From the moment he showed his nasty face in the second episode of the season, it was clear Ralph Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano) would cause a truckload of trouble. His bouts of madness reach their peak in University, one of the most truly disturbing eps of the series.
The story focuses on two relationships becoming what Woody Allen wittily described as "a dead shark" - a fitting moniker, given death is heavily involved in one break-up. On the one hand, we have Meadow and her boyfriend Noah (yep, the African-American one) drifting apart after a third person starts getting in the way. Nothing too dramatic, though, as opposed to Ralphie's affair with Tracee, a 20-year old stripper who works at the Bing: she is young, naive and optimistic about her future, not to mention pregnant with the man's child; he is arrogant, kinky, easily irritable, hung up on drugs and tends to get violent with random people for random reasons (at the start of the show he hits a guy just because the latter wasn't familiar with Ralph's favorite movie, Gladiator) - not the ideal father for the unborn kid. Tracee desperately asks Tony for help, but he doesn't respond to her pleas, claiming he can't be friendly with employees. Eventually, he has a change of heart, though not in time to stop an unwarranted explosion of brutality.
For the first and only time in the program's history, more focus is granted to the women who work for Tony and Silvio: most of the time, they're just a nice bunch of tits and ass, but through Tracee the previously labeled "stripper" emerges as a more complex, lovable person, and credit is due to the writers for not indulging in predictable "hooker with a heart" characterizations: this is a real human being we're talking about, and it's this unseen humanity that makes it damn near impossible for everyone involved, both in the show and outside of it, to stomach the bloody outcome of Tracee's attempt to lead a better life.
The whole episode is so brutal even fans of the show could find themselves surprised by Ralph's manic acts. Such is the profound insanity of the character, accompanied by the courage of the actor: a subtle bad guy in The Matrix and Memento, Pantoliano reaches levels he's never approached before, not even in Midnight Run, where he played a sort of proto-Ralph; and yet it never feels like he's going over the top, perhaps because with guys like these there is no top. It's an incredible performance, so strong it makes you wonder how come he won an Emmy for Season Four, but wasn't even nominated for Series Three: based on this episode alone, he would have won as easily as his character kills.
The story focuses on two relationships becoming what Woody Allen wittily described as "a dead shark" - a fitting moniker, given death is heavily involved in one break-up. On the one hand, we have Meadow and her boyfriend Noah (yep, the African-American one) drifting apart after a third person starts getting in the way. Nothing too dramatic, though, as opposed to Ralphie's affair with Tracee, a 20-year old stripper who works at the Bing: she is young, naive and optimistic about her future, not to mention pregnant with the man's child; he is arrogant, kinky, easily irritable, hung up on drugs and tends to get violent with random people for random reasons (at the start of the show he hits a guy just because the latter wasn't familiar with Ralph's favorite movie, Gladiator) - not the ideal father for the unborn kid. Tracee desperately asks Tony for help, but he doesn't respond to her pleas, claiming he can't be friendly with employees. Eventually, he has a change of heart, though not in time to stop an unwarranted explosion of brutality.
For the first and only time in the program's history, more focus is granted to the women who work for Tony and Silvio: most of the time, they're just a nice bunch of tits and ass, but through Tracee the previously labeled "stripper" emerges as a more complex, lovable person, and credit is due to the writers for not indulging in predictable "hooker with a heart" characterizations: this is a real human being we're talking about, and it's this unseen humanity that makes it damn near impossible for everyone involved, both in the show and outside of it, to stomach the bloody outcome of Tracee's attempt to lead a better life.
The whole episode is so brutal even fans of the show could find themselves surprised by Ralph's manic acts. Such is the profound insanity of the character, accompanied by the courage of the actor: a subtle bad guy in The Matrix and Memento, Pantoliano reaches levels he's never approached before, not even in Midnight Run, where he played a sort of proto-Ralph; and yet it never feels like he's going over the top, perhaps because with guys like these there is no top. It's an incredible performance, so strong it makes you wonder how come he won an Emmy for Season Four, but wasn't even nominated for Series Three: based on this episode alone, he would have won as easily as his character kills.