Episode Report Card Mr. Sobell: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Abruzzi -- dead!
By Mr. Sobell | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 09.10.2006
Over at the Mob Safe House, Non-Jersey Division, Mrs. Abruzzi has lined up the finances for the Mafia Don Retirement Plan. "We got a hundred and fifty thousand here, John," she says. "With Vittorio's place in Solanas, we'll be able to live off the interest." John's not here, man. Instead, it's just the kids, who give Mrs. Abruzzi the "Mom, Dad ran out to go avenge a Mafia blood feud. Or he's gone to the corner market to buy some smokes. Either way, we don't expect to be seeing him again any time soon." And those kids are prescient, because we immediately cut to what a caption tells us is "Interstate 95, North of Washington, D.C.," which I, as a man who not three weeks ago drove that very stretch of road between Baltimore and D.C., can tell you is a dirty, filthy TV lie, since Abruzzi is cruising along at top speed and not stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Ah, but let us willingly suspend our disbelief and instead pretend that the I-95 corridor is but a fast-moving parkway in which a mob boss can nip down from New York to Washington to rub out a snitch with nary a traffic snarl to be had. "Let's get this over with," Abruzzi says, "so I can get back to my family." I look forward to seeing you do that...in your flying car, maybe.
In a less fanciful world, Michael is expressing his utmost confidence in Nika's ability to worm her way into Bellick's heart. Linc is more dubious: "When money's on the line you trust no one." Michael takes the counter-point in this particular debate: "Sometimes you have to." Linc scoffs at Michael's survival skills, which brings a meaningful look and a withering rebuttal from his younger brother: "You really don't trust anyone, do you?" Oh, man -- not the question to ask someone who had to escape from Death Row after getting convicted for a crime he didn't commit at the whim of a vast conspiracy that reaches the upper corridors of power. Don't get Linc started on how he doesn't trust people. Too late, Michael didâ"Every time I trusted someone, I got burned. Every time I got close to someone, I got screwed." Well, present company excluded, of course. And Veronica -- God rest what's left of her in those hefty bags we stuffed in -- she treated you right. And L.J. And that nice prison doctor the two of you kind of left in the lurch. But other than that: everyone's mean to Linc! "I know better," Linc concludes his keynote speech on the folly of trust. "So should you." I wait for the NBC "The More You Know" graphic to whiz by. Then, I remember that this is a Fox show. Fox doesn't do public service announcements... well, not unless you count Joe Millionaire and its advocacy on behalf of eugenics.