Pine Barrens (The Sopranos)

"Pine Barrens" is an episode of the HBO series The Sopranos; it is the 11th of the show's third season and the 37th overall. The teleplay was written by Terence Winter from a story idea by Winter and Tim Van Patten. It was the first of four episodes for the series directed by Steve Buscemi and originally aired on May 6, 2001.

"Pine Barrens"
The Sopranos episode
Chris and Paulie trudge through the Pine Barrens, freezing and lost.
Episode no.Season 3
Episode 11
Directed bySteve Buscemi
Story by
Teleplay byTerence Winter
Cinematography byPhil Abraham
Production code311
Original air dateMay 6, 2001
Running time60 minutes
Guest appearance(s)

see below

Starring

* = credit only

Guest starring

Synopsis

Jackie is with Meadow in her room but she has a cold and explains she cannot have sex. Jackie looks at his watch, says he is tired, and leaves. The next night he makes a feeble excuse for not seeing her. A friend drives Meadow to Jackie's place. He comes out with another girl. Meadow gets out of the car and tells him they are finished. She and her friend then drive away, the other girl walks off, and Jackie is left alone.

Gloria comes back from Morocco and goes to meet Tony on his boat. She picks a quarrel and storms out, leaving him baffled. They reconcile, and have lunchtime sex in a hotel. She invites him for dinner in her house that night but, delayed by family obligations, he arrives very late. She is bitterly hurt and angry, but they reconcile again and have sex, and she cooks dinner again. Then, just before eating, he receives a phone call and has to leave on urgent business. She says, "I hate you!", throws his dinner—a steak—at him, and trashes her dining room after he goes.

Tony tells Dr. Melfi that he is seeing Gloria. In the first session he speaks of how happy they are together; in the second he complains of her changing moods. Melfi says Gloria is depressive, unstable, and impossible to please. "Does that remind you of any other woman?"

Tony instructs Paulie to make a collection from Valery, a Russian, on behalf of Silvio, who is ill. He goes there with Christopher. Though it is early, Valery is drunk. Paulie needlessly provokes him and there is a fight. Though drunk, Valery fights skilfully but the other two get on top of him and Paulie throttles him with a floor lamp. Shocked at what they have done, they wrap him in a carpet and wheel him out to their car. Paulie suggests that they dump him somewhere in the Pine Barrens. He calls Tony but this call and others later are hampered by poor reception and static. Slava, who launders Tony's money, tells him that he and Valery, a trained commando, are closer than brothers.

In the snow-covered woods, Paulie and Chris park and open the trunk: Valery is still alive. They walk him some distance, give him a shovel, and make him dig his own grave. Choosing his moment, Valery hits them both hard with the shovel and flees. They chase him, shooting. Paulie thinks he has shot him in the head but he keeps running, and goes out of sight. They find his track, but it suddenly ends: Valery has vanished.

After a time, Paulie and Chris realize they are lost. Paulie slips down a slope and loses a shoe. Long after nightfall, faint with cold and hunger, they find an abandoned van where they take refuge. Light-headed, they blame each other for what has happened; Chris says Paulie intends to choke him while he is asleep. They fight, Chris pulls a gun on Paulie, then breaks down in crazy laughter. They agree to stay together.

In the middle of the night Paulie calls Tony (who receives the call in Gloria's house), manages to tell him where they parked the car, and pleads for help. Tony drives out with Bobby, a skilled outdoorsman. They reach the parking-spot: Paulie's car has vanished. They wait until dawn to look for Paulie and Chris, who have left the van and are walking in a random direction. Paulie's makeshift shoe falls off, and he shoots it in a fit of crazed frustration. Tony and Bobby hear the shots and head toward their source; the pairs soon meet up with one another.

Paulie gives a false version of what caused the fight with Valery, and Chris backs him up. The money they collected was in the car. Tony stresses to Paulie that if Valery ever turns up again, it will be his responsibility. They head back to north Jersey in silence; only Bobby has peace of mind.

Valery's fate

Shortly after Valery escapes into the Pine Barrens, Paulie shoots him, apparently in the head, but he still vanishes. The camera shifts away from Paulie and Christopher to an aerial viewpoint, suggesting that Valery was watching them from a tree. In addition, Paulie's car is missing when they return. Valery was never seen again. Series creator David Chase has said that he never intended to have Valery return and that the story is richer and more realistic with some mystery to the plot. HBO listed Valery as "Deceased?" in promotional materials.

On the fate of Valery, Terence Winter said:

That's the question I get asked more than any other. It drives people crazy: "Where's the Russian? What happened to the Russian?" We could say, "Well, he got out and there's a big mob war with the Russians," or "He crawled off and died." But we wanted to keep it ambiguous. You know, not everything gets answered in life.[1]

David Chase said:

They shot a guy. Who knows where he went? Who cares about some Russian? This is what Hollywood has done to America. Do you have to have closure on every little thing? Isn't there any mystery in the world? It's a murky world out there. It's a murky life these guys lead. And by the way, I do know where the Russian is. But I'll never say because so many people got so pissy about it.[1]

In 2008 Chase said in an interview at the Actors Guild:

OK, this is what happened. Some Boy Scouts found the Russian, who had the telephone number to his boss, Slava, in his pocket. They called Slava, who took him to the hospital where he had brain surgery. Then Slava sent him back to Russia.[2]

In an interview with Sam Roberts, Chase said:

You mean the Russian? People came to me...He never went up a tree...He collapsed and he was found by some boy scouts. And they got in touch with his...somehow he was carrying a piece of I.D., which led them back to his boss. Slava the Russian guy. He was put in a hospital, and, ummm...you know, like he was completely, is, massive brain trauma. And he was sent back to Russia.[3]

Discussing the episode in a June 10, 2007 New York Times article titled "One Final Whack at That HBO Mob", Imperioli depicted the lack of closure regarding Valery as an example of the series' overall subversiveness:[4]

This show was never what people expected.

In the same article, Sirico said that Chase wrote a sixth-season scene where Christopher and Paulie chanced upon Valery outside a bar and promptly shot him to death but it was removed from the script, possibly by Chase:[4]

I think David didn't like it. He wanted the audience just to suffer.

Title reference
  • The Pine Barrens is a protected wilderness area managed by the New Jersey Pinelands Commission in Southern New Jersey. This is where Christopher and Paulie try to "dispose" of what they assume is Valery's body.

Cultural references
  • Paulie likens Valery to Rasputin, who was notoriously difficult to kill.
  • When Paulie is tying on his makeshift shoe, Chris ironically likens him to Bruno Magli, the name of an Italian luxury shoe company.

Production
  • Director Tim Van Patten had dreamed about the idea of Paulie and Christopher getting lost in the woods during the production of season 2, and after discussing it with writer Terence Winter, presented the concept to David Chase who worked it into season 3.[5][6]
  • The forest scenes for the episode were filmed at Harriman State Park in New York, after the production team was denied a permit to film in New Jersey at the South Mountain Reservation. Essex County executive James Treffinger said The Sopranos "depicts an ethnic group in stereotypical fashion".[7] Treffinger was later convicted and imprisoned for corruption.[5][8]
  • There was an unexpected snowfall just before the shoot. Both the cast and the crew agreed that the snow added to the emotional effect of the episode.[5]
  • The interior of the truck was shot on a sound stage. The actors' freezing "breath" was added in CGI.[9]
  • Director Steve Buscemi successfully threw the steak at James Gandolfini's head in the scene of Tony's argument with Gloria Trillo; neither Annabella Sciorra nor the prop handlers had been able to hit Gandolfini.[5][10]
  • "Pine Barrens" took 12 days for shooting, setting a record for the longest episode shoot in The Sopranos at the time.[5]
  • The HBO documentary James Gandolfini: Tribute to a Friend (2013) includes an anecdote by Steve Schirripa about the shooting of the scene where Tony picks Bobby up at Junior's house. When they were shooting Tony's reaction to Bobby's hunting outfit, Schirripa surprised Gandolfini by entering the kitchen wearing a strap-on dildo. Tony's response and laughter, pointing at Bobby and then doubling over the sink, is the take of Gandolfini seeing the strap-on.

Music

Accolades
gollark: In theory they do, but apparently public companies think ridiculously short-term in investments.
gollark: Not exactly.
gollark: Unfortunately, æææææÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆæææææÆÆÆÆÆÆÆÆæææÆÆÆÆææa nobody can make big organizations work properly.
gollark: Yes.
gollark: > if social systems operated sanely and competent people ran things.

References
  1. EW.com: Chase 'n' the Russian
  2. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2011-12-04. Retrieved 2008-11-23.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. "One Final Whack at That HBO Mob". The New York Times. June 10, 2007. p. 2 of 2.
  5. Martin, Brett (2007-10-30). ""This Thing of Ours": Creating The Sopranos Universe". The Sopranos: The Complete Book. New York: Time. p. 178–. ISBN 978-1-933821-18-4.
  6. "Sopranos: A Pine Barrens oral history". ew.com. May 13, 2007.
  7. "The Sopranos banned from County Property". The New York Times. December 17, 2000.
  8. Martin, Brett (2007-10-30). "Welcome to New Jersey: A Sense of Place". The Sopranos: The Complete Book. New York: Time. p. 32. ISBN 978-1-933821-18-4.
  9. The Sopranos: The Complete Third Season, DVD commentary
  10. The Sopranos: The Complete Third Season DVD commentary
  11. Time: The Best of the Sopranos
  12. EW: The all-time 10 best "Sopranos" episodes
  13. Dagbladet: - Har du en yndlingsepisode i Sopranos?
  14. D'Arminio, Aubry (April 2–15, 2018). "65 Best Episodes of the 21st Century". TV Guide.
  15. "Writers Honor 'Gosford Park,' 'Beautiful Mind'". The Los Angeles Times. March 3, 2002.
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