Who Plays Bobby Bacala? Three Sopranos Episodes to Rewatch for Steve Schirripa

Steve Schirripa plays Bobby Baccalieri, better known as Bobby Bacala, on The Sopranos. In “Pine Barrens,” Bobby shows up in hunting clothes to help find two men in the woods. Tony Soprano laughs. He gets a moment to enjoy the outfit before he has to rely on the man who turned up in it.

If you’re trying to place the actor, that’s the name you want. If you’re trying to place the character, the hunting outfit is a good start. Bobby can spend a long time in the same room as Tony without Tony seeming particularly curious about him. The minute someone needs to go into the woods, though, Bobby has something useful to offer. The first two episodes give Bobby a choice about how to respond to Tony. The third makes room for a part of Bobby’s life that has little to do with him.

The first two sections discuss events within their episodes. The last one gives away what happens to Bobby near the end of the series.

Pine Barrens, Season 3, Episode 11

Paulie and Christopher are the ones having the famous bad day in the woods. They’ve gone after a Russian mobster in South Jersey and gotten themselves lost. Steve Buscemi directed the episode. It’s easy to remember the episode as a double act because the two men have so much time to bicker. Outside the woods, there’s another pair worth watching. Tony needs someone who can help find them. Bobby comes in dressed to go looking.

In the Esquire interview, Schirripa recalled the hunting outfit. James Gandolfini’s character was supposed to laugh when Bobby came in. The outfit gives Tony every reason to enjoy the joke. The situation gives Bobby every reason to keep it on. What makes the scene work is how little Bobby has to do to turn the laugh around. He can stand there dressed to go out while Tony takes a moment to enjoy being the guy who gets to laugh first.

The clothes tell you where Bobby’s attention is. Someone has to get two people home. There’s no good reason to spend that time worrying about whether Tony will like the outfit. Bobby’s decision looks even better against the rest of the episode, where Paulie and Christopher have ample time to discover how poorly prepared they are. Tony can be right about how the outfit looks and still miss what it says about the person wearing it.

Start here if the Bobby you remember is mostly a quiet presence next to Uncle Junior. You get the pleasure of seeing somebody else need him. Watch it before the lake episode and there’s another detail to carry forward. Tony seems comfortable with a laugh that Bobby is expected to let pass.

Soprano Home Movies, Season 6, Episode 13

Look for this one at the start of the last batch of episodes. The series listing on Google Play groups it as Season 6B, Episode 1. Tony and Carmela visit Bobby and Janice at the lake. In the same Esquire interview, Schirripa remembered shooting the four of them playing Monopoly. He also singled out the episode as the first time Bobby fights Tony.

A board game gives the four of them something to do while they talk. It also gives everyone a reason to stay at the table long after the evening could have ended. The game ends in a fight between Tony and Bobby. The men know each other through work, but at that table Bobby is also Janice’s husband and Tony is her brother. There are two sets of expectations about how much Bobby is supposed to take. For a while he has to sit there with both.

The surprise is partly how fast the whole group has to give up the fiction that they are having an ordinary family night. Bobby has spent enough of the series letting other characters fill the silence that it’s easy to assume he’ll do it again. In “Pine Barrens,” it made sense to let Tony laugh and get on with the search. At the lake, Bobby can keep sitting there or join the argument. He fights Tony.

This is the best single episode of the three if you want to see the relationship change in one sitting. A fight can tell you who gets the better of whom in that particular room. It can’t settle who has power when everyone gets back to work. In a Los Angeles Times interview, creator David Chase recalled being moved by another scene in the same episode. Bobby comes back from carrying out a killing, and his young daughter hugs him. The series puts two family moments in one hour. Bobby can stand up for his wife at the table and still come home from doing the work Tony expects of him.

The Blue Comet, Season 6, Episode 20

This is the next-to-last episode, listed as “Blue Comet,” Season 6B, Episode 8, in that same catalog. Save it for after the lake house if you’re watching Bobby’s story in order. Spoiler for Bobby’s ending. He is killed in a model-train store. Schirripa recalled that Chase visited him in person to tell him that the character would die, and told him where the scene would happen.

You could put the same death in a place Bobby visits for work and still get the plot development. The train store makes it hurt in a more particular way. Bobby has somewhere to go because he likes trains. A train store is somewhere Bobby’s hobby might take him on an ordinary afternoon. The setting lets you imagine a version of Bobby with a whole afternoon to himself, even in an episode where that possibility is about to close.

It would be easy to make the hobby the whole case for Bobby’s decency. A man can be absorbed by a train set and still make choices that hurt people. Schirripa gives us a Bobby whose ordinary pleasures feel quite specific, even when his work makes them hard to separate from everything else. That’s the part the setting brings out. It takes very little time in the store to recognize a version of Bobby who could have spent a perfectly good afternoon there.

If you only have one episode and want a laugh, pick “Pine Barrens.” For the scene that changes what you expect Bobby to do when Tony starts in, go to the lake. Save the train-store episode for a rewatch. The other episodes give you time to see why a place as ordinary as a hobby shop can tell you something about what Bobby loses.