Phil finally puts the hits on the Soprano clan and Tony puts a hit on Phil which results in mistaken identity.
The Blue Comet (S06E20) aired June 3, 2007, as the second-to-last episode of the entire series. Written by David Chase and Matthew Weiner, directed by Alan Taylor. The episode is named after the Blue Comet, a model O-gauge passenger train that Bobby Baccalieri has been hunting down as a collector's piece. He finds it. He does not have long to enjoy it.
Plot
Phil Leotardo has finally made his decision. He wants to dismantle the New Jersey family entirely - not negotiate, not absorb them, eliminate them. He orders simultaneous hits on the three remaining leaders of the Soprano organization: Tony, Bobby Baccalieri, and Silvio Dante.
Bobby is shot and killed at a hobby shop in Wayne. He has just purchased the Blue Comet locomotive he has been looking for, the one he told Tony about in the season. The killers find him in the store. The scene is quick and specific. Bobby dies on the floor among the model trains. He was, by every measure the show offered, the gentlest person in the organization - the one who had never killed anyone before the events of this season, the one who expressed discomfort with violence, the one who married Janice and took care of her kids. The show does not soften his death.
Silvio Dante is shot in the parking lot of the Bada Bing. He survives initially but is left in a coma. He never recovers. Silvio has been Tony's consigliere and the show's most consistent supporting presence across all six seasons. The attack on the Bing - Tony's home ground - is a statement about how completely the situation has changed.
Tony survives because the hit on him does not go as planned. He goes into hiding with Carmela and AJ, eventually sheltered by one of his remaining loyal people. The family is in a safehouse. Tony calls meetings with what is left of his organization, trying to coordinate a response. He puts out feelers on Phil's location.
Separately, Dr. Jennifer Melfi terminates her therapy with Tony. A colleague at a dinner party has shown her a study arguing that sociopaths benefit from therapy not by becoming less dangerous but by becoming better at manipulation - the therapeutic vocabulary gives them tools. Melfi has resisted this interpretation for years. In this episode she accepts it. In their final session she creates a provocation designed to get Tony to walk out, and he does. The eight-year therapy relationship ends with Tony leaving in contempt, which is also how it started.
The episode ends with the Soprano family in hiding, two of Tony's closest men dead or dying, and Phil Leotardo still alive. The finale is one week away.
Credits
Written by David Chase and Matthew Weiner. Directed by Alan Taylor. James Gandolfini as Tony. Steve Van Zandt as Silvio, who is shot and does not speak again in the series. Steve Schirripa as Bobby Baccalieri carries one of the episode's most important scenes. Lorraine Bracco as Dr. Melfi has her final scene with Tony. Frank Vincent as Phil Leotardo drives the episode's violence from offscreen. Edie Falco as Carmela.
Music
The episode makes deliberate use of quiet around the violence - the hobby shop shooting is cut with almost no score, which makes Bobby's death feel abrupt and matter-of-fact in a way that is more disturbing than dramatized. The therapy termination scene is similarly dry. Any streaming version may have licensed track differences from the original broadcast print.
Analysis
Bobby Baccalieri's death is the episode's emotional center, and the show earns it through the specificity of the Blue Comet. Bobby talked about the train. He was looking for it. He found it. He was killed while buying it. The show has spent seasons establishing Bobby as the character who most does not belong in this world, and then it kills him in the place that represented what he actually cared about. The train he was holding when they shot him is the title of the episode.
The Melfi termination works differently. It is cold and procedural. Melfi has been the show's structural alibi for eight years - the character through whom Tony's psychology could be examined at a distance, the professional relationship that implied something like reflection was happening. This episode closes that door and locks it. The study she cites may or may not be correct. What matters is that she finally stops negotiating with what she knows.
Tony in hiding at the end of the episode is the show's image for where power ends up. He is alive. He is in a room. His men are dead or dying. Phil is out there. The finale is Made in America. For the complete final season arc see the season six guide.