Christopher (Michael Imperioli) and Paulie (Tony Sirico) alone in the New Jersey wilderness, nearly freezing to death as they search for the Russian who got away — is The Sopranos a comedy, a drama, or something that transcends both?
As explored in HBO’s new documentary Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos the series’ season 3 episode, “Pine Barrens” is widely considered one of the greatest hours of TV of all time. It seems as though creator David Chase thought, let’s put Tony Soprano’s (James Gandolfini) two capos alone in the snowy woods and see what happens. Well, it worked.
Because Tony, naturally, has some drama of his own, the complicated New Jersey mob boss sends Christopher and Paulie to collect money from Valery, a member of the Russian mob. When the collection trip goes wrong and Paulie thinks he’s killed the Russian, the men call Tony — who is not happy and has a few choice words for his companions.
After Tony requests that they dispose of the body “way the f—k away from me,” the duo head to South Jersey’s Pine Barrens. Once they arrive to the woods and remove the Russian from the trunk of the car, they discover that he’s still alive. He attacks Christopher and Paulie before taking off into the trees. Paulie shoots their target, but he just disappears.
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“I got a bad connection so I’m gonna talk fast, the guy you’re looking for is some kind of ex-commando or some s—t. He killed 16 Chechen Rebels single-handed,” Tony told the men, who cannot hear him because, again, they are lost in the woods. “He was with the interior ministry. The guy’s some kind of Russian green beret. This guy cannot come back to tell this story.”
Paulie, only hearing half the conversation, thought the man they were looking for “killed 16 Czechoslovakians and was an interior decorator.” Christopher, delivering the best line of the whole episode, responded, “His house looked like s—t.”
Anyway, the two got lost in the woods and eventually Tony came and rescued them. The Russian? He was never found.
While one might assume that shooting in the woods would have been the most difficult part for The Sopranos cast and crew, it was actually Sirico’s hair that posed the biggest problem.
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“One of the aspects of the episode is when you first see Paulie, he’s perfectly coiffed and he’s getting a manicure,” writer Terence Winter says in the Wise Guy documentary, which premiered on HBO on Saturday, September 7. “The whole idea is that he completely devolves to the worst version of himself by the end. He’s a complete mess.”
The writer told the late Sirico, who died in 2022, his hair couldn’t be perfect.
“He goes, ‘I’m not messing up my hair,’” Winter recalled, finally convincing the actor he didn’t have a choice. “That’s the only time you’ve ever seen Tony Sirico with his hair like that.”
