"In the final episode of the second season Tony faces the fact of Big Pussy's betrayal in a dream set in a safe place, because he cannot face it awake. Laid low by food poisoning and weakened by almost continuous diarrhea, Tony's subconscious lets down its guard and allows him to hear the message of a talking fish that looks astonishingly like Big Pussy Bompisano.

In December 1999 the cast of the Sopranos spent a week in Asbury Park at the recently renovated Berkeley-Carteret Hotel. On the show they called it springtime, said it was a fluke snow, and didn't let it stop them from shooting Big Pussy. Asbury Park is portrayed truly. It is just that surreal and ghostly, all that abandoned and bereft. A town out of Rod Sterling's "Twilight Zone" where everybody one day stood up and walked away. Just as Louis Malle's "Atlantic City" caught its moment, so did David Chase's 26th episode of the second season of "Sopranos" catch Asbury Park between its past and future. It is here, in this wind-swept ghost town of a seaside resort, just poised on a new beginning, where Tony Soprano meets his own past and future on April 9, 2000.

 During yet another of Tony's dreams we saw him looking into a coin operated binocular (which HBO crews added to the boardwalk) and he observes a card game. Something goes wrong and one player shoots the other. That scene was shot in the lobby of the Asbury Convention center pictured here.

Editors Note: While researching this part of the "Sopranos On Location" I came across an article written by Doris Lane titled "Asbury Park and Tony Soprano." I contacted Doris who was kind enough to give me some background history on Asbury Park and the locations that were used in the final episode of the second season. Much of the text above come from Doris's article. I'd like to thank her for allowing me to use excerpts from it. Check out the original article! Thanks Doris!