In The Sopranos, mob boss Tony Soprano seeks to avoid landing himself a jail sentence all
while making as much money as he can and controlling both his family and “the” family.
Tony’s nephew, Christopher Moltisanti, is dear to Tony. Chrissy is his protegee, the
man who Tony grooms to become his successor after his reign as boss ends. As such, Chrissy
often receives special privileges at the expense of other mobsters, such as when Patsey is
passed over for promotion which is instead given to Chris. In spite of the nepotism,
Chris proves to be a failure for Tony, due to his constant fuck ups, the most dangerous
of which is his drug and alcohol addictions. With his substance abuse, Tony lives in constant
fear of Chris flipping to the feds in order to avoid a length jail sentence, and in the
process, giving him up. As such, in season 6, Tony utilizes an opportunity after a car
crash leaves Christopher immobilised to block his airways, killing Christopher is what is
surely one of Tony’s darkest and most sickening moments.
Now, the issue as to why Tony killed Christopher and phycology and analysis behind this is
something I’ve already discussed in a video called “Why did Tony kill Christopher?”
It might be worth checking out that video before you continue with this one, as I discuss
in great detail Tony’s line of reasoning for killing Chris and his mindset behind the
decision, and for the sake of people who have already watched that video I want to avoid
going over the same points.
This video is basically an extension of that one, but of course that video is already very
long, so here I wanted to discuss a further possibility with regards to Christopher’s
death, a Sopranos theory which is a lot more obscure than many I’ve discussed on the
channel but one that is worth talking about, and that is – did Christopher become a rat,
and was he wearing a wire when he was with Tony in the car?
Now, I know what some of you guys are thinking – fuckin’ slander, ask me - where on earth
are you getting this from, no-where is it ever suggested that Christopher became a rat.
And yes, it’s true that the series never really points to the fact that Chris might
have been wearing wire, but who know, keep watching the video and you might come to find
that there might actually be a case here. And before you do, if you haven’t already,
please subscribe to the channel and hit the notification button so you don’t miss out
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member.
Now of course, the idea of Chris becoming an informant is always flirted with in the
show. He’s actively being sought after by the FBI, who know that he is their door to
Tony. His own girlfriend ws talking to the feds, which, no mater how innocent Chris was
in all of it, would no doubt make Tony constantly weary of him, in fact, the first thing he
does when Christ tells him the news about Adriana is check to see if Chris is wearing
a wire. There’s a scene where Paulie has Chris undress to check him for a wire, which
was mainly done to humiliate him of course, but what I’m getting at here is the idea
is constantly planted by the show that this guy could end up flipping. The closest he
actually came was of course after Adrianna came clean to him, and he leaves and then
looks out at a family, your average, normal American family, and knows that he could never
live that kind of life, away from the allures of the mob and far away in some distant corner
of the world in the witness protection programme. Maybe he genuinely thought about doing it,
or maybe he was just trying to give Adriana a false sense of security, but I feel this
is the closest he came to actually flipping.
And you might be thinking, well, if he was gonna flip, that’s when he would have done
it, so why would he waste an opportunity to live life out with Adriana and not flip when
he had the chance, and al of a sudden decide to do it in season 6. Well, by this point,
the relationship between Tony and Chris is no longer what it once was. There is resentment
from Chris over Adriana, there is resentment from Tony over Chris’ disappointment as
his number two. Chris becomes frustrated as his battle to stay sober becomes a running
gag in the mob, and other mobsters such as Tony B and Bobby Bacala become closer to Tony
at the expense of him. there is an element of Chris that thinks, this is the guy I got
Adriana killed for? The innocent, beautiful love of my life? And this is the way he treats
me? The way he marginalises me? Constantly berates me and passes me over? And let’s
not forget, the whole issue of Chris potentially flipping because he gets busted on drugs charges,
like Pussy, is always ever present.
Christopher even entertains the idea of turning rat at one point, in the episode Walk Like
A Man, where he drunkenly tells J T Dolan, his friend who was writing Law and Order:
The SUV, “You have any idea, if I wanted, what I could do to these pricks? One phone
call and it’s over” – this is the episode before Christopher dies, where he’s upset
and infuriated at Paulie’s joke about his daughter working at The Bing – who’s to
say Chrissy didn’t go ahead and make that phone call? The motivation is clearly there.
He also talks about how Gervano was living large in Arizona because of the programme,
saying that the government has money to burn. Let’s not forget, unlike before, Christopher
now also has a wife and kid to protect.
So what’s the evidence behind this theory – well, it pretty much starts and ends with
the cleaver cap that Christopher wears. In both his first scene, an his last scene, Christopher
is wearing a ballcap, and as we know, Jack Massarone had flipped in season 5 and he was
wearing a wire in his cap, provided by the FBI. He would never take his cap off, even
at Tony’s insistence, and though Tony eventually works out that he’s a rat, he never finds
out that wire was in Massarone’s cap.
The best time for Chris to have flipped was after Adriana came clean to him, but instead
he sold her out. He’s suggested on numerous occasions since then that he regretted this
decision, and not least because Adriana was truly the only other person he had in the
world. She’s dead, he’s alienated from his crew, he murders Dolan, what else does
he have left? Isn’t it a bit weird how the murder of a Hollywood screenwriter with mob
connections is killed with Christopher’s fingerprints all over his apartment, and yet
no-one ever brings this character up again, almost like the murder was hushed up. Hushed
up by who? The FBI, perhaps, who use this as leverage to nab Christopher. Tony would
have been furious with the killing of J T, because it would have bought The Sopranos
unnecessary heat, and yet he never brings it up, suggesting that he doesn’t even know
about it, even though he was so close to the FBI agent Harris.
Now, Christopher acts very weird in the episode he dies in, both at the meeting with Phil
Leotardo and the subsequent car ride, and it’s pretty much chalked up to drugs. But
Christopher hardly ever wears hats, why is he all of a sudden wearing one now, and at
that, a Cleaver hat to a mob meeting – it’s a wonder Uncle Philly didn’t slap it off
his head and remind everyone that he did 20 fuckin’ years. At the meeting, when Tony
says, “you got the scam Phil” we get a close up of Chris looking away into the distance,
as if he knows the feds have just heard something incriminating, and a few seconds later, he
says “there’s closed monitoring at every fuckin’ landfill” as if confirming to
the feds the scope of the scam. But Chris’ erratic behavior and ticks could be in fact
due to his nervousness because he’s wearing a wire, or maybe, it IS the drugs, but the
entire reason why Christopher relapsed is because he got caught out by the feds and
is bricking it that he’s wearing a wire. Of course, this theory branches out into two
directions – Chris willingly going to the FBI, or getting caught by them, or I guess,
a combination of both.
Maybe that’s why he turns the volume up so high when he’s in the car – perhaps
he was getting cold feet about giving Tony up, or maybe he was forced to become a rat
by the FBI and was using Big Pussy’s disinformation tactics so the feds wouldn’t be able to
hear Tony on the wire. Let’s not forget, the soundtrack the duo listen to is from The
Departed, a film full of informants, one who is like a son to the main crime boss who ends
up being a rat. He also talks about stopping and smelling the roses, each day’s a gift,
that kind of stuff, which could be the last few words a son says before he sends his father
to jail for the rest of his life, who knows? And maybe that’s why he’s so concerned
with not being caught out with a drugs test – since when would Chris care if he had
a licence or not, with the amount of illegal things he does. But if part of his deal with
the feds was that he wasn’t allowed to get high anymore, all of a sudden he has a real
problem.
Also, this might come off as laughable, but since we’re here anyway discussing this,
when Christopher crashes the car, the car literally flips! Yeah, I know, but it’s
worth mentioning, I don’t have much else to go on. On a side note, it’s amusing to
note that in Goodfellas, after Joe Pesci shoots and kills Michael Imperioli’s character,
Spider, Imperioli of course who plays Christopher, he says his whole family were rats and he
would’ve grown up to become a rat, and The Soprano acknowledges Goodfellas and the Spider
situation with Christopher shooting a character in the foot in season 1 and saying “it happens”,
when of course his character was shot in the foot
in Goodfellas.
So those are pretty much my evidences for this theory. Personally, I like this theory,
in a kind of, what might have been kind of way, and it’s ominous to know that Tony
unknowingly sparred himself life in jail by killing Chris, but I don’t really buy the
theory. The show doesn’t push enough into it for it to be a legitimate one, I don’t
think, like with whether Ralph really killed the horse and other stuff fans of the show
talk about. Plus, there are a few holes in it – in an earlier season, the FBI agent
who hangs around with Pussy says the feds would never look the other ay on a murder
charge, which they surely would have to do if Christopher became a rat, and also, wouldn’t
the hat be among the possessions at the hospital, where the wire could be easily found? Although
I guess no-one actively looks for a wire in a cap, and it could have easily been thrown
away.
Chris wearing a cap could simply be a call back to the first season where he was wearing
a cap and he drives Tony around. He might’ve also been wearing one because he was high
and wanted to hide his eyes – and him being high might explain why he was being so soft
of Phil – nobody wants to go to the mattresses high on heroin. Or maybe, because he’s a
rat and rats are not supposed to encourage violence, that’s why he is so uncharacteristically
soft on Phil, who he absolutely hates.
Or the cap might simply symbolise that Christopher has no arc, that they’re generally worn
by children, highlighting his immaturity, and though he is now a made man, the point
of the cap being worn in his first scene and last scene is to show he never developed or
grew as the series progressed.
So what do you think about this theory? Do you think it holds any weight? Let me know
in the comments below, and thanks for watching.