Paulie "Walnuts" Gualtieri

Although the show is full of engaging personalities, there is surely no one more entertaining than the murderous crown prince of the show Paulie “Walnuts” Gualtieri. Born Peter Paul Gualtieri (revealed by Ralphie when he prank calls Paulie’s mother), Paulie is destined for the criminal life from a very young age. During a conversation with principal “Chuckie” Signore, Paulie reveals he dropped out of school in the ninth grade. Paulie began working for Tony’s father Johnny Soprano when he 17, and has worked as an enforcer for the Soprano family for most of his adult life.

In season one Paulie tells Christopher he spent a “few years in the army, a few more in the can, and now here he was half a wiseguy.” Upon further investigation, we learn that Paulie spent four years in the Army signal corps (revealed when he is beating on a DVD player with his shoe in Season 1) and was eventually discharged for psychiatric reasons on a section 8. Returning to New Jersey, he once again works with Johnny Soprano. Over the years Paulie relates many colorful anecdotes from this time in his life, including throwing hot oil on a man from a food stand, being dosed with acid and seeing colorful visions of laser beams coming out of Junior’s eyes, and being beaten by a policeman after being pranked by Johnny on a southern road trip. Paulie got his nickname “Walnuts” when a truck he hijacked he believed contained television sets contained only Walnuts instead.

Paulie is prone to bizarre beliefs, superstitions, and eccentricities, and has some deep religious convictions despite the fact he has committed numerous murders over the years. He is also germaphobic and laments things such as his shoelaces touching the ground in the men’s room. He is often shown washing his hands, and can be meticulous about his clothing and appearance, as we see him at various times steam cleaning his suits and getting manicures. Despite the fact he makes large amounts of money for his various criminal enterprises, he clips coupons and leaves his furniture wrapped in plastic. Improbably, Paulie reveals to Tony he too has seen a psychiatrist, where he reported he learned some “coping skills,” which is quite humorous given his continual acts of impulsivity and violent tantrums.

Although Paulie is in Tony’s circle of most trusted advisors, he is occasionally given menial tasks to do by Tony, which nearly always results in hilarious misadventures. An example of this comes in the first season when Tony assigns Paulie and Big Pussy to find his son’s teacher’s car, which begins with a hard target search of a number of Starbuck’s franchises. Paulie becomes infuriated seeing how successful these stores have become, as he feels Italian coffee culture has been robbed to make all of it possible. As an act of defiance for this perceived insult, Paulie shoplifts an espresso machine from one of the locations.

Despite his now advanced age, Paulie also shows his chops as an enforcer in the first season when he and Silvio attempt to get a Jewish motel owner to grant his wife a divorce. Paulie, not understanding the intricacies of the man’s orthodox dress, slams the hotel bell into his head repeatedly after saying “listen here you weirdo fuck,” but is still unable to extract what he needs from him. Later he is assigned to decipher if Big Pussy is wearing a wire, but his awkward insistence that Pussy take his clothes off only increases his suspicions and sends Pussy into hiding.

In the second season, Paulie fulfills a lifelong dream when he accompanies Tony to Italy, but he is met with resistance at nearly every turn. When he attempts to celebrate the fact that he and an Italian prostitute have their origins in the same town, she shrugs with disinterest, which causes him to refer to her as a “fucking twat” under his breath. Further disappointments occur from there. His attempt to order spaghetti and meatballs is met with confusion, and his hosts refer to him as a “classless piece of shit” in Italian. He looks hurt, confused and personally betrayed by the prospect of using a bidet, and is unable to use this in public.

He can’t even get a response from the locals when he attempts to

 use his new favorite word, “commendatori” in conversation, and he again whispers an insult under his breath (this time “cocksuckers”) when they refuse to even say hello to him. He attempts one last greeting to an old man, who also insults him, which is Paulie’s final humiliation in the country he holds so dear. Despite these repeated rejections, he arrives back home and rubs the visit in Big Pussy’s face, informing him, “I feel sorry for anyone who has never been, especially Italians.”

Another hilarious event occurs in the second season when Christopher informs Paulie that during a vision he had during his coma, he, Paulie and Tony wind up in hell together and that 3:00 would be a significant time in their lives. Paulie at first dismisses this with a hilarious explanation of purgatory and religious math, but is later haunted by this declaration, which results in repeated nightmares where he is dragged into hell. This all culminates in a visit to a psychic, where more hilarity soon ensues.

While at the psychic, it is revealed that a number of Paulie’s murder victims have joined together in the afterlife in collaboration against him, which sends Paulie into a rage where he attacks the psychic, smashes a chair, and rails out loud at his ghosts, calling them “fucking queers.” He gives one last speech about how the whole thing is “satanic black magic,” but he is clearly rattled by the experience. Later he berates his family priest for not protecting him from this haunting, as he believes he has earned this protection through his ongoing donations to the church, which he now angrily refuses to continue with.

In the third season, we see the relationship between Paulie and his sometime protégé Christopher take shape, and their interactions escalate in some unpredictable directions. At first, we see Paulie as a supportive and encouraging figure in Christopher’s life, and it looks like their working relationship is going to be fruitful and productive. Things quickly turn, however, and Christopher’s resentment of Paulie’s management techniques result in Paulie escalating his supervision of Christopher even further.

An example of this is found when Paulie begins to subject Chris to random strip searches to see if he’s wearing a wire. Paulie uses this opportunity to mock Christopher’s penis size, and Christopher’s rage at this ritual only makes Paulie more creative in his hazing. One night he drops by Christopher’s house in the middle of the night with Patsy Parisi and helps himself to his “taste” of whatever Christopher makes. An already fuming Chris sees Paulie take a pair of Adriana’s panties out of her drawer and sniff them, which leaves Chris seething with helpless rage as Paulie continues to help himself to things around the house.

Things come to a head during the episode “Pine Barrens,” when Paulie’s arrogance finally catches up with him. On a simple collection mission with Christopher, Paulie insults the man, smashes his remote control, and finally attacks him, which leads to a series of unfortunate events culminating in the Russian man being wrapped in a carpet and placed in the trunk to be buried in the woods. When it turns out the Russian is still alive, he escapes from Paulie and Christopher, and they spend the night in the woods together growing increasingly more irritable with each other.

Tony eventually comes and rescues the two of them, but this marks a turning point in Tony and Paulie’s relationship that will have serious repercussions. In the final episode of the season, we see Tony rule against Paulie in a dispute with Ralph Cifaretto. This affects Paulie’s ability to care for his beloved “ma,” as he has been counting on the windfall from this dispute to finance her stay at Green Grove, the luxurious “retirement community” where Tony’s mother also resides. Paulie’s fall from grace in this season is now complete, which will, of course, lead to more volatile future developments.

The fourth season begins with Paulie behind bars, where he seems to have assumed an “alpha” position, where he dictates to the other prisoners which of his “programs” they would be watching. Even behind bars and away from the rest of the crew, he manages to wreak havoc, as he provides Johnny Sack with some second-hand information Ralph said about his wife. This information ends Johnny into a murderous rage that creates serious tension between the New York and New Jersey families.

Paulie is eventually released from jail, but the tension between he and Tony remains, as Tony correctly deciphers it was Paulie who has been betraying them to the New York family. As is often the case with Paulie, he becomes further unhinged under stress, and becomes involved in some bizarre interactions with the elderly residents of Green Grove and their families, as he tries to make sure his beloved mother “Nucci” is adjusting properly. His actions include arranging the beating of the son of a woman who has not been nice to his mother, and eventually the murder of another elderly woman who he attempts to rob to supplement his weekly “kick” to Tony.

Never content to be at peace with everyone in the crew, Paulie escalates another feud with Christopher in the fifth season, and exploits a rule in the code where the newest made member picks up the dinner tab to put an ongoing financial squeeze on Chris. As usual, Paulie escalates things when he sees Christopher getting increasingly agitated, and adds several hundred extra dollars to Christopher’s bill by ordering champagne for some homely middle-aged women and lobster and other expensive items for everyone at the table. His actions result in Chris leaving a poor tip for their waiter, and after a confrontation, Paulie murders the waiter after he interrupts he and Chris in the middle of one of their ongoing arguments. This seems to result in an easy peace between the two of them, but we know of course this will never last given Paulie’s fragile and impulsive temperament.

The fun continues in the sixth and final season, as Paulie becomes obsessed with Vito’s homosexuality, and laments “how much betrayal can I take?” despite the fact it really doesn’t affect him at all. Paulie also has misadventures running his annual street festival, where his conflicts with the elders at the Catholic Church eventually leads to yet another feud with Bobby Baccalierri. He also finds out he has prostate cancer in this episode, which sends his rumination and panic into overdrive.

Perhaps the biggest reveal in this season comes when he finds out Nucci is not in fact his biological mother but his aunt. This leads to him becoming completely unraveled, disowning Nucci, and senselessly beating Jason Barone (who has been in a business dispute with him and Tony) after hearing Jason’s mother make an impassioned plea to Tony for her son’s safety. Later in that final season, Paulie believes he sees a vision of the Virgin Mary at the Bada Bing, and he reconciles with Nucci shortly afterwards.

As the Sopranos came to a close, Tony finally came to appreciate Paulie and his contribution to the crew, but not before briefly considering killing him when they are on a boat together in Florida. And we are treated to one final conflict between him and Christopher during these end times, which (as always) escalates from a small problem to a much larger one when Christopher throws Paulie’s nephew “Little Paulie” out of a window, and Paulie takes his car and destroys Christopher’s landscaping in retaliation. When Tony kills Christopher following their automobile accident, Paulie seems to be genuinely remorseful, and laments the fact he was a “Dutch uncle” to Christopher throughout his life.

Paulie’s sadness over Christopher is short lived, as he is informed Nucci has died, and he becomes increasingly agitated when more people attend Christopher’s wake than Nucci’s. In his final scene with Tony we see that Paulie is in a sense the “last man standing” of the original crew, as virtually all the others have been killed or badly injured throughout the series. Tony manipulates Paulie one last time into taking over Vito’s old crew, and his last line to Tony, “I live but to serve you my liege,” takes us full circle to Paulie’s loyalty and commitment to Tony and the family. 

Analysis

Self-Assessment perceived through Genetic Possibilities

Paulie’s biological history is interesting to consider, as everything he previously believed about his background gets completely turned upside down when he finds out he was the illegitimate child of his aunt Dottie, who later became a nun after giving birth to Paulie. The original narrative Paulie grew up believing was that a trolley killed his father, and Nucci then raised him along with his two brothers and a sister. We know Nucci bailed him out of trouble a number of times as a young man, and how he only made it through the ninth grade in school before dropping out.

So when we find out Paulie’s aunt was his mother, we can still believe in the narrative of Paulie as a devoted Italian son, raised by his aunt instead of his mother. The story stays pretty much the same.

But we are teased by a fascinating possibility when we find out

 Paulie was fathered by a wayward GI named “Russ,” who at the time was a lonely soldier who Dottie befriended and had sex with decades ago. The only “Russ” the show introduces us to is Russ Fagoli, a highly educated and pompous friend of Carmella’s father Hugo, (who was also a GI), who insults Tony and generally behaves like a pretentious snob.

Surely the writers want us to consider this possibility, even if they are just toying with us a bit. Given Paulie’s level of intelligence, poor impulse control and anger issues, it would be easy to imagine his father as a blue collar Italian man cut from the same cloth as Tony’s father and other mafia members from that era. The idea of his father being a brilliant and pompous Ph.D. is so absurd that it just may be what the writers would like us to believe, and it certainly wouldn’t be the most far-fetched thing that ever happened on the show.

Openings for Advancement Perceived through Environmental Opportunities

Growing up and coming of age in the 60’s and 70s, Paulie’s Italian heritage, New Jersey roots, and tendency towards breaking the law placed him squarely in a time and place when the mafia in America was rising to power. As an enforcer since the age of 17, Paulie’s association with “Johnny Boy” Soprano led to opportunities for advancement in the criminal underworld he was able to seize upon. Tony discusses his own memories of Paulie as a young man in the episode “Remember When,” when he talked about how his dad used to threaten him with “Uncle Paulie” when he misbehaved as a child, and how there was a time he wished he could be exactly like Paulie.

Although Paulie’s environment provided him with opportunities for advancement, his own problems with impulse control and lack of insight have prevented him from ascending to the top rungs of the organization. He is easily manipulated throughout the series by Tony as well as Johnny Sack, and has actually risen quite far given his often limited resources.

Range of Social Interest perceived through Other Particularities

The idea of social interest was suggested by Adler as a way of measuring a person’s sense of connection and contribution to his fellow human beings. He believed it was an important marker of a person’s mental health, and it is a particularly interesting thing to consider in the case of Paulie Gualtieri. Paulie sees himself as a good man, perhaps even a great man, as evidenced by his statement “I must have done good things in my life” when he beats his prostate cancer.

But we the viewer see that Paulie may be truly evil. Although his comic musings are often hysterical, there appears to be a fundamental difference between Paulie and many other members of the crew, as he has no problem hurting and killing people not connected to organized crime.

There are several examples of this throughout the series, including the murder of Minnie Matrone, an elderly friend of his mothers, the crippling of Jason Barone after his mother pleads with Tony for his safety, and the murder of the waiter who complained to him and Christopher about the size of his tip. These incidents run contrary to the idea that members of his crew are soldiers who are at war with other soldiers, and show Paulie has little conscience at all (especially when agitated) when it comes to his own preservation.

So how does one get like Paulie exactly? M Scott Peck writes about evil in his seminal book “The People of the Lie,” and talks about how evil people rarely see themselves as evil, and this certainly seems to be the case with Paulie, who is adept at rationalizing all of his various criminal endeavors. Perhaps the lack of a male role model, coupled with his early involvement with organized crime both combined with an already shallow genetic situation to create the amoral yet brilliantly diabolical character of Paulie Walnuts.

Evil has never been so much fun.