The Sopranos Wiki
Register
Advertisement

You know Quasimodo predicted all this.
― Bobby to Tony Soprano[src]

Robert "Bobby Bacala" Baccalieri Jr. (born June 12, 1964) is a recurring character in the HBO series The Sopranos.

Biography[]

Bobby ran Junior Soprano's old loan shark business. Although not officially a captain, Bobby was a high ranking soldier who ran Junior Soprano's interests as acting captain and reported directly to Junior, and more recently to Tony Soprano. Prior to his death, he became the underboss of the Soprano Crime Family, behind only Silvio Dante and Tony Soprano.

Bobby was the son of Robert "Bobby" Baccalieri, Sr. — a mob hitman (Tony Soprano referred to him as "a real terminator", indicating his extensive record of mob killings) who fronted as a barber. Bobby's father returned from retirement for one last job before his death from lung cancer, which Bobby found quite distressing. Before joining Junior Soprano's crew Bobby was a head waiter until at least 1986 and was groomed by his father Bobby Sr. At some point, Bobby became a made man, although without making his bones; this may have been arranged by his father. Bobby was married to Karen Baccalieri until her death and they had two children, Bobby III and Sophia.

Bobby was quite different from the other men in the Soprano crime family. He was quiet, almost shy, sweet and even-tempered; these traits made him well-liked, if not necessarily respected. He was obese, which brought him much ridicule, but he was very loyal and even Tony apologized to him after making cracks about his weight. In turn, Bobby was always respectful, and sometimes affectionate, towards Tony, telling him "I always liked you," in the aftermath of a feud that saw Tony order the deaths of several members of Junior Soprano's crew, with Bobby and Junior the sole survivors. He bore no lasting grudges against Paulie Gualtieri or Christopher Moltisanti, who carried out these hits, and appeared briefly looking delighted on the day Christopher was 'made'.

Bobby operated Junior Soprano's loan shark business in his stead and also acted as Junior's assistant while he was under house arrest on federal racketeering charges. Junior eventually rewarded him by putting him in charge of his loan shark operation during the later part of his prosecution. Bobby was made acting capo when Junior had Murf Lupo step down in "For All Debts Public and Private".

Bobby was very loyal to his wife, Karen, and was the only made man in the Soprano crew without a comare. The only time he was ever seen with another woman other than his wife was in the episode University. When Ralphie Cifaretto walks back into the Bada Bing after beating Tracee to death, Bobby could be seen talking to another stripper and feeling her up while she was sitting on his lap. However, Bobby lost his wife in a car accident and took it especially hard. Following Karen's death, Janice Soprano, along with many other women, actively pursued Bobby. Some trying to help him out as much as possible (with cooking and watching over Bobby's two children), and others trying to initiate a relationship with him, such as JoJo Palmice.

When his grief continued, Janice went so far as to use the internet to expose his children to a Ouija board within their house. This frightened them and cleared a path for Janice to demonstrate that Bobby's grief was affecting his children. Despite Bobby's initial reluctance, the two were soon married and he soon fathered a daughter, Domenica. Bobby remained unaware of his wife's machinations at the start of their relationship. Bobby also enjoyed playing with model trains, which Janice ridiculed him for.

Since 2001, when he assisted Tony in rescuing Christopher and Paulie from the Pine Barrens, Bobby had grown closer to Tony. Additionally, as Ralph Cifaretto put it, "dating the boss's sister will help a made man's career"; nevertheless, Tony had recently stepped up his expectations of Bobby, whom he felt was taking their newfound family relationship as an excuse not to earn at a competitive level, compared to other members of the family. Bobby rose to the occasion by supplementing his income with $7000 he received for shooting a rapper he met at the hospital, while Tony was in the ICU, in order to raise the rapper's profile.

In the Season Six episode, "The Ride" Janice, along with Bobby's son and younger daughter were in an accident during the Feast of Saint Elezar carnival. Janice and the kids were riding the ride, which malfunctioned due to faulty machinery whilst Bobby was escorting his elder daughter to the restrooms. Bobby's initial reaction was relief that his family were unhurt. When Bobby was invited to the Soprano residence for a Sunday dinner the following week, Janice later berated him for not getting angry over the incident, to which Bobby stood his ground saying family dinners are not a forum for those grievances. She later accompanied him when he paid a visit to the ride owner, pretending to be suffering from nerve damage. Bobby stormed into his motel room, beat him up and tried to extort money from him but learned that Paulie had been responsible for withholding the funds needed to repair the ride. Bobby tracked him down at the festival and angrily confronted him - the two were separated by other associates in the crew. At Christopher's belated bachelor party Bobby left soon after Paulie arrived. Tony ordered Paulie to make things right with Bobby. The episode demonstrated Bobby's devotion to his family, but also confirmed his credentials as a man not to be crossed lightly, further cementing his position in the higher echelons of Tony's crew.

In November 2006, Bobby was attacked and robbed by a street gang of Kids as he was making his collections. One of the kids fired a shot at the sidewalk near Bobby's face and a concrete fragment injured his right eye. The injury left his sight in the eye uncertain. Despite the injury, Bobby made certain his envelop reached Tony, by way of a concerned Carlo Gervasi visiting Bobby at the hospital. However, Tony didn’t hold sympathy for him at first, and suggested it was a maneuver to get back into his good graces after the shooting.

However, Bobby's injury, as well as seeing his living conditions, prompted Tony to reassess his relationship with his sister and brother-in-law. Tony's feelings of guilt prompted him to broker an agreement with Johnny Sack that allowed Bobby and his family to buy Sack's house at a half-reduced price.

In the Season Six Episode, "Soprano Home Movies", a drunken fist fight between Tony and Bobby, sparked by an obscene comment made by Tony about Janice, threatened to compromise the growing relationship between the two men. Bobby won the fight, battering the inebriated Tony quite severely, but also injuring his boss's pride. Tony, although reasonably gracious in defeat, was embarrassed at having been beaten and frequently asserted to Bobby, Janice and Carmela that he would have won the fight had he not been drunk. As a partial result of this awkward incident, Bobby (to his visible discomfort) was tasked with murdering the brother-in-law of one of Tony's Québécois associates, an important hit that formed part of a deal to save money on a pharmaceuticals racket. It was Bobby's first murder; Tony mentioned earlier that Bobby had never "popped his cherry" with wetwork as his father didn’t want that for him.

Bobby was soon promoted to underboss of the Soprano family. The murder initiated a change in his attitude from a soft and shy personality to a more outgoing, assertive and ruthless one. When Tony was having difficulties regarding a loan from loan shark and his old friend, Hesh Rabkin, Bobby suggested Tony not bother paying any of the money back considering Hesh could not force Tony to do anything, and also saying that tony should have told hesh to "go f#ck himself". Such a ruthlessly logical piece of thinking was quite at odds with the gentle, quiet Bobby from a few years back.

At the time of his death, Bobby appeared to have won a place within Tony's "inner circle" of trusted associates; no mean achievement for a man who, for a long time, had been little more than Junior Soprano's driver (as a dismissive Lupertazzi soldier once described him).

In the episode "The Blue Comet", a war breaks out between New York and New Jersey. Phil Leotardo orders the deaths of Bobby, Silvio, and Tony. Tony is informed by FBI agent Dwight Harris at Satriale's that a snitch in Brooklyn implied to them that Phil has ordered a major hit on the New Jersey crew. Tony then gives orders to inform everyone of the upcoming assassination plot. At first it was assumed by the sopranos that Phil was whacked by the two hitmen from naples. However, they had killed the wrong person, and the hits on the crew were inevitable. The scene then shifts to Bobby exiting his car going into a hobby shop, leaving his cell phone behind, while a call comes through most likely attempting to inform him of the assassination plots. Bobby goes in to check out a vintage train set, "The Blue Comet" while the storekeeper talks to him. Two men are seen entering the store and open fire as he's purchasing the set. Gun shots break out throughout the store sending his rattled body crashing on top of the train display. Later in the episode, when Tony is reflecting on Bobby's death, holding the rifle that Bobby gave him on his birthday, Tony flashes back to the moment when he and Bobby were fishing, contemplating their own fates. Bobby observes that when getting killed, you "probably don't even hear it when it happens, right?"

Gallery[]

Relationships[]

Karen Baccalieri[]

Bobby and Karen both loved each other, and he was one of the few mobsters to not have a goomar. However, in the season 3 episode University, Bobby is seen hanging at the bing with the rest of the crew, talking with strippers while having his arm around them. This could imply that he still did cheat on his wife.

Janice Soprano[]

He held the same fidelity with Karen to Janice, as evidenced that he did not have sex with her until after their wedding and stayed faithful to his second wife until his own death. However, Janice was a nagging and controlling women to both Bobby and his kids, and she manipulated him into putting his grief over Karen behind by scaring his kids with an ouija board.

Murders committed by Bobby Jr[]

Rene LeCours: a French-Canadian man whom Tony Soprano had ordered to be killed. (August 2007)

Appearance[]

Episodes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
Season 5
Season 6
  1. In Soprano Home Movies, while talking about the fight, Tony says he is 42 or 43. Also, Bobby Baccalieri Sr. fathered him at age 32, and in Another Toothpick, Bobby tells Junior his father is 68
Advertisement