The Sopranos: 10 Best Sal Quotes

Made · For Family Members Only How Well Do You Know The Sopranos? “Woke up this morning, got yourself a gun…”

💄Bada BingSilvio's office

🐖Satriale'sGabagool, ova here

🦆The PoolTony's first attack

🍞Onion RingsHolsten's diner

🚬Tony's CigarBathrobe canon

01

The Sopranos was created and largely showrun by a New Jersey-born writer-producer who'd cut his teeth on Northern Exposure and The Rockford Files. Born Daniel Baruch DeCesare, he originally pitched the project as a feature film about a mob boss in therapy. Who is he?

✓ Correct! David Chase. He shopped the original feature script around for years before HBO bit and ordered it as a series. Much of Tony's relationship with his mother Livia was lifted from Chase's own deeply fraught relationship with his mother Norma — he's spoken openly about it in interviews. Terence Winter and Matthew Weiner were both writers on Chase's staff who later created Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men respectively.

✗ Wrong consigliere. The answer is David Chase. Terence Winter wrote some of the show's all-time best episodes (“Long Term Parking”) and went on to create Boardwalk Empire. Matthew Weiner joined for Season 5 and used the experience as the launchpad for Mad Men. David Milch is a separate giant of TV (NYPD Blue, Deadwood) but no Sopranos credit. Chase is the auteur — born David DeCesare in Mt. Vernon, NY and raised in North Caldwell, NJ.

02

The Sopranos premiered on HBO on January 10th of which year, kicking off six seasons and 86 episodes that would close in June 2007? The premiere is now widely cited as the launch of the so-called “prestige TV” or “Third Golden Age” era of American television.

✓ Correct! 1999. The Sopranos premiered Sunday January 10, 1999 at 9 p.m. on HBO — the same month The West Wing was being workshopped at NBC and The Phantom Menace was four months from release. The pilot was called simply “The Sopranos.” HBO had ordered the series largely on the strength of Chase's pilot script and James Gandolfini's audition tape; Chase had been shopping the project unsuccessfully since 1995.

✗ Wrong era. The answer is 1999 — January 10, 1999 to be exact. By 1997 Chase was still pitching the project as a movie. By 2001 the show was already in its third season and a cultural phenomenon. By 2003 it was in Season 5. The Sopranos premiered five months after Sex and the City debuted and effectively founded the HBO drama as we know it.

03

Tony's therapy sessions are the show's structural spine. His psychiatrist — a soft-spoken, ethically tortured Italian-American who eventually drops him as a patient in the finale — was played by an actress who'd already been Oscar-nominated for Goodfellas. Name the character.

✓ Correct! Dr. Jennifer Melfi, played by Lorraine Bracco. Bracco had originally been offered the role of Carmela — a part she turned down because it felt too close to her Goodfellas character Karen Hill. She lobbied hard for Melfi instead, was nominated for three Emmys for the role, and famously researched the part by sitting in on actual psychiatric sessions. Edie Falco wound up as Carmela and won three Emmys for the part.

✗ Wrong file. The answer is Dr. Jennifer Melfi. Dr. Elliot Kupferberg is Melfi's own therapist, played beautifully by Peter Bogdanovich. Dr. Krakower is the one-scene therapist Carmela visits in Season 3 who tells her she has to leave Tony — one of the show's most-quoted scenes. Karen Baccalieri is Bobby's first wife (deceased). Lorraine Bracco played Melfi for all six seasons.

04

The DiMeo crew's main hangout-slash-front, presided over by a giant fibreglass pig on the roof, was a Kearny, New Jersey pork store named for an Italian butcher Dickie Moltisanti once wiped out a gambling debt with. The building was demolished in 2018. Name it.

✓ Correct! Satriale's Pork Store. The exterior — on Kearny Avenue in Kearny, NJ — was a real, vacant former auto-body shop dressed by the production. HBO finally tore it down in 2018 to build condos. The pig on the roof has since become an iconic prop, and Tony's coma-vision in Season 6 even featured a recurring Satriale's. The pork-store-front-for-mob-business detail is plucked straight from real Cosa Nostra history.

✗ Wrong storefront. The answer is Satriale's Pork Store. Vesuvio (and its rebuilt successor Nuovo Vesuvio) is Artie Bucco's restaurant, a separate hangout. Centanni's is a real-life North Jersey pork store some fans confuse with the show's. Satriale's, with the giant fibreglass pig on the roof and the wooden bench out front, is where the Bing isn't — and where the boys eat their gabagool.

05

Tony's nephew and protégé Christopher Moltisanti — the would-be screenwriter behind “Cleaver,” husband to FBI informant Adriana, and ultimately suffocated by Tony in his crashed Cadillac Escalade in Season 6 — was played by an actor who'd previously been in Goodfellas. Who?

✓ Correct! Michael Imperioli. He played Spider in Goodfellas — the kid Joe Pesci shoots in the foot, then later kills outright. Imperioli won the 2004 Emmy for Best Supporting Actor for his Sopranos work, also wrote five episodes of the series himself, and later played Dominic Di Grasso in the second season of The White Lotus. Steven Van Zandt (Silvio) was an unknown actor when cast — he was, of course, Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band guitarist.

✗ Wrong made man. The answer is Michael Imperioli. Steven Van Zandt is Silvio Dante. Joe Pantoliano joined in Season 3 as Ralph Cifaretto and won an Emmy for it. Vincent Pastore is Big Pussy Bonpensiero, who got whacked at the end of Season 2 on the boat. Imperioli is Christopher — both an actor and a writer on the show, and the only cast member with credits in both Goodfellas (Spider) and The Sopranos.

06

“Pine Barrens” (S3E11) — the snow-bound dark comedy where Paulie and Christopher get lost in the woods chasing a Russian who may or may not have killed 16 Chechens with his bare hands — is widely cited as the show's funniest episode. It was directed by an actor who later joined the cast as Tony Blundetto. Name him.

✓ Correct! Steve Buscemi. He directed “Pine Barrens” in 2001 from Terence Winter's script, then joined the cast in Season 5 as Tony Blundetto, Tony's Brooklyn-based cousin freshly out of prison. The unresolved fate of the Russian (Valery, played by Vitali Baganov) became one of TV's all-time great hanging questions; Chase has said in interviews that the answer is “he never came back, he was an interior designer.” Buscemi went on to anchor Boardwalk Empire under Sopranos alum Terence Winter.

✗ Wrong director. The answer is Steve Buscemi. Tim Van Patten directed more Sopranos episodes than anyone (20) but not Pine Barrens. John Patterson directed many of the early-season classics including the pilot's editing version. Allen Coulter directed the Season 1 finale “I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano.” Buscemi did Pine Barrens in Season 3 then jumped in front of the camera as Tony Blundetto in Season 5.

07

The crew's other main hangout is a Lodi, New Jersey strip club owned (on paper) by consigliere Silvio Dante, where the back office doubles as their de-facto boardroom. The exterior is a real working club called Satin Dolls on Route 17. Name the show's fictional version.

✓ Correct! The Bada Bing! — including the exclamation mark and red neon Bing! sign. The exterior was Satin Dolls in Lodi, New Jersey, which kept its Sopranos-era signage as a tourist draw for years before NJ regulators forced ownership changes in 2018. The Crazy Horse is a competing club Tony has dealings with; Caputo's is one of the show's many pizzerias. The Bing — with Silvio's back office, the dancers, and the recurring shot of them through the front door — is iconic.

✗ Wrong joint. The answer is the Bada Bing. The Crazy Horse appears in the show but isn't owned by Silvio. The Crystal Palace is invented for this question. Caputo's is a pizzeria. The Bing — Silvio's strip club in Lodi, with the recurring shot of Tony through the front door framed by dancers — is the crew's de facto boardroom and the most-recurring exterior in the entire run after Tony's house.

08

The series finale “Made in America” (June 10, 2007) ends in Holsten's diner in Bloomfield, NJ with Tony, Carmela and AJ ordering onion rings while a song plays on the jukebox. The screen cuts to ten seconds of black mid-lyric, ending the show. What's the song?

✓ Correct! “Don't Stop Believin'” by Journey, 1981. AJ feeds the jukebox; Tony scrolls through “Magic Man,” “I Gotta Be Me” and “Don't Stop Believin'” before settling on Journey. The cut to black on “don't stop” sent millions of viewers thinking their cable had failed and reignited a 1981 single all the way back into the modern Top 40, eventually pushing it past 12 million digital sales. David Chase has spent 18 years deflecting questions about whether Tony lives or dies.

✗ Wrong jukebox pick. The answer is “Don't Stop Believin'” by Journey. Tony does scroll past “I've Gotta Be Me” before landing on Journey. “Born to Run” never appears in the finale — though Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt connection makes it a popular wrong-guess. “Comfortably Numb” would be too on-the-nose. Journey + onion rings + cut-to-black remains one of the most discussed ten seconds in TV history.

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Made man — or strictly an associate?