"Never rat on your friends, and always, always keep your mouth shut." This line, spoken by Robert De Niro in Goodfellas, sums up the work ethics of organized crime. Fans of The Sopranos got a taste of it in the fifth episode, where Tony killed an informant with his bare hands; and now history is about to repeat itself.
It all starts with two of Tony's men being arrested in such a way that it can only have happened because someone talked to the cops. The suspicion is seemingly confirmed when the boss's guy inside the force, Vin Makazian (John Heard) claims to have evidence implicating Pussy Bompensiero (Vincent Pastore), one of Tony's oldest and closest friends. Unfortunately, Makazian kills himself before the evidence can be retrieved, and so Tony has to resort to other techniques if he wants to clear Pussy's name. Meanwhile, Uncle Junior, still convinced his nephew might have told family secrets to the wrong people, gives Mikey Palmice (Al Sapienza) the green light to clip Tony.
While previous shows were suspenseful because one could never tell if the wise-guys would whack unknown associates, the tension in Nobody Knows Anything is almost impossible to bear since the designated victim is a man audiences have come to like (odd, given he is a foul-mouthed murderer) over the course of ten episodes. The paranoid mood is sustained prominently by smart dialogue, which lets the viewer interpret the signs, and a moving performance from Pastore, who reveals a lot about his complex role without actually saying anything explicitly: the look on Pussy's face when Paulie invites him to a bathhouse (that way the latter can check if he is wearing a wire) conveys a truckload of fear and torment that set events in motion for the spectacular season finale. A revelatory turn in one of the first series' most memorable episodes.
It all starts with two of Tony's men being arrested in such a way that it can only have happened because someone talked to the cops. The suspicion is seemingly confirmed when the boss's guy inside the force, Vin Makazian (John Heard) claims to have evidence implicating Pussy Bompensiero (Vincent Pastore), one of Tony's oldest and closest friends. Unfortunately, Makazian kills himself before the evidence can be retrieved, and so Tony has to resort to other techniques if he wants to clear Pussy's name. Meanwhile, Uncle Junior, still convinced his nephew might have told family secrets to the wrong people, gives Mikey Palmice (Al Sapienza) the green light to clip Tony.
While previous shows were suspenseful because one could never tell if the wise-guys would whack unknown associates, the tension in Nobody Knows Anything is almost impossible to bear since the designated victim is a man audiences have come to like (odd, given he is a foul-mouthed murderer) over the course of ten episodes. The paranoid mood is sustained prominently by smart dialogue, which lets the viewer interpret the signs, and a moving performance from Pastore, who reveals a lot about his complex role without actually saying anything explicitly: the look on Pussy's face when Paulie invites him to a bathhouse (that way the latter can check if he is wearing a wire) conveys a truckload of fear and torment that set events in motion for the spectacular season finale. A revelatory turn in one of the first series' most memorable episodes.
