A Hit Is a Hit

Tony begins socialising with his neighbour, whilst Christopher and Adriana attempt to crack the music business.

This is another strong episode with a number of hilariously funny moments and great character driven comedy.

There is so much dark humour, cringe comedy and perfectly timed dialogue in 'A Hit Is A Hit' I barely noticed it mostly abandons the main plot of season one.

Similarly to 'The Legend of Tennessee Moltisanti' the characters Christopher and in particular Adriana are developed well. Drea de Matteo wonderfully projects strength, humour, naivety and sympathy in a great portrayal of a female character fighting for recognition in a male dominated world that mostly wants to objectify her. This contrasts well with the subplot involving Carmela.

Michael Imperioli is hilarious, with some fantastic material that sees Christopher blunder aggressively through multiple social interactions with a diverse range of people. Sometimes I want to die of embarrassment along with Adriana, other times, such as in the recording studio, I was almost crying laughing.

Tony has some of his funniest moments of the series during his interactions with Dr Cusamano. His practical joke, the John Gotti and Jimmy Smash stories are absolutely fantastic. As ever James Gandolfini is brilliant throughout.

It is clever and manipulative writing when you can sympathise with a murderous gang boss and role your eyes as a doctor comes across as a pretentious, middle classed buffoon. This is similar to the themes of the previously mentioned episode, where you had Dr Melfi's friends and family looking down their noses at organised criminals. This time you have characters who are fascinated and amused by their friend's association with Tony.

A great touch is the conclusion to the central conflict between Hesh and the character who is effectively the main antagonist of the story. You think it's heading for a very typical mob resolution, yet it takes a surprisingly mundane approach that goes against the usual tropes. Jerry Adler and Bokeem Woodbine both give strong performances.

The visual storytelling is excellent, particularly in the scenes involving Adriana, Christopher and Massive Genius.

It's a difficult one to rate as there is not much movement in terms of the central plot, but it is not really the point of episodes like these that like to explore certain themes and do it in a very entertaining way. It appeals to my sense of humour so much I have got to rate it just shy of perfect with 9.5/10.

... in that it doesn't advance the overall storyline at all, but yet it is not dull. And it could have been since the two subplots - one with Christopher and Adriana and another with Tony trying to expand his horizons, weren't very compelling. I never did find the Christopher/Adriana scenes in this show that interesting, and Tony is never as good with mob outsiders as he is in his element. But the two stories were set up in parallel to make a point.

Christopher is mouthing off to some black guys in a fast food restaurant. It turns out that one of them is rapper Massive Genius. He seems menacing at first, but it turns out he is more MBA than anything. He wants Chris and Adriana to arrange a sit down between himself and Hesh Rabkin over some record royalties that he believes should have gone to an acquaintance. Meanwhile Tony has decided to cultivate the friendship of his family doctor, who lives next door, and his country club friends.

Adriana makes a demo of a music group she knows and Massive says it is wonderful, but Chris has his doubts and takes the demo to Hesh who says the demo and the group have nothing special. Chris rightfully deduces that Massive is just saying what Adriana wants to hear so he can sleep with her. She is hurt by the revelation. Tony quickly learns that his doctor's country club friends just see him as some kind of human oddity because of his mob connections. He could never be considered one of them. He is hurt by that revelation.

Nothing is said about it here, because for some reason the point is never made, but I really wonder why Christopher is not dead by the end of season one. He goes off and does things that step on the toes of other mob bosses after Tony warns him, he is always whining about his lack of advancement, he is writing a movie script about his life in the mob and even TELLS Tony that, and if he hadn't mouthed off to some random black guy in a fast food joint for no reason Hesh would not be facing a legal battle over past royalties. Tony would have plugged half a dozen other guys over much less than this. So this tells you how much Tony loves this young man who seems to be his own worst enemy.

This was really very weak .

The acting is poor from several actors.

It is as if the director had no time and just used every take 1 for this episode.

It also feels fragmented and has no flow at all.

The whole music band scenes are ludicrous and badly done.

The only positive and fantastic idea was in fact the ending where you see Tony workin' out and thus explaining a previous weird cutt scene.

This was probably the worst episode in the series so far. It wasn't as good as the rest, but either way, it was still good. My favorite things about this episode were the Dialogue, the acting, and the storyline. My favorite characters in this episode were Chris, Tony, and Adriana. This episode wasn't honestly all that great, so you can probably maybe skip this if you want, but it's still sort of enjoyable. I just maybe think it should be the lowest rated episode in the series. Overall, this wasn't amazing or great, but this was still a decent and good episode of the amazing series so far. Can't wait for more.

The Sopranos is an amusing show, and is great at balancing humour and drama. Here, the episode goes full side quest mode and it's a pretty entertaining episode.

Christopher is probably my favourite character on the show, along with Paulie, Tony and Meadow, so its funny seeing him get up to more. The episode is really funny, all the jokes at the expense of the band (who sound like a second rate band you'd hear playing on Buffy), the satires of the record industry, etc. The episode is just entertaining all around, and I think that's why I enjoy it. Not every episode needs to push the story forward, it's just cool to hang out with these characters!