That to me was the beauty of the show. It was never "this is our comedy scene", "this is our violence scene"... these were characters that lived outside the lines and honestly probably couldn't find the lines even if they wanted to (that's always what I took from Tony's therapy; what is a more mainstream, conventional way of living in society than seeking out therapy? Did it help him in any MEANINGFUL way? I would argue it didn't, and in fact perhaps made some aspects worse).
For me, the two scenes that capture that are:
- when Christopher is helping (I think it's) Adriana's friend record some songs, and the guy doesn't want to continue recording and Christopher beats him with the guitar yelling "Hey Paul Fucking McCartney!", and
- this is a very subtle scene, but when Tony is eating dinner with Artie, and a kid in the place won't take his hat off while eating dinner. The kid mouths off at first, but Tony just stands there, threateningly, and the kid acquiesces. Not that there's "humor" here, though there is, but the idea of taking normal things, "today's values", and distorting them (Tony is indignantly talking to Artie about Meadow's soccer coach, who is leaving the team, even though he's actually banging one of the players) in a way that still seems to make a sort of sense. I'll cop to secretly wishing I had the nerve and the presence to do what Tony did.