...and we find ourselves in a flashback, because all the cars look thirty years old. Young Junior pulls up to the Soprano house in a black gas-guzzler and yells for Johnny, Tony's father, and Little Tony comes out and asks Junior what he's doing there so early. Junior asks him why his dad isn't out front, and Tony offers to go get him, but Junior just asks if he heard the game the night before; Tony says his mom made him go to bed. Young Livia -- played by Laila Robins, who has appeared in several Law & Order episodes and who really nails Livia's voice and pronunciation -- comes out on the front steps in curlers and tells Tony to hurry up or he'll miss his bus, and does he want to have to walk through "the colored neighborhood"? Then she comments sarcastically on Junior's "big fancy car" and nags Johnny that they have to go to her sister's that night and he promised to bring a pork loin, and Johnny walks to the car and nags back, "Bah bah bah bah bah, nonstop -- don't you get sick a yourself?" Livia sucks her teeth at him. Tony asks his dad to give him a ride to school; Johnny tells him he can't, but Tony should behave himself in school and "listen to what those teachers tell you," and Johnny and Junior take off. Tony says, "See ya, Ma." "Okay," she says flatly, "be good," and she drags herself back into the house.

Young Tony heads to school on foot. As he rounds the corner, he sees his bus pulling away, and he starts to run after it but pulls up short when he sees his father and Junior drive up to a group of men and chase one of them down. Tony hides behind a tree and watches his father and Junior deliver a beatdown to some guy named Rocco, and the frame freezes on Johnny walking away from the guy and counting money. Then there's a white flash...

...and we're back to the bathroom. Tony stands up straight and stretches in front of the mirror. Carmela comes in, clad in a sporty striped outfit from Contempo Casuals, and says in a surprised tone, "You're up." "Who the fuck can sleep with all this shit goin' on?" he asks, shuffling out of the bathroom.

Melfi's office. Tony relates that he started thinking about Jefferson Airplane earlier, and it made him think about his father. "What about him?" "First time I ever saw him whack the shit outta somebody." Melfi asks what made Tony think of that; Tony thinks it's to do with "what's been goin' on" with AJ. Melfi asks timidly why Tony's father whacked the shit out of some guy, and Tony says he'd never seen his father do something like that, although he used to "whack us kids around a little bit." "Really?" Melfi asks gently. Tony jokes that "the belt was his favorite child-development tool," but Melfi doesn't smile. Tony goes on to say that "this was different, though -- you could tell he knew what he was doin'." Melfi asks how Tony felt about his father after that. "I didn't want him to do it to me," Tony says. Melfi, not buying the jokey tone: "Seriously." Tony won't break: "Whaddya want me to say? I was glad he wasn't a fag." Melfi gives up on that angle and asks how Tony and his father got along. Tony, looking down and fiddling with a thread on his pants, says he got along "good" with his father, everybody liked his father, he knew how to have a good time, he taught Tony how to eat shellfish, blah blah blah; he tells an anecdote, clearly designed to change the subject, about slurping down oysters with Worcestershire sauce, and Melfi smiles. But Tony abruptly changes tone to one of aggravation: "My mother never ate anything raw." He adds that his father "wasn't around much." Melfi asks what Johnny did for a living. "Retail meat and provisions." Oh, hello, Euphemistic Vocation. Melfi sits, waiting; after a moment, Tony sheepishly admits that his father dabbled in numbers, loan sharking, and extortion also. Well, it's nice to have a hobby. Just kidding. Melfi asks how Tony felt about that. Tony repeats the question and shrugs; Melfi prompts him, "About your father being engaged in illegal activities?" Tony lies that he never really knew about it, and when Melfi presses him about when he found out, he gets even more shifty and says, "Who remembers?" Melfi reminds him that he thought about the beating incident this morning: "Are you concerned that your son is going to find out about you?" "Don't start talkin' to me about legitimate business," Tony grumbles, and he rambles on about chemical companies and deformed babies and toxic waste, but the effort to throw Melfi off the scent fails: "Does he know anything?" Tony gives up, saying tersely, "I don't know." "Has he asked you?" "No." "How are you gonna handle that?" Tony, getting annoyed: "I don't know!" "Did you ever talk to your father about it?" "What, are you kiddin'?" Hmm. Guess not.