The Sopranos: 10 Greatest Ever Episodes

The Sopranos featured some savage fights during the course of its run, but none were quite as hard-hitting as the domestic showdown between Tony and Carmela in the fourth season finale Whitecaps, which led to the couple’s separation that would last for most of the next season. For four years audiences had witnessed the many flaws in the Sopranos marriage - namely Tony’s continuing affairs and Carmela’s willingness to brush over her husband’s indiscretions in order to maintain her luxurious lifestyle. In Whitecaps this doomed marriage comes crashing down in spectacular fashion.

The straw that breaks the camel’s back is when Tony’s ex-goomah calls the house and informs Carmela not only about Tony’s history with her, but that he’s recently been sleeping with her cousin Svetlana. Tony returns home to find Carmela launching his things out onto the front yard, and the two have an explosive confrontation that has been coming their entire marriage. Like any lasting married couple, they know how to cut each other deep, slugging one another with some unwelcome home truths. The outstanding performances of Gandolfini and particularly Edie Falco turn this into jaw-dropping drama that no other show has really come close to.

The destruction of the Sopranos marriage is made all the more powerful by the fact that, at the beginning of the episode, we see them at their happiest. Tony has just bought Carmela a house on the Jersey Shore, and the two celebrate with a romantic dance on the beach. As much as we might want them to end up happily ever after by the end of the episode, we know this just can’t happen. And so, by the final scene, Tony walks out of his house, seemingly for good, into the night. Perhaps no episode of any show has so unflinchingly depicted the breakdown of a marriage in all its ugliness, and that’s why Whitecaps makes this list.