Richie Aprile¶

At a glance¶

Played by: David Proval
Position: Capo, Aprile crew — Jackie Sr.'s brother
Released: 1999, after ten years
Partner: Janice Soprano
Died: 2000 — shot by Janice at the dinner table, "The Knight in White Satin Armor" (S2E25)

The show's first study of a man who cannot accept that the world moved on without him — a theme it returns to with Tony Blundetto and Phil Leotardo.

The grievance¶

Richie comes out after ten years to find that his brother is dead, the business is being run by a man he considers a boy, and his old routes have been reassigned. He believes he is owed. He is not owed, and nobody can explain this to him in a way he'll accept.

His campaign of small insubordinations is precisely observed: he restarts a garbage route that isn't his, ignores instructions, sells cocaine against explicit orders, and takes offense at increasingly imaginary slights.

The leather jacket is the best object in season two. Richie gives Tony a jacket he took off a man he beat — a trophy, and in his mind a gesture of enormous respect. Tony finds it repulsive and gives it away to a housekeeper's husband. When Richie discovers this, it's a mortal wound, and the show plays it as both absurd and completely legible.

Janice¶

He and Janice rekindle a teenage relationship, and briefly they suit each other — two people whose entitlement is total and whose grip on reality is negotiable. She encourages his ambitions, largely to needle her brother.

Richie begins sounding out Junior about moving against Tony. Junior, who has learned something, listens and then reports it.

Then, at dinner, arguing about his son, Richie punches Janice in the mouth.

She goes to the counter, comes back with a gun, and shoots him twice. It's over in about four seconds and there is no music.

Tony arrives, absorbs it, and has the body disposed of. His reaction is not shock — it's exasperation at having to clean up after his sister.

Why it works¶

Richie is set up across a whole season as the season's threat: the man who will force a confrontation with Tony, in a plot the audience can see forming.

And then he's shot at a dinner table by a woman he hit, in a domestic argument, for reasons that have nothing to do with any of it.

It's the first time the show demonstrates that it will not deliver the confrontation you've been promised — a habit it keeps for another five seasons and turns into a whole ending.

David Proval¶

A veteran character actor, best known before this for Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) — another piece of the show's constant lineage casting.