Full Leather Jacket opens up with a great tune, Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty. Suddenly we’re having dinner with The Soprano family. Usually the family dinner scenes take place anyplace in an episode besides the first scene, which feels a little bit out of place. Speaking out ‘out of place’, the leather jacket that Richie Aprile gives to Tony Soprano, looks so out of place on Tony, it’s not even funny. Okay, maybe it’s funny to us, but definitely not to Tony and Richie. The episode title references the jacket, Full Leather Jacket, which is a play on words from the 1987 Stanley Kubrick film, Full Metal Jacket.

Just when we thought Christopher Moltisanti was done with Hollywood, they pull him back in; Christopher & Adriana join Chris’s cousin Gregory Moltisanti and his fiancée Amy Safir for some drinks in the city. Amy works for Jon Favreau (who plays himself in this episode) and they are both interested in reading Christopher’s movie script. A few episodes prior, the writers had us thinking that Christopher was through with big screen distractions, however he now wants to dive back in. The Sopranos writers were always great at delivering diversions like that.

Dr. Jennifer Melfi returns back to Sopranoland this episode, after being absent in the previous. Her return makes for an interesting dream sequence, an amusing encounter with Tony Soprano’s crew, as well as a closer look at her own mental issues. Before we get to all of that, I’m going to talk about one of the main characters of season 2, who makes his first appearance in this episode.

Right off the bat, the opening of season two of The Sopranos ups the ante. We’re shown a very cinematic montage, giving us the status of the Sopranos characters as the new season begins. The montage is set to Frank Sinatra’s It Was A Very Good Year. Up to that point in time (January 2000) there weren’t too many television shows that felt so much like an actual Hollywood movie going experience. The Sopranos accomplished that within the first 5 minutes of season two. The montage does an excellent job of expressing what’s going on with each character without the use of dialogue.

The title of this episode features one of those great play on words that The Soprano’s writers were always throwing at us. When you look at the title, “A Hit Is A Hit”, you automatically think that a lot of people are probably going to get whacked in this episode, but you’re wrong. The title is referring to hit songs in the music industry. While I’m on the subject of The Soprano’s episode titles, I want to state that I really love how the writers named the titles. Most of the episode titles are spoken at least once during an episode, not all of the time, but most of the time.