Without any forbidding music or cut-away camera work, viewers are forced to endure the intensity of the scene.
Due to a unfortunate loss in the chain of custody, the police have no choice but to free her rapist. While ordering from a sub shop, she sees a picture of him where he has been named employee of the month.
There is a moment in her session with mob boss Tony Soprano where it is overwhelmingly clear to fans, and surprisingly so to Dr. Melfi herself, that she longs to tell him about the assault she suffered. Earlier in the episode, Melfi suggests Tony consider seeing a behavior modification therapist. Then, she has a dream where her hand is trapped inside a vending machine and her rapist is advancing towards her, until a rottweiler appears, menacing to her at first, before it turns and mauls the rapist. In discussing this with her therapist, Dr. Kupferberg, she comes to the realization: Tony Soprano is the dog coming to her defense. She sees him as her protector.
Tony is concerned during their appointment when she begins to cry and goes to her, asking what the matter is.
After he returns to his seat, he can tell by the silence that she is contemplating.
“What? You wanna say something?”
“No.”
The internal struggle and eventual triumph of omission are crucial to Dr. Melfi. She knows her client and has been studying him for years. Though she is not privy to all his business undertakings, she is aware of his line of work and how their therapist-patient confidentiality agreement allows him a level of comfort which is often not awarded to him outside of the family setting.
So she knows that she’d only have to mention the name Jesus Rossi to Tony and she’d ‘have her problem taken care of’.
But ultimately, this would mean two things.
She would effectively destroy the boundary between them, stunting Tony’s growth that they were able to make during each session, and jeopardizing her career for temporary gratification and an unfulfilling retribution.
It would also mark a turning point for Dr. Melfi herself, namely her morals and her integrity. If I’m willing to have Tony Soprano kill for me, where does it end? Do I have him murder a neighbour who owes me money? If I tell him a store clerk was rude to me, would he have them kneecapped?
Other repercussions might have involved her being asked to repay the ‘favor’ because there is no true ‘help from the mafia’, a thought Melfi would have considered. She also would have been a willing participant and accessory to a crime, putting her in significant risk.
It is all these factors that led to Jennifer’s silence. But it is also these factors that exist in the real world, factors which women are forced to consider when put in a position of vulnerability.
Employee of the Month is chilling because like a large majority of the series, it is rooted in reality.
Though it is initially posited that Chase intended for the rape plotline to reduce Melfi to a victim, in those final moments it is revealed that he did it to push her to confront a crisis of ethics and morality. Her unwillingness to “take the easy way out” separates her from Tony Soprano and from the mafia.
Bracco herself was surprised by the writers’ decision for her character, saying, “When they told me they were going to do this, I was like, ‘Why are you going to hurt Melfi?’ And David said, ‘Because I know the ending, and that’s because she doesn’t tell him.’…If she told him, she knew he would go and hurt him, and then she could no longer be his doctor. It was not the right thing to do.”
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