Big Girls Don't Cry is the first of two Chris-centric episodes in Season Two, and much like the superb The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti, they focus wholeheartedly on his career frustrations.
This time, his writer's block is so serious Adriana decides to surprise him with a special birthday present: an acting class for struggling screenwriters, where people like Chris get to understand a little more about the characters they are supposed to create. However, things deteriorate when Chrissy is asked to recreate a scene from Rebel Without a Cause and goes so Method the experience awakens bad memories. Pussy has a bad day too, getting pushed aside while Paulie and Silvio are promoted so that the activities of new crew member Furio Giunta (Federico Castelluccio), whom Tony met in Naples, can be supervised more effectively.
Furio gets to play a pivotal role in the episode, as his methods are compared to Christopher's: the latter, all obsessed with style and a Goodfellas-like approach to things, fails to get a difficult customer to pay the required amount of money at the start of the show; Furio, on the other hand, has been brought up in a more matter-of-fact fashion and proves it by beating up said customer and knee-capping the guy - while cursing in Italian! In less than two minutes, Castelluccio has achieved what other cast members did in an entire episode: he has ensured his character won't fade away in the audience's memory.