Christopher: Fuck you, Paulie. Captain or no captain, right now, we're just two assholes lost in the woods.
Gloria visits the Stugots for a tryst with Tony, bringing a belated Christmas present. Irina calls the boat, believing she left a piece of jewelry there and hastily makes up an unconvincing story that she's one of AJ's teachers when Gloria picks up the phone. Tony briefly goes along with the lie before coming clean. Gloria feels patronized that Tony didn't drop the pretense earlier, and throws his present into the bay before leaving. In a session with Dr. Melfi, Tony finally confesses to his involvement with Gloria and half-jokingly asks for advice based on what she knows about Gloria from sessions.
Silvio catches the flu before he can go make a collection from Valery, a subordinate of Tony's Russian mob associate Slava. Tony calls Paulie, telling him and Christopher to make the collection in Silvio's stead. Paulie, feeling under-appreciated for being given this assignment, arrives at Valery's apartment angry and antagonistic, mocking and provoking the Russian. Though Christopher attempts to defuse the situation, it escalates as Paulie deliberately breaks Valery's universal remote, and a fight breaks out. Valery proves a formidable fighter, and Christopher and Paulie have to double-team him to stand a chance. Eventually, they tackle him to the ground and Paulie chokes him with a standing lamp while Christopher holds his legs. Once Valery loses consciousness, Paulie believes he's crushed his windpipe and killed him. The two wrap Valery's body in a carpet and put him in the trunk, planning to bury him in the Pine Barrens.
Meadow is sick and holed up in her dorm room, playing Scrabble with Jackie Jr., an activity that only highlights his stupidity. He attempts to initiate sex but Meadow doesn't feel up to it. Shortly after this, Jackie leaves. He calls later, canceling his plans to visit her again, and is seen applying cologne. Meadow's suspicions are raised.
Gloria attempts to make amends with Tony, giving him an apologetic card along with the gift of a robe she got in Morocco before another sexual encounter in a motel room. As they have sex they are interrupted by a phone call from Paulie at a gas station on the way to the Pine Barrens. Tony takes the call in the bathroom, repeatedly flushing the toilet to avoid any recordings, and leaving Gloria in bed. Paulie explains the situation with Valery. Tony is angry at the bad timing of the altercation, as he has a meeting with Slava soon. After the phone call, Gloria complains about Tony wasting water with the toilet flushing and gets dressed to return to work. They arrange for dinner at Gloria's that night, with her offering to cook him roast beef.
On the way to Pine Barrens, Chris suggests getting Roy Rogers, as he hasn't eaten, but Paulie is eager to bury the body and get it over with. Valery, however, is not dead and regains consciousness in the trunk. When they find him alive, Paulie and Christopher march him into the snowy woods to dig his own grave, and Valery vows to kill them both. Though Paulie and Christopher, fully dressed, are out of their element in the cold wilderness, Valery is un-bothered by it, even in his pajamas. While digging his grave, he waits for his captors to get distracted by a trivial conversation and strikes Chris in the head with the shovel, kicks Paulie in the groin, and takes off running. The injured and disoriented men give chase, shooting at Valery, and Paulie fires what seems to be a headshot. However, Valery appears to get back up, and as they continue to pursue him they find that his footprints simply end several yards ahead, with no body in sight.
Tony takes another call from Paulie at home, with their signal deteriorating, and loses his temper, shouting "Is there any way the package could survive?!" which AJ overhears from the living room. After the call abruptly ends, Tony makes his scheduled visit to Slava, wary of an ambush. Slava is oblivious to the unfolding situation but recounts that Valery, a good friend and old military comrade of his, was an operative for the Russian interior ministry who killed 16 Chechen rebels single-handed. Tony relays this to Paulie on the phone immediately after, but Paulie mishears him through the bad signal, apparently believing Valery was an interior decorator who murdered 16 Chekhoslovakians for some reason. Paulie and Christopher get lost in the woods after attempting to retrace their steps. They think they hear Valery in the underbrush and give chase, but end up killing a deer. Paulie falls in the process, losing his shoe. The two of them, hopelessly lost and ill-equipped to take care of themselves, find an abandoned truck to spend the night in.
When Jackie, Jr. fails to call Meadow as he promised, she relays her suspicions to a friend, who encourages her to investigate. They stake out Jackie's apartment and catch him leaving with another woman. Meadow confronts Jackie there and tearfully breaks up with him, while her friend escalates the situation with the other woman. As Meadow drives off, the woman yells obscenities at her. Jackie yells at her to stop, terrified of the possible consequences of offending Tony Soprano's daughter. Later, Meadow checks into a campus hospital, where her roommate Caitlin - apparently recovering from her emotional problems - comforts her over the breakup.
As Tony's dinner date with Gloria approaches, Carmela's parents arrive at the Soprano house, with the revelation that her father Hugh has been diagnosed with glaucoma. Tony agrees to stay for a cup of coffee with them and ends up arriving at Gloria's house late. She is upset, but Tony manages to calm her down. However, he then gets another call from Paulie, learning that he and Chris are lost, delirious, and need to be saved from the woods. Tony reluctantly agrees, but as he heads out Gloria loses her temper with him and throws the roast beef at his head. After a tense moment, Tony laughs this off and departs, heading to Junior's where he meets with Bobby, an experienced outdoorsman, to drive to the woods. When Tony sees Bobby dressed up in hunting gear, he cracks up laughing, much to Bobby's annoyance.
Christopher, who is suffering from a possible concussion from the shovel, grows suspicious of Paulie when he hears him playing up Chris's injury and pawning off the blame for the fight with Valery onto him during the phone call with Tony. Upon catching Paulie hoarding tic-tacs that he'd found, Chris resolves to go eat some berries from a nearby bush, but Paulie tries to stop him, claiming the berries could be poisonous. Chris later urinates outside of Paulie's passenger side window. Paulie yells at Chris, who dismisses him, and they have a tense confrontation where Chris accuses Paulie of planning to kill him. Chris finally pulls a gun on Paulie, invalidating Paulie's insistence that he's in charge because he's a captain. Chris just claims they're "two assholes lost in the woods". When Paulie asks Chris if he really thinks he would kill him, Chris says yes and breaks down laughing. The two then go back into the truck to sleep.
Along the way to the Pine Barrens, Tony apologizes to Bobby for laughing at him, and they bond a little bit, with Bobby insisting that Junior cares about Tony, and Tony in turn expresses his appreciation for Bobby's caretaking of Junior. They arrive at the outpost where Paulie says he parked, but find no car there. Tony yells but hears no response, and the two of them agree to wait until morning to search.
The next morning, Paulie fashions a makeshift shoe out of carpet from the back of the truck, and he and Christopher venture outside, resolving to walk in a straight line until they reach civilization. Before long, Paulie's carpet-shoe comes undone, and he loses his temper and fires his gun at it. Tony and Bobby, who have been fruitlessly searching the woods, hear the gunshots, and Bobby fires his hunting rifle in response. With this method, the two pairs find each other and return to Bobby's car. Tony suggests it may be a good idea to search for Valery some more, but leaves the decision to Paulie, who decides against it. Before they drive home, Tony tells him that if Valery ever resurfaces, he'll be Paulie's problem.
At his next session with Dr. Melfi, Tony complains about everything being difficult and references his altercation with Gloria. Melfi points out that Tony has a sexual history with difficult women, and asks if outside of his goomahs, he can recall a significant female figure in his life who was manipulative and impossible to please. Tony hesitates before shaking his head.
Tropes:
- The Alcoholic: Valery routinely abuses drugs and alcohol.
- Badass Boast: Valery to Chris and Paulie, on the basis that Mother Russia made him strong: "Cocksuckers! I'll kill you both! You think the cold bothers me?! I wash my balls with ice water! This is warm. You American pieces of shit!"
- Badass Decay: In-universe case. Slava implies that Valery was even more of a total badass before he fell into the bottle. In fact, according to Tony, Valery was a One-Man Army who took out sixteen Chechen rebels all by himself. It's meant to raise the question that if Chris and Paulie had their hands full with a deteriorated and drunken Valery, what would a prime Valery have done to them?
- Blatant Lies:
- Tony pretending in front of both Carmela and Dr. Melfi that he's being faithful.
- Tony lying to Gloria about who called him on the Stugats, at least to begin with.
- Paulie telling Tony that Valery started it.
- Carmela notices that Tony isn't eating much of her dinner, and asks why. Tony pleads, "Late lunch." He's really saving room for a romantic dinner with Gloria.
- Paulie later calls up Tony and throws Chris under the bus for starting things with Valery, while Chris is out of earshot.
- Jackie Jr. multiple times to cover his infidelity when Meadow won't put out.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: Paulie orders Valery to take a shovel and dig his own grave before Paulie and Chris execute him. It doesn't occur to him that giving a Gardening-Variety Weapon to a guy with nothing to lose might be a bad idea.
- Book Dumb: This episode goes out of its way to erase any lingering doubts that may yet exist in your mind that Jackie Jr. qualifies for this trope. To say that he's outmatched by Brainy Brunette Meadow during Scrabble games is an understatement to put it mildly. He mistakes oblique for a Spanish word and doesn't know what it means. Meanwhile, he can only come up with words like "ass" and "poo" to scrounge any points for himself.
- Boom, Headshot!: Paulie gives Valery one, at least from his point of view, but Valery gets up and keeps running to the utter shock and amazement of both Chris and Paulie.
- Brainless Beauty: Meadow shows an awareness, even if reluctantly, that Jackie is good-looking yet dumb as rocks when she stares at the words he made during their Scrabble game, "ass", "poo" and "the". Caitlin of all people outright says it: "I mean he was cute, but he was really boring."
- Brick Joke: Uncle Junior asks Tony if he ate steak after Gloria lobbed a piece of steak at Tony during their fight in her house.
- Butt-Monkey: Bobby suits up in extensive hunting attire before heading out with Tony to the Pine Barrens to help look for Paulie and Chris. Tony, still frustrated and moody after his abortive dinner night with Gloria, nonetheless bursts into cackling laughter at the sight, prompting an angry reaction from Bobby. (he does get an apology from Tony later, though)Bobby: "It's not bad enough you wake me in the middle of the night - I gotta get my balls broken, too?!"
- Butterfly of Doom: Most of the events of the episode only happen because Silvio is sick with the flu and can't make his usual collection from Valery himself.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Carmela blames Tony for Meadow being with Jackie Jr., tracing it to Tony being racist to Noah.
- Cellphones Are Useless: Played straight several times between Tony and Paulie. At one point it leads to an instance of Lost in Transmission.
- Chekhov's Gunman: Deliberately subverted with Valery. After his one big appearance, he seemingly escapes from Paulie and Christopher despite being wounded. The viewer is left expecting him to return in some way eventually and bring hell down on the protagonists. He never does. He becomes just one of those unsolved mysteries of life, his fate forever unknown.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Valery gives one to Paulie when the latter opens the trunk.
- Contrived Clumsiness: Paulie drops Valery's universal remote, causing it to break, and gives a sarcastic oops after Valery tells him sternly (in his thick Russian accent) that "remote goes on docking station".
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Paulie and Christopher, making a collection for Silvio, assault former Russian special agent Valery, attempting to dispose of his supposed dead body in the eponymous woods. But when Valery turns out to be Not Quite Dead and turns the tables on his assailants, escaping into the wilderness even after being shot in the head, Paulie and Chris end up getting lost overnight in the freezing cold. All because Paulie felt like being a dick and needlessly broke the guy's universal remote.
- Crazy-Prepared: Tony bursts out laughing when he sees Bobby in his full hunting gear, derisively calling him "Elmer Fudd". He's eventually forced to eat his words since Bobby's gear is completely appropriate for the situation; while Tony is shivering in the cold since he's wearing nothing but a shirt and an overcoat, Bobby is quite comfortable.
- Dig Your Own Grave: Christopher and Paulie try to force Valery to dig his own grave. Valery attacks them with the shovel and escapes. They later discover that Valery was a former special forces soldier.
- Dirty Communists: Paulie still has vivid memories of the Cold War, including the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is also the apparent reason for why he has xenophobic views of Russians, and why he resents being sent to collect the debt from Valery.
- Don't Go in the Woods: Chris and Paulie go to the New Jersey Pine Barrens to dispose of a body. Things went horribly wrong. For a realistic show with a setting in an honest-to-God real place, they managed to make it really creepy.
- Drowning My Sorrows: The implied reason for Valery's rampant alcoholism and drug abuse according to Slava.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Very much so for Slava as it concerns Valery, as Slava sheds Manly Tears over the mess that Valery has become. It raises the stakes for Tony, Chris, and Paulie in that it's implied that if anything can motivate Slava to have The Mafiya declare all-out war on the Jersey mob, it's finding out what Chris and Paulie did to Valery.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Christopher doesn't approve of Paulie needlessly antagonizing Valery after he's already given them the money he owes. He's later shown with an expression of disgust when Paulie lies to Tony over the phone and says that Valery started the fight that seemingly ended with his death.
- Evil Is Petty: The whole reason why Chris and Paulie get lost in the woods and nearly freeze to death, was because the latter felt like being a dick to Valery simply for no other reason than he could, and then just kept escalating the situation all the way up to attempted murder.
- Food Slap: Angered at Tony suddenly leaving dinner (to rescue Chris and Paulie), the highly volatile Gloria clocks Tony in the back of the head with a thrown steak.
- Forgets to Eat: Chris lampshades several times that he and Paulie have yet to eat both before and during the whole Valery situation. It becomes plot-relevant in that it potentially amplifies the danger that the two find themselves in. Not only are they lost in the cold Pine Barrens, but they're also desperately short of calories needed to walk through the woods and even generate body heat.
- From Bad to Worse: Chris and Paulie's situation gets worse by degrees after Valery escapes from them. They get lost, Paulie loses one of his shoes, and the sun sets lowering the temperature.
- Gardening-Variety Weapon: As soon as Paulie and Chris are distracted, Valery predictably makes use of the shovel they just handed him.
- He Knows Too Much:
- Once Tony learns of the Valery situation, he makes it clear to Paulie, despite the fact that their Cellphones Are Useless, that Valery absolutely must be killed. Tony is genuinely terrified of the prospect of being in a meeting with Slava, surrounded by Slava's men, and Valery has escaped to inform Slava of what Paulie pulled. The situation for Tony would not be unlike Trapped Behind Enemy Lines, but Tony wouldn't have any real chance of getting out of it. "Walking into a buzzsaw" is how Tony puts it before he goes to the meeting.
- The imperative to silence Valery for good gets raised when Tony sees Slava shedding Manly Tears for the mess that Valery had become, and realizes that Slava truly cares for Valery. Tony realizes that if Valery makes it out alive, it just might motivate Slava to have The Mafiya declare full-on war against the Jersey mob.
- Husky Russkie: Valery is a badass ex-soldier and an elite veteran of the Chechen War. Paulie and Chris get their asses handed to them.Paulie: "He killed 16 Czechoslovakians.note Guy was an interior decorator!note
- Improperly Paranoid / Properly Paranoid: Depends on the perspective. Tony checks for signs of Slava's men before he steps into the office, genuinely terrified that stepping into the office will amount to Lured into a Trap. He even eyeballs the gun on Slava's desk once he's inside the office. It turns out that he had nothing to fear because Slava doesn't know anything about the Valery situation. But Tony definitely had a legitimate reason to be worried.
- Interrupted Intimacy: Paulie calls in about Valery while Tony and Gloria are trying to enjoy themselves. It becomes part of the build-up to Gloria going in full Yandere mode.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Paulie brags that four years in the army has given him awesome tracking skills that will allow him and Chris to make it back to the car without skipping a beat. The third act of the episode sees both of them utterly lost in the Pine Barrens to the point of being scared for their lives.
- Like Parent, Like Spouse: Dr. Melfi pulls no punches in pointing out that Tony has a thing for women who are extremely difficult and impossible to please. She takes it even further and points out that they share those traits with Livia, and therefore Tony struggles with Oedipus Complex. The comment hits rather Close to Home for Tony before the ending credits begin.
- Living Lie Detector: Tony isn't convinced when Paulie insists that Valery started things. He looks to Chris, who decides to Maintain the Lie.
- Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: Paulie loses a shoe during their ordeal as they lose their bearings and minds. When his makeshift-shoe becomes useless, Paulie starts to shoot at it. This enables the rescue party to find them.
- Lost in Transmission: An instance that's played for comedy instead of dramatic suspense. Tony indicates that Valery was a military member of the Interior Ministry who took out 16 Chechen rebels all by himself. Paulie hears it as Valery killed 16 Czechoslovakians, and that he was an "interior decorator". It doesn't make sense to either Paulie or Chris, the latter noting that Valery's house "looked like shit".
- Made of Iron: Valery. The first clue we get is that by himself he gives Chris and Paulie all they can barely handle, even after Paulie starts things with an attempt at Grievous Bottley Harm. And it later turns out that even what was supposed to be the Boom, Headshot! hasn't brought him down.
- Maintain the Lie:
- Irina tells Gloria over the phone that she's calling about Tony's son at school. Gloria relays as much to Tony, and Tony maintains the lie, at least temporarily.
- Chris also helps Paulie maintain his lie that Valery started the confrontation that led to the Pine Barrens "adventure".
- A Man Is Always Eager: Jackie Jr. gets impatient with Meadow's repeated hesitations, so he comes up with excuses to leave her and get it on with one of the Bing strippers.
- Matter of Life and Death: Paulie makes a last phone call to Tony. He and Chris finally manage to convince Tony that they're in a life or death situation while stranded in the Pine Barrens in winter conditions with no way out. Tony relents and agrees to come and get them.
- Meaningful Name: Valery comes from the Latin name "Valerius", meaning "healthy" or "strong".
- More Dakka: How Chris and Paulie use their guns as they become more and more desperate to take down Valery for good. One such display results in Chris taking down a deer. Chris himself admits that if he deliberately aimed at the deer as a hunter, he wouldn't have even come close.
- Mother Russia Makes You Strong: Valery is a Russian ex-Spetnaz who seemingly gets his throat crushed and his head shot, yet still manages to escape into the pine barrens, never to be seen again.You think the cold bothers me? This is warm! I wash my balls with ice water!
- Mugging the Monster: Paulie really stuck his foot in it by pushing Valery's buttons.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: All he had to do was collect Silvio's money, but Paulie needlessly escalates the conflict to the point of no return.
- Never My Fault:
- Paulie tells Tony that Valery started things by sucker punching him. It's telling that Chris of all people is glaring at Paulie even when spewing his Blatant Lies.
- Once the duo takes shelter in the van, Paulie calls up Tony outside the van and throws Chris under the bus for starting things with Valery, while Chris is out of earshot and still in the van. Christopher later tells Paulie he heard him loud and clear and suspects Paulie of planning to kill him.
- Not Quite Dead: Chris and Paulie assume more than once that Valery has finally bitten it, only for Valery at every turn to either fight back against them or elude them. It practically becomes a Running Gag over the course of the episode, and the only thing that stops it from becoming a through and through Rasputinian Death is that we never see any final confirmation of Valery's fate one way or the other.
- Pet the Dog: Bobby has thus far been a regular Butt-Monkey and Chew Toy for Tony. The latest incident within the episode itself is of course Tony laughing hard at the sight of Bobby in his hunting gear. Tony later on does apologize as they're driving out to find Chris and Paulie. He also expresses sincere gratitude to Bobby for all the time spent looking after Uncle Junior.
- Plot-Induced Illness:
- Paulie regards Silvio catching the flu as an irritating inconvenience since it now falls to him to collect Valery's debt. Paulie will by the end of the episode REALLY wish Sil hadn't caught the flu.
- Meadow has it too, which leaves her indisposed when Jackie Jr. wants some. A frustrated Jackie goes off to get some however he can when Meadow won't put out. It leads to their breakup when Meadow catches him cheating red-handed with one of the Bing strippers.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Paulie really doesn't like Russians.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Christopher dealt with Valery straight and was annoyed when Paulie pointlessly antagonized him. He brings up Paulie's lapse into Stupid Evil later in the episode and will use it against him again in the future too, contributing to their deteriorating friendship.
- Punk in the Trunk: How Chris and Paulie take Valery out to the Pine Barrens, under the mistaken assumption that he's dead.
- Rasputinian Death: Valery is an ambiguous example. After seemingly getting his throat crushed, he turns out to still be alive. After seemingly getting shot in the head, he simply disappears into the Pine Barrens. Paulie even compares him to Rasputin, but it's never known what happens to him or if he even dies of his injuries.
- Riddle for the Ages:
- Valery's fate. He never appears again after he escapes from Paulie and Christopher, although considering Valery was good friends with The Mafiya and they never do anything to retaliate against Tony or his crew, it's more than likely that he's dead.
- Also, Tony and Bobby pull up to the same chained-off path and picnic table that Paulie parked at, but Paulie's car is gone. Did Valery find it and hotwire it out of there?
- Ridiculous Counter-Request: Paulie cracks a joke in this format to Christopher while they're starving and subsisting on leftover ketchup packets:Christopher: We shoulda stopped at Roy Rogers.
Paulie: And I shoulda fucked Dale Evans, but I didn't!note - Russian Guy Suffers Most: Valery really did not have a good day...and in an episode where Chris and Paulie get run through the wringers, that's saying a lot.
- Seriously Scruffy: Paulie's characteristic slicked-back hair and skunk stripe more and more give way to unkempt and disheveled hair the longer his ordeal lasts.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: It's apparent that Valery being a full-blown alcoholic is at least partly because he suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following years of military service in the troubled former Soviet bloc. Could also become an instance of
Harsher in Hindsight as soldiers getting afflicted with PTSD became more well known in conjunction with the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. - Shout-Out: The multiple unsuccessful attempts to kill Valery are of course meant to invoke references to the notorious murder of Rasputin the Mad Monk, who is the Trope Namer for Rasputinian Death. Paulie himself even lampshades it by asking Chris if Valery actually IS Rasputin.
- Shovel Strike: How Valery fights back against Chris and Paulie and then gives them the slip.
- Suspiciously Apropos Music: The episode begins with Gloria Trillo driving up to Tony's boat, The Stugats, in her car. Van Morrison's "Gloria!" is playing in the background. And the Apropos is in the lyrics of the song too, not just the title.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: An unusual example, and even then dependent on the idiosyncratic perspective of an individual character. Paulie doesn't like the Jersey crew working with The Mafiya, so it's all he can do to just barely tolerate it. The trope usually describes a brief episode of unusual circumstances obliging strange bedfellows to work together to get themselves out of a jam. But such are Paulie's views of Russians as Dirty Communists that he regards the very alliance between The Mafia and The Mafiya as this trope in a constant state that he can barely stand. Tony reminds him that the alliance brings in money, suggesting that Tony himself sees the alliance as one of Pragmatic Villainy.
- Television Geography: The Pine Barrens is well-known in New Jersey as an extensive and uninhabited forest. That Paulie sees it as the perfect place to bury Valery without anybody seeing it could also be considered a Shout-Out to Casino, where a lot of Las Vegas' problems were solved in the desert.
- Title Drop: Paulie proposes disposing of Valery "down the Pine Barrens" and then taking in some blackjack in Atlantic City.
- Too Good to Be True: Dr. Melfi realizes that Tony has Gloria on a pedestal, and brings up the fact that Gloria herself is in therapy as a way to warn Tony that not all is as it seems on the surface. It doesn't work, and she turns out to be right with a vengeance.
- Trail of Blood: Chris and Paulie attempt to follow the one left behind by Valery after getting him with the non-fatal Boom, Headshot!. Problem is, the blood trail itself runs out, and Chris and Paulie are left utterly perplexed as to where he could have gone. Then, in one of the truly creepy moments of the show, the audience is looking at the duo from above. The shot itself is holding out the possibility that Valery climbed up a tree, and we are now looking at Chris and Paulie through his eyes as a result of a Switching P.O.V..
- Uncertain Doom: Valery, of course.
- Underestimating Badassery: Paulie more than once doesn't appreciate that Valery is more than he seems on the surface, and regrets it on multiple levels.
- What You Are in the Dark: Chris and Paulie nearly come to blows and/or gunshots as they're both staring at the brink of a situation where one's survival could depend on killing the other. Chris actually did hear Paulie throwing him under the bus to Tony and accused Paulie of wanting to get rid of him to avoid responsibility for screwing up with Valery. Each accuses the other of wanting to abandon him to improve the odds of surviving. The situation is eventually diffused by Tension-Cutting Laughter, but implicitly they both got their answers. If each thought they had to get rid of the other in order to be the only one to make it out alive, they would absolutely Screw The Mafia codes that demand Undying Loyalty to each other.
- Yandere:
- This is the episode where Gloria starts to reveal in earnest that she's Too Good to Be True. It begins with overreacting to Tony lying but then coming clean about Irina, dropping a Precision F-Strike, and then throwing Tony's belated Christmas gift into the water.
- The next degree manifests when Tony shows up three hours late, with her prepared dinner gone cold, and she's even angrier than on the previous occasion.
- Gloria then really loses it when Tony tells her has to leave, even though Tony is now convinced that Chris and Paulie are in a Matter of Life and Death situation. She throws her steak at Tony before he leaves, and then has an epic fit of Tantrum Throwing once he's out the door.
- You Remind Me of X: Tony half-jokes with Melfi that he's dating Gloria maybe because she reminds him of her, only to say they are not alike at all, before settling in that they both have great legs.
