Whitecaps

That Joe Pantoliano would win an Emmy for his work on this show's fourth season was pretty much a given from the start, and anyone doubting James Gandolfini and Edie Falco's potential will probably have changed their mind after seeing the superb season finale, Whitecaps.

Named after the place where Tony considers buying a beach house, the episode is essentially one long climax of the main tension that has been there for four years: the Sopranos' stressful marriage. It's all kick-started by a phone call from Irina, Tony's resentful former lover, who mercilessly taunts Carmela by revealing Tony has been sleeping with her one-legged cousin. This causes Mrs. Soprano to project all her repressed rage on her unlucky husband, who eventually accepts to leave the house. Therefore, two wars begin for Tony (the other is against Johnny Sack, who doesn't approve of the Jersey boss's decision not to go through with a hit on Carmine Lupertazzi), whereas another one ends for Uncle Junior: thanks to a threatened juror, his trial reaches the conclusion he was expecting.

While the Johnny and Junior situations are given very little room, saving material for the fifth series, the Tony/Carmela battle occupies 90% of Whitecaps: it's as if the writers (Robin Green, Mitchell Burgess and David Chase) had taken a regular fight between the two, which usually lasts a couple of minutes, and extended it to make it the subject of an entire episode. But rather than having a soap opera kind of quarrel, which gets boring after thirty seconds, the Soprano family breakdown is a 40-minute metaphorical fistfight between two of American television's finest actors, Gandolfini and Falco spitting bile at each other with neither of them pausing for breath. The Season 4 conclusion is an unstoppable container of acerbic, adult drama, so strong it's hard to believe anything could top The Sopranos at the Emmys in the Outstanding Drama Series category (The West Wing did, for three years; The Practice beat the first season). Unmissable.

A brilliant episode but just look at Edie Falcos acting...I've never seen anything more brilliant.

From the beginning she's fantastic ,but her acting in the showdown with Tony is something you can't take your eyes off.

Gandolfini is brilliant as always but Falco...words fail me.

What a fantastic episode, everything was perfect, but on top of that, an amaaaaazing performance by the beautiful Edie Falco, this lady deserve more.

Whitecaps is an extraordinary, powerful ending to an excellent season. The majority of the episode is given to the disintegration of the marriage between Tony and Carmela. Okay, well that's a lie, because the disintegration of their marriage has gone on for a while now. Rather, it was the climactic and bitter ending to what was left of it. Both Gandolfini and Falco give their finest performances here, knocking the material out of the park and making us ache for what is left of their relationship.

As for the season as a whole, excellent as mentioned before. Some episodes' structures aren't as focused as the third season's, but overall, a more than worthy continuation of this fantastic saga. Drea De Matteo has never had more to do, and she has become one of the most sympathetic characters on the show. Lorraine Bracco's Dr. Melfi is not seen nearly enough anymore, which is a shame. I hope that changes in the next season.

Tony and Carm have done the job so well, very good acting as well, the conversations between them are so tight, really the episode deserves The Emmy for writing, on the other side am glade to see Chris again, and i laughed so much at the closing , a good last sceen for a good episode.