best session scenes with Melfi

1
We all had seen everybody's version of the top ten episodes, but I am all curious about your favourite episodes that includes the best session scenes. You can mentions the scenes or refer to it by the episode title. Why? Because it can be discussed just waht was the short- or long terem effect of the particular meeting.
This can be a top ten, but if you can't limit yourself, than feel free to go off to top 15 :).
You can't have everything- Where would you put it? -Steven Wright

Re: best session scenes with Melfi

2
Wizdog, before I reply, are you looking for the best in terms of what someone perceives as best entertainment value (where therapeutic potential is largely irrelevant) or best in terms of the likelihood that it imparted some new insight to or about Tony and might have a higher potential to actually help him evolve psychologically/emotionally?
Tony, his spirits crushed after b-lining to the fridge first thing in the morning: "Who ate the last piece of cake?"

Re: best session scenes with Melfi

4
Don't have a lot of time right now, but let me throw out four right off the bat that would have to be near the top of any list:
  1. Unidentified Black Males session where he has the panic attack in her office. He experiences the attack as he was lying about why he "missed the job" that eventually sent his cousin to prison. When he finally tells the truth, the attack subsides. He's left feeling a sense of a "purge" that he likens to "taking a shit". This event could have (and perhaps should have) been the Rosetta stone for him confronting a lot more truth about his life and feelings. He witnessed for himself the sense of relief that came from talking truthfully about issues that plagued him.
  2. Fortunate Son session where she relates the gabagool to Tony's flashback of his father cutting off Satriale's finger and later passing out as he saw his mother "reward" his father for the roast with receptivity to his sexual advances. Melfi also made a connection to the fact that Tony was grilling meat when he experienced the first panic attack that brought him to her. She may have even made the connection to the meat he took out right before passing out when he first met Noah (can't recall for sure). For sure she helped him see that he had a father who praised his (Tony's) apparent stoicism and masculiningy in the face of witnessing something as gruesome as the finger chopping and a mother who seemed to bestow affection to men that procured free food by force/extortion/violence. All in all a pretty good combo for conditioning a male child who felt unloved by his mother to pursue a way of life that could win him her favor.
  3. Session at the end of Army of One where Tony is oh so close to blaming himself for putting AJ on a course to be the next Jackie Jr., a "soft", suburban kid with no work ethic, sense of discipline, or scholastic potential, caught in a no man's land between adopting the values and pursuits of mainstream society and following the example of his male role models . . . with tragic consequences. He stops short of actually accepting the blame for this, but he is close.
  4. The sequel to # 3 in the episode Walk Like a Man where Tony does finally take some responsibility and admit guilt for dooming AJ, genetically if not by example. This episode followed episodes like Johnny Cakes and Cold Stones, where Tony had the chance to either reaffirm the same message his father had given him after the Satriale's thing or plow new ground with AJ and push him toward a much more respectable life. He chose the latter. And for those like me, who hoped for a triumph for Tony's humanity, those episodes are as close as we ever got to seeing it. Though it was way overdue and a partially a mixed message (disappointment that AJ wasn't more like him, gratittude that AJ wasn't more like him), Tony's intervention on the whole seemed to earnestly tell his son, "You're better than I am. You DON'T have it in you to be a killer. And I'm glad that you don't. Lead a better life than I have led." I think we glimpse the feelings that give rise to this intervention in the sessions from Walk Like a Man and Army of One.
Tony, his spirits crushed after b-lining to the fridge first thing in the morning: "Who ate the last piece of cake?"

Re: best session scenes with Melfi

6
Actually, I hated the Melfi character and by the time I was on the 3rd season dvd, I was skipping the session scenes.. Chase would have improved the story greatly if he'd written her out after the 1st season.

After the cat was out of the bag about Tony seeing a shrink, there was really no point in having her in the mix any longer. The session scenes were pointless, as were all the dream sequences. Neither added to the storyline in any real way.
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