The 25 best episodes of The Sopranos, ranked

While the plot stuff seems almost over-packed—Jimmy and Mikey and Chucky get whacked, Junior is arrested, Tony is confronted with hard truths by Dr. Melfi and the FBI—the cinematics helmed by season-finale designated hitter John Patterson are some of the show’s most memorable: Artie seeing red with a rifle, Paulie adding spleen to a shooting because of poison ivy, Tony pulling a gun from a fish mouth, the Boss’ guttural yelps on “State Trooper.” None is more indelible than that of Livia, laying on a hospital gurney, maybe smirking, maybe grimacing, definitely taunting—just by being alive. Chase has said that his own mother was inspiration for Livia, and while there have been many moments (her cackling as Tony falls, her ghostly silhouette at the top of a stairwell in a dream), this is the sickest glimpse of the dark heart, the maternal specter haunting the soul of the series. [Todd Lazarski]

Landing the season-five plane after “Long Term Parking” was a tall task, but Tony B. and his triggery fingers “went into business for himself” and left enough New York ennui to make fit for a Van Morrison soundtrack. Tony is stubborn, stuck in what Sil ironically calls his “problem with authority,” refusing to give up his cousin, causing a frustrated purgatory for all sides. But the gallows humor feels like a welcome downshift. Christopher is lamming it, replying to Carmela’s query about Adriana, “is there a number?” “Not that I know of.” Junior’s lawyer has a stroke, but that means a trial postponement. A.J. tries his hand at party planning, asking non-paying interlopers: “You think it’s like downloading music?” Again Tony is confronted with the painting of him and Pie-O-My, hanging at Paulie’s, an unwelcome reminder and provocation of all that it is to be number one. “All due respect you got no fucking idea what it’s like to be number one …” he laments. Indeed we don’t. Nor does Tony B. Except for maybe one fleeting half second. [Todd Lazarski]

Michael Jordan was drafted third, Citizen Kane lost Best Picture, and Fox passed on The Sopranos’ pilot script. Impossible to figure, even harder is to remember television before the New Jersey Turnpike opening, the cigar and the hairy, braceleted wrist on the wheel, the bass-y churn of “Woke Up This Morning.” But in January of ’99 HBO introduced this world and Tony, half head of hair and uncertain of his time, puzzling through the existentialism with Dr. Melfi—the ducks, the Livia-induced panic attacks, Christopher’s incompetence. He also gleefully runs over a man with a Lexus before punching his broken leg and chiding him: “What are you crying about, HMO? You’re covered, you prick.” We get a glimpse of a Satriale’s sit-down, see Christopher’s first hit, are introduced to Artie and Uncle Junior, hear some Link Wray, see cash wads in a Campbell’s can, get A.J.’s best line (“so what, no fucking ziti now?”) and, in full writerly circle, see how the HMO guy’s debt can work for the Family. Nick Lowe’s “The Beast In Me” closes, and for this peak inside, the television world would never be the same. [Todd Lazarski]

Nobody cares about your dreams. That maxim should apply to TV-writing too. But Matthew Weiner and David Chase had little interest in rules, except in ways to defy. Trusting in the audience’s smarts, the script shoots a surreal, moody 20-minute ride that is equal parts The Twilight Zone, A Christmas Carol, David Lynch, and Luis Buñuel, with a sprinkling, somehow, of Annette Bening—as Annette Bening. Tony is being hounded by his homesickness, it seems. But writing too much about the episode feels like telling someone about a dream. It’s meant to be experienced. [Todd Lazarski]

What would it take to humanize Ralph Cifaretto? What would it take for Tony to see past Ralph’s earning power? With Ralphie’s son clinging to life in a hospital bed, and Pie-O-My dead after a stable fire, the two immovable forces meet in Ralphie’s kitchen. While the fight is most memorable—a visceral grunt-fest of thwacks, a frying pan full of Ralphie’s special sour cream-scrambled eggs, a happenstance can of Raid deployed to the eyes—the real magic actually comes in cleanup. Christopher is summoned in what becomes body disposal as bonding moment, decapitation as comic relief, the whole thing a sort of semi-intervention (“you’re so high on scag, you wouldn’t know if he had your mother’s muff on his head”). There is no glamor to their workaday drudgery, just physical toil, blue collar-like ball-busting, cold air smoking, then a well-earned drink, hot shower, and sleeping like a baby. Everyman stuff. But there is a life of madness, sociopathy, midnight secrecy. It doesn’t end as Tony walks out into the harsh dawn. It’s just another day. [Todd Lazarski]

Not to squash that (kinda dumb?) debate about what happens when this show suddenly cuts to black, but please keep in mind this line about death, delivered by a day-drinking Bobby (Steven R. Schirripa), in the episode that kicked off season six, part two, the superb “Soprano Home Movies”: “You probably don’t even hear it when it happens, right?” Right. finale opens with a shot of Tony (James Gandolfini) looking like a corpse, soundtracked by the churchy organ of Vanilla Fudge’s “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” and goes on to show Tony’s chillingly depressing last talk with Junior (Dominic Chianese), Phil’s (Frank Vincent) darkly humorous worst-case-scenario hit, and Paulie (Tony Sirico) being Paulie (“Walden? The fuck kinda name is that for an Italian?”) before ending with an absolute masterclass in editing, building suspense, and sound design, all set against quotidian dialogue about onion rings and Meadow trying to park. [Tim Lowery]

One of the funniest installments of one of the funniest seasons opens with Tony stalking an empty Asbury Park boardwalk, haunted, like all of us that have had to murder our best friend for being a rat, by ghosts of Christmas past. But most of the episode is really a pitch black comedy tour of north Jersey holiday angst. Tony tells It’s a Wonderful Life “enough already”; Bobby is told “you’re Santa, so shut the fuck up about it.” But lingering dread is mostly bestowed by the looming shadow of Big Pussy—excellent Santa, bad friend. We see him in flashbacks, and feel his unholy ghost in the hilariously chilling callback provided by Big Mouth Billy Bass. It’s a writerly metaphor for seasonal pangs of nostalgia, and a sendup of how we enter the strange, forced year-end reckoning that that jolly home invader brings about every December. Maybe Paulie, giving us a modern update on “humbug,” says it best: “In the end, fuck Santa Claus.” [Todd Lazarski]

Tony’s 47th birthday: a chance to get out of town, refresh, reflect in the bucolic country lakehouse of Bobby and Janice. Of course, first Tony must beat some stale gun charges. And then it’s one minute from “the lawn looks like shit” to everything segueing into the B-side of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? Needling, baiting, alcohol—or Monopoly—induced nastiness. Plus, pure vindictive passive aggression. Livia’s ghost hangs around all the margins of conversational manipulation here, in all the “verbal diarrhea,” and is mentioned, as a “splitter,” hinting at the foundation of the way someone you’ve known your whole life can infuriate simply by doing that “sitting in the chair thing.” Much has been made of Bobby’s “you probably never even hear it when it happens” comment, often pointed to as foreshadowing Tony’s death in the show’s ambiguous ending. But it could just as easily be a reference to when you cross a line and get cold-cocked by your brother in law. Or the way said brother-in-law, who is boss after all, can repay such a wrong by robbing you of all your innocence. [Todd Lazarski]

Suspense always takes a backseat to slowburn here. But then there is Adriana’s last ride. After the gut punch of watching her finally broken by the FBI, Chris’ violent explosion feels like a series climax. The end is in sight and not just for Ade: The ATF is onto a cigarette smuggling operation, New York wants Tony B. on a “fucking spit,” Christopher is drinking, Tony’s come full circle back to quiet domesticity. Meanwhile, Chris gets a telling glance at what such regularness of life looks like at a gas station and makes his final decision. Then we’re in the car, knowing, but not knowing, resigned, but hopeful, riding alongside Silvio’s ambiguous menace, feeling Adriana’s Thunderbird daydream of Jersey in the rearview, awaiting her withered, broken acceptance. So painful, so heartbreaking, so jarring to fully register, it feels like a minor relief that it happens just off camera. In Adriana’s and the show’s final moments are echoes of both Silvio’s final seconds with her, “C’mon, where you fucking going … ?” And also of Tony’s last, lying words: “I’ll see ya up there.” [Todd Lazarski]

“Boca” opens like an after-school special: “Yeah zebra I’m talking to you!” Silvio in an A-shirt cartoonishly assaults a girl’s high school soccer referee, 15 minutes before one of Meadow’s teammates attempts suicide. But in a show of dark humor this episode ends up leaning especially hard into each of these terms. Tony, Sil, and Artie try to convince their kid’s coach Hauser to stick around, first with a talk—“you haven’t heard our offer”—then a 50-inch TV placed in the driveway by “Clarence” (Paulie). Meanwhile, Junior is reluctant to have his oral-sex exploits aired, getting ribbed by Carmela and then mercilessly by Tony. And then Christopher is kidnapping a dog (“you won’t want Petey to get hit by a car”), Junior is breaking his own heart and openly contemplating having Tony clipped, and suddenly the fellas are wondering which brand of violence to inflict on Coach Hauser, guilty of committing statutory rape. It’s easy to instinctively hope for a whack of Tony’s type of justice. “He ain’t gonna be doing that shit no more,” he says, and it feels satisfactory. But Artie, in one of his better moments, pushes back. And Dr. Melfi wonders, “Why [do] you feel punishing this man falls upon you?” “Well it sure doesn’t fall upon you,” Tony replies. In the end, he leaves it to the police, and for once his compass points to, what is probably, right; and it feels like there’s a glimmer, maybe, of hope, for his, for our, redemption. “I didn’t hurt nobody,” he says, drunkenly celebrating himself. For one day, he didn’t. [Todd Lazarski]

The Sopranos loves to throw a good party—and by good, I mean a celebration filled with toasts and smiles that has tons of resentment and more than a few mind games bubbling just under the surface (which inevitably boil over once the booze gets flowing). For this one, it’s the “surprise” party—quotes because Junior ruined said surprise on purpose—for Hugh’s 75th birthday, and aside from the moving speeches by the birthday boy and his daughter, Carmela, there are two major clashes: The biggie is with pretentious Ph.D. Russ Fegoli, one of the “cultured Italians,” to quote Carmela’s mom, Mary, and Tony, who’s all sausage twirling and wise-guy dad jokes in the backyard. (Todd Lazarski did a wonderful breakdown of another episode that dissects Italian-American pride.) And the other is with Steve Buscemi’s Tony B., as his jealousy over the life he could have had—that is, Tony’s—pushes him over the edge to off Joey Peeps to the sounds of the Faces’ “Bad ‘N’ Ruin.” There is plenty more to get into—our separated titular couple’s drunken hookup in the pool, for one; that funny La Dolce Vita “discussion,” for another—but I’ll just note here that this episode is endlessly rewatchable: This is, hands down, the one I’ve returned to the most, and it also just so happens to be from my favorite season of the show. [Tim Lowery]

Mussels or Vindaloo? Or instead of gastrointestinal bacteria is it a bit of psychosomatic conscience pangs really leading to revelation? David Chase certainly didn’t intend Tony to discover with certainty that his best friend was a rat via some type of cop TV procedural. So he instead delivers a pitch perfect bout of sideways Fellini surrealism, a North Jersey play of Dostoevskian ponderance. Tony finds the intel from his subconscious, or quite literally, his gut. The season-long arc of buildup ends in a way both shocking and inevitable, sad and overdue, highlighted by Tony’s ambivalence, Paulie’s unwavering dagger of a death stare, and Keith Richards’ haunting open strings and hard fret slides on “Thru And Thru.” Dark, dreamy, absurd, it’s an episodic encapsulation of all things Sopranos: Family, food, and a fated sleep with the fishes. [Todd Lazarski]

A taut and self-contained morsel, as intimate, dark, and thrilling as a modern mafia tale as possible, a cacophonous bloody intersection of Tony’s two worlds. While Carm recovers from the flu, she and Father Phil engage in a cringey trainwreck of awkward semi-sexual religious tension, cut off by her brutally abrupt return to cutthroat normalcy: “Don’t forget your sacrament kit or whatever.” Meanwhile, David Chase had to face off with HBO’s president over whether or not Tony could explicitly become a murderer while touring colleges with his daughter. The end result is a show most memorable not just for the gnarly hit on an informant, but also his ability to remain steadfast in the role of fatherly protector and teller of dad jokes. In the end, of course, Chase got his way, arguing that actually the audience would turn on Tony if he failed to fulfill his ethical mob duty. It’s a subtle acknowledgement of viewers being willingly complicit in the mafia code—part of what makes Sopranos fandom so fun. [Todd Lazarski]

A perennial fan favorite, this Steve Buschemi-directed tangent might make the best case for the argument that each episode is a movie and underscores the endlessly rewatchable quality of the series. A broken universal remote, a cracked windpipe, a demented broken barefoot iteration of Ivan Drago, Roy Rogers, Denny’s Grand Slams, a forgotten lighter, Bobby’s hunting outfit, an “interior decorator” whose house “looks like shit” that “killed 16 Checkoslovakians”—it’s always in the specifics here, everything ridiculous, everything exposing more existential fault lines in the fraught but sweet relationship between Christopher and Paulie. It is gangland Waiting For Godot in the snow, a comedic and thrilling slice of life. What happened to the Russian? Where’s the car? Every viewing might contain new clues. (What is the deal with that bird’s eye view shot?) But each time it seems to matter less. It’s about the journey. And not skipping breakfast. [Todd Lazarski]

The movie-length season-four ender “Whitecaps”—it clocks in at one hour and 16 minutes, making it the longest episode in the series—has a bit of everything that made The Sopranos The Sopranos. If you were to pick one Powerhouse Acting Showcase, for instance, it’d have to be Tony and Carmela’s putting-the-cards-on-the-table meltdown in their guest house, with Gandolfini and Falco each giving arguably series-best turns, bouncing off of each other with vitriol and tears and shouts and deflections and threats and admissions, with each shade of each performance changing who has the upper hand at any given moment, making plain who truly understands their sparring partner. (Spoiler: It’s Carmela who knows exactly who Tony is.) That those exchanges are captured brilliantly, with directing decisions reminiscent of the aforementioned Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? is icing on the cake. And like with so many harsh about-faces on the show—think of the calm before Adriana and her uncle Richie’s respective demises, say—it’s the writing that makes it that much more of a gut punch. The inevitable breakdown of this marriage only works because of what came before it—in this case, Tony buying a picturesque summer home on the Shore, the one his kids will inherit, the one he and Carmela will grow old together in. Only now they won’t. It’s devastating, sure, but instead of dwelling on that devastation in the final minutes, “Whitecaps” pulls out another calling-card of the show, drawing the curtains closed with humor, showing a square, rich couple—the ones who own that beach-house that symbolized so much stability for the Sopranos—being assaulted by a boat with speakers that are blasting live Dean Martin songs, all so Tony can get his deposit back. To quote Christopher in another episode, chiding Adriana, “What, you think it’s fucking funny?” Yes. Very. [Tim Lowery]