Entry 5:

Dear Glen, Phil, and Joel,

I'd like to suggest that this episode is a "theme and variation" on the twin subjects of yearning for recognition from the Other and for a concomitant dependency on the Other. (I use "other" in both a symbolic sense and an actual sense.) Let's start with the women: Gloria, Carmela, Meadow, Jennifer, and the side-lined Russian goomah whose name I (fittingly) forget. Putting aside Jennifer for the moment, each of these women in one way or another unconsciously suffers from a lack of direct financial, social, and economic power in the world. (Notice I don't say a lack of personal/emotional/psychological power--they have that by the carload.) This lack of power is in part attributable to the specific, rather traditional versions of a "feminine" role they have crafted for themselves or have had thrust upon them. They must seek their recognition in the world not from their own achievements (though these may be substantial) but from their attachment to Tony, here representing the "masculine" principle of agency, independence, assertion, and aggression. (Though as a flesh-and-blood man rather than a symbol, he is hardly exempt from the feminine wishes and needs either!) Gloria and Meadow freak out when their respective gangster abandons or betrays them, in part because their sense of self is too much predicated on being recognized, admired, and loved by a masterful man. Carmela is seemingly innoculated from needing Tony's sexual fidelity because she has found her own area of competence as chief-in-charge of the domestic side of Tony's life and image. Jennifer certainly feels more empowered as a highly trained female professional but has perhaps lapsed back into needing a more primitive type of dependency on an "above the law" male in order to counter the enormous powerlessness she felt in relation to her rape and its having gone unpunished.

The Sopranos men are also earnestly in search of recognition and an opportunity to regress into their own state of dependence--while at the same time they are desperately flailing against admitting this to themselves or others. (This is how I interpret the symbolism of the crackly, broken cell phone connections--Paulie and Chris can't admit their need for the "father" to rescue them; the "father" Tony can't admit his paradoxical dependency on his henchmen "sons," who are supposed to keep him "looking good" to Slava.) Tony's attachment to Gloria is NOT just about her being like his mother Livia (you're misattuned again, Jennifer), but about her seeming promise to endlessly admire and celebrate his potency. This is why she would have been "better than therapy or Prozac" for him, if only she could have sustained that seeming promise.

Peggy