46 Long

"46 Long" is the second episode of the HBO original series The Sopranos. It was written by David Chase, directed by Dan Attias and was originally broadcast on January 17, 1999, in the United States.

Synopsis
After A.J.'s science teacher has his car stolen, Carmela persuades Tony to help find it. Tony tells Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero, who runs an auto repair shop, to look out for the vehicle, a task Pussy resents. The thieves are found, but the car has been "chopped" so they are told to steal another one. The teacher is surprised when his car is returned with the same plates, but different keys and a different color.

Christopher and Brendan Filone, who has a meth habit, hijack a shipment of DVD players. They deliver the goods to Tony, Silvio and Paulie Gualtieri at Silvio's strip club, the Bada Bing. However, the trucking company pays protection money to Uncle Junior, who angrily arranges a sit-down with Tony and the DiMeo family's acting boss, Jackie Aprile, Sr. Jackie rules that restitution must be made, which Tony accepts, but Christopher, who thinks he is due his button, attempts to reject the $15,000 that Junior claims. Tony insists on receiving the full amount, saying he will beat Junior down, but Christopher is aware that Tony will take some for himself, and little will be left for him and Brendan.

Although they have been told not to attack the trucking company again, Christopher and Brendan, both high on cocaine, plan to hijack a shipment of Italian suits. However, when Brendan arrives to pick up his partner, Christopher, stoned and reflective, decides to sit the job out. Brendan proceeds with the hijacking along with two inexperienced associates. One of them drops his gun, which fires when it hits the ground, killing the driver. When Tony learns of this, he orders Christopher and Brendan to return the whole consignment to Junior and come to terms with him, though first his crew help themselves to a few of the suits.

A small fire occurs when Livia is cooking. Tony insists that she accept a live-in nurse, but Livia soon enrages her and causes her to quit. While driving, Livia forgets to shift her car into reverse and badly injures a friend of hers to whom she has just given a lift; she is forced to move into the Green Grove retirement community. In her house, while collecting photos of himself as a child with his parents, Tony nearly has another panic attack.

Although Tony himself tells his mother, "You've got to stop with this black poison cloud, because I can't take it anymore," he cannot bear hard words about her from Dr. Melfi. After Tony discloses his feelings of guilt, Melfi says that he must either acknowledge or displace his "feelings of hatred" toward his mother; he walks out. In the Bada Bing, when Georgie Santorelli, the bartender, clumsily uses the telephone in a manner similar to Livia, Tony grabs the handset and hits him with it.

Cast
 James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano
 Lorraine Bracco as Dr. Jennifer Melfi
 Edie Falco as Carmela Soprano
 Michael Imperioli as Christopher Moltisanti
 Dominic Chianese as Corrado Soprano, Jr.
 Vincent Pastore as Pussy Bonpensiero
 Steven Van Zandt as Silvio Dante
 Tony Sirico as Paulie Gualtieri
 Robert Iler as Anthony Soprano, Jr.
 Jamie-Lynn Sigler as Meadow Soprano
 Nancy Marchand as Livia Soprano

Guest starring
 Michael Rispoli as Jackie Aprile, Sr.

Also guest starring

Title reference
46-Long is a large man's suit size.

Production
Drea de Matteo, who played the restaurant's hostess in the pilot episode, appears in a new role as Christopher's girlfriend, Adriana La Cerva. De Matteo was cast as the hostess in the pilot episode only, but creator David Chase liked her performance so much that he developed the role of Adriana starting with this episode.

Reception
Alan Sepinwall wrote of the episode that "some of it – particularly anything involving Tony and Livia […] feels fully-formed and very much of a piece with what we would come to know as one of the greatest shows ever made. And some of it is David Chase still fiddling with the knobs and levers"; Sepinwall considered the family-oriented scenes strong while viewing the subplot about the car theft as "still on the broader, lighter end of the comedy spectrum, […] It's not bad, but it's not quite right, either." In The A.V. Club, however, Emily St. James praised "46 Long" as "a confident expansion of the show's universe", considering it an example of "the show's keen sense of generational conflict, of the ways that different kinds of people come into conflict with each other."

References

External links
"46 Long"  at HBO

The Sopranos (season 1) episodes
1999 American television episodes
Television episodes directed by Dan Attias
Television episodes written by David Chase