Mayham

"Mayham"
The Sopranos episode
Episode no. Season 6
Episode 3
Directed by Jack Bender
Written by Matthew Weiner
Cinematography by Phil Abraham
Production code 603
Original air date March 26, 2006
Running time 56 minutes
Guest appearance(s)

"Mayham" is the 68th episode of the HBO original series The Sopranos and the third of the show's sixth season. Written by Matthew Weiner and directed by Jack Bender, it originally aired on March 26, 2006.

Starring

* = credit only

Guest starring

Episode recap

On a tip from Vito, Paulie and a member of his crew, Cary DiBartolo, attempt to burglarize an apartment belonging to Colombian drug dealers in Newark, New Jersey. However, they find the apartment is not empty as expected, and a fierce firefight ensues. The building superintendent is killed while Paulie and Cary manage to shoot the two drug dealers. The mobsters find a large amount of money hidden in a dishwasher. Meanwhile, Christopher and Bobby confront A.J. about his attempt to purchase a gun and try to dissuade him from going after Junior, who is in custody. They assure him that Tony would not want him involved. Afterwards, A.J. accuses Carmela of putting the two up to the talk, though she has no idea what he is talking about.

Tony's dream sequence from the previous episode continues: at his hotel room he receives a court summons from the Buddhist monks addressed to Kevin Finnerty, and he begins to question his actual identity. He seeks answers from the bartender as well as from the monks who initiated the summons, but does not get any answers.

Tension surges within the DiMeo family. Silvio makes rulings on how Bobby and Vito are to split Eugene's former Roseville, New Jersey bookmaking revenue and on Tony's cut from Paulie and Vito's Colombian score. None of the parties involved like his decisions. Paulie and Vito delay giving the $200,000 to Carmela, since they do not want to part with it in the event Tony does not recover. Vito quietly starts a campaign to position himself as a potential new leader, pointing to his recent weight loss as a sign of better health and maintaining a cordial relationship with the Lupertazzi acting boss Phil Leotardo, who is a second cousin of Vito's wife Marie. He also happens to be in the hospital when Meadow's fiancé Finn turns up, and makes a threatening pass at him.

Carmela bumps into Dr. Melfi at the supermarket, and receives an offer of help. Carmela later becomes livid when she sees a TV special about the shooting, in which A.J.'s cursing at the media is interpreted as a threat. Carmela drags A.J. out of bed, berating him for putting the entire affair on national television, and tells him that he is "a cross that the rest of his family has to bear." The next day, Carmela has a session with Dr. Melfi in which she tearfully regrets insulting A.J., and later reminisces on her attraction to Tony since the two first met. She goes on to acknowledge that she had a choice in picking a husband but that children have no option in choosing their parents.

Chris' passion about entering the movie industry is reborn. He has Benny Fazio and Murmur rough up screenwriter J.T. Dolan, and orders him to write a script for a slasher mob film he wants to produce. Chris later arranges a meeting with potential investors for the production, their chief adviser and partner being Little Carmine. J.T. comes up with the title, Cleaver, and explains the premise, but the investors, which include Silvio, Vito and Larry Boy Barese, seem confused about its plot. Nevertheless, Chris assures them the film is a guaranteed win, citing profitable films with tangentially related subject matter.

Despite orders to allow only family to see Tony, Silvio and Paulie are smuggled in by Carmela and Meadow. Left alone with Tony, Paulie proceeds to treat his unconscious boss with an interminable and profanity-laden update of his current state of affairs. Tony's heart-rate escalates steadily, but Paulie does not notice it until he goes into cardiac arrest. Hospital staff rush in and attempt to revive him.

In Tony's dream, Paulie's voice appears as muffled sounds from an adjoining room at his hotel, prompting him to bang on the wall and ask for some calm. Having found a flier for the Finnerty family reunion in his briefcase, he is greeted outside the venue by a man who looks like his cousin Tony Blundetto. The man tries to get Tony to enter the light-festooned house, assuring him that "everyone's here" and that he is "coming home"; but he also tells Tony that he must first let go of his "business" and hand over his briefcase. Tony is reluctant, replying that he had once already given away a briefcase which had "his whole life inside" and does not want to do the same with the one he has now. Standing at the steps of the house, Tony hesitates for some time. With the figure of someone similar to his mother Livia standing by the doorway in front of him, and the faint voice of a little girl coming from the trees behind him pleading with him not to go (in the hospital Meadow is calling to her father), Tony chooses not to enter the house and awakes in the hospital. His first words, after beckoning Carmela to come closer, are "I'm dead, right?"

Later, heavily sedated and still largely unable to talk, Tony sits in a chair at the foot of his bed and listens to an excited Christopher explain his movie venture to him; his nephew says he left a position for Tony to become a major investor in the project. Christopher then notices an Ojibwe saying taped onto the wall: "Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while, a great wind carries me across the sky."

With Tony now conscious, Paulie and Vito anxiously rush to get their cuts to Carmela. In the hospital lobby, when they hand over the cash, Carmela is initially grateful. However, before the elevator doors close, she turns around in time to see their facial expressions turn sour. Carmela arrives to tend to Tony's chapped lips and remarks to him her amazement about his ability to intimidate others without even uttering a word.

First appearances

Deceased

  • Building Superintendent: shot by Colombian #1
  • Colombian #1: shot by Cary DiBartolo and Paulie
  • Colombian #2: shot by Cary DiBartolo and then stabbed by Paulie

Title reference

  • The title is a malapropism; after Vito gives Paulie bad information about the stick-up job (saying the place was empty), Paulie does not want to give him his full cut of the money, saying that the job was "mayham".
  • Disorder is within the ranks of the DiMeo/Soprano crime family, as there are disagreements between some members, dissent is growing, and, at one point, both its boss and substitute acting boss are hospitalized.
  • Tony Soprano violently fights to stay alive.

Production

  • Ray Abruzzo (Little Carmine) is now promoted to the main cast and billed in the opening credits but only in the episodes in which he appears.
  • Lorraine Bracco's sister Elizabeth joins the show playing the character of Marie, the wife of Vito Spatafore.

Other cultural references

  • As Vito pulls up alongside Paulie at the beginning of the episode, Paulie greets him saying "Diary of a Thin Man", in reference to Vito's recent weight loss, misquoting the title of the Bob Dylan song "Ballad of a Thin Man".
  • When confronted over his attempted purchase of a gun and told that he cannot get to his Uncle Junior anyway because he is in police custody, AJ says it's "difficult, not impossible" - these same words are spoken by Rocco Lampone in The Godfather Part II in reference to assassinating Hyman Roth.
  • In another homage to The Godfather, when Benny Fazio unexpectedly speaks up at the movie pitch with a solution to the film's plot impasse, it harkens to the scene when Michael Corleone speaks up and calculatingly details how to assassinate Virgil Sollozzo and the corrupt police captain at a restaurant.
  • Vito greets Finn, who flew over from California, as "Phineas Fogg" at the hospital.
  • J.T. Dolan is discussing Beowulf when kidnapped from his writing class.
  • When pitching Cleaver, Silvio, Christopher, and J.T. Dolan compare and contrast the film to The Ring, the Friday the 13th franchise, and Freddy Krueger movies, and Halloween as well as to The Godfather II, Saw and Ghostbusters franchises.
  • Tom Giglione says he needs some Irish Spring to look fresh again after a night spent beside Tony's bed.
  • Phil Leotardo says everyone thought Vito looked like John Travolta when he married Phil's cousin Marie.
  • Paulie Gualtieri refers to Vito as "Bluto" (Popeye's nemesis).
  • Paulie Gualtieri refers to Carmela Soprano as the "Princess of Little Italy". This is an homage to Steven Van Zandt and his band Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, who recorded a song by the same name.
  • In a rare session with Dr. Melfi, Carmela recalls her second date with Tony, in which he brought her father a $200 power drill as a gift. She says she knew there was "probably some guy with a broken arm" behind it and reflects on whether this made her like Tony less, or more. This mimics Bracco's own character's reaction in Goodfellas when she realized what Henry Hill really was early in their relationship.

Music

  • In the first scene, as Paulie is driving, "Smoky Places" by The Corsairs is playing.
  • In one of the episode's first scenes "La Gata" by Nicky Jam is playing in the Colombians' office when Paulie enters.
  • An acoustic version of Heart's "These Dreams" plays in the supermarket where Carmela and Dr. Melfi run into each other.
  • Sheryl Crow's rendition of "The First Cut Is the Deepest" can be heard playing on Tony's stereo during his coma.
  • The mariachi music played in the country house when Tony Blundetto is welcoming Tony Soprano is "La Feria de las Flores" by Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán.
  • "When You Dance", by The Turbans can be heard heard playing in the last scene while Christopher is talking to Tony in his hospital room.
  • A rendition by The Mystics of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" is being played while Carmela is wetting Tony's lips.
  • The instrumental piece played over the end credits is "The Deadly Nightshade" by Daniel Lanois.
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