Pax Soprana is a damn fine episode, and makes for an entertaining and intriguing 50 minutes or so. Its title is derived from Pax Romana, a political but peaceful move made by the Emperor Augustus that managed to hold the Roman Empire together for over a hundred years. Comparatively, Tony must plot and move in order to keep Junior, who's not really fit to be the Boss, from disrupting the family. Now that Junior has finally gotten what he wanted the most, the man thinks he can start taxing and bumping off anyone who he sees fit (and that drug dealer getting thrown off a bridge was pretty disturbing). So naturally, the mob comes to an already stressed out Tony who previously named Uncle Junior as the Boss of New Jersey to keep head off of himself whilst secretly running things. It seemed for a while that plan backfired, until Tony manages to get his points across to Junior over a duo of conversations to ease down the activities. Things aren't faring much better on the domestic side either as Carmela, in addition to discovering Dr Melfi is a woman, now has to deal with Tony being temporary impotent, apparently due to his Prozac medication. She's quite funny in this episodes, coming out with witty remarks to offend Tony at their anniversary dinner and waking up in the night to Tony quipping "You want sex?" excitedly. After an insightful talk with the priest, Carmela wants to do her best to be THE woman in Tony's life, something that she makes very clear to him as they relax in the garden. It's a touching moment, only to be made ironic by the fact that Tony is trying (and failing) to get it on with his Russian lover and is now having sexual fantasies in his dreams about Dr Melfi. Poor guy. I could see this coming, but I didn't anticipate Tony telling Melfi straight up that he loves her and makes an advance towards her. Professionally, she keeps her cool and upsets Tony by telling him this feeling is a by- product of the success they are having as psychiatrist and patient. It'll be interesting to see their relationship develop now that Tony's got his feelings for her out in the open. Amid his envy of horses and personal problems, it's the business that matters in Pax Soprana. Gandolfini is unusually calm calculating, choosing his words carefully so that he can get sympathy whilst Uncle J side-lines the violent ex-thug we've seen in previous episodes. He almost looks the part as the boss but is clearly gonna mess things up. Junior finally gets his big moment in the end of the episode, which happens to be my favourite scene of the series so far. An FBI agent is present as Junior gets crowned amongst the salutes
as is a killer beat. We are then taken to the FBI headquarters, where an agent is sorting out the order of the mob on a wall. We see all of the six big hitters. As Junior's photo is pinned above the rest and word 'Capo' is crossed out from his name and replaced with 'Boss', thus proving Tony's plan has worked, the camera focuses on Tony before panning upwards at the new head of the New Jersey family, before fading out with the beat intact. What a great ending. It really makes me wonder what more is to come from the due of Tony and Junior.
Review of Pax Soprana
