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All 13 Episodes of ‘The Sopranos’ Season 4, Ranked
The one show that rivals all the best gangster movies in history, if you’re talking about the whole crime/drama genre, would have to be The Sopranos. It feels a bit silly to even introduce it at this point, much like how talking about Goodfellas or The Godfather is difficult to do, when so many words have already been said, but hey… that’s a testament to something being iconic and widely discussed.
The Sopranos has well and truly earned all that praise, functioning incredibly well as a series about the mob, family conflict, and psychology/therapy, all at once. Tonally, it’s all over the place, but never messy, since at its best, The Sopranos can be funnier, more dramatic, or even more frightening than just about anything else TV-wise. Its fourth season was a little slow-paced and maybe even challenging, but the show’s standards, but didn’t really contain any truly bad episodes, and some of the show’s best hours were featured here, in any event. All 13 episodes of season 4 of The Sopranos are ranked below, starting with the fairly good and ending with the absolutely incredible.
13
“Christopher” (Episode 3)
“Christopher” is the worst episode of the series, to be brutally honest. It’s not being criticized here because it’s about race-related issues, touching on anti-Columbus Day protests and anti-Italian sentiments. It’s more the case that these topics are handled quite clunkily, with a good deal of dialogue throughout not really feeling natural, and it makes The Sopranos suddenly feel weirdly preachy.
These are things that could be explored without things feeling preachy, but “Christopher” doesn’t manage that. It feels out of step with so much of the series, and all the episodes where ridiculous things might happen, but you still can believe that these characters are real and consistent (at least within the world the show builds). It’s a testament to how good The Sopranos is, though, that even “Christopher” has a couple of great moments. Bobby’s grief here, in a subplot about the death of his wife, is powerfully done and important going forward, and Christopher’s misunderstanding of Tony’s rant about Gary Cooper is pretty incredible (and one of many moments from the show that’s become an enduring meme).
12
“Pie-O-My” (Episode 5)
Season 4 can feel a little slow the first time you watch the show, but on a rewatch, it feels much richer and more meaningful. The only episode of the season that’s worse on a rewatch is the aforementioned “Christopher.” This isn’t a great comparison, but if you can liken seasons 2 and 5 of The Sopranos to Breaking Bad, with intensity and pacing, then season 4 is like, comparatively, its Better Call Saul. Or maybe it’s a grower in the way Twin Peaks: The Return was, compared to the more immediate first two seasons of Twin Peaks.
That’s all to say that “Pie-O-My” is much better than “Christopher,” even if it’s also not ranked particularly high here. That’s also an indication that the territory of good-but-flawed episodes of The Sopranos is now being moved on from. “Pie-O-My” is good, with Tony and Ralph clashing over the titular horse being important going forward, and Bobby having a compelling subplot here, dealing with grief over his recently deceased wife. It’s not quite a stand-out episode, but it’s harder for an episode to stand out when it belongs to a series as packed with legendary episodes as The Sopranos is.
11
“Watching Too Much Television” (Episode 7)
“Watching Too Much Television” (and the episode that followed it), and its subsequent episode, proved a little slow. It doesn’t stick out too badly, though, owing to how season 4 is a bit more laidback on a narrative front, in contrast to the first two seasons with Tony sort of at war with the older generation (Livia and Junior), and the final two seasons being largely about Tony at war with Phil Leotardo, who wouldn’t enter the picture until season 5.
“Watching Too Much Television,” like many episodes in season 4, is still very interesting for what it says about the characters, and that side of the show is honestly more compelling than the “narrative” (so to speak) a good deal of the time. Tony’s hypocrisy and jealousy in this episode prove to be the most memorable and important part, with him eventually snapping and lashing out at an associate who’s having a relationship with one of Tony’s ex-mistresses. Elsewhere, most of the other threads of the season (Paulie feeling disconnected from Tony, Adriana grappling with being an informant, Furio wanting to be with Carmela, etc.) creep forward slowly but surely.
10
“Mergers and Acquisitions” (Episode 8)
Right after all the drama with Tony and one of his ex-mistresses, he goes right back into pining for another woman who’s just his type, and she’s a new girlfriend of Ralphie’s. He then starts having an affair with this woman, named Valentina, and it drives home even more how ridiculous his outburst at the end of the previous episode was.
This eighth episode is important for the rest of the season, since events transpire (or events expire, as Little Carmine might say) in episode 9 that make the possibility of continuing to see Valentina even easier, for Tony, living in a post-Ralphie world and all. But then the cheating here is also significant for the final episode of season 4, which has Tony and Carmela clashing in a big way because of all his infidelity. Both those episodes are a good deal better than the admittedly still pretty good “Mergers and Acquisitions,” though, so more on them later.
9
“For All Debts Public and Private” (Episode 1)
The best scene in “For All Debts Public and Private” is Tony and Bobby conversing at a diner, and the dialogue following the latter saying, “You know, Quasimodo predicted all this.” There is another storyline in this episode that’s solid, albeit more so after watching The Many Saints of Newark, since it concerns Christopher seemingly getting revenge on a man who purportedly killed his father, Dickie Moltisanti (who was at the center of that 2021 prequel movie).
Or at least knowledge of that movie colors and complicates what Christopher goes through here. Otherwise, “For All Debts Public and Private” is another pretty good episode of The Sopranos. A little slow, like some of these season openers tend to be, and maybe you can also criticize it for not really setting up a clear direction for season 4. That’s intentional, in hindsight, given season 4’s somewhat looser feel, but in the moment, it does make this episode feel a bit rambling/listless.
8
“No Show” (Episode 2)
And now, conveniently, following right on from the first of the season’s episodes, here’s the second episode of the fourth season. So much of the drama in season 4 revolves around a joke Ralphie makes about Johnny Sack’s wife, Ginny, and said joke happens in “No Show.” It’s not automatically low-stakes, since Ralphie is already on thin ice with a lot of people after the events of season 3 (see “University,” for example), but it does feel like an eventually big deal was pretty small, at least initially.
Christopher also gets to be a general mess in this episode, hitting on Adriana’s friend, who’s actually an undercover FBI agent, and then the whole ordeal leads to the agent revealing her identity to Adriana. From there, Adriana is subsequently made an informant for the FBI, threatened with a drug possession charge if she doesn’t comply. So, on those two fronts, things are heating up, albeit slowly, which is appropriate for this slow-burn fourth season.
7
“Eloise” (Episode 12)
The biggest shake-up to the status quo, provided by “Eloise,” is that it features the departure of Furio, who’d been a pretty consistent presence in the series since being introduced in season 2. Furio honestly doesn’t do a ton outside of causing some turmoil with his almost-affair with Carmela, which heats up throughout season 4, and gets dangerous in “Eloise,” prompting Furio to retreat back to Italy.
It’s a bit anticlimactic, but having Furio be one of a handful of penultimate episode casualties might well have felt more forced. The middle ground would’ve probably been to bring him back in some capacity during the last two seasons, to give actual closure, but The Sopranos never played by anyone’s rules but its own, so farewell, Furio. “Eloise” is, other than that, pretty light on drama and conflict, but it set the stage decently enough for what ended up being a great season finale. It’s also worth noting that penultimate episodes for other seasons of The Sopranos are usually a little more memorable than this (see seasons 2, 5, and 6 especially).
6
“Everybody Hurts” (Episode 6)
Hey, look at that: episode 6 at number 6. The most intense hurting in “Everybody Hurts” probably comes from the revelation that Gloria, with whom Tony had a fling in season 3, has taken her own life. Her last appearance in the show, not counting dream sequences, was in that third season, and the death happening suddenly and off-screen works in making viewers feel just as caught off-guard as Tony is, when Carmela tells him about Gloria (she, however, doesn’t know Tony knew Gloria to that extent).
Artie’s also struggling a lot in this episode, and in his typically Artie way, those struggles are almost darkly funny, and then also just quite sad (though he doesn’t succeed in trying to end his life, unlike Gloria). Also, Paul Dano is in this episode a little, joining Lady Gaga (who showed up briefly in season 3) as another then-unknown – but soon-to-be-famous – actor who showed up because of an A.J.-related storyline in The Sopranos.
5
“Calling All Cars” (Episode 11)
There’s an argument to be made that “Calling All Cars” is the scariest episode of The Sopranos, just because of some of the dream imagery here, with Tony’s dreams in this particular episode being especially concerned with death. It’s a way for some of the more recently deceased characters in the show to temporarily return, since both Gloria and Ralphie show up here.
Livia does, too, or at least seems to, with that ambiguity – and her shadowy appearance – proving quite terrifying. The Sopranos usually nailed the feeling of being in an unpleasant or confusing dream better than just about any other show or movie out there, and “Calling All Cars” is yet another indication of that. The rest of the episode is typically strong stuff for the show, but it’s ultimately the dream-focused parts that stand out here specifically.
4
“The Weight” (Episode 4)
“The Weight” is about a weight-related joke that Ralphie made earlier in season 4, because that’s just Ralphie being Ralphie for you. That joke starts to have more dramatic consequences here, and really, the most intense mob-related drama comes about, in this season, because of that joke, and how Johnny Sack wants to strike back at Ralphie for it.
This episode also gives screen time to Ginny, Johnny Sack’s wife, showcasing some of her struggles with her weight in a way that is humanizing and compassionate, all the while also showing Johnny’s dedication to her that goes some way toward making him one of the better/more honorable gangsters in the show. The episode does have some heart to it, and Johnny and Ginny honestly have one of the better and healthier relationships throughout the seasons they’re in, compared to almost all other couples on the show.
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