Carmela has another furtive romance collapse, while Tony B. throws away a chance to turn his life around.
Plot
Carmela has developed a romantic interest in one of AJ's teachers, Robert Wegler, whom she met at a school conference. Wegler is educated, attentive, and interested in Carmela as a person rather than as Tony Soprano's wife. They spend time together and become involved. Carmela experiences something with Wegler that she has not had in her marriage: being treated as an individual.
Carmela and Rosalie Aprile take a trip to Paris. The Paris scenes are the series' most deliberately romantic -- the architecture, the food, the specific experience of being an American woman in a city where no one knows your husband. Carmela eats and walks and sits in museums and is briefly, genuinely happy. She calls home to check in. The contrast between Paris and New Jersey is not ironic but simply accurate.
When Carmela returns and the relationship with Wegler continues, it runs into the reality of what Carmela is. Wegler eventually ends the relationship, telling Carmela she was using him to leverage better academic treatment for AJ. There is some truth in this, though it is not the whole truth. Carmela is furious and wounded. The episode, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, treats Carmela's desire for something beyond the Soprano world with full seriousness.
Credits
Written by: Matthew Weiner
Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich