Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Usually we take
a wide -angle lens to a topic, a geopolitical
shift, maybe a new tech trend, or a sprawling
history of a specific industry. Right, the big
picture stuff. Exactly, the big picture. But
today... We are doing something entirely different.
We are zooming all the way in. We're taking a
microscope to exactly 48 minutes of television
that aired back in February of 1999. And honestly,
if you are going to pick one single hour of television
to completely overanalyze, this is the one. I
mean, it is arguably the most important hour
in the history of the medium. That is a massive
claim. But I agree. We are talking about The
Sopranos, specifically the fifth episode of the
very first season, an episode titled College.
Yeah. Now, before we get too deep into the weeds
here, let's establish the stakes for you listening,
just to give you an idea of how highly regarded
this is. Back in 2009, TV Guide released their
list of the 100 greatest episodes of all time.
A highly contested list, usually. Oh, always.
And usually those lists are dominated by massive
series finales, you know, M .A .S. Cheers or
huge cultural events like the moon landing coverage.
But sitting right there at number two on that
list. It is even more impressive when you look
at the internal rankings for just the show itself.
Time magazine and Entertainment Weekly both rated
this as the single best episode of the entire
Sopranos run. Which is wild when you think about
it. It really is. Think about that. They didn't
pick Pine Barrens with the Russian out in the
snowy woods. They didn't pick the series finale
with the infamous cut to black. They picked this
mid -season, relatively quiet, almost bottle
-like episode. So our mission today is to really
unpack why. Why is this specific script considered
the absolute turning point? We're going to dissect
the two very distinct storylines here. The A
story and the B story. Right. The A story, which
is this father got a road trip that suddenly
turns into a dark noir thriller. And the B story,
which is basically a dark night of the soul involving
Carmela Soprano and her local priest. And perhaps
most importantly, we are going to look at the
invisible war that happened behind the cameras.
Oh, yeah. The network battle. Because this episode
almost didn't happen the way we saw it. There
was this intense strategic battle between the
creator, David Chase, and the executives at HBO
that fundamentally changed the whole concept
of what a television protagonist could be. Seriously,
if the suits at the network had won that argument
back in 99, we probably wouldn't have Walter
White. We wouldn't have Don Draper. Exactly.
The entire golden age of television basically
rests on a decision made in the editing room
for this specific hour of TV. Well, let's just
jump right into it. Let's start with the A story.
The setup is deceptively simple, right? Tony
Soprano takes his teenage daughter, Meadow, up
to Maine to visit prospective colleges. Right.
They're looking at Bates, Colby, Boudoin. Yeah.
Bates, Colby. It is a completely classic, wholesome,
suburban rite of passage. A dad bonding with
his daughter on a road trip. Structurally, this
is what we call in the industry a bottle episode
on wheels. You take two characters, you trap
them in a confined space, in this case a luxury
Lincoln Town car, and you literally force them
to talk. Because there's nowhere to hide. Exactly,
nowhere to go. But the context here is what makes
it so volatile. This isn't just an ordinary dad
and a teenage daughter. This is a mafia boss
and a highly intelligent, very observant teenager
who is just starting to realize that her incredibly
comfortable life is built on something totally
rotten. And that tension just snaps in, a scene
that I think is permanently burned into the brains
of anyone who watched it. They are driving along
this quiet, tree -lined road, and Meadow just
turns to him and drops the hammer. Yep. She just
asks him point blank, are you in the mafia? It
is the big question. And we really have to pause
here on why this was so revolutionary for TV.
In the genre of crime drama prior to this, if
you think about The Godfather or Goodfellas,
the family dynamic almost always relies on this
willful ignorance. Right. The wives and the kids
just know not to ask where the money comes from.
Exactly. There is a strict social contract of
silence. By asking that specific question out
loud, Meadow is breaching that contract. She
is basically demanding that the subtext of their
entire lives become text. And Tony's reaction
is just fascinating to watch. James Gandolfini
plays it with this perfectly flustered, incredibly
defensive energy. Oh, it's brilliant. His first
instinct is just a standard reflexive lie. He
denies it completely. He says, I'm in the waste
management business. Everyone is. He assumes
you're mobbed up just because you're Italian.
He immediately plays the victim card. Yes. He
goes straight into full dad denial mode. But
Meadow doesn't buy a word of it. She pushes back
hard. She cites the late nights, the wads of
cash around the house, the lavish lifestyle.
She is essentially a prosecuting attorney presenting
evidence in the passenger seat. And this forces
Tony to make a really rapid calculation. He realizes
the old lies, the waste management stuff, it
just won't work anymore. She's way too smart
for that. So he attempts what what intelligence
circles called a limited hangout, a limited hangout.
Yeah, it's a spy craft term. When you are caught
in a lie, you admit to a very small, partial
truth to satisfy the interrogator. And hopefully.
cover up the massive, much more damaging lie.
Oh, right. You give them a crumb, so they stop
looking for the whole loaf of bread. That is
a perfect way to describe it. So in this case,
Tony admits that, yes, some of his income comes
from illegal gambling. And as he delicately puts
it, other activities. Other activities. That
phrase is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It really
is. But he validates her suspicion just enough
to make her feel respected. He makes her feel
like she is finally in the know. But he does
this without actually admitting to being an extortionist
or racketeer or, you know, a murderer. Right.
He reframes his entire criminal empire as something
almost benign. Just some underground poker games
and cutting a few corners here and there. And
it works. Meadow seems almost relieved to hear
it. Because the door to honesty has finally been
cracked open. Yeah. And she feels compelled to
walk through it, too. This is that basic psychological
principle of reciprocity. Yeah. He gave her a
piece of the truth, so she feels she owes him
one. And her truth is a bombshell. She confesses
that she took speed methamphetamine to stay up
and study for her SATs. Which is just a narrative
grenade to throw into the car. You have this
mob boss who literally beats and kills people
for a living, suddenly clutching his pearls because
his high school daughter tried drugs. The hypocrisy
is just... It is beautiful, hilarious hypocrisy.
Tony drops the tough gangster mask entirely and
just becomes the terrified, angry, suburban dad.
He is furious. He is. But look at Meadow's reaction
to his anger. She completely stands her ground,
he demands to know who gave her the drugs, and
she refuses to rat out her friend. Which, ironically,
is the most mafia thing she does in the entire
episode. Exactly. She adheres strictly to the
code of silence. It's Omerta in the passenger
seat of a Lincoln. Precisely. And the source
material notes something really critical here
about the aftermath of this argument. By the
end of this conversation, despite the yelling
about the meth, the vibe in the car isn't hostile
at all. No, it's actually really peaceful. There
is a deep sense of mutual honesty on difficult
topics. They have basically popped this blister
of tension that had been building for the first
four episodes of the series. They feel closer
than ever because they believe they are finally
seeing each other clearly. It's a total seduction
of the audience, really. The show seduces you
into thinking you are just watching a quirky
family drama. We are watching a father and daughter
bond over their flaws, and then wham, the genre
completely shifts. We enter a high -stakes thriller.
The inciting incident for that shift happens
at a random gas station. Tony is just pumping
gas, looking around, and he sees a face across
the way. Fabian Petrullio. Febby. Now, for the
listener who hasn't totally memorized the DeMeo
crime family tree, who exactly is Febby? Febby
is basically a ghost. He was a former member
of the crime family who turned state's evidence.
A rat? He testified against the family, entered
the Federal Witness Protection Program, and supposedly
vanished into normal, everyday America. So Tony
spotting him at a random rural gas station in
the middle of nowhere is statistically highly
unlikely. Highly unlikely, yes. But narratively,
it represents fate. It is the past coming up
to Maine to collect a debt. Tony just stares
at him. He isn't... Completely sure at first.
So he does what any normal suburban dad would
do. He goes to a payphone and calls his mobster
nephew, Christopher Moltisanti, to run an illegal
background check on a license plate. And Chris
runs it, and the plate comes back to a guy named
Fred Peters. Fred Peters. Fabian Petrillo. FP.
It is an incredibly lazy alias. It's actually
a really subtle dig by the writers at the incompetence
of the witness protection program. Just keeping
the same initials. Right. But it confirms the
identity for Tony. And now Tony has a massive
immediate problem. He is on a wholesome schedule
packed college tour. He is actively playing the
role of the good attentive father. But he has
just located a man who, by the rigid, unforgiving
rules of his organization, absolutely must die.
Because there is no statute of limitations on
being a rat. This right here is the core tension
of the entire episode. The duality of Tony Soprano.
Can you be dad and executioner in the exact same
weekend? In the exact same hour, really. Tony
resolves that he has to kill him. But he has
to somehow schedule this premeditated murder
around his daughter's college admissions interviews.
It becomes this really dark comedy of scheduling.
Yes. He drops her off to meet some alumni students
at Colby College. And while she is sitting there
having coffee and casually talking about dorm
life, he literally goes hunting for a human being.
He tracks Febby down. to his new workplace which
turns out to be a small local travel agency and
there is a very specific visual detail here that
confirms the identity beyond a shadow of a doubt
for tony the bust right the sculpture febby was
known back in new jersey as a hobbyist sculptor
tony peeks through the window of the travel agency
and sees a carved bust sitting right there on
a desk visual confirmation Target acquired. Target
acquired. But this is where the episode completely
elevates itself above a standard mob hit story.
This isn't a one -way street. Febby isn't just
a clueless target. He is an ex -mobster himself.
He still has all the paranoid instincts of a
predator. He senses he is being watched. He looks
out the window, and he actually spots Tony. And
suddenly, the dynamic flips. The hunter becomes
the hunted. Which leads to the scene at the motel,
which I genuinely think is one of the most terrifying,
suspenseful moments of that entire first season.
Oh, without a doubt. Febby tracks Tony back to
the motel. He is standing outside their room
in the dark, in the rain, holding a handgun.
Tony is sound asleep inside. Meadow is asleep
in the next bed. It is a complete and total inversion
of power. Febby has the absolute shock on him.
He slowly raises the weapon. He could end the
entire Tony Soprano story right there in episode
five. We are looking directly at the extreme
fragility of this protagonist. So the big question
is, why doesn't he pull the trigger? He has the
shot. Collateral damage. He looks through the
gap in the curtains and he sees Meadow. And then
at the exact same time, he sees two other motel
guests winding by on the balcony with an ice
bucket. Just completely oblivious, innocent bystanders.
Exactly. The sheer risk of having witnesses and
specifically the presence of an innocent child
in the line of fire is what stays his hand. He
lowers the gun. It is a fascinating, ironic moment
where Tony's biological family, his literal daughter,
unknowingly protects him from the deadly consequences
of his business family. If Meadow wasn't in that
room, Tony Soprano would be dead. 100%. That
is a chilling thought when you really sit with
it. So Tony survives the night, completely oblivious
that he was inches away from getting his brains
blown out. The next morning, the sun is up. It's
a brunk new day. He drops Meadow off for her
interview at Bedouin College. And now the clock
is ticking. He only has a small window of opportunity
before she finishes her tour. This is the climax
of the Ace story. Tony drives straight back to
the travel agency. Febi is there alone. And what
happens next is so important to television history
because of exactly how it is depicted. This isn't
some stylized, slow motion, cool shootout. Tony
doesn't use a silencer. No, he uses a wire. He
literally garrots him from behind. It is incredibly
visceral. It is a desperate, messy struggle.
Tony is physically wrestling the life out of
this man with his bare hands. He is grunting.
He is sweating. He is staring directly into the
guy's eyes as the life literally drains out of
them. The direction of this scene heavily emphasizes
the sheer labor of killing a human being. It
strips away all the Hollywood glamour of the
mafia. It's ugly. It's hard. It's brutal physical
work. And immediately after doing this, after
engaging in this, incredibly brutal, intimate
act of violence. He has to go wash up, get back
into Lincoln, and pick up his teenage daughter.
He has to completely switch his code and his
entire persona instantly. But the transition
isn't seamless, and this brings us right back
to that theme of honesty that we started the
trip with. Meadow gets in the car. She is highly
observant. She looks over at him, and she sees
mud on his expensive leather shoes. And she sees
a fresh, bleeding cut on his hand from where
the wire dug in. She asks him what happened,
and this is the real tragedy of the episode,
even more than the murder. Tony lies to her.
He concocts this incredibly flimsy story about
slipping in the mud or hitting his hand on something.
And Meadow, she just looks at him. You can see
it entirely in her eyes. She absolutely knows
he is lying. And this is the crucial turning
point for her character. She chooses not to press
it. That silence in the car is absolutely deafening.
The grand pact of mutual honesty that they made
the day before, it's broken immediately. She
realizes that to keep her father, to keep the
peace in the lifestyle, she has to actively accept
his lie. It heavily implies that their relationship
can only really exist if she agrees to be fully
complicit in his deception. She effectively signs
the exact same contract of willful ignorance
that she tried so hard to tear up at the beginning
of the drive. There's a great piece of analysis
from the television critic Alan Sepinwall about
a very specific shot during this quiet ride home.
Tony is driving and he finds himself staring
up through the windshield at a clock of ducks
flying overhead. The ducks! Such a massive recurring
motif for Tony, starting right from the pilot
episode. Sepinwall argues that in this specific
moment, the ducks stand in for these feelings
of pure family and peace that remain, quote,
forever beyond his grasp. He desperately wants
to just be the guy watching the birds. He wants
to just be the normal suburban dad. But his hands
are literally cut and bleeding from strangling
a man to death. It is a stunning visual juxtaposition.
And what's amazing is that while all of this
incredibly high stakes, literal life and death
violence is happening up in Maine or what is
supposed to be Maine, we have a completely different
kind of drama unfolding back home in New Jersey.
Right. The B story. Carmela Soprano and Father
Phil. This storyline is definitely quieter. It's
mostly in one room, but in a lot of ways, it
is just as intense. It creates a perfect thematic
mirror to what Tony is doing on the road. So
set the scene for the listener here. It is a
dark, rainy night in North Jersey. Their son,
AJ, is sleeping over at a friend's house, so
Carmela is completely home alone in this massive
house. And Father Phil Intantola, the family
priest, just happens to drop by. Father Phil,
the ultimate schnorrer priest. He always seems
to miraculously show up right when the food is
hot and the expensive wine is uncorked. He is
a total spiritual parasite. He absolutely loves
the perks of his parish, the baked ziti, the
imported wine, the constant adoration of these
wealthy mob wives. So he comes in and he and
Carmela create this weirdly intimate domestic
atmosphere. It honestly feels like a date. It
does. The fire is going, the wine is flowing,
they're eating together. And then the catalyst
happens. The phone rings. It's Dr. Melfi's office
calling the house to reschedule Tony's therapy
appointment. Now, up until this exact moment,
Carmela knew Tony was seeing a psychiatrist,
but she didn't know who it was. She thought it
was a man. In taking this phone call, she discovers
for the very first time that Dr. Melfi is, in
fact, a woman, Jennifer Melfi. Oh, the bomb drops.
Carmela immediately jumps to the absolute worst
case scenario. She completely assumes the therapy
is just a convenient cover for an affair. she
is totally devastated she feels betrayed and
humiliated and she is sitting there on the couch
with a man who is supposed to be her spiritual
guide but who is clearly actively attracted to
her this turns into a very strange very raw confession
scene she isn't in a wooden booth at the church
She's in her own dimly lit living room, half
drunk on wine, crying and confessing her deepest
fears. She talks about the danger to her family.
She talks about the morality of her life. She
essentially admits out loud that she knows her
entire lavish lifestyle is funded by blood money,
but she accepts it anyway. And Father, he blurs
the professional boundaries so dangerously here.
He actually administers communion to her right
there in the living room. That scene has always
struck me as incredibly charged. It's almost
uncomfortable to watch. It is a total sacrilegious
blurring of lines. It is staged and shot almost
exactly like a sex scene. He administers the
sacrament, she drinks the wine, and then he drains
the rest of the cup. It represents an intense
intimacy that is completely forbidding for him.
And then they both fall asleep on the sofa together.
They wake up a few hours later in that weird
middle -of -the -night haze. The fire is dying
down to embers. The sexual tension in the room
is just screaming. They are inches apart on the
cushions. They are leaning in, about to kiss.
The tension is palpable. You think they are actually
going to cross the line, but then the turn happens.
Father Phil suddenly stops. He just freezes,
pulls away in a panic, runs to the guest bathroom,
and he vomits. The wretch. It is such a visceral,
incredibly unglamorous reaction to a romantic
moment. Why does he do that? Is it just too much
wine on an empty stomach? It is likely a mix
of the alcohol, sure, but mostly it's a severe
physiological reaction to his own moral hypocrisy.
He desperately wanted the emotional intimacy.
He wanted the intense adoration from her. He
wanted to play house with Carmela. But when it
actually came dangerously close to committing
the physical sin of sex, his body completely
rejected the situation. He is a man who wants
to stand right next to the fire to get warm,
but absolutely refuses to get burned. It is so
interesting to contrast these two men, Tony and
Father Phil. Television critics really love to
compare their actions in this specific episode.
Emily St. James wrote a truly brilliant piece
on this for the A .V. Club. She calls the entire
episode a meditation on what it means to choose
the easy path every single time. How so, though?
Because Tony just physically wrestled a man to
death with a wire. That did not look physically
easy. Physically, no, it was exhausting. But
morally. Killing the rat is actually the easy
solution for Tony. It solves his problem definitively.
It completely removes the threat to his freedom.
It requires zero emotional nuance, zero negotiation.
He just blindly follows his mafia code. It is
the path of least moral resistance for his conscience.
And Father Phil, how is he taking the easy path?
Father Phil is also taking the easy way out.
He constantly seeks out the emotional and physical
benefits of a relationship with Carmela, the
amazing food, the domestic comfort, the massive
ego boost of having this powerful woman seek
his guidance. But he wants all of that without
the heavy cost of actually breaking his vows
or facing the harsh reality of who she really
is. Both men are just indulging their baseline
impulses while desperately trying to maintain
a fake veneer of righteousness. Wow. So next
morning, the sun comes up in Jersey, just like
it did up in Maine. Carmela is stone cold sober
now. The spell is broken. She looks at him and
says very firmly, we didn't do anything. She
is drawing a hard boundary in the cold light
of day. But when Tony finally returns home from
the college trip later that day, the two storylines
violently collide. Carmela immediately tells
Tony that Father Phil stayed over the night before.
Which is... Such a massive power move. She knows
exactly how suspicious that sounds to a guy like
Tony. It is a calculated preemptive strike. She
tells him before he can possibly find out from
a neighbor or someone else. And naturally, Tony
gets instantly defensive and sarcastic about
the priest sleeping on his couch. But Carmela
has the ultimate trump card ready to play. The
phone call. Exactly. She reveals that she knows
all about Dr. Melfi. She uses that phone call
as heavy ammunition to completely neutralize
Tony's anger about the priest. It is a pure stalemate.
It's mutually assured destruction in a marriage.
Exactly. They both have these dark secrets. They
both literally and metaphorically have mud on
their shoes, so they just retreat to their respective
corners. The marital status quo is preserved
purely through mutual blackmail. Now, I want
to pivot a bit to the industry side of this episode.
We teased that huge battle between David Chase
and HBO at the top of the show. Why was the network
a network that was already known for pushing
boundaries? so terrified of this specific script.
You really have to remember the television landscape
of 1999. We were coming out of an era where TV
protagonists, even the flawed ones, were fundamentally
likable. Even the gritty antiheroes like Andy
Sipogitz on NYPD Blue, they were ultimately on
the side of the angels. They had a core moral
code that the audience generally agreed with.
So the HBO executives read the script for college
and they completely panicked. Specifically about
the premeditated murder of Febby. Yes. specifically
the murder. They went to David Chase and basically
said, look, you have spent four entire episodes
carefully building Tony up as a highly sympathetic
character. We see him feeding the ducks in his
pool. We see him being tender with his kids.
We see him suffering from debilitating panic
attacks. The audience relates to him. If he savagely
kills this guy in cold blood, especially while
he is on a wholesome college trip with his daughter,
the audience is going to permanently turn on
him. They thought people would just tune out.
They thought people would hate him. They said,
we will lose our hero. We were basically terrified
of breaking the save the cat rule. Exactly. Save
the cat is a very famous screenwriting term coined
by Blake Snyder. It dictates that when you introduce
a hero, they have to do something demonstrably
nice early on, like literally saving a cat from
a tree so the audience instinctively likes them
and roots for them. HBO desperately wanted Tony
to save the cat here. They wanted him to just
let Febby go, maybe stalk him, maybe scare him,
maybe beat him up a bit, but ultimately... show
mercy and let him live. So what was David Chase's
argument against that? Because he obviously didn't
back down. Chase completely flipped their logic
on its head. It was brilliant. He told the executives,
the audience will not turn on him if he kills
the rat. They will turn on him if he doesn't
kill the rat. Wait, if he didn't do it, they
would hate him for showing mercy. Yes. Chase's
core logic was that Tony is a mafia boss. That
is his chosen profession. That is his entire
life. If a ruthless mafia Don somehow finds a
known snitch and just lets him walk away simply
because he happens to be on a college tour with
his kid, he looks incredibly weak. He looks incompetent
at his job. Chase argued that the television
audience actually craves competence and realism
far more than they crave traditional morality.
That is such a brilliant, cynical insight into
human nature. We root for competence. We just
want to see people be really good at whatever
their job is, even if that job happens to be
murder. And Chase won the decision, obviously.
HBO backed down. And television history proved
him absolutely right. The episode aired, and
Tony Soprano became immensely more popular, not
less. It definitively proved that we, the audience,
are totally willing to root for a literal monster
as long as he is a complex, highly competent
monster. That one network decision really did
pave the way for everything that followed in
the next two decades. Think about Vic Mackey
and the Shield, or Dexter Morgan, or Walter White,
or the entire ensemble cast of Succession. They
all owe their existence to the fact that Tony
Soprano was allowed to strangle Febby Petrullio.
It completely shifted the fundamental question
of television writing. It went from, is this
character a good person, to is this character
compelling to watch? I also read in the background
materials that the initial idea for this specific
plot didn't even come from David Chase originally.
That's right. It was actually writer and producer
Frank Renzulli who first hatched the idea. He
came up with the core high concept hook. Tony
is out of his element and randomly spots a mob
rat in witness protection. It is such a simple,
clean premise, but it allowed for all this incredible
character depth to naturally emerge. And just
a quick production fun fact for location nerds
out there listening. Even though the entire A
story is set up in Maine. They didn't actually
go anywhere near Maine to shoot it. No, standard
TV magic right there. The Maine scenes were all
filmed in rural New Jersey. And the college campus
scenes, that was just Drew University in Madison,
New Jersey, standing in for all these elite New
England schools. It is amazing how much quaint
New England aesthetic you can find hidden in
the Garden State if you just frame the camera
shot right. And speaking of framing shots and
production, we should definitely touch on the
critical reception because the industry didn't
just accept this dark episode. They completely
threw trophies at it. Oh, absolutely. James Manos
Jr. and David Chase actually won the Primetime
Emmy Award for outstanding writing for a drama
series for this specific script. Incredibly well
-deserved. The dialogue is flawless. But significantly,
Edie Falco, who plays Carmela, won her very first
primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in
a Drama Series, purely based on her performance
in this episode. That makes total sense when
you watch it. The emotional range she has to
show in that living room scene is just incredible.
She cycles through intense vulnerability, boiling
anger, suppressed lust. deep religious guilt,
sometimes displaying all of them in the exact
same light. It is an absolute masterclass in
subtle acting, and the television critics completely
recognized that at the time, too. Emily St. James,
writing for the A .V. Club, openly called the
episode pure genius. She specifically noted how
the storyline blends every single aspect of the
show's complex world so completely that it just
feels natural. It doesn't feel like a contrived
TV plot. It feels like messy reality unfolding
in real time. She also highly praised the cinematography,
right? Yes, the camera work is phenomenal. The
use of cross -cutting and those tight point -of
-view shots. It aggressively puts the viewer
right in the claustrophobic headspace of both
the hunter and the stalker. physically feel the
anxiety of Febby watching Tony from the motel
window, and we feel the cold, predatory focus
of Tony tracking Febby. It is a technically brilliant
episode as well as a perfectly written one. And
Alan Sepinwall from Uproxx also heavily praised
the narrative structure. He really liked that
they chose to use only two stories. So many shows,
especially back then, try to cram in a C -plot
and a D -plot to keep the pace up by stubbornly
sticking to just Tony and Meadow in the car and
Carmela and Phil. in the house that could let
both of those stories play out in exhaustive,
powerful detail. Nothing at all felt rushed or
unearned. It really does feel like a perfect
storm of television production. The writing,
the acting, the directing, and even the sheer
bravery of the network to finally step back and
let it happen. It is exactly the moment the show
officially transitioned from being just a hit
series about the mob into being great art. So
as we wrap up this deep dive, I want to go back
to that final... quiet car ride, Meadow and the
Lie. The ultimate moment of complicity. Yeah.
We so often look at a show like The Sopranos
as being a show about them, about criminals,
sociopaths, people fundamentally unlike us. But
I think college asks a very, very uncomfortable
question about us as a viewers. Oh, go on. How
so? Well, Meadow represents the normal person
in this dynamic. She heavily enjoys the expensive
college tuition, the nice clothes, the safety
and status provided by her father's brutal power.
She literally sees the mud on his shoes. She
sees the blood on his hands. She is smart enough
to know exactly where it all comes from. But
in that silent moment in the car, she actively
decides that her comfort is worth her silence.
It is weaponized willful blindness. She edits
her own reality just to stay comfortable. Exactly.
So the provocation for you, the listener, is
this. In your own life, Whether it is the massive
corporation you work for, the politicians you
routinely support, or even just the messy family
dynamics you navigate every day. How often do
you spot the mud on the shoes? And how often
do you consciously choose not to ask the difficult
follow -up question simply because you really
like the ride? That is the real terrifying danger
the show exposes. We are all, in some small way,
a little bit like Meadow Soprano sitting quietly
in that passenger seat. That is a genuinely haunting
thought to leave on. That is the deep dive on
college. Thanks for joining us. We will see you
next time.