A further note:


At this point the series is coming to the end of its second season, knowing very much that there's a third in the pipeline. It's quite an obvious case here, self-reflexively speaking, of the writers voicing their intentions through Junior: not only is the show moving on (beyond its first and second seasons), it's doing so with such confidence in its own creative capabilities: don't forget how very different Season Three begins stylistically: "Mr Ruggerio's Neighborhood" is largely from the FBI's perspective, while its follow-up, "Proshai Livushka", begins with that 'rewind' affect, quite knowingly drawing our attention to its 'unusual-ness' (as a side note, the frequent fade-outs in "Neighborhood" seem to me to go too far - the narrative premise is unusual in itself, the edits seem quite clunky). And don't forget the impact Nancy Marchand's death had on the show: Livia, such a central presence to Tony's and the series' narrative development, has to be killed off early in Season Three, finally forcing the writers down paths they might otherwise not have imagined.

It's as if with that critical moment when Junior decides against Richie in favour of Tony (Bobby to Jun: "I'm in awe of you."), everybody's saying "This show has a future; life repeats itself - especially the kind of lives these people lead, when you're only as good as your last paycheck - and we're going to face that repetition and make what we can of it. We're not going to repeat ourselves, but we're going to rely on that kind of narrative because life is like that."