The fourth season of the American crime drama series The Sopranos began airing on HBO on September 15, 2002, and concluded on December 8, 2002, consisting of thirteen episodes. The fourth season was released on DVD in region 1 on October 28, 2003.[1]
The story of season four focuses on the marriage between Tony and Carmela, as Tony engages in an affair with his ex-lover's cousin Svetlana and Carmela finds herself infatuated with Furio. The increasing tension between Tony and Ralph Cifaretto comes to a violent head and Uncle Junior is again put on trial for his crimes. Adriana is forced into becoming an FBI informant, while Christopher plunges deeper into heroin addiction.
Twenty months later, Paulie calls Johnny from prison, having been arrested on a gun charge, and complains about Tony's lack of concern. Ralphie cheats on Rosalie with Janice while having dinner at Tony's house. Tony admits to Melfi that he feels the only ways out of his business are "dead or the can" and plans to have Chris take over. He gives Chris, who is using heroin regularly, the address of the retired cop he claims killed his father, but the man insists he was not responsible when Chris follows him home. He kills him anyway and takes a twenty dollar bill from his wallet, later pinning it to his mother's fridge after a conversation about his father.
Ralphie tells a joke regarding the weight of Johnny's wife, which Paulie's nephew repeats while visiting him. Chris is made temporary capo of Paulie's men, causing resentment between him and Patsy, which escalates when Patsy and Silvio steal from their no-work job against Tony's wishes. The FBI brings Adriana in and demand that she become an informant. Meadow has shown a lack of motivation since Jackie's murder, so Melfi recommends a therapist for her to Tony. The therapist encourages Meadow's plans to take a year off of college and go to Europe, leading to an argument between Meadow and Tony about his work getting Jackie killed. Tony and Carmela return home one day to find her gone, fearing she has left for Europe, but she has instead chosen to return to school.
Junior's RICO trial begins. At a pro-Italian luncheon, the guest speaker makes a point of deriding Italians involved in mafia activity, leaving the mob wives insulted. Bobby's wife is killed in a car accident. Rosalie becomes even more depressed by this news, prompting Ralphie to leave her and attempt to move in with Janice. Janice visits Bobby and is moved by his sincere grief, and decides to break up with Ralphie, doing so by starting a fight and kicking him down the stairs. Paulie tells Johnny about Ralphie's joke. A Native American group protests against the local Columbus Day parade to the ire of Tony's men. The leader of the group is not moved by Ralphie's threats, and Tony is unable to convince a chief (actually a white man with a small amount of Native American blood) to stop the protest. As Silvio continues to complain, Tony annoyedly disparages the notion that everyone belongs to a victimized group.
Johnny's anger at the joke begins to boil over into meetings between the DiMeo and Lupertazzi families. Boss Carmine Lupertazzi approves of killing Johnny, and Silvio and Chris arrange a hit on him while Johnny puts one out on Ralphie. He leaves to go see his father, where he will be killed, but forgets something and discovers his wife cheating on her diet. Hurt that she lied to him despite never asking her to lose weight, he calls off the hit. Melfi's son begins acting out while at college, and Elliot Kupferberg suggests that he may still feel guilt over her rape. He later bumps into Tony without knowing who he is. As Carmela and Tony argue about money, she finds herself increasingly attracted to Furio, helping him buy a house and dancing with him at his housewarming party. While Tony has sex with her, she imagines hearing the music she and Furio danced to.
The FBI presses Adriana for information, and she reluctantly gives them a tip about Patsy. Janice begins inserting herself into Bobby's home life, trying to pull him out of his grief lest Junior abandon him, as well as trying to get him to eat his wife's last baked ziti that he has been saving to honor her memory. Ralphie's racehorse Pie-O-My wins all of her races. Tony begins demanding more and more of the winnings, and when the horse falls ill and Ralphie cannot pay, he gives the vet Tony's number. Tony goes to the stables, pays the vet, and sits with Pie-O-My to try and calm her.
After discovering that Gloria Trillo committed suicide, Tony does several kind things for people in his life to distract himself from the guilt. Artie takes a loan from Tony so he can distribute Armagnac, only for his supplier to start ignoring his calls. The man beats Artie when he tries to get his money back, and he tries to overdose on pills and calls Tony apologetically, who realizes what is happening and calls 911. Tony agrees to forgive the loan so long as Artie drops his tab and gives him the money from the man, who Furio is sent to go collect from. A grateful Artie praises Tony for having apparently guessed what was going to happen from the start, which upsets him. A.J. visits the home of his new girlfriend and realizes how wealthy she is, a fact she never told him. When his friends ask him why he does not have "Don Corleone money," he responds with “I don’t know.”
Paulie is released from prison, but is resentful that Tony never contacted him. While watching television, Adriana gets the impression that spouses cannot be forced to testify against each other, and proposes to Chris. He storms out when she tells him she may not be able to have children, but accepts after Tony and Silvio talk to him. Adriana learns that she was wrong and joylessly unwraps her presents at her bridal shower. Carmela's cousin tips Tony off to a mortgage fraud scheme he can get in on, so he makes use of assemblyman Ronald Zellman to purchase several houses. One of them has been turned into a crack house, so Zellman pressures his anti-violence friend into sending a group of armed teenagers to scare the occupants away. After the scheme pays out, Zellman and his friend wonder what happened to their morals. Tony learns that Zellman is dating Irina Peltsin, and though unbothered by it at first, he drunkenly barges into Zellman's house and beats him.
Furio goes to Naples for his father's funeral, where he confesses to his uncle that he is in love with Carmela. His uncle warns him that he will have to kill Tony if he wants to be with her. Paulie's mother Marianucci "Nucci" moves into a retirement community, where she is ostracized by a group that one of her friends is in. Paulie pays off the woman's son, but when nothing changes, he has men break the man's arm. His wife threatens to pull his mother out of the home unless she is kinder to Nucci. Ralphie's new girlfriend, Valentina La Paz, helps commission a portrait of Tony and Pie-O-My. They soon begin an affair, although he refuses to keep seeing her unless she breaks up with Ralphie, which she does. Carmela discovers one of Valentina's fake nails in Tony's clothes, and so she invests some of his money with a stockbroker and leaves the nail for him to find. He and Carmela quietly try to get the other to admit what they have done, but neither speaks.
As Junior's trial continues, Tony gets the idea to begin feigning memory loss and force a mistrial, which Junior passes off to an investigator, only to have a genuinely dazed conversation with his neighbor that he seems to forget. Ralphie's son is hit in the chest with an arrow while playing with his friend, leaving him with brain damage. Believing God is punishing his son in his stead, Ralphie asks Phil Intintola for advice and tries to do right by the Aprile family. The stable housing Pie-O-My burns down, resulting in her death. Realizing that the payout of the stable's insurance would cover Ralphie's medical bills, Tony confronts him in his home, leading to a lengthy struggle that ends when Tony strangles Ralphie to death. He calls Chris, and they dispose of the body.
Chris accidentally kills Adriana's dog while high and gets robbed while trying to buy more heroin, and he hits Adriana when she suggests he go to rehab. Junior advises Tony to kill him, but he is unable to and instead organizes an intervention that quickly deteriorates into Chris being beaten. Tony informs Chris that he is being moved to a rehab clinic. Tony has a hostile meeting with Johnny over the Lupertazzi family not being included in the mortgage scheme. Furio returns, and Carmela continually makes up excuses to see him. Junior's new nurse turns out to be supplied by Svetlana Kirilenko. Tony expresses admiration for her, and the two have sex. Tony openly cries to Melfi about losing Pie-O-My, and orders their portrait to be destroyed when it arrives. Paulie saves it without Tony's knowledge, hanging it on his wall and having it repainted to put Tony in a "Napoleon-like" uniform.
Tony dreams about Carmela driving his father's car with him, Ralphie, and Gloria/Svetlana inside. Melfi suggests that it represents his desire to settle things with them, but he becomes frustrated with the seeming lack of progress in their sessions and decides to quit. Annoyed at Carmela forcing him to play with Bobby's kids, A.J. pranks them with a séance that leaves them terrified of their mother's ghost. Janice anonymously guides them to their ouija board, scaring them further. Bobby comes to her for advice, and she manipulates him into eating his wife's last ziti. Tony continues to refuse Johnny a satisfying cut of the mortgage scheme. He goes to Miami to deal with Carmine's son, "Little" Carmine, who agrees to talk to his father. Tony's dream continues: he arrives at a house, where he waits outside, claiming he is there for a stonemason job. A shadowy female figure descends the stairs before Tony wakes with a start.
Bobby picks a juror at Junior's trial to have intimidated into holding out. Carmine refuses to compromise on the mortgage scheme, and Johnny meets with Tony and implies that he should be killed. Paulie encounters Carmine and realizes he has no idea who he is despite the good word Johnny apparently put in for him. He learns that Nucci's friend keeps her money in her house, and is forced to kill her while stealing it. He gives a large cut to Tony, putting them back on good terms. After Furio and Carmela almost kiss, he nearly pushes a drunken Tony into a helicopter rotor, leaving for Italy the next day despite Tony not remembering the incident clearly. Carmela, in bad spirits, argues with Meadow about the homosexual themes in Billy Budd. The arguing continues at Meadow's birthday dinner, and Meadow learns from A.J. about their mother's interest in Furio. As Tony asks if Carmela is happy with Meadow growing into an independent woman, she stays silent for a moment, then murmurs "yes."
Because of the one holdout juror, Junior's trial is declared a mistrial. Tony agrees to kill Carmine in exchange for all of the profit from the mortgage scheme, and has a clean Chris hire his former heroin dealers to do the job. Little Carmine reports that his father has conceded, and Chris has the dealers killed to prevent knowledge of the attempt from leaking. Tony begins purchasing a house on the Jersey Shore for his family from owner Alan Sapinsly, only for Irina to call the house in revenge for Tony ending her relationship with Zellman and tell Carmela that Tony slept with Svetlana. Tony and Carmela argue about his infidelities and she orders him to move out. He tells Sapinsly that he no longer wants to buy the house, but he refuses to release him from his contract unless he pays a fee. Tony argues with Carmela again and she reveals her feelings for Furio, almost causing him to hit her. He calls Melfi, but hangs up and blocks her number when she answers. Tony has speakers installed on his boat, which he drives outside Sapinsly's house and plays loud music from. His wife begs him to release Tony from the contract.
Reception
Critical reviews
Rotten Tomatoes reports a 92% approval rating with an average score of 9.0/10 based on 12 reviews for the show's fourth season, with the following critical consensus: "The war seeps into the Sopranos household in a season of discontent, with each of these artfully rendered devils stewing in a divine comedy of their own making."[15]
^Fitzgerald, Toni (November 20, 2002). "A romantic score for ABC". Media Life Magazine. Archived from the original on October 31, 2005. Retrieved July 7, 2015.
