As an actor, Steve Buscemi has a thing for playing acerbic, tastily verbose misfits or weirdos - Exhibit A: his collaborations with Tarantino and the Coen Brothers. And though I'm not familiar with his work as a feature film director, I'd guess he applies the same sensibility behind the camera, judging from the four episodes of The Sopranos he directed in Seasons 3-6: the typically black humor that characterizes the show reaches its culmen of darkness, pushing the absurdity button like never before. The best example of this is his first contribution to the show, the delightfully quirky Pine Barrens.
The title is taken from a wood just outside New Jersey, where Paulie and Christopher plan to bury a Russian hood who caused them trouble while they were collecting money on behalf of a flu-stricken Silvio. Things don't really go as imagined: the Russian isn't dead when they arrive, so he runs away in the middle of the woods. As Chris and Paulie pursue him, they get lost and must seek shelter in an abandoned truck, since staying out in the open during the night would most likely kill them (it's freezing cold). Back at home, on the other hand, Tony gets to experience Gloria's darker side after a jealous Irina calls him during a date, and Meadow's romance with Jackie Jr. comes to a painful end.
That last plot batch is handled with a lot of care, the result being a poignant closure to one of the season's predominant sub-stories. Elsewhere, however, Buscemi isn't as mannered; on the contrary, he exploits the surreal nature of ongoing events to deliver what can only be described as the darkest of comedies. The Tony-Gloria thing, for one, climaxes in a wonderfully crazy sequence that deserves to be cherished as one of the show's most memorable. But what really sets Pine Barrens apart from all other episodes is the central section: the prospect of watching two beloved characters freeze to death in the middle of nowhere should be downright terrifying, but the atmosphere created by the director and the profanely witty conversations between Sirico (at his best) and Imperioli have the opposite effect, inducing hysterical laughter instead of angst.
Quite simply a wonderful 50 minutes. The finest of the entire season.
The title is taken from a wood just outside New Jersey, where Paulie and Christopher plan to bury a Russian hood who caused them trouble while they were collecting money on behalf of a flu-stricken Silvio. Things don't really go as imagined: the Russian isn't dead when they arrive, so he runs away in the middle of the woods. As Chris and Paulie pursue him, they get lost and must seek shelter in an abandoned truck, since staying out in the open during the night would most likely kill them (it's freezing cold). Back at home, on the other hand, Tony gets to experience Gloria's darker side after a jealous Irina calls him during a date, and Meadow's romance with Jackie Jr. comes to a painful end.
That last plot batch is handled with a lot of care, the result being a poignant closure to one of the season's predominant sub-stories. Elsewhere, however, Buscemi isn't as mannered; on the contrary, he exploits the surreal nature of ongoing events to deliver what can only be described as the darkest of comedies. The Tony-Gloria thing, for one, climaxes in a wonderfully crazy sequence that deserves to be cherished as one of the show's most memorable. But what really sets Pine Barrens apart from all other episodes is the central section: the prospect of watching two beloved characters freeze to death in the middle of nowhere should be downright terrifying, but the atmosphere created by the director and the profanely witty conversations between Sirico (at his best) and Imperioli have the opposite effect, inducing hysterical laughter instead of angst.
Quite simply a wonderful 50 minutes. The finest of the entire season.