Season 5 (2004)¶
At a glance¶
- Episodes
- 13
- Aired
- March 7 – June 6, 2004
- Avg. viewers
- 9.80 million
- Emmys
- Outstanding Drama Series — the first cable series ever to win it
- Also
- Michael Imperioli, Supporting Actor; Drea de Matteo, Supporting Actress
The most conventionally well-made season: a clean premise, a great guest performance, and the episode people still refuse to rewatch.
Episodes¶
| # | Title | Directed by | Written by | Air date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 53 | Two Tonys | Tim Van Patten | Terence Winter & David Chase | Mar 7, 2004 |
| 54 | Rat Pack | Alan Taylor | Matthew Weiner | Mar 14, 2004 |
| 55 | Where's Johnny? | John Patterson | Michael Caleo | Mar 21, 2004 |
| 56 | All Happy Families… | Rodrigo García | Toni Kalem | Mar 28, 2004 |
| 57 | Irregular Around the Margins | Allen Coulter | Robin Green & Mitchell Burgess | Apr 4, 2004 |
| 58 | Sentimental Education | Peter Bogdanovich | Matthew Weiner | Apr 11, 2004 |
| 59 | In Camelot | Steve Buscemi | Terence Winter | Apr 18, 2004 |
| 60 | Marco Polo | John Patterson | Michael Imperioli | Apr 25, 2004 |
| 61 | Unidentified Black Males | Tim Van Patten | Matthew Weiner & Terence Winter | May 2, 2004 |
| 62 | Cold Cuts | Mike Figgis | Robin Green & Mitchell Burgess | May 9, 2004 |
| 63 | The Test Dream | Allen Coulter | David Chase & Matthew Weiner | May 16, 2004 |
| 64 | Long Term Parking | Tim Van Patten | Terence Winter | May 23, 2004 |
| 65 | All Due Respect | John Patterson | David Chase, Robin Green & Mitchell Burgess | Jun 6, 2004 |
The class of 2004¶
The season's premise is the cleanest the show ever had: a group of men — "the class of 2004" — are released after long federal sentences and try to re-enter a business that moved on without them.
Chief among them is Tony Blundetto (Steve Buscemi), Tony's cousin, who went inside for seventeen years partly because Tony didn't show up that night. Blundetto is smart, got certified in massage therapy in prison, and genuinely wants to go straight. It takes about six episodes for the pull of easy money to win, and when it does he creates a war with New York that Tony cannot contain.
The guilt structure is precise: Tony owes Blundetto his freedom, so he protects him past the point of sense, and it ends with Tony having to kill him himself — the season's last act, and the moment Johnny Sack never forgives.
Elsewhere: Tony and Carmela are separated for most of the season, and both are worse for it. Steve Buscemi the director becomes Steve Buscemi the cast member.
"Long Term Parking"¶
The episode. Written by Terence Winter, directed by Tim Van Patten.
Adriana La Cerva has been an FBI informant since season four — coerced, terrified, in over her head from the first minute, and never once malicious. She finally tells Christopher the truth and proposes they go into witness protection together.
Christopher considers it. Then he sees a man at a gas station screaming at his family and decides he can't live a normal life.
The next morning, Silvio picks Adriana up. He says Christopher tried to kill himself and is in the hospital. She gets in the car. The drive goes on too long. She notices the exit go by.
Chase films the killing itself in a long shot from outside the car, at a distance, in woods — and gives Adriana a brief false alternate version first, in which she drives south and gets away.
It is the most emotionally devastating hour the show made, and it's the clearest statement of its actual moral position: the person who dies is the one who did the least harm and had the least power.
Drea de Matteo won the Emmy for Supporting Actress.
"The Test Dream"¶
The show's most formally extreme episode before season six: roughly twenty uninterrupted minutes of dream, in which Tony is hunted through a hotel and a school by his own guilt over what he's going to have to do to Blundetto.
The dead appear — Pussy, Ralph, Gloria, Mikey Palmice. Annette Bening appears as herself. Tony can't find the right classroom, can't fire a gun that keeps going soft, and is finally handed the answer by a version of Coach Molinaro who tells him he never had it.
Divisive on broadcast and increasingly regarded as one of the show's most ambitious hours. See Dreams & Symbolism.
Also notable¶
"Irregular Around the Margins" (S5E57) — Tony and Adriana crash a car together, and the rumor that they slept together nearly gets both of them killed. A whole episode built on something that didn't happen.
"Sentimental Education" (S5E58) — Carmela and A.J.'s guidance counselor Robert Wegler. Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, who also plays Melfi's therapist Elliot Kupferberg. Ends with Carmela being told, accurately and cruelly, what she is.
"Cold Cuts" (S5E62) — Tony and Blundetto dig up bodies; Janice does anger management. Two of the show's best comic performances in one episode.
"In Camelot" (S5E59) — Tony meets his father's mistress and learns his family history was a different story than the one he was told.
Reception¶
The season won the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series — the first time a cable series had ever won it, ending decades of network monopoly on the category and effectively opening the door for everything that followed.
Michael Imperioli won Supporting Actor; Drea de Matteo won Supporting Actress. Rotten Tomatoes 93%.