When digging for metaphorical gold, pop culture has always hit the jackpot with food and animal imagery. “Pie-O-My” plays with the interaction of the two, first with the image of a mini-skirt wearing, hair-teased, heavily made up rat; namely, Christopher’s wife-to-be, Adriana.
The constant threat of indictment on her mind, she becomes increasingly paranoid around Tony and goes out of her way to avoid him. The feds won’t leave her alone, though, and she leaks info about small-time jobs run by Patsy Parisi. However, a dissatisfied agent Harris advises her that Tony Soprano should be her “area of focus.”
Happily oblivious to his burgeoning problem, Tony and Ralph rake it in at the horse track after Tony’s off-handed advice on how to run Ralphie’s horse, Pie-O-My, winning the boys fistfuls of cash. T continues to hide his assets from Carmela, though, and tensions escalate after he turns down her proposed stock investment and, later, her suspicious trust-fund plan.
A newly single Janice begins to take advantage of her next-door-neighbor status with the Baccilieris and ingratiatingly offers her services as replacement mom to Bobby and the kids. She even gets him to stop moping about and back to the services of Uncle Junior, strong-arming a union head into voting in his favor. But when she suggestively offers to heat up leftovers prepared by Bobby’s deceased wife, he explains that he’s “not ready to eat that yet.”
Food and animals provide several meanings throughout the episode, the most important of which is love (or the lack thereof). Various mob wives care for the widowed Bobby by bringing him food, while others try to do more than care for him by overstepping the veritable culinary boundary. Steve Schirripa’s performances as the lovable Bacala keep up with each and every layer added to his character, vulnerable lug one minute and aggressive goodfella the next.
While Bacala is waited on hand-and-foot, Tony is seen eating several times alone in long shot, an obvious portrayal of his growing alienation from Carmela and his family. He finds solace by episode’s end in stroking Ralphie’s subdued racehorse. The image and its implications are striking, as they come to embody what he’s been looking for throughout “Pie-O-My” — a graceful female presence capable of making him money, yet docile enough to fall under the spell of his reassurances that everything will be OK.
Best line: “I’ve been waiting like patience on a monument.” (Uncle Junior, complaining to Janice about Bobby Bacala’s delayed return to his services.)
