Don't Give Meth to High Schoolers | The Sopranos S1E3 | Dudes Daily
I registered the retcon in the previous episode, making Tony only the acting head of the North Jersey mob after the pilot's indication he was fully in charge, but it wasn't clear what to make of it yet. In this episode, I already feel it doing really productive work.
Here, we see both Tony and Uncle Junior appealing upward as they navigate their conflict, Tony to Jackie and Junior to Livia. Both are disempowered, Jackie by cancer and Livia by being forcibly moved to the assisted care facility. Livia fares better, able to give Junior what amounts to orders around Christopher and his deadbeat pal. I'd have to revisit the pilot, but I wonder how much of this Livia/Junior dynamic was there; at the time, I read the very similar conversation between them as purely menacing from Junior.