Read this: An oral history of The Sopranos' "Pine Barrens"
Toward the end of The Sopranos’ third season, Michael Imperioli’s Christopher and Tony Sirico’s Paulie get lost in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. This episode—simply titled “Pine Barrens”—is one of the best in a series filled with stiff competition for that distinction. It’s part-buddy comedy, part-horror story, and a great exploration of two of the show’s main characters. It’s also the subject of a new oral history from The Ringer that provides insight into The Sopranos’ creative process, the origins of the episode’s premise—and just how difficult it is to get Sirico to agree to intentionally mess up his hairdo.
“Pine Barrens” originates with a story meeting for the show’s second season, when Sopranos writer/director Tim Van Patten shared a dream he had about Paulie and Christopher unable to escape the New Jersey woods after a failed hit. Creator David Chase liked the idea and writer Terence Winter ended up scripting the episode that would be directed by series actor/director Steve Buscemi the following year.
Imperioli says that “from the beginning, we had a sense that it was going to be good” and Buscemi remembers reading the episode’s script and thinking “that it was gold.” A lot of the appeal came from putting Paulie and Christopher in a situation where the pair had to survive with only each other to rely on. Director Alan Taylor, commenting on the pair’s dynamic, says that “in this day and age, [Paulie and Christopher] would have their own spinoff, probably.”
