Violence, family violence, violence enacted against children by their parents especially, is the spectre lurking behind the events of "Soprano Home Movies". Tony and Bobby, and in a different way, Carmela and Janice, are in a violent business. Tony and Janice's parents were in that same violent business. Though the episode never comes right out and says it, it's not a far leap to imagine that some of that filtered down to hitting their kids. Tony says as much in therapy in prior episodes. He's told Melfi multiple times that his father would have whupped him for things Tony's children do, and that not doing the same to his offspring was Carmela's idea, not his. It's the style of parenting he grew up with; it's what he knows and as we've seen with everyone from Gloria to Ralphie, it's what he defaults to when he's truly upset about something. It's the language he knows to communicate emotion. Receiving it, let alone being on the losing side of it, makes him feel small and weak. Tony, even at his blubbery zenith in the sixth season, is a large, imposing man. It's no coincidence that he reasserted himself by taking on his burly driver at the beginning of the season. His physical strength is part of what gives him his swagger, his confidence that he's not the small kid who was kicked around by his father. Tony can't accept that his father was anything but a saint who was dragged down by his admittedly monster of a mother, and yet, as Melfi points out, he marries and support a woman who did what his mother never would -- protect her children from their father. And so while it's easy to take Tony's rationalizing away his losing the fight with Bobby as his feeling older, feeling like things are coming to an end (and admittedly, that's part of it, his conversation with Bobby on the boat certainly shows a Tony more contemplative of where things might finish), it's as much in service of justifying to himself that he is still the physically capable man who wouldn't have to suffer that kind of abuse from another man again. It's clearly impacted Janice as well. She's appropriately Livia-like in her conversation with Carmela, where she not so subtly suggests that Tony may have been physical with his family as well. Carmela denies it (though there have been moments with AJ she didn't know about aside from the one she mentions), and while Janice is, as always, trying to stir up trouble, she's clearly not off-base in wondering if the same cloud of violence that hung over her childhood hangs over Tony's home as well. Bobby objects to Janice bribing Nica to get her to go to bed, but there's a sense that as much as she can be the evil stepmom to Bobby's kids, she's overcorrecting for her own daughter. That's what makes the story about Johnny Boy shooting through Livia's hair so unpleasant for Tony, even if he doesn't quite realize it. There's irony in his complaint that it makes them look like a dysfunctional family shortly before a monopoly game ends in fisticuffs. But it's also a sign of his father's temper -- that what seems humorous in the rear view mirror decades later is, to someone who experienced it at the time, a sign of a dad who expressed his anger with tools of violence and a home of discord. As Bobby notes, The Sopranos go too far, they take one step over the line, and when they do, it's evident how much Tony and Janice were damaged by what when on in their home. And then there's Bobby himself, one of the gentlest, most kind-hearted mobsters the show ever depicts. And it's clear that Tony both looks down upon and yet also envies Bobby, not simply for his youth but for the way that Bobby had a dad who loved him ("he never wanted this for me"), for his sense of honor (leveling the playing field against the deer) and who has a quiet strength and steadiness that Tony lacks. Like with Janice after her anger management classes, Tony has to break anything that someone has that he doesn't. So he hits Bobby where it hurts -- he takes the last of Bobby's innocence my making him kill a man, and not just a man, a father. The Sopranos is a show where people don't necessarily understand the real motivations for their actions, and it's hard to know how much Tony sees the symmetry in that given what's lurking behind the walls in this episode, but it's palpable. And then there's that 10,000 yard stare, the way Tony sits in that chair after all the terrible excitement and gazes on the water, lost in thought. There's a sense that he's being soothed, as he was at his Uncle's farm, of having to escape the thoughts and scars of the life he's lived and the pain he's suffered. And at the end of the episode, Bobby, holding his daughter, shares that same gaze. The ducks Tony hears Nica signing about remain a potent symbol on this show -- of family, of the good life, so hard to hold onto and so easily lost. Bobby may have gotten the better of the fight, but Tony left him with a new scar that now needs to heal, and we cannot help but wonder how this beautiful innocent child might be tainted by this life that has left its mark in different ways on so many people. It might not be in the same terms, but the cycle of violence goes on.