With none forbidding music or cut-away digicam work, viewers are pressured to endure the depth of the scene.
As a consequence of a unlucky loss within the chain of custody, the police haven’t any alternative however to free her rapist. Whereas ordering from a sub store, she sees an image of him the place he has been named worker of the month.
There’s a second in her session with mob boss Tony Soprano the place it’s overwhelmingly clear to followers, and surprisingly so to Dr. Melfi herself, that she longs to inform him concerning the assault she suffered. Earlier within the episode, Melfi suggests Tony contemplate seeing a habits modification therapist. Then, she has a dream the place her hand is trapped inside a merchandising machine and her rapist is advancing in direction of her, till a rottweiler seems, menacing to her at first, earlier than it turns and mauls the rapist. In discussing this together with her therapist, Dr. Kupferberg, she involves the conclusion: Tony Soprano is the canine coming to her protection. She sees him as her protector.
Tony is anxious throughout their appointment when she begins to cry and goes to her, asking what the matter is.
After he returns to his seat, he can inform by the silence that she is considering.
“What? You wanna say one thing?”
“No.”
The inner battle and eventual triumph of omission are essential to Dr. Melfi. She is aware of her shopper and has been learning him for years. Although she will not be aware of all his enterprise undertakings, she is conscious of his line of labor and the way their therapist-patient confidentiality settlement permits him a stage of consolation which is usually not awarded to him exterior of the household setting.
So she is aware of that she’d solely have to say the title Jesus Rossi to Tony and he or she’d ‘have her drawback taken care of’.
However finally, this is able to imply two issues.
She would successfully destroy the boundary between them, stunting Tony’s development that they had been capable of make throughout every session, and jeopardizing her profession for momentary gratification and an unfulfilling retribution.
It might additionally mark a turning level for Dr. Melfi herself, particularly her morals and her integrity. If I’m prepared to have Tony Soprano kill for me, the place does it finish? Do I’ve him homicide a neighbour who owes me cash? If I inform him a retailer clerk was impolite to me, would he have them kneecapped?
Different repercussions might need concerned her being requested to repay the ‘favor’ as a result of there is no such thing as a true ‘assist from the mafia’, a thought Melfi would have thought-about. She additionally would have been a prepared participant and accent to against the law, placing her in vital danger.
It’s all these components that led to Jennifer’s silence. However it’s also these components that exist in the true world, components which girls are pressured to contemplate when put ready of vulnerability.
Worker of the Month is chilling as a result of like a big majority of the sequence, it’s rooted in actuality.
Although it’s initially posited that Chase meant for the rape plotline to scale back Melfi to a sufferer, in these closing moments it’s revealed that he did it to push her to confront a disaster of ethics and morality. Her unwillingness to “take the simple manner out” separates her from Tony Soprano and from the mafia.
Bracco herself was stunned by the writers’ determination for her character, saying, “Once they informed me they had been going to do that, I used to be like, ‘Why are you going to harm Melfi?’ And David mentioned, ‘As a result of I do know the ending, and that’s as a result of she doesn’t inform him.’…If she informed him, she knew he would go and harm him, after which she might not be his physician. It was not the correct factor to do.”