The Sopranos | Why You're Wrong About Tony Blundetto

[Laughter] in The Sopranos New Jersey mafia boss Tony Soprano must battle his own internal demons verbalized through his interactions with his therapist Dr melie as well as his battles with external foes such as a1000 dictator Muhammad RZA pavi and Uncle Ben's original Minute Rice a key character of season five of the show is notorious child killer Tony blundetto Tony B is Tony Soprano's cousin who was his close friend growing up bandetto was rising in the ranks but got pinched by the cops and went down for 17 years not a peep and Tony would have joined him had he not had a panic attack that day and slipped and fainted Tony Uncle Johnny feels internal guilt over blundetto so tries to mitigate this by offering him jobs in the mob but Tony egg wants to go straight he trains to become a massage therapist toiling at a LR to make cash but after he finds some money and splashes the cash in typical mobster fashion he gets an itch for the life once again and ditches the working man's world he even does a hit for New York something Tony Soprano told his crew to keep out of when his former prison best Buddy Angelo gpe is whacked by the leotardo brothers Tony be goes off the reservation shape-shifting into an animal and eating Billy leotardo and injuring Uncle Philly it causes a meltdown with this thing of ours Johnny sack wanting Tony be dead The Sopranos crew frustr Tred with Tony protecting his cousin and eventually Tony himself taking out Tony B to stop him getting tortured by New York you can check out our video I did on whether Tony made the right call and whether he should have handled the situation differently today I wanted to propose a thesis that might cause a little dissenter among fans but that is quite simply that Tony B is the worst main character in the show and I mean that in multiple ways from the depiction of the man by Steve Bashi to the writing of the character I don't know [ __ ] slander ass me don't get me wrong I love Bashi I love the character I'm used to it by now and I don't want anything changed or red corned and Tony B is very much part of The Soprano's universe but initially when I first watched it and I looked online and I saw that I definitely wasn't the only one but Tony be just seemed all off and a really weird character [ __ ] weird are you ask me firstly there's the way he looks he doesn't really look like an Italian-American excon Jersey mobster not the way the other characters do when they're all together he sticks out and not in a this guy was in the can for 17 years and his fashion is out of date kind of thing well that too but like Bashi walked onto the wrong TV set there's a hello fellow Mobsters Vibe about him it's not basham's fault that's just the way he looks he looks like a dog he's goofy looking and perhaps it's because of the actor's Fame before even joining the show but you always get a sense of oh look there's Steve Bashi rather than being engrossed into the character he was just too famous and wellknown and where other famous actors like Frank Vincent were B in but they already had reputations for playing Mobsters Bashi was a huge profile actor but is known for playing comedic weirdos and creeps even when he's played gangsters there's a scene where he's being offered a contract by Rusty and Angelo and you never get a feel that this guy used to be a rising mob hitter some of the extras in the scene look more like professional criminal than he does John tuturo might have been a better fit I know Michael Madson wanted to be on the show maybe he could have been Tony B but long story short what we're told about Tony B doesn't match up to what we see a dangerous upand cominging assassin a young hitter for the mob who was a rising star a dynamic duo with Tony Soprano he went away for more than a decade shaped in the can he's out and he's unstable he's got a problem with rage he could go skits at any moment if you say the wrong thing he rubs shoulders with Legends like f lman and Angelo gy he is a force to be utterly reckoned with with boy are you fat doesn't quite work does it there's a feeling I get from Tony B of A Classic guest star appearance for a season on a sitcom with everybody else it feels like they're part of the family and I know in a way it works because Tony B is an oddball who is reinserting his place into the family after many years but it isn't just that he just looks off his performance is off-kilter it's a skew and the accent doesn't help supposedly he grew up in Jersey like the rest of the guys but he doesn't have the same accent we're told he's really dangerous and can snap easily but never get a sense of it Bashi just couldn't [ __ ] sell it it's like when he threatens the doctor saying any gunshot wounds or broken kneecaps it just doesn't sound scary I was like you know waiting for a punchline instead of intimidating he comes across as a bit of a creep he stayes at Meadow a lot for example and it's obviously because he's thinking about his daughter but he looks like a perv who wants to gnaw at her with his teeth it seems Steve Bashi was cast simply because everybody liked him he of course was already part of the crew directing episodes like the fan favorite Pine Bar apparently they wanted to work with him so the character of Tony be was written specifically for him that makes it worse because he's only in it because they liked him and since the character was written for him surely it should have just worked better and plot-wise the insertion of Tony blundetto feels nonsensically shoehorned in let's go through some ey raising story elements so Tony B is Tony Soprano's long lost cousin who he loves dearly and was so close to him and yet he is never mentioned throughout the course of the show previously no one ever visited him in the can Tony and K never bought him up at the dinner table and it's especially unbelievable given we've had so much insight and exposure into Tony's childhood his backstory the panic attacks his early criminal career surely when he's talking to Dr milfy he would have bought up his cousin somewhere especially seeing as though the BOS hijacking he missed due to a panic attack was such a vital part of his character it's just too obvious that Blondo was written later and they worked it backwards then in order to give him two sons they tell us that his able-bodied Seaman was smuggled out of the can and used to make the twins that's really weird and it's made all the more weird by the fact that blundetto lost a single season his kids are such a small part of the story and after he gets popped they're never bought up again so it all feels pretty pointless then there's the fact that before he went in the can he already had a woman and a daughter and oh this daughter actually lived with a Sopranos in their own home again she's never been mentioned before but apparently she ran away from home and they tried searching for her but were never able to again very strange how this has never been mentioned before when Tony is telling Meadow about safety for young women in Europe when she wants to go there that seemed the perfect opportunity to bring up that a young woman from their house old disappeared after leaving home then you have the fact that blundetto is trying to go straight he could go back to being a mobster but chooses to have the working man's life so what are the chances that a bag full of thousands of dollars cash lands right at his feet him of all people and then he spends it gets a taste of the Mob Life and wants back in it's so convenient that some fans actually theorize that Tony Soprano staged this as some kind of Master plan to get blundetto back in the game but that only speaks to how contrived people find this plot point and then he punches Kim and it really comes out of nowhere when we've seen him go through a lot of frustrations like when his van gets stolen I mean like really the straw that broke the camel's back just happened to be when Tony be was just about to get his dream of the massage par right at the last minute they were going for the trying to go straight but pulled back into a life of crime Arc but it just felt unearned because it's like blenda went ahead and randomly thought you know what I can't be bothered after putting in so much effort into his massage stuff he even got a license by this point which was the hardest part of all surely it would have been sometime when he's revising for that test that he would have went [ __ ] it put me in coach it just doesn't quite work blenda punching Kim and rening on his wish simply happened because that's what the rst decided to happen in that moment it didn't feel organic it's one of several instances where Tony be does not act entirely logical for plot reasons not character reasons which would have been understandable like the hit on Joey Peeps is done because bee needed money but this is despite Tony s willing to offer him work and help him out why do something so stupid an actual betrayal of Tony is what just because he liked Angelo it might have worked better if Tony B was forced into the hit like maybe he owed a debt or something because of something that happened in the can also character Dynamics are altered in ways that are confusing all of a sudden it turns out that the two cousins would bully Christopher when he was younger and it's something Chris is insecure about in order to marry up the ages the writers tell us that Tony and Chris are about 8 years apart which seems bizarre and only seems to have been said to make the threeway character Dynamic work people complain about the ages in the many Saints of New York between Christopher and Tony but that actually makes more sense than what the writers told us in the soprano season 5 which they only did seemingly to make Tony B work what is Tony be about does he just want a quiet innocent life the ability to buy his boys game boys does he like the Allure of the criminal life does he have a killer streak in him and that's what his true calling is is he refusing help from Tony enslaving under Kim so when he makes it he can say to himself he did it in an honest way what's the driving Factor behind this a desire for a straight life but now we're back to my first question you just don't know what this guy's about then there's the awkward F lman thing I don't fully blame the writers here because they were forced to write fech out because the actor was having issues with his lines but it was clear the show was making out F and Tony be to be really close in the can f gives Tony be a startup they drive around all of that kind of stuff then it's Rewritten so that bondo's best friend in the joint was actually Angelo gpe and we get awkward scenes like this where Angelo doesn't know who Tony SU 's cousin is but in the next line he says he was his best buddy in a line that is so obviously 8 yard in who's your cousin again Tony blond oh yeah good guy right right he was my best buddy inside even the riters knew they screwed up with Tony blundetto you can see interviews where they said he was supposed to stick around for two seasons but with what he did they wrote themselves into a corner and knew that the only logical ending was that Blondo had to Die the brought in a completely new person who was never mentioned before someone so important to Tony not to mention he's supposed to be really smart with an insanely high IQ that the nuns were raving about and yet he makes many moronic decisions in the show and then he is the Catalyst for the New York New Jersey conflict it's a poor decision from the writers how are you supposed to feel Tony's anguish about this situation when we just met the guy and it's becoming obvious that he exists simply to cause denty in the Banks and then exit the show if someone like Christopher had killed a New York man and they wanted his head that would have been completely different and way more emotional we'd really feel Tony's desire not to give up his nephew because we've been with Christopher for several seasons speaking of dumb decisions this guy does blunder after blunder that maybe that's why they named him blundetto I just cannot get over the fact that he got the drop on the leotardo Twins and for no reason leaves Uncle Philly alive and doesn't finished the job what stopped him seriously why does he walk away it's not the easiest thing to believe he'd go off the reservation and do a premeditated hit against the leonardos in the first place but leaving Phil alive is insanely stupid and plus why does his blood loss stop after this and he goes into hiding Phil is the senior of the brothers and one of the men who killed Angelo gpe he's still alive but for the sake of the plot blundetto thinks yeah at least I got Billy and decides to call it a day and go into hiding instead of you know continuing to go after Phil Phil is walking around all deranged threatening to put things up Tony's mother's box it's the perfect time to hit him also with the peeps hit the imbecilic [ __ ] gets his foot run over by a car being driven by a dead guy and then knowing they're looking for a limping dude what does he do he goes limping around all over the place like Long John Sila including to peeps his own funeral it's possible the series even acknowledged itself how Tony be came out of nowhere when Bobby junor says how come I never heard of you the in universe explanation is that people don't talk about people who are in prison but it's possible the writers know Tony having a long lost cousin arrive is farfetched and this is their way of winking at us and telling us just to accept it and move on of course the flip side to this argument about bshi not the awkward writing is that often real life Mobsters look Goofy offkey and relatively normal he isn't a scenery chewing character like Richie Ralph of Fe it may be that it's because he sticks in out that he was cost and he might be run down from being in prison during the prime of his life maybe that weird non-committal attitude he has is what's come from being jaded in prison and his demeanor kept him mentally fit inside if the writers wanted him to have fit there would have probably been aberration to the lateral interior aspect of the right clavis or the right midsternum above the Eid process and it's worth mentioning that the feeling that there's something off about him might just be what the show Runners were looking for there's a slight unease about him you're not really sure where he's coming from when he talks what his point is what's the deeper reason for what he's saying he's emotionally numb from jail and there are a few moments here and there where you do get a sense that there's something quite animalistic hidden inside like when Tony's berating him and he says you're crowding me so that's all really I had to say I still really like Tony be but I did think it was worth mentioning that his character feels very off and much of it is due to the writing which is trying so desperately to make him fit what do you think of Tony be is there another character who you think fits even less than Tony blundetto let me know in the comment section below subscribe to the channel hit the notification Bell for more videos and thanks for watching

Channel: CineRanter

Views: 34,725

Keywords: the sopranos, the sopranos tony b, the sopranos tony soprano and tony blundetto, tony blundetto, steve buscemi

Id: MQK5TQsUxlo

Length: 14min 40sec (880 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 18 2024