Greetings, podsiglieres and vafongoolios, today is your lucky day because Pod Yourself A Gun, the internet’s only Sopranos rewatch podcast™, is back for season three. If you’ve never heard or seen an episode until now, well, it’s a perfect time for a bada-binge.
On this, the day of your daughter’s wedding, my cohost Matt Lieb from Newsbroke and I are back discussing “Mr. Ruggierio’s Neighborhood,” part one of The Sopranos season three premiere, which originally aired March 4, 2001. There’s a gang war heating up in the garbage racket and the FBI is determined to pin Tony to the wall. To that end, they’re cooking up a surveillance plan to try to get a wire into Tony’s basement. To do that though, they have to make sure that everyone — Papa Bing, Mrs. Bing, Princess Bing, Baby Bing, and the Polish housekeeper (no codename) are out of the house. Which turns out to be more complicated than they ever imagined.
This episode is a bit of a meta look at the FBI as they, essentially, watch The Sopranos. Ay, Ton’, da friggin FBI is just like us! It includes the introduction of a braless tennis instructor from Iceland and a mash-up of The Police and Henry Mancini that, curiously, seems to be the centerpiece of the entire episode. As Matt says, it’s almost like they came up with the mash-up first and then built an entire episode around it. Meanwhile, Patsy Parisi is distraught about his dead identical twin brother, and Meadow has a wacky roommate at Columbia, whose mental health will later become another classic Sopranos episode.
So join us, will you? In this spirited discussion of episode 301 of television’s greatest mob dramedy, The Sopranos. And remember, just like they say on The Sopranos, when you’re here, you’re family. If you love it, don’t forget to give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts.