Oof madorn! There is major trouble up ahead for Tony. With the death of Johnny Sack in prison, it's his fractured relationship with Christopher that hurts most. But the New York situation takes a turn for the worse as Phil Leotardo decides to take control.
The episode opened up with a very tense, filmic scene of one of the lesser known Baldwin brothers happening upon some guy hanging in a garage with his guts spilling out of him. He is then attacked by a blood-soaked zombie with meat cleavers for hands.
Turns out we are watching the closing scene of Christopher and Little Carmine's ultra-violent mob slasher flick, Cleaver. The two exec producers are extremely happy with the film and one of the investors even compliments the film's director by telling him Cleaver is " even better than those porn films we made". High praise indeed.
The end of Johnny SackIn another corner of the world, a pale, bald and sickly Johnny Sack is with his doctor and is given the bad news - he has stage 4 lung cancer and since there is no stage 5 (the episode title) he has just three months to live.
On his way back to prison hospital, Johnny tells the marshalls escorting him how unfair this prognosis is, since he gave up smoking 38 years before and lived a healthy life. His wife Ginny and daughter Allegra come for a visit and are devastated when he tells them the news.
While in his sick bed, the hospital orderly (played by Sydney Pollack) gets to talking to Johnny about their situations. The orderly, Warren Feldman, is an oncologist doing time for the murder of his cheating wife and her aunt and tells Johnny that, with all the aggressive treatment he's had for his cancer, he likely has 1-3 years left. This lifts Johnny's spirits somewhat but he starts smoking again.
During a Soprano family dinner, it's revealed that Meadow and Fin have split up. No details are given but it would seem to have happened months before. I've been keeping a close eye on The Sopranos timeline this season, just because there hasn't been any indication of significant amounts of time passing by, although there've been little signs along the way, like the rapid ageing process Janice's daughter has undergone.
Also AJ's girlfriend Blanca and her son appear to be firm fixtures at Soprano family gatherings, but Blanca's previously sweet and loving nature appears to have been replaced by a cold and rather bitchy demeanour. The family note this but AJ says he has no idea what's going on.
Cleaver hacks its way into theatresIts Cleaver's much-anticipated worldwide premiere and during a pre-screening speech, Christopher gives special thanks to Tony and the other investors for their contribution to seeing him realise his dream. The screenwriter JT Dolan (Tim Daly) is present but Chris makes no mention of his contribution. And before the film's director can make his speech, the mike stand is taken away and the house lights are dimmed as the screening starts up.
Seems The Sopranos producers made a bit of an effort with this faux film as well because the production qualities of Cleaver and The Sopranos are quite similar. Select scenes from Cleaver sees the film's villain Sally Boy (played by Daniel Baldwin) standing in a white robe in his basement with his soldiers, angrily throwing something against the wall - something we've seen many times ourselves. Sally Boy appears to be directly inspired by Tony himself. During the film, Carmela mentions this to Tony and he beams with pride.
Another scene from the film sees Sally Boy seduce a young woman, the finacee of the film's cleaver-handed protagonist Michael (played by Jonathan LaPaglia, brother of Anthony and star of a time-travel cop show I sort of remember called '7 Days'). This clearly unsettles Carmela, and Rosie Aprile (her friend who accompanied her to Paris a few episodes ago) shoots her a withering look as Carmela squirms in her seat.
New York headacheAt the after-party, Tony hob-nobs with the actors and talks business with Phil Leotardo. This discussion revels that as much as a year has passed since Phil's coronary in episode 612 "Kaisha". That's a pretty huge time jump, I think. New York politics appear at the all-time worst with Phil now resigned to never taking over from Johnny as boss, and a hit on Phil's protégé and next-in-line Gerry Torciano in a restaurant (with Silvio present) Johnny's recent death in prison.
With the push for leadership of the New York family looking a bit like the ANC succession race, Tony approaches Little Carmine at a golf course to do the right thing and take over where his father left off. But Carmine is against the idea too - there's just too little happiness in the life of the boss. Who knew?
The morning after the film premiere, Tony is alarmed to find his two favourite FBI agents, now working the Terror cases, wait for him as he makes his way down his driveway for the paper. The agents again ask Tony to send any info their way pertaining to Middle Eastern or Pakistanis trying to get their hands on material or money for their terror plots. Tony refuses, despite having contact with a few regular Middle Eastern customers at Bada Bing who have already approached Christopher for credit cards.
Christopher's "revenge fantasy"But his encounter with the agents is nothing compared to the tongue lashing he gets from Carm back inside the house. She makes it clear in uncertain terms that she is upset about the scene in Cleaver where Tony's likeness, Sally Boy, sleeps with his protégé's fiancee. She draws parallels with Tony's suspected dalliance with Adriana in season 5 - but Tony insists it never happened.
Carm warns him that the film played out like Christopher's "revenge fantasy" on Tony for sleeping with Adriana and then ordering a hit on her. I was very surprised that Carmela even mentioned this to Tony, knowing how close he and Chris have become recently, especially since Chris became a family man and sobered up.
She's so upset that she even confronts Chris about this when he and his wife Kelli come to pick up their baby daughter, Caitlin, whom Carm had been baby-sitting. Her fury worries Chris so much that he storms into JT Dolan's apartment and orders him to let Tony know that the idea for the fiancee seduction scene was his. When JT refuses, Chris loses his marbles (always a very very scary sight) and hits JT over the head with one of his writing awards.
JT then visits Bing under the guise of meeting Chris there, but only to "casually" let Tony know that
he came up with the idea to have Sally Boy have sex with the Cleaver's fiancee after seeing a 1950s mobster flick called "Born Yesterday". Tony, Paulie and Silvio seem unconvinced, especially after noting the huge bruise on JT's head. Oh well, at least he tried.
Tony is clearly rattled by Carmela's reading of the film and later has an emotional session with Dr Melfi. He tells he how, growing up together, he came to see himself as a mentor to Chris, the way Chris's father had been to him before he died. But despite all he's done for him, Chris has come to despise Tony and, though he doesn't say the words, Tony's brimming tears confirm how deeply hurt he is by Christopher's true feelings. I don't know how these award things are decided - but I would give James Gandolfini the Emmy just for that 2 minute scene with Melfi. He was sensational!
Chris has an emotional epiphany of his own during coffee with his new AA sponsor Eddie. It appears the inspiration for Cleaver came when he watched Edward Scissorhands and imagined meat cleavers in place of scissors. And a much greater deal of violent blood and gore too, I imagine. He also feels distant from his crew because the others are so dismissive of his attempts to stay away from alcohol and even places where its freely available, like Bing. Chris is angered that Paulie especially is ignorant of his struggles. No surprise there.
Phil makes up his mindBack in New York, Phil and his family celebrate the 47th birthday of Billy, his brother who was killed at the hands of Christopher. Its a pretty sad occasion, considering the number of deaths the family has had to deal with in recent times, and Phil is further angered when he relates a rather amusing story about how his family's name originally Leonardo - named for the most famous Italian who ever lived. But his "stupid" forefathers saw it fit to change their name to Leotardo "a ballet costume" on their arrival in the States.
As he later sits at his bar and looks at the photographs of his fallen comrades - Billy, Carmine Lupertazzi and Johnny Sack - Phil seems to almost bolster himself to take matters into his own hands and says he won't take it any longer.
We close with scenes of Chris's daughter's christening, Tony and Carmela act as godparents, and Chris and Tony hug each other at the close of the ceremony, not without a tinge of apprehension or regret. It was definitely a tense embrace. There's a growing sense of bad things to come for Tony - not just from the New York family, but from within his own. The clouds are definitely building on the horizon and it won't be long before they break.