Dr. Melfi Actually Missed This Major Part of Tony’s Complicated Duck Dream in ‘The Sopranos’
The opening scene of the pilot episode of The Sopranos was the perfect way to hit the tone for the HBO series. A sullen Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) staring at an art sculpture in a psychiatrist’s waiting room told everyone that this was no ordinary series about organized crime. More than racketeering, hits, and evading federal prosecution, David Chase‘s groundbreaking HBO drama was a cerebral exercise about the fragility of the male subconscious heading into the ominous 21st century. The dynamic between Tony and his therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), was the root of the show’s endlessly analytical urges and thematic richness.
In Season 1, Episode 1, “The Sopranos,” Tony, in one of his many sessions with Dr. Melfi, describes a recent dream involving his belly button, detached genitalia, and the overarching metaphor of the entire episode: ducks. Melfi’s analysis was astute for someone who had just met this mercurial crime boss, but the deeper, twisted meanings of Tony’s dream prove that she was barely scratching the surface, according to a compelling fan theory by Ingrid Jennison on Instagram.
‘The Sopranos’ Tapped Into the Mind of Tony Soprano From the Very Beginning
James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano in The Sopranos-1Image via HBO
As we learn throughout the series through flashbacks, Tony has been suffering from panic attacks since his youth. These emotional episodes dominantly stem from his thorny, antagonistic, and seemingly-unsolvable relationship with his mother, Livia (Nancy Marchand). Other times, it’s the sight of items representing his father’s illicit line of work, such as meat that was stolen from a local butcher.
After suffering a panic attack while operating the grill at his son A.J.’s (Robert Iler) birthday party, seeking mental health consultation — which he had avoided all his life — became a must. Tony’s sessions with Dr. Melfi were mainstays in The Sopranos, with the latter probing into the warped mind of this emotionally taciturn professional tough guy. Using psychiatry to examine the psychopathology of your main character may seem like a crutch, but David Chase and his writers expertly used the setting to underline the multidimensional nature of Tony and the blurred line between counseling and enabling of sociopathic tendencies on Melfi’s part.
Tony’s Duck Dream in the Pilot Episode of ‘The Sopranos’ Contains Multitudes
Following the initial meeting, a reluctant Tony shares a peculiar dream he recently had where he was walking down the street while a bird was unscrewing his belly button as if it were a nail. The unscrewing caused his penis to fall off, leaving him in a panic. As he scrambles to find a mechanic to re-attach his genitalia to his body, the bird swoops in from the sky and steals it with its beak. The presence of an avian animal is quite conspicuous, as Tony’s beloved ducks flying away from the backyard pool was the impetus for his latest panic attack.
In typical psychiatric fashion, Melfi tries to get Tony to connect the dots between the dream and the ducks. A closed-off Tony, who will continue rejecting any in-depth psychoanalysis surrounding his emotionality in the series, figures the bird was incidental, or perhaps because he recently watched Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds. When Melfi suggests that it was a duck that flew off with his penis, a distraught Tony proclaims, “Those goddamn ducks!” The pilot episode showed that Tony’s brass and menacing physicality were no match for Melfi’s diagnosis of his mind.
In retrospect, Melfi’s reading of the dream was a rookie shortcoming, as the makeup of the dream speaks to so much more about Tony’s disposition and mindset. It doesn’t take a psychiatry degree to link the detachment of male genitalia to feelings of insecure masculinity. From the minute he stepped into Melfi’s office, Tony sensed his pride waning, as emotional vulnerability is a no-go in his world. He wouldn’t want to be caught dead inside these brown walls, especially if his fellow wiseguys suspected he was revealing family secrets.
As with anything that manifests in a dream, nothing occurs by accident. A bird, presumably a duck, representing the loss of innocence and purity in his life (Tony’s romanticization with animals would be a recurring theme in the series), unscrewing his belly button ties into his relationship with his mother, a figure he will never escape, even after she passes in Season 3. Tony carries a Freudian complex during Livia’s tenure on the show, beginning when her animosity toward Tony evolves into her putting a hit on her own son. Tony’s vices and worst tendencies stem from Livia, and his rocky relationships with other women are all manipulated by his mother. Melfi is quick to recognize when Tony draws parallels from Gloria Trillo’s (Annabella Sciorra) own toxicity to that of Livia.
What Tony’s Duck Dream Says About His Character and State of Mind on ‘The Sopranos’
James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano in The Sopranos episode Pilot, standing with his arms crossed.Image via HBO
The image of a belly button being “unscrewed” evokes an explicit longing for a primal connection to Livia — connecting himself back to her umbilical cord in the womb. In his subconscious, the act of having his penis removed signals a willingness to relinquish his sense of masculinity and return to the comfort of his loving mother, which is, of course, something he never had growing up or as an adult. Tony is so alienated by Livia’s coldness and her vitriolic offense taken at being placed in a nursing home that his mind has reverted to yearning for a fetal reconnection. The sudden shock of having his penis fall off in the dream underlines his overriding malaise about losing control of his mob family and masculinity due to the stress caused by his mother, as well as the fear that he will be viewed as weak for seeking mental health consultation.
One element of the dream that Tony glosses over — his frantic search for his favorite car mechanic — signals his interpretation of psychiatric treatment for the next 85 episodes of The Sopranos. The literal act of physically screwing back on his genitals as if it were a faulty piece of metal is a metaphor of how he views Dr. Melfi’s line of work. After years of medication and regular appointments, Tony grows increasingly frustrated that she hasn’t provided him with a cure for his panic attacks and gloomy moods as if they were physical ailments that can be fixed with a simple solution and not long-term treatment. The dream indicates that he was never fully committed to therapy, which shows itself in the back half of the series, with Tony slacking off during visits. In the series’ penultimate episode, “The Blue Comet,” Melfi realizes that he’s nothing but a leech and these sessions merely enable his sociopathic ways.
Just because Dr. Melfi did not consider these theories in her diagnosis of Tony’s dream in The Sopranos‘ pilot episode is not a sign of poor consultation. After all, it’s easy for the average armchair psychologist viewer to chew on all these details over 25 years later and constant Sopranos re-watches and retrospectives. It’s not that the audience was smarter than David Chase, but each episode of the iconic series lured everyone into reading between the lines of the text. The fact that Chase pulled this off in a show set in our everyday world without any explicit surrealism like Twin Peaks is even more impressive. Episode 1 of The Sopranos and its deep psychological analysis was only the beginning. TV audiences had no idea what was coming its way.
Release Date
1999 – 2007
Network
HBO
Showrunner
David Chase
Directors
Tim Van Patten, John Patterson, Alan Taylor, Jack Bender, Steve Buscemi, Daniel Attias, David Chase, Andy Wolk, Danny Leiner, David Nutter, James Hayman, Lee Tamahori, Lorraine Senna, Matthew Penn, Mike Figgis, Nick Gomez, Peter Bogdanovich, Phil Abraham, Rodrigo García
Writers
Michael Imperioli, Jason Cahill, Lawrence Konner, David Flebotte, James Manos, Jr., Salvatore Stabile, Toni Kalem, Mark Saraceni, Nick Santora
