#IDreamOfTonySoprano 1x04 - "The Therapy Dream", Meadowlands.

The is the first dream sequence we see, opening with Tony and Melfi staring intimately at each other in silence. We don't know it yet. Camera scans her legs, Melfi breathes flirtatiously out of character.

You don't need to have taken a semester and a half of college to understand this is the beginnings of a sex dream, wish fulfillment, the seeds of Tony's idolisation of caring, mothering female figures. It's fantasy, it's role play, it's foreplay in his mind.

Here's where we realise this is just a dream. We see Hesh float by the window. A window is a entrance or an exit, for thoughts to roam free, much like therapy, but it is also a divide that separates two worlds. The duality of themes such as family and morality come to play here.

It may be Hesh but symbolically this is Tony's father. Same age, best friend, memories of the old days and the world he grew up in. This may foreshadow Tony's relationship with his own father in later episodes, connecting to his panic attacks. His weakness isn't safe.

This DVD chapter is titled "Paranoia". Self explanatory. Melfi uses the intimate pet name "Heshie", how T sometimes refers to him.

He has a 3 o'clock; a recurring theme of death, foreshadowing the angle of Tony's ultimate demise in the final episode but also another death...

Remember the ducks? His fear of dying before seeing his children grow up, or losing them. Paranoia. We see AJ seeing his father through a narrow perspective, oblivious to the many other sides of who he really is. Foreshadows young Tony witness his own father's violence.

AJ of course is Tony's true self, a child forced to be tough in a world of usery and violence, and from one family, we see the next. From innocence to a sleazy shot of Silvio, his contemporary, getting a lapdance. What was supposed to be a sex dream is now taking a dark turn.

Silvio winks (to Tony or us?) which can offer a number of meanings. "This is our secret" (therapy), "this thing of ours" (business) or simply this is all a trick being played on him, nothing is truly as it seems. Possibly a visual wink to the audience that this is all a dream.

Paulie is sat in the waiting room, reading what looks to be Japanese newspaper (foreshadowing his love for Sun Tzu?) but also reading into something he doesn't understand, maybe Tony subliminally defending his reasons for therapy.

"The pinky represents ending and the ability to finish what you started and end what is not serving you anymore."

This ties in with a lot of themes of season 1 and this episode on the whole, specifically Tony's proactively seeking solutions.

Big Pussy looks over to Paulie; like wildfire the suspicion mounts and grows amongst his peers. This will foreshadow Big Pussy embodying Tony's sense of suspicion as the series unfolds.

We return to a shot of Melfi's back. His fear of people turning their back on him and leaving him coming to light. A nurturing figure, a mothering figure becoming unloving and uncaring in his time of need.

The themes of death relate to the impending death of Jackie that occurs in this episode. He ominously mentions thunder and rain. Chaotic, and cleansing; ushering in drastic changes, signalling Tony will have to step up once again and follow his father's footsteps.

The blueprint for the entire first season is mapped out in this dream. Paranoia and death being the poignant themes here but it all comes to a head with this scene; his doctor, someone who is supposed to care for him, betrays his trust. Just like his own mother will.

"I had a semester and a half of college, so I understand Freud".

Of course, at the center of Tony's problems lie his struggles with his mother and how he loved her but she turned her back on him time and time again, and would eventually betray him by trying to have him killed.

This is the reason he cannot emotionally relate to other humans beings, only animals; he can show them love and they love him back. He's still just a child wanting to be loved in a world where he has to act like a man who feels nothing.

Finally, we see a second wink; this time from Jackie, just before Melfivia's "big reveal". Like a magic trick; a cruel joke being played on Tony and everyone else is in on it.

Death, winking at Livia, to keep their little secret of what's about to come at the end of S1.

So many themes of the mother/lover; comes to surface later on where Melfi draws comparisons to the women Tony is drawn to tend to be nurturing, caring women, the opposite of his mother, suggesting he is constantly searching for that validation through affection.

The theme of the son/father never really get the attention it deserves, but this season we see AJ learning about who his dad is, juxtaposed with how Tony later learns about his own father and how he's clearly worried about how his children see him.

There is the fear in knowing that when Jackie dies, Tony will have become his own father, following in his footsteps, boxed into a path of his own unravelling masculinity which will soon be brought into question.

Make my nephew a fucking egg.