The Sopranos: Are There Ghosts in the Show?

the sopranos is a show praised for its groundbreaking realism in its characters and portrayal of life in america well at least until that episode where tony ate a piece of celery we all know that's science fiction but at times the show also goes beyond the realm of normalcy and features a number of what might be considered supernatural elements that was a paranormal event what the [ __ ] are you talking about now these moments are heavily debated by fans if they're actually supernatural or not after all most can be explained away but these moments do provide an interesting insight into not only the psychology of the characters experiencing them but also the people who wrote them so in this video i thought i would go through each of these moments and see what we can extract from them now i'm not gonna be covering the dream sequences in this video one because they can be explained as just being dreams and two because i already covered tony's coma dream in another video i will probably get to the rest of the dreams eventually but for now let's focus on the other moments the first incident i'd like to examine is in season 3 when tony sees pussy's image in a mirror [ __ ] was one of tony's best friends since they were young and a key member of his crew however when they learn that he was an informant for the fbi they have to whack him and dump his body into the ocean at the end of season two pussy's ghost as the fans refer to him is of course a shocking image it appears out of nowhere in a moment that otherwise wouldn't seem tense but it could just be a manifestation of tony's guilt [ __ ] was one of his best friends after all so the fact that he had to kill him would obviously weigh heavily on his conscience i'm sorry i know you like him like him i [ __ ] love him this is further reinforced by the fact that the reason tony even realized [ __ ] was a rat was because of his dreams tony's subconscious was responsible for pussy's death and continues to think about him even after the act especially this episode in which she was also dealing with his mother livia's death so while it's fun to imagine pussy's ghost out there we'll leave that for the sopranos video game getting whacked i remember what that's like [ __ ] city what and speaking of livia in this episode aj hears a noise when he's alone at the house he thinks it might be livia but just like before there's no evidence for this being a ghost he was reading a poem about death just before this so it makes sense that he might hear a normal creaking of the house and think of his dead grandmother another moment people think is a ghost is in the episode calling all cars after bobby's wife karen dies in a car accident janice tries to squeeze her way into his life so that he'll marry her in doing so she tries to get him to remove any reminder of karen so she can take over this culminates in bobby and janice eating the last c that karen ever cooked symbolically representing bobby moving on from her in the scene of them at dinner you can see the wine glass appear to move on its own some people think that this is karen's ghost come back to try and stop janice in this episode her children had been trying to contact her through a ouija board after all so maybe aj wasn't full of [ __ ] and they managed to somehow summon her from the dead however it's most likely that janus was simply moving the table mat with her hand off screen and that's what caused the glass to move you can see her adjust her play to the ziti which makes more sense given that this is such a small little thing after all if it was karen's ghost wouldn't she do something like tip the glass over onto janus another potentially supernatural moment is when paulie sees the virgin mary at the bing in season six the figure comes out of nowhere with a loud musical sting which makes it very startling this moment has a profound impact on paulie causing him to reunite with his mother and making him hesitant to take over the april crew in the final episode one time at the bing i was alone to meet eddie lind i saw the virgin mary but again since paulie is the only one who sees her it may just be a figment of his imagination after all in the episode he's dealing not only with a possible cancer diagnosis but also the guilt of putting innocent children in danger with his cheap rides at the festival his catholic guilt may be why he sees the virgin mary and the fact that he goes to his mother at the end of the episode for comfort suggests it is just a psychological problem but there also might be a deeper meaning to this scene there's another scene similar to this in season 4. after killing ralph tony and chris go to the place to clean up and sleep when tony awakens he's alone he sees a picture of tracy the stripper ralph killed and then walks out the scene draws attention to the empty stage the same place paulie saw the virgin mary when he was alone some fans think that this scene shows that paulie was somehow blessed and tony wasn't which is why paulie survives while tony is presumably shot in the final episode but it might also just be symbolic of paulie's superstition and tony's lack of faith i'm not saying there's nothing out there poorly but then i'll live your life what the [ __ ] are you gonna do and speaking of paulie the most well-known supernatural moment of the show is when paulie goes to visit a psychic after christopher's cryptic warning from the afterlife paulie begins to think he's cursed his girlfriend convinces him to go see a psychic she went to before paulie attends this psychics meeting with a bunch of other people at first he doesn't believe in the guy's [ __ ] however after the psychic seems to be able to see people paulie is whacked he flips out [ __ ] quiz one of the reasons people think this scene is legitimately supernatural is the fact that the psychic knows things he shouldn't be able to such as paulie's first hit sonny pagano and the fact that paulie got poison ivy this seems to suggest that he's actually communicating with the people paulie is killed like mikey palmise there's no denying it i'm dragging a bunch of [ __ ] ghouls around with me and mikey's their [ __ ] ringleader however there are several clues that the psychic is just using cold reading a technique that fake psychics use to seem like they have supernatural abilities stop it i didn't do anything you know peter was dead i didn't start by saying peter is dead i started by saying they want me to acknowledge peter that could have meant peter was in the audience or the peter was somebody's friend or peter had died i couldn't be rock see the psychic starts out by throwing out the name charles and asking about a son when paulie offers up that he doesn't have kids the psychic then changes it to sunny paulie himself then offers up the name pagano which the psychic then connects with his previous statements even when paulie's girlfriend is describing her experience with the psychic she says it at first he was talking about a guy named johnny which wasn't anyone she knew she herself then connected the dots for him and offered up the name ronnie an obvious hint that the psychic is a phony it's clear from paulie's appearance and attitude that he's a mobster so it wouldn't be hard for the psychic to predict that this guy had hurt people in the past the only detail that's a little harder to explain is the poison ivy but perhaps paulie still bears some markings from it after all in the last episode of season 1 he has powder on his face to treat the rash so he could still have some sign either way though i think it's fair to say that while this instant definitely freaked paulie out it can be explained without the supernatural you're too susceptible to the psychics and the dream messages and dirty [ __ ] toilet seats now i know i've spent the entire video showing how these moments can be explained away without anything magical about them but i do think that david chase and the writers were trying to say something about spirituality david has said in interviews that spirituality interested him just as much as it's clear from the therapy scenes that psychology interested him as well i think these scenes are meant to make us not only think of whatever might be waiting for us on the other side but more so on how the characters who are experiencing them react to these moments the fear of death or divine punishment making some of them better people and some of them worse but at its core the focus is always on the characters themselves not an abstract spiritual concept that's the guy adriana my uncle tony the guy i'm going to hell for while we're here i should also mention three o'clock after christopher is shot he experiences a vision of hell while he's clinically dead there he sees dead mobsters including his father and mikey palmise who give him a message for tony and paulie yeah he said uh tell tony and pauly 3 o'clock as i mentioned in my review of the final episode many fans believe tony is killed in the last scene and if he's shot by the members only guy the angle would be at his 3 o'clock there's some great dramatic irony here the characters are worried about a time when the warning is actually a physical direction now i don't have an outright explanation for this there's no definitive answer as to whether the three o'clock warning was legitimate or just a coincidence however the many saints of newark does definitively show that hell is a real place and christopher is there he narrates the movie from hell that's the guy my uncle tony the guy i went to helpful but that's just another reason why i dislike the film it removes any ambiguity when it comes to the supernatural the show is always careful to give possible explanations to all of its supernatural moments it was up to the viewer to decide for themselves what the meaning of the scenes were and whether or not you believe to a supernatural is a reflection of your own beliefs about the afterlife so in that spirit i choose to ignore the continuity of the movie to me it's like a ghost it may be out there haunting my dreams but if i pull my covers over my head and pretend it doesn't exist then it can't hurt me right [Music] oh come on cindy the news is on another little white girl that fell down the well 50 black people get their ass beat by police today but the whole world gotta stop for one little while down the hall let's ask the ouija board if you should subscribe what do you mean no russell sean heart of markness logan clean john rayna jesse sterling andrew stewart ops gracing media dazz j kidd conan higgins sam cedarlin don lucania celery man jenna marie johnson and brad smith studios [Music]

Channel: Pure Kino

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Id: 5a5S7PK3Cy4

Length: 12min 32sec (752 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022