[NegPhil]

I like it. We were given the answers to all the questions and the ending was a shock. The cat was a cool way to show us that Pauly was the rat.

i don't think it shows us that pauly was the rat. the cat was initially looking at a picture of someone dead, christopher...someone tony killed. by accepting the new skipper position that pauly thinks is cursed, i think the cat staring at him showed us that he was next to die when he takes the new skipper position. a foreshadow to what the future holds for him...

maybe I'm overreaching though...

When the Soprano Mafia family "went to the mattress" a stray cat showed up at the flop house. Normally they would throw the cat out but they let him it stay because it was a killer. The superstitious gangsters (Pauly didn't need to tell them, they already knew) even brought the cat back to The Ba Da Bing. The cat sat on the table and starred at a memorial photograph of Christopher. Pauly the only one freaked out by that. Why did Tony say It was probably just looking at a dead rat in the wall? Christopher was the Heir Apparent. Christopher was the youngest member of the "family" and he did not respect the old ways. One example was his disrespect of Tony in CLEAVER. He was telling the world about the mob. The Italians call it "this little thing of ours." He didn't know when to shut his mouth so Tony shut it for him.

Pauly couldn't shut his mouth. We were told he was like that because he never found a wife and had a family of his own. Pauly suspected Tony was going to whack him on the fishing boat. He knew that Tony didn't trust him anymore. We saw the old photograph of him in his prime. Back in the days when everyone respected him. Back in the days when everyone respected the Italian Mob. Even the old neiborhood had shrunk to a single block surrounded by the new American immigrants.

The Sopranos was about the American family. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant gangsters are called politicians. All the rest, all the immigrants are called criminals. Organized crime provides a economic platform for impoverished people to establish themselves in American society. Tony Jr. was a typical spoiled American teenager. Meadow is an average American law student who will marry into a respectable vanilla American family. The children have become established because of their hard working Mom and Dad. It is all about family.

Pauly was a dead rat. He knew it. Tony knew it. The cat knew it.