Paulie walked into that priest's office with confidence, and it looked like he was absolutely determined to get the best of this new priest in their business dealings. In the prior episodes, it seemed that Paulie was out-of-practice in his negotiations and dealings, so I'm sure he wanted to end his business losing streak and change his financial momentum.

"Some things don't change!" was his response to the priest's surprising demand of $50K (by the way, where was this guy's accent supposed to be from?). He then went into a history lesson of the feast and said the price was negotiated since Johnny Soprano's era (and he used his inflection-highlighting hand gestures as he referred to Johnny). When the priest stated that these are different times, Paulie would take none of that.

Before this encounter, and after the revelation about his ma, Paulie has appeared as if he has lost the old feeling of confidence and stability that he saw in himself. He got frazzled and seemed insecure. After the decision was made to basically say F-you to the priest and the hat, I think Paulie's confidence came back and in his mind prompted a new string of good luck in business.

He wanted to parly this newfound good karma towards the end of the episode to counter the biOPsy issue. He went back to his mother in hopes that the 1-good business luck would spur him onto some new 2-good family luck, which in turn would segue into some 3-good health luck.

Before he decided to visit his ma and after talking to Little Paulie, he turned on the home-shopping infomercial to which James Brown (of the NFL on Fox) says "Now is your last chance to take advantage". I am wandering if the writers are going to help Paulie in regards to health news or if in fact they are going to give Paulie another reason to be down on himself.

</p>

You know, when Paulie showed up he had death on his face, I just thought to myself "He's got cancer."

</p>

While Tony can understand Paulie's fear of cancer from his own skin cancer scare and being shot, Paulie really has no one else he can turn to but his aunt/'mother' facing what believe to be a diagnose of cancer. He really cannot turn to his fellow thevies and has no wife/girlfiend (maybe not even a goomba). Notice too, that as the episode faded out, it showed changing fall leaves, a breeze in the air. It suggests that he is in the 'fall' of his life.

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After thinking about some the past studies in Psych class, this seems like a typical case of regression.

This more often occurs for a younger person- say a kid goes to kindergarten, and feels uncomfortable- he then starts sucking his thumb because he subconciously harkens back to a prior, comfortable time in life.

To me, Paulie desperately wanted back at this happy place during this episode.

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Who was that old guy in the priest's office and why did he make a point of saying Paulie was an altar boy? And why did the camera linger on him at the end of that scene? Does anyone think it's possible that he's Paulie's father? I'm probably reading way too much into this.

--
BobbyBuz
"Everything happens for a reason"</p>

<hr />I'm guessing Paulie still had to pay the $10K to use the statue.

If so, why wouldn't Paulie just take a few photos of the statue in the church and hire some art student to make a replica of the statue?

Thereafter, he could just use the replica and give the church ugatz.

BTW, I think the priest's accent was supposed to be Irish.


</p>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p098.ezboard.com/bthechaselounge ... plishak</A> at: 5/10/06 5:38 pm

bcorsale:

I know a lot of people are fascinated by the paulie's father angle, my personal take is that we, and Paulie, will never know who his father is.

Its more about the uncertainty that Paulie now has towards his family, at a time when he needs them the most. A lot of plot lines this season have had to do more with how events effect the characters we know, rather than the events themselves.

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Well a lot of people speculate on this board and others that Paulies father is that ass Russ Fagoli from the Marco Polo episode.............we know Paulies dad is a "Russ" and also Russ Fagoli had prostate cancer. It would be a funny tie in if that were true and Paulie met his real dad who is nothing like his son. It would be a riot. I could see Paulie kicking his "dads" ass all over the place........

</p>

Paulie's mom hooked up with his dad years ago and never saw him again. I think it would be way too far-fetched for the father to turn up now, especially as a character we're already familiar with. You see that kind of stuff on "Days of Our Lives" but not this show. I hope.

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