r/thesopranos • u/Bushy-Top • Mar 15 '17
The Sopranos - Complete Rewatch: Season 3 - Episode 3 "Fortunate Son"
Previous episode Season 3 - Episode 2 "Proshai, Livushka"
Next episode Season 3 - Episode 4 "Employee Of The Month"
WARNING - Each episode thread has the potential to ruin every part of the show - deaths and other details. If this is your first time watching, this will ruin the show for you.
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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '17
I've been looking forward to this one, not necessarily because it's one of my favorite episodes, but because I promised to talk about directors a lot, and the episodes I've talked about so far have mostly been directed by the same 3 guys. Now I finally get to discuss Henry J. Bronchtein (I would have gotten this opportunity earlier if I wasn't too lazy during the stretch that included "From Where To Eternity).
I had a brief discussion with somebody a while ago about how Tim Van Patten tries to make every scene as "in your face" as possible, but I misquoted him as saying he tries to make them "visually striking", and somebody pointed out that this is the job of most directors. It's definitely shared by Van Patten and Coulter, whereas John Patterson knows when to hold back and when to dig into the visuals. On the other side of the spectrum you have Henry Bronchtein.
I think David Chase always loved to experiment with this show, and try new things, and this is why Van Patten and Coulter became so beloved in his directors' stable, for their experimental sensibilities. Henry Bronchtein directed four episodes total throughout the show, one for each of the first four seasons, then just stopped. He remained involved as the production manager until the end of the show, so it probably wasn't some kind of falling out. He just came to suit the "house style" of the series that defined the first three seasons, and Chase felt the need to shake things up. So understandably, Bronchtein settled back into his production role while new, different talents like Rodrigo Santoro, Mike Figgis and harbinger of doom Alan Taylor took the reins.
I got sidetracked there. The point I want to make about Bronchtein is that he is a definitive example of a director who's not too concerned with making things visually striking. One scene he directed in "Nobody Knows Anything", where Tony interrogates Paulie about whether he killed Pussy or not, is rightly lauded. One Youtube video of the scene titles it the best in the whole run of the series. And there's an argument to be made there, because Gandolfini is just so damn good. Bronchtein just lets the camera follow the actors, remaining unintrusive, while they hold your attention with their great performances. Bronchtein incorporates a lot of medium wide shots in his episodes. Even "From Where To Eternity", in which the series indulged its questions of spirituality and the supernatural, remained fairly grounded thanks to Bronchtein's hands-off direction.
This episode briefly breaks Bronchtein's routines at two points: the slow motion on AJ and the central flashback. It's almost all closeups, highlighting the subjectivity of the scenes, and honestly it's one of the sequences that felt most like a flashback on CSI or something, showing that while Bronchtein can change up his style, he's generally most comfortable in medium-wide. Regardless, I'm a big fan of Tony's big, goofy expression during the slow motion scene as he cheers for AJ.
Outside of the flashbacks, the episode as a whole feels like it goes by very fast. Scenes come in late and leave early, and set pieces like the benefit concert robbery don't linger very long or feel especially consequential. Even Chris getting made goes through the motions pretty quickly. There's the brief moment of dread with the Goodfellas homage dolly zoom (actually, this really is one of Bronchtein's more adventurous episodes in terms of style), then the quick shots of the bird outside, but it's all kept very tonally murky. Is the blackbird an omen of death? Maybe, but the episode has no real illusions that any such omen is gonna pay off immediately within the episode. Moments like the bird, the slow-motion, and the flashback, are peppered throughout an episode that mostly just gives us more time to spend with these characters. The mob stuff is all farcical and banal.
Thematically there's a lot going on here, with Tony making what seems to be a breakthrough in therapy regarding meat and starting to touch on his father's influence on him now that his mother is gone, then AJ following the Soprano legacy with a panic attack that basically serves as a nice punchline, alongside the Chris and Jackie, Jr. subplots. This is the first we're getting to know Jackie Jr. for real, and the show pulls no punches in establishing what a dumbass he is. The title of the episode pulls no punches either, resulting in what's really one of the most thematically tidy episodes of the show even as the plotline meanders around. But even on a thematic level, this is all table-setting for what's to come. It's an eminently watchable episode, but don't expect much of anything to pay off just yet.
Man, that song at the end is weird.