Butch DeConcini: A Sopranos character evaluation

hey Sopranos fans welcome to another episode here on Bully Whispers And we are here today to take a much requested look at Butch decancini now this makes sense since by the end Butch was a pretty significant character but it's also a little surprising because Butch is only in Nine episodes and has less than 12 minutes of screen time in the entire series just to add a little context to that Bobby bakala Jr has over 16 minutes so in this episode we will evaluate Butch by first starting with a look at his personality in general before moving on to whether or not he was a puppet master where we will run into everyone's favorite poly walnuts among others and then ending with how Butch in many ways personified the downfall of not only the luportazi family but the mob in general but before getting into that we must acknowledge one thing that is unacceptable here on Bully Whispers he doesn't really have a nickname as regular viewers know we do come up with our own nicknames for characters that don't have one for example it was decided in the comments section of furious episode that his nickname is now The Beekeeper now Butch has been referred to as the little guy but that was more to identify who they were talking about without saying his name than it was a nickname and while Butchy technically is a nickname it's too generic in the context of this discussion to count so let me know some nickname ideas down in the comments and let's see if we can't find him a good one as previously mentioned we don't see much of Butch in fact by this point in the episode a clip from every single scene he was in has been played so we don't really know much about him which adds a little bit of Mystique to his character all that we really know about him can be clearly observed in the first scene where he actually has lines during this scene he only makes five real statements and in his first statement balls on this prick to blow up a store you call that balls balls is you look a guy in the eye while you jam ice pick to his lung he speaks of looking someone in the eye in his second statement he shows himself to be quite the Warhawk as far as I'm concerned this is like 9 11. it's only wanted our attention fine he got our attention now we wipe them off the planet in his third statement he further shows that he is the instigator type it's irrelevant Phil but he's testing you all the time and you keep indulging in his fourth statement he shows that the idea of killing a boss doesn't bother him a whack a boss I won't do that it's been done before and in his last statement iPhone huh he talks about eyes again so make of that what you want but the real question is was he trying to be a puppet master with philiotardo in the same way that Rusty was trying to be one with little Carmine we go all my Steamroller right over John and I predict the guys in the street in Brooklyn Queens they're welcome us his Heroes if not then butchy's best comparison would be Polly walnuts if Polly were a number two both are escalators of conflict both of them will get in your face in defense of their boss while they are loyal to them but both are willing to switch sides if it's to their advantage if he is the Puppet Master type then that does lend a layer of credibility to the theories involving New York and Tony's possible death though it wouldn't really be necessary now I'm not going to get into all those particular theories here because they've all been covered in other episodes but since we were already talking about Butch and Paulie we will take a second to look at the conspiracy theory linking those two according to this Theory Paulie had made a deal with New York to help take out Tony and butchy's involvement is shown through two main things during the sit down to discuss philiotarda the first is that Paulie is the only one sitting in a red chair with the implication being that this marks him as the guy to leave alone if hits the fan and the second being the supposedly secret handshake between Paulie and Butch behind Tony's back when addressing the chair I'd like to point out two things first that is a four-person table with six people at it and for some reason seven chairs the real question might be who did they think was going to be there that didn't show up either way neither of Tony's guys is sitting in one of the normal chairs and even if there was some significance to the red chair Holly was the last to claim his spot so he was in the red chair by default Not By Design as for the supposedly secret handshake behind Tony's back how did you expect it to go down Butch shook all three of their hands and Paulie was the furthest away so he was last and by then Tony was walking away so I don't know how much stock can be put into the red chair or handshake conspiracies either way Butch clearly seems to represent the downfall of both the luportazi family and the mob in general which can be easily seen in the phone call between him and Phil of shops and the shrinking of Little Italy represents the changing of the tide both in terms of the population in general and the Italian mafia specifically despite facing increased competition on all sides from different groups they were losing money fighting amongst themselves and the abrupt end of the conversation is often cited as the moment that Butch decided to turn on Phil now Butch tries to phrase him not being willing to give up Phil's location as a matter of principle my prices you help us get a location of Phil I can't go there but we all know he literally can't close but either way it's often pointed to as a sign of declining mob values Etc however killing off a boss is nothing new both Lucky Luciano and Carlo Gambino killed off bosses to get their spot and they are largely considered to be two of the best Dawns so much so that even Tony names drops them as Mafia role models beyond that this has also been a possibility in the Looper tazi family and not just doc Santoro back when it was Carmine senior and Johnny sack both largely regarded as the two most effective gangsters in the series a similar situation almost played out Johnny sack was ready to kill Carmine senior and vice versa so this scenario is nothing new but the contrast does go to show the declining quality of their gangsters if not their values Celia tardo was no Carmine senior and Butch was no Johnny sack the level of quality and Leadership had dropped significantly now since The Sopranos ended when and how it did we will never know if Butch was trying to be a puppet master with Phil but had the show continued we could tell based on who took over New York if Butch convinced Alby to take over then I would say he is clearly a manipulator but if he took over then I would say he's just an average gangster that was lucky enough to outlive everyone else and find himself on top well thanks for watching this episode here on Bully Whispers as always like comment subscribe and I'll see you at the next score thank you

Channel: Bully Whispers

Views: 37,016

Keywords: aj sopranos, carmela soprano, christopher moltisanti, gloria trillo, hesh sopranos, james gandolfini, janice soprano, livia soprano, paulie walnuts, pine barrens, pure kino sopranos, ralph cifaretto, ralphie sopranos, richie aprile sopranos, sopranos d girl, sopranos ending, sopranos theories, talking sopranos, tony soprano, Butch DeConcini, phil leotardo, puppetmaster

Id: 9WTOWxz3xm8

Length: 7min 7sec (427 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 26 2023