Bust Out

"**Bust Out**"
"Bust Out"
The Sopranos episode
Episode no.	Season 2; Episode 10
Directed by	John Patterson
Written by	Frank Renzulli ; Robin Green ; Mitchell Burgess
Cinematography by	Phil Abraham
Production code	210
Original air date	March 19, 2000
Running time	59 minutes
Episode chronology
← Previous; "From Where to Eternity"	Next →; "House Arrest"
	The Sopranos season 2
	List of episodes

Last updated April 03, 2024

"Bust Out" is the 23rd episode of the HBO original series The Sopranos and the 10th of the show's second season. It was written by Frank Renzulli, Robin Green, and Mitchell Burgess and directed by John Patterson, and originally aired on March 19, 2000.

Starring

* = credit only

Guest starring

John Ventimiglia as Artie Bucco

Also guest starring

Synopsis

Dr. Melfi tells Tony that he seems scared. A witness has identified him as one of two men leaving the scene of Matt's murder, but after a press report that the murder is Mafia-related, the witness retracts his statement. Pussy has another acrimonious meeting with Agent Skip Lipari and denies that he was the second man. Lipari orders him to record Tony admitting to the murder.

Tony and Richie subject Davey Scatino's store to a "bust out", using the store's line of credit to buy expensive merchandise with which to pay off his gambling debt, and doing so until the store goes bankrupt. Tony points out to Davey that the Executive Game was fair and that Davey could just as easily have won, but Davey is not consoled and is close to suicide.

Richie is dissatisfied with the cut he is getting from Davey's store, and with the deal he has with the DiMeo family's sanitation business. Egged on by Janice, he approaches Uncle Junior with the idea of eliminating Tony. Junior admonishes him, but Richie points out that Junior himself planned to kill Tony the previous year. Tony visits Beansie in the hospital and insists on giving him $50,000.

Davey's wife does not know about his disastrous debt to Tony. She is friends with Carmela and introduces her to her brother, Victor Musto. Carmela and Victor, who is recently widowed, are immediately attracted to each other. He is a housepainter, and she engages him to wallpaper part of her house. They suddenly kiss when they are alone in a small powder room. They agree that he will come alone the next day, without his assistant. That evening, Victor meets Davey, who confesses that he is ruined, in debt to Tony. The next day, only Victor's assistant comes to Carmela's house.

In therapy with Melfi, Tony claims he is fine with going to jail, but only once his kids are grown, so that he is not an absentee father. One night in the kitchen, drunk, he reminds Meadow that he loves her. After some cruel words to A.J., Tony feels bad and tries to get closer to him. At first he resists, but they are happy together, speeding on Tony's boat.

Title reference

A "bust out" is a fraud tactic, commonly used in the organized crime world, wherein a business' assets and lines of credit are exploited and exhausted to the point of insolvency.^[1] Richie and Tony profit from busting out Davey Scatino's sporting goods store in this episode.
"Bust out" is also a poker term that Poker News defines as: "To lose all your chips and thus be eliminated from a tournament."^[2] It was Davey Scatino's "bust out" in Tony's Executive Poker Game that led to the bust out of his sporting goods store.

Cultural references

In bed, Carmela is reading Memoirs of a Geisha .
Livia mentions Rose Kennedy, the wealthy matriarch of the Kennedy family.
When Richie visits Junior at his home, Junior is watching the CBS daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful .
Carmela tells Tony about a Harvard study examining the importance of the father-son relationship she read about in Time .
Tony mentions "The Scorpion and the Frog" to David Scatino.
At home, the eyewitness is reading Anarchy, State, and Utopia , by Robert Nozick.
Richie tells Janice that Mafia rules dictate that an underling cannot kill a boss. She responds, "Tell that to Paul Castellano", referring to the assassination of Castellano by John Gotti.
A.J. is shown playing the Dreamcast game Flag to Flag .

Music

The piano instrumental playing at Nuovo Vesuvio during lunch with Carmela and Christine Scatino is "Cast Your Fate to the Wind".
The song "Con te partirò" by Andrea Bocelli appears for the third time this season, played as Carmela thinks about and receives a phone call from the handyman. This song was especially prominent in "Commendatori", playing (among other places) when Carmela and her friends discussed hoping to be free of their husbands.
The music playing during the scene wherein the witness realizes the murder victim was a Mafia associate is the second movement from Anton Webern's Variations for Piano , Op. 27.
When Carmela is preparing the food for her lunch with Vic Musto, "You're Still the One" by Shania Twain is playing in the background.
The song played over the end credits is "Wheel in the Sky" by Journey; this song also played in the scene of painters wallpapering the Sopranos' dining room.

Filming locations

Listed in order of first appearance:^[3]

Garden State Plaza in Paramus, New Jersey
Ramsey Outdoor in Paramus, New Jersey
North Caldwell, New Jersey
Washington Middle School in Harrison, New Jersey
Long Island City, Queens
Satin Dolls in Lodi, New Jersey
Great Kills, Staten Island

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References

↑ Experian Data Analytics. Bust-out fraud 2018: Knowing what to look for can save the bottom line (PDF). Retrieved August 27, 2018.
↑ "Poker Terms: Bust Out". Poker News. Retrieved August 28, 2018.
↑ Ugoku. "The Sopranos location guide - Filming locations for". www.sopranos-locations.com. Retrieved 2020-04-23.

External links

"Bust Out" Archived 2016-08-18 at the Wayback Machine at HBO
"Bust Out" at IMDb

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
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[1] Experian Data Analytics. Bust-out fraud 2018: Knowing what to look for can save the bottom line (PDF). Retrieved August 27, 2018.

[2] "Poker Terms: Bust Out". Poker News. Retrieved August 28, 2018.

[3] Ugoku. "The Sopranos location guide - Filming locations for". www.sopranos-locations.com. Retrieved 2020-04-23.

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