The Knight in White Satin Armor

Did You Know?

• Junior mentions "old man Profaci" Joe Profaci when Richie cannot sell the plan.
• Tony sarcastically comments that Junior is a double-agent like Matt Helm.
• When Silvio gives the money to Irina, he urges her to get on with her life, saying "It's called passages. It's a book," referring to Gail Sheehy's Passages.

Synopsis

Pussy, fed up with how Tony has been treating him, starts acting like an FBI informant. He tails Christopher and an associate all night as they get ready to steal a load of Pokémon cards. Exhausted from lack of sleep, Pussy crashes into a car, hurts his knee, and sends a cyclist flying. Skip Lipari bails him out but chews him out, stressing that his only job is to gather proof against Tony.

Tony punishes Richie for still pushing cocaine on his garbage routes, but Uncle Junior sees that drug money as his only way to survive. Richie proposes killing Tony and says he can round up support from other unhappy crews. Junior lets him bring it up with capo Albert Barese, who isn't convinced. Thinking it over alone, Junior figures Richie couldn't sell the idea to Albert, so he lacks respect, and Junior is better off sticking with Tony.

He tips off Tony, who starts planning to have Richie killed with Silvio. Richie and Janice have a tense night at home. She tells him Tony won't let his kids near him because of what he did to Beansie. Richie sneers at his son being a dancer, implying he's gay; Janice argues back, and he punches her in the mouth.

She leaves, comes back with a gun, and shoots him dead. Panicked, she calls Tony, who finds her sobbing over the body. He gets Christopher and Furio to get rid of it; they cut it up using the meat equipment at Satriale's. The next morning, Tony sees Livia for the first time since her stroke. He says Richie has left; Livia grins at a wrecked Janice and says she knew it wouldn't work out.

She laughs when Tony trips on the stoop and falls onto the walk. Janice heads back to Seattle. Carmela sets up a meeting with Victor, hinting she might be free someday and thanking him for not coming to her house for lunch, since she would have done something she'd regret. She gives him a light kiss on the cheek.

Victor feels huge relief when she leaves. While loading the washing machine, Carmela catches Irina's perfume on Tony's clothes. But Tony is done with Irina and ends things. She tries to kill herself with vodka and pills.

Tony visits her in the hospital and comforts her, then sends Silvio with a goodbye gift of $75,000. Irina's cousin Svetlana Kirilenko pushes her to take it.

Title reference

The term originates from Irina in the episode "College," where she mixes up the idiom "knight in shining armor" with the Moody Blues song "Nights in White Satin." The white satin could also refer to Janice, who is seen in her wedding dress during the episode. Additionally, the Moody Blues appear on Giorgio Moroder's 1976 album "Knights in White Satin," possibly another source for the title.