The Sopranos, "The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti": Where's my arc?

My review/recap of the February 28, 1999 episode after I get high off of the that candy and carpet smell in Blockbuster.

The past coming back to haunt people, the identity of people and an entire culture are the themes of this episode.

At captain Larry Boy Barese's (Tony Darrow) daughter's wedding the crew find out about upcoming indictments. The captains get together to discuss whether they should stop business. Uncle Junior says they should continue as usual. The others ask Tony for his advice, which angers Junior because he is the boss. Tony agrees with Junior (to reaffirm that Junior is the one in charge) and suggests that they should do some "spring cleaning." They agree and gather their families and leave the wedding to start the "spring cleaning."

At their home, Tony and Carmela remove the cash and guns from their hiding spots, as Meadow looks on from the steps. Tony then tells Carmela they need to hide her jewelry, because he can't show receipts for them. The rest of the crew also get rid of their "questionable" materials. The next day, Carmela takes Livia to brunch so that Tony can hide the cash and guns in her apartment.

Melfi has dinner at her parents house, along with her ex-husband Richard (Richard Romanus), and their son Jason (Will McCormack). At the dinner, Melfi says that she has an Italian patient. Richard assumes that he must be connected to the Mafia. He then goes on to say that they give Italian-Americans a bad name, and that mob movies are how people think all Italian-Americans act. Jason says that these mob movies have become part of American cinema. The show uses this part to express the views of people who thought that The Sopranos was giving all Italian-Americans a bad name. This get resolved later in the episode. 

Tony tells Melfi that he may miss their next appointment because he may be "going on vacation." Melfi understands after seeing the newscast the night before about the indictments. Tony misses the appointment due to the FBI searching his house. Agent Dwight Harris (Matt Servitto) tells Tony that he wants to search the house peacefully to not upset his children. Tony allows them to search the house. During the search, Agent Grasso (Frank Pando) breaks a glass bowl, and Carmela makes him clean it up, while Tony, who recognizes that Grasso is Italian, curses at him in Italian. That night while eating Chinese take-out for dinner, Tony says that Italians are unfairly targeted by the police and that there are plenty of Italians who have contributed to society. He cites Michaelangelo, Antonio Meucci (Tony says he was the real inventor of the telephone), and of course, Frank Sinatra.

At their next appointment, Melfi tells Tony that she will have to charge him for his missed appointment. Tony becomes enraged and throws money at her and storms out of her office. Melfi, her ex-husband, and son go to their own therapy session, to which Melfi admits that "Patient X" (Tony) scared her, and both her ex-husband and their psychiatrist recommended that she drop the patient.

Junior visits Carmela, and after complaining about headaches caused by the indictments, Livia tells Junior maybe he should see a psychiatrist like Tony. Junior is surprised by this.

Meanwhile, Christopher is searching for his own identity as a person. He is suffering from a recurring nightmare of Emil, the man he killed in the first episode. In the nightmare, Emil tells him that he left evidence from the murder. Christopher gets Georgie to help him dig up the body and move it somewhere else.

He is also struggling to write a screenplay about his life in the Mafia. He is having trouble developing a story arc for the characters, and thinks that his own life doesn't have a significant event to start his own arc. Even with Adriana, Paulie, and Pussy offering support, Christopher becomes more and more depressed, which isn't helped when the news refers to Brendan as as a "DiMeo associate," receiving more recognition than Christopher even in death. 

When Christopher is called to the Bada Bing to help with "spring cleaning," he stops at a bakery before to get pastries. When the clerk skips him, Christopher takes his frustration out on him and ends up shooting him in the foot. When Tony finds out, he yells at Christopher and then tries using the techniques that worked on him in therapy, to see what is wrong with Christopher. The next morning, Christopher's mother calls him to tell him that his name was in a Star-Ledger article about the Mafia, he becomes energized again and buys all of the copies of the newspaper he can find.

Other notes:

• Joseph Gannascoli, who plays Gino, the customer in the bakery who is almost allowed to cut in front of Christopher, returns in Season 2 and throughout the rest of the series as Vito Spatafore, a soldier in the Aprile crew.
• Christopher shooting the bakery employee in the foot is similar to Spider, Michael Imperioli's character, getting shot in Goodfellas.

Sign of the Times:

• Christopher's laptop and word processor
• The Bud Light cans in Christopher's apartment

A good episode that moves the story along, and introduces us to characters on the government side of the story, particularly Agent Harris. We also get to see more of Dr. Melfi's personal life and that many people in her life don't agree with her seeing Tony as a patient. At least it seems like Christopher finally has his big event and will start his own arc.