HBO’s The Sopranos follows the life of New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano
and all the colourful characters his life is surrounded by, like his wife and two children,
his protegee Christopher Moltisanti, and his mob underlings like Silvio, Paulie and Furio.
Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri is a solider in the DiMeo family, later becoming a captain
and eventually the underboss of the family. An interesting figure, Paulie is a highly paranoid
germaphobe who’s petty, jealous and competitive behaviour often put him and others in trouble.
Between season 3 and 4, Paulie is arrested on a gun charge and serves time in prison.
As no-one comes to visit him or takes care of his mother while he is away,
plus the lucrative earning abilities of Paulie’s rival Ralph Cifaretto, Paulie becomes bitter
towards his own family, and decides to do a bit of shit-stirring. During his 4 month stint, Paulie
learns that Ralph made an insensitive joke about Johnny Sack’s wife, Johnny being the underboss
of the powerful New York Lupertazzi family and a very dear friend of Tony Soprano. Paulie phones up
Johnny and tells him the joke, which sends Johnny into an irate fit where he demands that Carmine,
head of the Lupertazzi crime family, sanctions a hit on Ralph, but he is turned down.
Johnny and Paulie continue to talk, and it’s implied the two share several dinners
and meetings with each other, which the highly manipulative Johnny Sack utilizes to get useful
information from Paulie. With Paulie unloading his frustrating woes and family troubles onto Johnny,
Johnny is able to make use of this information to squeeze money out of the Sopranos family,
such as when Paulie reveals that the assemblyman Ronald Zellman did some work for The Sopranos
without the Lupertazzi’s knowing, and after Johnny puts this to Tony, Tony is forced to give up
some of his family’s percentages in the project and the two families share the use of Zellman.
Paulie’s motivation for running information to New York is because he either feels he will become
boss one day of the Sopranos, with New York a powerful ally, or because he has delusions of
switching families and playing a big role in the Lupertazzi crew. Either way it’s obvious that he’s
being played by Johnny, and this is made clear to Paulie when, after being repeatedly told that
Carmine thinks highly of the three-time winning chin-up cup champion, when the two finally meet in
the episode Eloise, Carmine has no idea who Paulie is, and Paulie realises he’s been played, and he
goes back to kissing Tony’s ass, and it’s assumed he stopped running information to Johnny Sack.
Now, this entire situation brings up many questions that we can ponder on,
one of which is how could Carmine not recognise Paulie, who’s been around for decades in the mob?
I’ve taken a look at this question in another video, which you can check out,
and while we’re on the subject, if you haven’t already done so, consider checking out the channel
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Anyway, what I wanted to talk about today was – why did Johnny not tell Tony that Paulie was the
one who told him the joke? Johnny and Tony were good friends, and Tony knew that someone from his
family was speaking out of turn, so wouldn’t it be good for their sometimes-fractured relationship
if Johnny let loose that it was Paulie who started the who Ginny Sack telephone war, and that it was
he who gave New York all that private family information? What benefit does Johnny get in
protecting a nobody like Paulie when he’d want to keep Tony, boss of the family, a happy man?
One way of looking at this is to actually break down two different time periods where
Johnny could have made it known that Paulie was the wind beneath his wings,
one is when the tensions were high and when Johnny demanded a sit down with New Jersey, specifically
when Tony told Johnny that he would give Ralph on a platter if he just told Tony who had told
him about the joke. And as well all know, Johnny thought about it, and then went on the defensive,
grandstanding and going on about if this was years ago would he even have had to ask to whack Ralph.
The second period where Johnny could have told Tony was after all the hullabaloo was over,
when the issue had been resolved and Johnny accepted Ralph’s apology. Maybe even after
Ralph died, or after Johnny became boss, Tony and Johnny could be having one of their meetings and
maybe as leverage in a business transaction, or just for the hell of it, Johnny could
have just said “hey remember that whole joke thing? Well, do you wanna know who told me?”
It is actually something I wondered when watching The Sopranos. It’s like once the whole Ginny Sack
joke storyline is over, everyone kinda forgets about this, but you’d think Paulie would be
constantly shitting himself over the possibility that Johnny Sack could one day tell Tony
that not only he told him about the joke, but he told him about inside Sopranos information, and
if Tony found out, surely Paulie would get killed for this? Surely it would be seen as a betrayal
of the family, the proof that Tony finally needed to kill Paulie, something which he did contemplate
doing in the show. I can’t see Tony simply fining Paulie – his envelopes are light enough as it
is without being taxed – and given that Tony is only rarely ever impressed with Paulie, I can see
him getting rid of the guy after no longer being able to trust him for giving away family secrets.
So why didn’t Johnny tell Tony? Well, I’ve done some thinking,
and there’s a few reasons I’ve come up with.
First of all, during that sit down between New York and New Jersey,
Johnny is pressed to reveal who the informant was,
and even Carmine thinks this is a reasonable exchange in return for Ralph’s head.
But had he mentioned that it was Paulie, in a series of conversations between the two men
behind Tony’s back, as opposed to say, a random Sopranos associate mentioning it in passing,
it would completely destroy Johnny Sack’s credibility as a New York Underboss. He
wouldn’t be considered trustworthy anymore by his friend Tony, with him going behind the
guy’s back and profiting from his underling. He would also lose Carmine’s trust, because Johnny
used Carmine’s good name to butter up Paulie, but Carmine had no idea this plan was being devised.
It would be pretty embarrassing for Johnny to just say “yeah, me and Paulie were shooting the
shit and he told me the joke, and a whole lot of other things”. In addition to this,
Paulie wasn’t even there when the joke was made, so he isn’t a credible witness,
and therefore Tony and Ralph could just deny the joke was ever made and close the case. It would
open up pandora’s box by involving Little Paulie, who told Paulie the joke, and the other mobsters
present could also possibly be questioned, and they would just say whatever line Tony fed them.
Johnny’s playing everyone in this storyline, including his own boss. And by giving up Paulie,
in a manner of speaking, he would essentially be ratting. Think about it. If this mobster can give
up a fellow la cosa nostra member, put him out to pasture just because of a fat joke, what could the
feds do to him under intense questioning? The minute he says Paulie’s name, no one can trust
Johnny with their secrets, with their business dealings, because who knows? Whenever Johnny is
next pressured up, or his ego is hurt because of a wife joke, he might start singing like a canary.
And speaking of ego, that’s another thing to consider. Johnny is genuinely insulted
by the joke, he is enraged at the idea of a roomful of men taking the piss out of his
wife and being unable to do anything about it, and as Uncle Junior says, he’s right,
a man in the old days would not be expected to stand for such a thing. So Johnny may have
also refused o give up Paulie’s name out of principle. Out of the fact that he should
be allowed to kill Ralph because of the joke, and shouldn’t have to stoop to such low levels,
as an underboss, of having to bring forward a witness when everyone knows what Ralph said.
Let’s put a positive spin on things. Maybe Johnny never gave up Paulie, quite simply, because he’s a
stand-up guy? He is shown to be honourable in many ways – he doesn’t cheat on his wife; he
defends her honour. Sure, he was playing Paulie, but he took their secret to their grave because
it was the right thing to do, and giving the guy up would be as good as killing him,
and maybe, who knows, maybe Johnny actually likes Paulie.
Maybe he thinks there’s a chance he can get more information out of hi in the future.
He has already benifited a lot from him, and maybe it’s a rare humane act from one of these mobsters
to protect one of their own from a whacking based on what Paulie has given Johnny in the past.
Let’s look at it from another angle. Now, this might not be a very strong theory,
but hear me out. Yes, Johnny wanted to kill Ralph, he even went out of his way to organise a hit
behind Carmine’s back, but maybe, just maybe, he was making a big show because, as a man,
he needed to be seen as defending his wife’s honour. After all, he didn’t go through with
the hit in the end, although admittedly he only stopped it when he saw Ginny stuffing her face.
Maybe Johnny didn’t want Ralph to die. If Ralph went away, it could potentially
damage the Esplanade business, and in a scene between Johnny and his wife,
it’s established that construction is one of Johnny’s biggest earning rackets,
and his pockets are a lot lighter during Tony and Carmine’s feud which involved Carmine temporarily
shutting down construction. If Johnny gives up Ralph, Ralph dies, and potentially a giant
revenue stream of Johnny’s dies with him, so in the end, ironically, given everything he said,
it was all about the money in the end, and after all of Johnny’s emotional outbursts, Johnny Sack,
ever the pragmatist, took the sensible decision and chose to make a big scene out of the joke but
never go as far as to actually get Ralph killed and thus damage the construction racket. Like I
said, not the most plausible theory because it really seemed like Johnny wanted Ralph dead,
but it’s a theory I like, and it would re-iterate that all these guys care about is money, and even
someone like Johnny who loves his wife dearly, would be willing to allow his wife to get insulted
if it meant he could continue to make money. What’s next, he gets to fuck her for a million?
There are other reasons that could have flashed through Johnny’s head.
For one, Tony giving up Ralph could put Johnny in Tony’s pocket. Years down the line, when trouble
arises with Phil Leotardo, Tony could turn around and say, “remember when I took care of the joke
incident and gave up Ralph? Well I’m not giving up my cousin that animal Blundetto, you owe me one.”
And also, the whole thing with Johnny and Paulie talking, mobsters getting together and secretly
making alliances and profiting off one another, is not a big thing, and is a common occurrence in the
mob. This is just one situation that threatened to boil over because of the sensitivity of the joke.
Heck, Tony got together with all of the rest of the capos in the early seasons
behind Junior’s back while Junior was the boss. Surely that’s a far greater betrayal?
And in terms of why Johnny never brought it up years later – why would he? The situation
was finalised, it was over and done with, sorted between all parties. Ralph was dead,
why bring up old feuds and risk being embarrassed again by having
people repeat the joke – let sleeping dogs lie.
So there you have it? Why do you think Johnny never told Tony about Paulie
telling him the joke? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for watching.