There’s been a lot of discussion online about the fact that The Sopranos and Gilmore Girls exist as TV shows in each other’s universes, but that’s not the only Sopranos paradox. It originated with a Reddit post by u/Firstasatragedy, but it’s since been picked up by publications like Esquire, Looper, and Bustle. In The Sopranos season 6, episode 4, “The Fleshy Part of the Thigh,” when Paulie visits Nucci at her retirement community, an episode of Gilmore Girls is playing on a TV in the background.
In Gilmore Girls season 7, episode 17, “Gilmore Girls Only,” when Richard is seen wearing a tracksuit, Lorelai jokingly asks if he’s having lunch with Tony Soprano. This means that when people in The Sopranos universe watch Gilmore Girls, they’ll see a reference to their televised lives, and vice versa. It’s a fun tidbit, but Gilmore Girls isn’t the only show with a weird Sopranos paradox. The same paradox exists with a different HBO show, Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Curb Your Enthusiasm Has Its Own Sopranos Paradox Like Gilmore Girls
Sopranos & Curb Both Referenced Each Other
Gilmore Girls isn’t the only show that referenced The Sopranos and got referenced back by The Sopranos itself. There’s also a crossover of references between The Sopranos and Curb Your Enthusiasm. In each show, the other show is a major plot point. In The Sopranos season 5, episode 3, “Where’s Johnny?,” Tony’s Uncle Junior watches Larry and Jeff in Curb (from the classic season 2 episode “The Doll”) and mistakenly thinks he’s watching himself and Bobby on TV, highlighting his confusion and cognitive decline.
Related
10 The Sopranos Episodes You Can Skip During A Rewatch
Though the show was virtually perfect, some episodes of The Sopranos don’t add much to the plot, focusing on side stories rather than main story arcs.
In Curb Your Enthusiasm season 5, episode 10, “The End,” Larry complains to Cheryl about a missing Sopranos DVD. He doesn’t believe he could’ve been the one who lost it, since he has a system with DVD covers, so he blames Cheryl. When Larry briefly dies and goes to Heaven and gets the chance to ask his guardian angels anything about life or the universe, he just asks where the misplaced Sopranos DVD is. This creates another strange paradox in the Sopranos-verse.
Why The Sopranos Has So Many Unintentional Crossovers
There Was Bound To Be Some Pop-Cultural Overlap
It’s not surprising that The Sopranos has unintentional crossovers with Gilmore Girls and Curb Your Enthusiasm (and probably with a lot more shows that have yet to be discovered). David Chase and his team of writers filled The Sopranos with pop culture references — including references to other TV shows — in order to ground it in the real world. On top of that, The Sopranos is a cultural landmark in itself that’s been referenced by a bunch of other shows, so some overlap was bound to happen.
Source: u/Firstasatragedy
10/10
The Sopranos
Considered to be a quintessential drama series to watch, The Sopranos is a crime-drama series that follows Tony Soprano, who tries to manage the expectations of an Italian-American patriarch while acting as the head of a prolific New Jersey crime family. Burdened by the stress of the expectations thrust upon him, Tony regularly visits a therapist throughout the series run. This helps give context to Tony’s actions as a ruthless boss with violent tendencies.
- Cast
- James Gandolfini , Lorraine Bracco , Edie Falco , Michael Imperioli , Dominic Chianese , Steven Van Zandt , Tony Sirico , Robert Iler , Jamie-Lynn Sigler
- Seasons
- 6
- Showrunner
- David Chase
