through. He advises that Tony keep his distance from the Bada Bing and other disreputable connections, and instead spend time at Barone Sanitation to fulfill his cover job.
Junior, diagnosed with sleep apnea, visits Dr. Shreck's office and is given a goofy-looking CPAP machine to attach to his nose when he sleeps. While at the office, he encounters an old acquaintance, Catherine Romano, the widow of a corrupt cop Junior knew. Junior evades her questions, embarrassed to admit that he is under house arrest. He also acts somewhat dismissive of Catherine when she drops by his house with a tray of manicotti, opting instead to flirt with the much younger nurse attending to him.
Tony grows extremely bored at Barone Sanitation. He becomes interested in Dick Barone's secretary after learning she is a born-again Christian and later has sex with her in the office. He also sets up an office betting pool and passes time doodling, but begins to develop a rash on his arm, believed to be a manifestation of psychological issues. Further emphasizing his boredom, he gets a call from Silvio, Paulie, and Pussy, who have just received a shipment of World War II-era weapons and seem to be having fun. While at a company banquet, Tony encounters Richie and Janice and harshly confronts Richie about his off-the-reservation behavior. Tony then has a panic attack after overhearing multiple banal conversations of white-collar "Madigan" partygoers. He collapses and Richie rushes to his aid.
Junior's hand gets stuck in the garbage disposal unit in his sink, leaving him stranded in the kitchen for hours on end. Richie and Janice come over and help pry him loose. Junior finally opens up to spending more time with Catherine, and shows her his ankle bracelet, revealing the reason he can't leave his house. She stays over that night to watch TV with Junior and puts on his CPAP mask for him when he falls asleep.
Dr. Melfi (who has had more than a few drinks) embarrasses herself at a restaurant with her son Jason when she causes a scene due to another patron smoking a cigarette. While discussing the incident with Dr. Kupferberg, he begins to probe into her doctor-patient dynamic with Tony. At Tony's next session, he describes his general feelings of boredom and ennui. Melfi compares him to a shark, suggesting that certain personalities need to remain in constant motion or else being forced to contemplate their immoral actions causes them to "crash". Tony, finally fed up with Barone Sanitation, returns to Satriale's pork store, settling back into his usual lifestyle.
Tropes:
- Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: How Jason feels when his mother (a drunken Dr. Melfi) makes a scene over a nearby patron not putting out her cigarette.
- Blatant Lies: Uncle Junior gets out of an unwanted visit from Catherine by claiming his examination by a nurse is about to begin, when in fact it already ended. The nurse conveniently was within sight while wrapping up.
- Corrupt Cop: Catherine Romano asks Junior if her late husband, a policeman, was "involved" in any way, mentioning spare money she found.
- Death Glare: Richie gives Tony one after getting chewed out over the drug dealing. Given that Tony is the recognized boss, and he could very likely beat the utter crap out of Richie, it also amounts to Staring Down Cthulhu. Tony for his part isn't phased and continues berating Richie.
- Dirty Old Man: Uncle Junior when interacting with his young CPAP nurse. Combined with ...
- Double Entendre:Nurse: But testing shows REM-wise, you have 40 arousals each hour.Uncle Junior: More since I met you.
- Friendly Enemy: Agent Harris resumes this dynamic with Tony almost the instant that Tony has returned to Satriale's. Used to further punctuate the He's Back moment noted below.
- Gilligan Cut: Uncle Junior's excuse to Bobby about not wanting to see Catherine is he can't stand the sight of injured feet, or feet at all really. The next scene is hundreds of feet dancing at a party to the sound of "Disco Inferno".
- Glory Days: Junior reminisces about the days when Johnny Boy was still his partner in crime. Tony is more skeptical:Junior: You know, back in The '50s, we worked together. Even rival families settled their differences amicably.
- In the full scope of the show, the ending scene becomes this. The gang is healthily populated and united (well, with one exception), Satriale's is crowded with mobsters, and all the feds are there to do is shoot the shit with Tony. It's all downhill from here; nearly every one of the men there will be in a coffin or a hospital bed by the finale.
- Good Is Boring: What Tony learns while trying to steer clear of his criminal lifestyle.
- He's Back!: Tony and his crew are all jubilant smiles and jokes the moment he sets foot in Satriale's near the end of the episode.
- Help, I'm Stuck!: When Uncle Junior gets his arm stuck in a sink drain for over six hours.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Dr. Melfi admits to Dr. Kupferberg that she drinks on the days that she has therapy sessions with Tony.
- Jerkass: Livia trolls Uncle Junior about Catherine Romano letting herself get felt up by Johnny Boy in the past, just because she can. He promptly hangs up on her.
- Just Following Orders: Richie drops Uncle Junior's name as an excuse for selling drugs along the garbage routes. Tony doesn't buy it.
- Like Father, Like Son: Catherine's husband was a cop, and their son has grown up to be one as well. Though, unlike his father, the younger Romano does not seem very friendly to Junior.
- The Load: Tony pretty much calls Richie this, beginning to see him as a liability. Having to ride Richie is the way Tony puts it.
- Manipulative Bastard:
- Richie doesn't mind complying with Tony's order to stop selling drugs along the garbage routes for the time being. The reason being he sees it as an opportunity to drive a wedge between Tony and Uncle Junior when presenting a light envelope to Junior. He goes off the reservation again after getting Junior angry.
- Uncle Junior has long since lost interest in Catherine Romano. But Bobby eating up the manicotti prompts him to strike things up with her again, in order to get her to bring more food to him.
- Nervous Wreck: The stress of dealing with Richie, and the problems his drug dealing could create, causes Tony to have another panic attack at the party.
- Old Flame: When Uncle Junior and Catherine Romano meet each other, at least initially. Subverted in that Junior has over time lost interest in Catherine, and still has a thing for younger women.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Richie and his subordinate refer to the Indian deli owner as a "rag head".
- Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure: Junior's nurse jokes the Marshall named McLuchan is technically called Marshall McLuhan. Junior doesn't get the joke.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Tony's motivation for ordering Richie to stop dealing drugs near his garbage routes. He doesn't care that Richie and Uncle Junior are dealing drugs. He just doesn't want it near his garbage truck routes, which the cops have only recently started to leave alone (and which he uses to move other goods).
- Really Gets Around: Tony wastes no time arranging for casual sex with Dick Barone's secretary.
- Scary Black Man: When Junior stubbornly refuses a nurse's orders to sit in his wheelchair, a large black male nurse is brought out to politely reiterate the request.
- Selective Obliviousness: A pretty common theme in the episode, especially as it relates to the characters' health problems.
- Dr. Melfi refuses to admit she's sunken into alcoholism, even after multiple lampshadings by Dr. Kupferberg, and is only willing to confront it after she embarrasses herself in a restaurant.
- Uncle Junior refuses to admit he needs CPAP therapy, along with the inconvenient mask, to help his heart troubles. He accepts the treatment very grudgingly.
- Tony convinces himself he doesn't need Dr. Melfi's therapy anymore. He's only willing to go back after passing out from another panic attack.
- Shout-Out:
- A federal Marshall comes to the hospital room to attach a surveillance bracelet to Uncle Junior's ankle. The nurse notes that the Marshall's last name is McLuhan, leading to a joke that he could be called after a Canadian philosopher named Marshall McLuhan.
- Tony mentions watching Se7en while in therapy. In a moment of what might be
Fridge Brilliance, Tony references growing bored with the movie because the killer's identity didn't matter to him. If he'd watched it through to the end, he'd see that the movie didn't really care about the killer's identity either. Also, one of the serial killer's victims was a fat mobster.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: While Tony succumbs to a panic attack listening to various waste management workers discussing developments in the industry, "More Than a Feeling" by Boston is playing.
- Straw Nihilist: Tony shows shades of this, along with depression, when he wonders out loud to Dr. Melfi whether there's any point to anything that he does or sees.
- Stupid Evil: How Tony sees Richie's drug dealing and dumping garbage at the deli. He even punctuates the point by calling Richie "stunad", (Italian for "stupid").
- That's an Order!: Tony orders Richie to stop dealing drugs along Barone Sanitation garbage routes, with a Cluster F-Bomb to boot.
- Villainous B So D: Dr. Melfi suggests that Tony's panic attacks are a result of having too much time on his hands (sitting in an office at Barone Sanitation) to ponder his immoral actions, thereby forcing him to have the BSoD. An anti-social personality like Tony has to keep himself distracted with constant action to avoid the onset of the BSoD.
- Wham Line: Tony and Richie initially exchange pleasantries at the party. Tony then pulls Richie aside and asks him, "Got any blow?" It throws Richie into a funk and sets him up for Tony tearing a strip off him for dealing drugs along the truck routes.
- You Are Fat: The doctor tells Tony that losing weight wouldn't hurt when it comes to dealing with his panic attacks.
- You Do NOT Want To Know: Deconstructed. Dr. Melfi admits to Dr. Kupferberg that she shouldn't delve deeper to obtain knowledge of Tony's Mafia lifestyle, and yet she can't help herself out of fascination.
