Who else thinks we should have Daylight Savings Time every weekend?
The episode opens with my first chance all season to use the words "Tony Sirico" and "back" in a sentence that has an entirely positive connotation. Well, hallelujah. We're at The Bing, and pretty much the entire male component of the cast has gathered to welcome Paulie home from jail. Once the obligatory hugs, toasts, and prison sex jokes are exchanged, Silvio cues up Paulie's favorite song on the loudspeakers. It's an old Frank Sinatra tune, and my extensive research on the subject indicates that Dean Martin had absolutely nothing to do with this one. I'm sure I'll somehow be proven wrong on that. After pausing to introduce him to Cousin Brian, Tony leads Paulie over to the bar for a little sit-down. He welcomes him back from the wilds of Youngstown, and even hands over an envelope stuffed with cash. Paulie, in his ever inimitable style, replies, "Not that I don't appreciate it, but I could have used a boost while I was gone, too. Fucking bills." Sheesh. All I got when I was released from jail was twenty bucks in bus money and a postcard from Zihuatanejo. Tony just rolls his eyes, and reminds Paulie about the no show jobs he got for him. "Just enjoy the party," he adds. A chastened Paulie promises that he will. And so, it seems, will I. Cut to some silicone -- er, strippers, cavorting wildly onstage. It looks like all that pole cleaning we saw earlier in the season has finally paid off. In any case, gratuitous female nudity is always welcome my house, and even Tony sports an indulgent smile as he watches Brian doing body-shots off a topless waitress.
Hey! It's Murder One! I used to love that show! In fact, if we ever do a "TWoP at Nite"-style, old-school recap site, that'll be the first show I sign up for. Well, okay. It would actually be the second show, but since Sars has already repeatedly refused to let me recap Red Shoe Diaries, I'll take what I can get. The scene in question describes the legal machinations that result from Julie's decision to marry Richard so she can't be forced to testify against him at Neil's trial. Oddly enough, the girl who plays Julie (Bobbie Phillips) was yet another youthful infatuation of mine, which is why I was shocked to discover that I've apparently never seen her episode of Red Shoe Diaries. Looks like I'll be heading to Blockbuster as soon as the recap is finished. Anyway, as Adriana sits alone on her couch and listens to the dulcet tones of Daniel Benzali emphasizing his objections to the marital privilege, we slowly push in on her face in order to better see the six brain cells that the heroin hasn't killed light up with understanding.
Back at the Bing, Brian wakes up on the stage the morning with no pants on and no clue how he got there. Up on the balcony, Tony pokes his head up to suggest they go to breakfast, and Joey Pants emerges from the men's room to invite himself along as well. Everyone's bed-head is making me giggle here, but I do have a hard time believing that Tony would ever sleep on the floor, especially when we already know that the VIP room has a couch.
Once they get to a diner, Joey takes the opportunity to ask Cousin Brian for some investment tips. "Buy land," Brian advises, "because God ain't making any more of it." Perhaps not surprisingly, Tony doesn't contradict him by pointing out that Iceland and Hawaii were formed by volcanic activity, and therefore God in fact is still making more land. But that's not the point. The point is that Brian has a story about a scam a friend of his once pulled using the Department of Housing and Urban Development to guarantee some "fugazee mortgage loans." Reminiscent of the way in which MacGyver always used to leave out one critical component when assembling a nuclear weapon out of dental floss, cat food cans, and a leg of lamb for fear that kids would try to replicate it at home, David Chase elects to cut us to a silent exterior shot of the diner just as Brian begins to explain the crucial details. Aww, MacGyver. That would have been my third show.
Cut to Furio, driving Tony to an as yet undetermined location. They pull over to park, and Tony tells him to wait while he runs inside. People who enjoy hunting for film flubs will be pleased to note that the windshield, which was just wiped clear of rain in the exterior shot, appears completely soaked from the inside. Tony gets out and heads across the street, while Furio waits in the car and looks through a stack of pictures from his housewarming party. When he comes to one of Carmela, he pauses thoughtfully and then starts scribbling "Mrs. Carmela Giunta" on a nearby Trapper Keeper.
The undetermined location turns out to be a Russian bathhouse, and while I'm sure some of you were expecting a Czechoslovakian interior decorator to jump out and grab Tony, he's actually just there to have a nice schvitz with Boon, Joey Pants, and Vondie Curtis-Hall, who is playing an African-American civil rights activist that happens to be one of Boon's old college buddies. And while it is true that the world must never forget that Vondie is the man most responsible for Glitter, we should probably just be grateful that David Chase elected not to cast Tim Matheson in black-face for the role. Especially when you consider all the other stereotypes this episode traffics in. Speaking of which, Vondie is telling everyone about the "Jew-fro" Boon used to sport back in the day. Man, I'd kill to be able to pull off the Jew-fro. The best I can manage these days is the Jew-comb-over. Tony and Vondie reminisce for a moment about growing up near one another in the old neighborhood, which also provides Joey the opportunity to make his contractually obligated offensive comment of the week.
Back out in the car, Furio gently places his sunglasses in the glove compartment, and then picks up a cell phone to call Carmela. Incidentally, anyone who thinks they're not deliberately dressing Edie Falco in frumpier fashions this season needs to check out the seriously unflattering scoop-neck sweater and snow-leopard print mock turtleneck they've got her wearing here. It looks like something Adriana's grandmother would wear. Anyway, a clearly smitten Furio claims to be calling because he lost his sunglasses, and while it's never quite clear whether Carm buys that excuse or not, she does make at least a token attempt to look around the house for them. They exchange a lot of awkward small talk, and Carmela seems to be a bit more brusque than you might expect, even after Furio tells her that he found a particularly pretty picture of her from the housewarming party. Realizing that he's unable to sustain the pretense for calling any longer, Furio wistfully promises to see her soon, and looks incredibly sad as he hangs up the phone.
You know, I really do love that the producers have decided to reward the fans' obvious affection for Furio and Bobby Bacala with bigger plotlines this season. And while I have no problems buying Bobby's story, I'm somewhat disheartened to admit that Furio's just seems to be falling flat. I miss the ass-kicking, knee-capping, hat-poking, bikini-brief-wearing, bad-ass Furio of yore. I mean, all he did last week was blink at a guy. It's nice that they want to show him as a three-dimensional character and all, and the dichotomy between cuddly Bobby turning evil and evil Furio turning cuddly is clever, but the show already has way too many conflicted characters, and sometimes it's nice to just have some simple, mindless comic relief. That's no knock on Federico Castelluccio, by the way. The mere fact that I still get freaked out when I hear him speak without the accent is enough to prove how talented he is. So if you're reading this, Federico, please don't beat me up. I'll even buy one of your paintings if I have to.
In the steam room, Vondie and Boon are still waxing nostalgic about their days as young liberals. They talk about voting drives and food co-ops and lots of other historical stuff that's probably quite interesting to anyone who lives in Newark or cares passionately about the plight of the oppressed. Seeing as how neither of those two apply to me, however, I'm not going to bother recapping what they're saying. When Joey starts talking about Cousin Brian's HUD scam, Tony excuses himself and walks out in order to avoid participating in any of those pesky incriminating conversations. Joey runs down the plan for Vondie, and this time we do get to hear details. They've got a urologist on the payroll who will buy four rundown houses for $125,000 each, and also an appraiser who will re-list them at $300,000 apiece. So all Vondie has to do is get his non-profit group to apply for a HUD-guaranteed loan, which Boon's office will support, and then keep the check and not make any mortgage payments so that the taxpayers get stuck with the bill. Vondie and Boon each get ten percent of the profit for their troubles, and the citizens of Newark, as always, get screwed.
Outside in the locker room, Tony is almost fully dressed when Boon emerges to join him. After last week's shockingly robe-free episode, I'm more than a little disappointed that Boon is the only one we'll be seeing in terrycloth this scene. He sidles over to Tony and proceeds to deliver the somewhat unexpected confession that he and Irina are now an item. They met at some fundraiser, blah blah blah, she had a problem with her landlord, blah blah blee, and now suddenly he "[cares] for her very deeply," and is separated from his wife. Tony outwardly seems surprisingly okay with the whole thing, and even wishes the lovebirds well, but it's also very important that you remember he's listening to a Chi-Lites song while simultaneously pulling on his belt here. That'll be important (and also painful) later on. Vondie and Joey enter at this point, and Tony and Vondie do a little bonding over their shared appreciation for Motown trivia so as to further draw attention to the plot-relevant music on the soundtrack. The scene ends with Tony assuring Boon one last time that he has no problem with the guy going for sloppy seconds.
At a bank somewhere, the shady urologist signs off on the deeds for the four houses he's buying before hilariously exclaiming, "Eat my dust, Donald Trump!" in the sort of deadpan tone you'd expect him to reserve for describing a particularly troubling prostate problem.
Meanwhile, in a non-product-placed Hallmark store, Adriana's new and significantly less buxom FBI contact has snuck up on her to ask about Paulie's return from prison. "How does Christopher feel about that?" she inquires. "Paulie likes Christopher," replies Adriana. "They're friends. He lets him smell my underwear." Agent Not Mare Winningham also wants to know how Christopher is doing with his "drug problem." Adriana denies that such a problem even exists, and also demands that Agent Not Mare stop pretending like she actually cares about them. "We're both fine," she insists, before adding, "As a matter of fact, we're thinking about finally getting married." The look of bemused distaste on Agent Not Mare's face after that line makes it seem like she might have just caught a whiff of Adriana's underwear herself.
Cut to Tony and AJ, coming home from a fishing trip to the Jersey shore. I certainly hope they don't plan on eating whatever they caught. I'm sure AJ already got enough hypodermic needles in his Halloween candy this week. Obviously enjoying their pleasant father-son time together, Tony asks if AJ wants to take a little drive. When he agrees, Dad brings him to the very same church where he brought Meadow in the show's first episode. "See that church?" he says. "Your great-grandfather helped build that almost eighty years ago. He was a stonemason, the old man. He came over from Avellino with four dollars in his pocket." AJ's response to this genealogical enlightenment? "Yeah, but I saw in a book where you could get a hotel room for like ten cents a week then. Room service must have been like one or two cents a meal." Hee! And you people in the forums are speculating that AJ might secretly be smart. I don't think so. On the other hand, his response is still at least marginally more clever than Meadow's was, and she goes to an Ivy League college. So who knows? "We're talking about history here," snaps Tony. "Your family's history. Newark's history." AJ: "Well, who gives a shit about Newark?" Heh. Maybe the boy is smart, after all. Tony goes on to extol the virtue of old-style Italian pride and construction ability. "Look at all these buildings around here," he says. "Most of them are falling down into the ground. But that church is still standing. Do you know why?" "The bricks?" answers AJ. Hee, again! In fact, I'm not sure which is funnier, AJ's dumb-guy tone of voice or the exasperated-parent look on Tony's face. Dad tries once again to explain the significance of all this to his child, pointing out that hundreds of Italians drive in every Sunday from all over the state to help keep the church alive. "So how come we never do?" asks AJ, proving that even a blind squirrel can occasionally find a juicy conversational nut. Tony has no answer for that one, so instead he decides to parrot the same advice Cousin Brian gave him earlier. "Buy land, AJ," he says. "'Cuz God ain't making any more of it."
After a brief cut, The Tony Soprano Magical Mystery Tour Of Greater Newark And Its Environs resumes across the street from the rundown houses he's just bought. It looks like a pretty crappy neighborhood, and Tony stops scanning for threats in his rearview mirror just long enough to ask AJ if he's scared. "Right," replies the kid. "Like I haven't seen places like this before." Yeah, and when you saw one last week you nearly pissed your pants. Tony explains that he bought the houses as an investment, and repeats his new "buy real estate" mantra to AJ a few times in the hopes that it will sink in. Before he can say anything else, however, a few local residents come over, and Tony rolls down the window to speak with them. "You five-oh?" the guy asks, getting a sarcastic smirk in response. "Yeah, I'm Starsky and this is Hutch," says Tony. After he politely declines an offer of "smoke, crack, or crank," the guy tells Tony that there's "no eyein' if you ain't buyin'," which prompts the woman with him to add, "Unless you want something, motherfucker, get the fuck off our street." "Oh, the language on you!" exclaims Tony. "You blow your father with mouth?" Heh. AJ, by the way, is loving this confrontation. Tony tries to explain that he just wanted to show his kid the old neighborhood, but Random Resident flashes his gun and snarls, "This is our neighborhood now, you guinea motherfucker." "Yeah. I can see that," sighs Tony, as he puts the car in gear. Just as they pull away, AJ gets a big smile on his face and says, "So, that's a crack ho." Bwah!
FBI Headquarters. New Jersey's crack Organized Crime Task Force (which consists of a grand total of four people) is gathered in their conference room to eat lunch and discuss the impending Moltisanti-La Cerva nuptials. I really hope they cleaned all the puke off that table before they decided to eat there. I'm just saying. They argue about the relative pros and cons of the marriage, and when Agent Lola mentions that Adriana probably can't have children due to "female trouble," Agent Rico Suave gets to reply, "Maybe Darwin was right. Nature really does weed out the nimrods," as he cleans a ketchup stain off his tie. Heh. They all finally decide to support the wedding plans, and consummate their decision with a toast to "the happy couple."
In another office in what might well be the same federal building, Vondie is getting his HUD loan applications approved. He trades a few Kent-worthy platitudes with the loan clerk, and then takes his signed documents and heads off.
Yep. It's now official. Tony has spent more time in his Suburban this week than he has in Melfi's office all season. This time he's pulling up in some cookie-cutter suburban subdivision that looks as though it could be the set for a sequel to The Truman Show. A slow pan across a license plate which reads "New Jersey Assembly #1" lets us know exactly who it is he's going to visit. Inside, Tony explains to Boon that one of the houses they've bought is a crack den, and that he wants Boon to get the cops to go in and clean the place out. Boon tries to explain why that's not going to be easy, but he's interrupted when Irina emerges from a back room wearing nothing but a skimpy halter top and a pair of hot pants. On second thought, that's the shot that lets us know exactly who Tony came to see. Irina greets him in broken English, and Boon proudly announces that she's been taking ESL classes at the local community college. Given what we've seen of the Newark community in this episode, I'm not surprised that the classes don't seem to be doing much. "Well, you, uh, sound great," says Tony, as he stares at her chest. We then cut to a wide shot, which nicely contrasts Boon's growing paunch with Irina's taut midriff. She offers to make him a sandwich, and he asks that she go "light on the mayo." Yeah, that'll help. She heads back into the kitchen so that the men can discuss business, and Tony explains that he can't strip the valuable copper piping out of the houses with all those crackheads in there. Boon thinks they should focus on "the big picture," and be happy that the HUD approval came through, but Tony reminds him that "maximum value" IS the big picture, and suggests that they take the $7,000 he'd be losing out of Boon's cut. Naturally, Boon is not real thrilled with that idea, so Tony orders him to find a solution, and then lets himself out.
Maison de Moltisanti. Christopher and Adriana settle in on the couch after eating dinner, which gives Adriana the perfect opportunity to begin implementing her devious legal scheme. "Let's get married," she says, pointing out that they've been engaged for more than two years, and even suggesting that they head down to City Hall right away. Chris is surprised by her sudden interest, but he (at least initially) doesn't seem to be objecting too strenuously. Of course, that may just be because Adriana is rubbing her foot in his crotch and saucily mentioning that "a wife can't be forced to testify against her husband." Chris thinks things over for a minute, and then reminds her that "you can't have a club and stay out all night getting high when you have a kid." This lets all the air right out of Adriana's marriage balloon, because now she's forced to tell him what we viewers already know. After a few false starts and several gulps of wine, she finally admits that she had a "medical procedure" done back before she met him, and it left her with a punctured uterus. "Both of them?" asks Christopher. Hee! "There's only one," she explains. "That's ovaries." Incidentally, a lot of people seem to think that Christopher didn't catch the meaning of the whole "medical procedure" euphemism, and given his general lack of understanding concerning the female reproductive system, that's not necessarily surprising. Personally, however, I think he gives a look here that fairly clearly demonstrates he knows what she meant. It's quick, but it's there. Anyway, she goes on to explain that it will likely be difficult (but not necessarily impossible) for her to get pregnant, and she even mentions that "a friend" gave her the name of a specialist in Manhattan. Chris, however, has finally grasped the meaning of all this, and he's furious. "You knew you were damaged goods and you never fucking told me?" he shouts. Wow. That was a little rude. But still, he does sort of have a point. If they've been engaged for two years, you'd think she'd have mentioned it by now. That doesn't justify what he said, but Christopher is not the only bad guy in this scene. Adriana apologizes tearfully, and suggests that they could always adopt. "Oh, that's great!" shouts Christopher. "Some kid with chinky eyes called Moltisanti. He'd get his ass kicked every day." He smashes a vase and then storms out of the house, leaving Adriana alone with her tears and her yapping little field goal dog.
Speaking of field goals, let's go Steelers!
Ahem. Back in the Bing's back room, Tony, Silvio, and Paulie are counseling Christopher on the virtues of marriage. Tony speaks optimistically about the wonders of modern medical technology, and Silvio points out that "you could have more kids than the Kennedys, but if you're married to some twat, what good it is it?" Paulie, however, takes a dissenting view. "This is nothing about Ade or anybody else," he says, before advising Christopher to remain single as long as possible. "Marriage and our thing don't jive." Heh. I'm beginning to think that marriage might not jive with recapping, either. But that's more of a Six Feet Under sort of subject, so I'll just move on. Tony reminds Christopher that Adriana stood by him when he got shot in the spleen, and then pulls out his ultimate trump card: "You don't want to end up like my Uncle June, do ya?" Chris seems genuinely grateful for their advice, even if he still doesn't seem to have made up his mind one way or the other.
So, of course, he then does what anyone would do when considering a critical life decision: he shoots up. In his car. Which is parked on the side of the road. And then he passes out against the window, with his arm still wrapped in plastic tubing. Oh, yeah. That's smart. It also makes me wonder why the hell the Feds even need Adriana's help. It's not like they couldn't have picked up Chris himself by now. And if they could get Big Pussy to turn over a heroin beef, there's certainly no reason they couldn't do the same thing here. Anyway, Chris shakes himself awake, puts away the paraphernalia, and almost gets into an accident as he starts to drive away.
The morning, Boon walks up to a house in a considerably less generic neighborhood than his own. Mrs. Vondie answers the door, and mentions that Mr. Vondie can be found in the den before her two kids come rumbling out past her. Because this show can never pass on an opportunity to tweak those beloved stereotypes, the little black kids are carrying hockey sticks instead of basketballs and rushing off to practice. Heh.
Inside, Boon is trying to convince Vondie that he's the one who should be handling the crackhead problem, because the police would be ineffectual. Vondie, however, doesn't want to get in any deeper than he already is. "Nobody mentioned anything about violence," he says. "We renounced it, remember? When Eldridge went into the codpiece business." Heh. Leave it to David Chase to dig up a historical nugget like that one. Boon insists that the problem can only be solved by "people of color," and proposes that Vondie use some kids from a gang outreach center he helps run to do the job. "When you think about it from a policing standpoint," he rationalizes, "it's just one group of recidivists beating on another." When even that still fails to convince Vondie, Boon asks Foreshadowing for some help in pulling on his coat, then adds, "Let me tell you something else. Guys like Tony? You don't fool around with these people. That's what their ex-girlfriends are for."
Hmm. It seems that the production staff has been using all the time they weren't actually shooting in Melfi's office to find all sorts of new and interesting places to put the camera. I like the new diagonal angle they've got going here. Tony wants to talk about AJ, but Melfi interrupts to say that she thinks they need to discuss his "angry tirade" from the episode. She chews him out for allowing his anger to "manifest itself in physicality," and remains completely unmollified by the basket of flowers that he sent. "You cannot have these outbursts and expect to redeem yourself with an FTD bouquet," she tells him. "We've been down this road before." Several times, in fact. Tony is quite apologetic, but he does repeatedly insist that he never laid a finger on her. "You loomed," she replies. "You threw my tissue holder." Heh. "Loomed" is a funny word. So is "tissue," for that matter. Anyway, Tony is still upset that she didn't tell him about Gloria (which I assume she was legally required not to), and tries to justify his behavior thusly: "I know what I did was wrong, okay? And you may not believe this, but I did exercise impulse control. And I have been controlling my anger. This thing with my son? I went to show him the old neighborhood, and we got accosted by these crackheads. One of them had a gun, and the other one threw a bottle at my car. Now it may not sound like much, but I let it go. I drove away." "In the future," replies Melfi, "I'd ask that you extend to me the same courtesy that you would a crack addict." Ooh, burn! Even Tony has to smile at that one, knowing that he's been caught. He settles back into the chair, and confesses that he's been holding a grudge against Melfi for the idiot shrink she referred Meadow to a few weeks back. When Melfi greets this news with nothing but a put-upon sigh, he's forced to admit that it's not much of an excuse.
Hey! It's the A-Team! I used to love that show! Not as much as Murder One, MacGyver, or Red Shoe Diaries, but I loved it nonetheless. Adriana is watching TV again, and this time the A-Team's insipid dialogue about smuggling an incriminating videotape across the county line should provide all the explanation Adriana could ever need about why you shouldn't believe everything you hear on television. If this job has taught me anything, it's that the only network you can trust is the UPN, and that's only because they don't even try to hide the fact that they suck. Christopher comes home, and turns off the TV before silently sitting down beside his fiancée. Eventually, he admits that even though he's "not happy" she lied to him, he graciously does want to "try and deal with it." "I love you, Adriana," he says tenderly. "I want you in my life." Aww. Now, see? These two crazy, mixed-up kids really do love each other. It's actually quite sweet, in a drug-induced, shadow-of-impending-doom sort of way. Adriana asks if he's high, because she wants to be sure that his feelings are real, and when he insists that they are, she asks when they can get married. Christopher wants to do it in Las Vegas on their anniversary, which causes me to suddenly realize that I'll be in Vegas myself for the weekend of the season finale. I'd better go check my mail for an invitation. The happy couple embraces, and Adriana tries very hard not to spill the ash from her cigarette onto the leather sofa.
Chez Soprano. Carmela refuses to allow Adriana to get married by an "Elvis impersonator," because, as we all know, marriage is a "sacrament." And nothing says heresy like a fat guy in a sequined jumpsuit. Instead, she wants to hold the wedding right there at Chez Soprano, in the backyard, or maybe in the "great room." "What's so great about it?" I wonder. Carmela, however, is too excited to answer. In fact, her voice is pitched so high that I'm surprised Adriana's dog hasn't come running. She wants to invite all their friends, and have Artie do the catering. "We can decorate the whole house with mums," she says, to the woman who can't have children. Heh. You always gotta be paying attention with this show. Eventually, Adriana gets into the spirit of things, and actually seems to be excited about life for a moment. And, even more shocking, she's wearing a zebra print instead of leopard. You could knock me over with a feather.
Newark at night. We're outside the crack house, when a bunch of gangbangers pull up in a late-model Volvo station wagon. You can always count on gang kids to be safety-conscious. Seat belts may interfere with your aim, but no self-respecting Crip would ever be caught dead pulling a drive-by without side-impact airbags and ABS brakes. They storm into the house, shooting the place up with an Uzi that's almost as big as the kid who's carrying it. Just for added dramatic tension (with special bonus irony, as well) they've put a little girl in there with all the crackheads. What's really frightening is that I actually thought it was Taylor for a second. Now, that would have been weird. But not entirely unexpected, given her lineage. Anyway, the kids continue beating on the helpless drug addicts until pretty much everyone has run away. At this point Random Resident -- whom I've decided to rename Crackhead Carl -- picks up a pistol and tries to lead his sister and the little girl out of the house. He's quickly beaten down by the younger, faster, and not-high-on-crack kids, and they proceed to steal both his gun and his drugs. As he stumbles out the door, one kid fires off a single shot which ricochets and hits Carl right in the, er, "crack pipe," so to speak. Damn! Now, that's gotta hurt. Hell, even just having a squib go off there must have hurt the stuntman. On the other hand, it's only one of the many literal and figurative emasculations going on in this episode. I mean, you've got Furio turned into a wuss, Boon taking a beating, Tony getting chewed out by Melfi, and Christopher discovering that he'll likely never have a male heir. Hmm. I wonder if David Chase is trying to tell me that "Watching Too Much Television" makes you less of a man? I wouldn't put it past him. The scene ends with a homeless guy out in the street reminding Crackhead Carl that he "told [them] that crack is some bad shit." Then Ice Cube and Cuba Gooding Jr. stop by, and everyone takes a moment to feel sorry for poor, poor Morris Chestnut.
Cut to a bank, where the final element of the HUD scam is consummated as Vondie "buys" the houses from the shady urologist. You know, if there's one thing I love about this show, it's their ever-present willingness to poke fun at their own habits and motifs. Of maybe it's their willingness to make fun of their corporate masters. Either way, the bank in question is adorned with a huge generic sign which reads, "Mid-County Bank," presumably because no real bank was interested in being product-placed as an institution which condones fraudulent mortgage lending. I'm gonna have to give that one a hearty "heh," and also negative fifteen StPP points.
And speaking of points, our long national nightmare is finally over! Tony is once again wearing his robe, and all is right in the world. As a special thanks to the sixty-five percent of you who voted overwhelmingly for me to just "Stop with the damn math already" a few weeks ago, I'll just say that this week's StR value can only be calculated by taking the square root of 299,220,804 and dividing by pi. So there. Nevertheless, Tony leads Cousin Brian down into the basement, where he presents him with a very expensive watch in appreciation for suggesting the whole HUD scam in the first place. Brian is a bit taken aback, mostly because he never expected Tony to actually go through with it, but also because he's concerned about the potential impact it might have on the American taxpayers. "The American taxpayers pay for airport security," observes Tony, "and look how well that's going." Good point. Brian -- who is apparently quite easily tempted by anything shiny (up to and including the fabric of his suits and the sequined pasties on the girls down at the Bing) -- quickly overcomes his objections, and gratefully accepts the gift. Then Carmela yells down, and the boys are forced to pretend that Brian just came over to borrow some tools. Except they almost forget the actual tools, causing Tony to have to go back and grab a drill before they head upstairs.
Meanwhile, Carmela is once again primping in the mirror in anticipation of a visit from Furio. She's also in a much nicer outfit this time, all the better to contrast with how she dresses when she's not expecting him to stop by. When he arrives at the door, however, he refuses to come inside, claiming that the car has some sort of malfunction which requires him to keep his foot on the gas pedal. Carmela isn't sure what to make of that, especially since he clearly took his foot off the pedal to ring the doorbell, so she just maintains her artificially chipper tone and dips her head like a bird a few times. She also has no idea what to do with her hands while putting on a brave face, so they just sort of hang there in front of her. Finally Furio breaks the tension by turning to walk back to the car, and Carmela heads closes the door and looks worried. See? That was exceptionally well-acted by both principals, and yet I still don't buy it. I can't be the only one who feels this way, can I?
Back inside, Carmela catches Cousin Brian on the way out the door. She notices the drill, and asks if he's doing any work on the house. For the record, Cousin Brian is an incredibly bad liar. "Yeah, you know, uh, I'm sinking some anchors for, uh, a wall mirror," he says. "And then I'm building a guest house so Foreshadowing can come over and hang out with all my new mob buddies."
Boy, Johnny Sack really loves this restaurant by the Brooklyn Bridge, doesn't he? They must give Ginny extra portions when he brings her there or something. Anyway, he's meeting with Paulie in person this time, but the conversation is basically the same. Paulie complains about Tony, while Johnny nods and smiles a lot. "Fuckin' Tony," whines Paulie. "Four months I'm up there like the man in the iron mask. Not one visit. Not even a fucking phone call." The man in the iron mask? That's a fairly obscure reference. Maybe Paulie is the one who's smarter than we give him credit for. Unless he was referring to the DiCaprio version, that is. "When do I ever complain?" he continues, blowing the "smarter than he looks" idea right out of the water. "Even before I left he was treating me like the ugly girl at the dance." The real news, however, comes when Paulie lets it slip that Tony and Boon have profited on yet another real estate deal without giving Carmine and Johnny their fair share. Perhaps realizing that he's let the cat out of the bag, Paulie asks for assurances that "this shit don't leave the table." Johnny promises him that it won't, and we close with a two-shot that provides a study in class differences as Johnny daintily folds his hands together and Paulie tries valiantly to scrape the last vestiges of chocolate mousse out of his bowl.
New Jack City. Uh, I mean, "Newark." Boon is meeting with constituents around the corner from the crack house when he spots Tony driving by in his Suburban. While Boon makes excuses and ditches his assistant, Tony is giving Wide Guy instructions on how to strip the houses. When Boon finally catches up with him, they share a brief, relatively pointless conversation about whether or not they'll be seeing each other at the Bing the day. Then Tony leaves, and a precocious little black kid comes over to ask Boon if it's "gonna be a nice house here now." Heh. White guilt is always funny.
Hey! It's the "Like A Virgin" video! I love that video! Okay, just kidding. It's actually Adriana trying on a wedding dress, complete with V-shaped tiara and fingerless gloves. For some reason, she's got Monica Lewinsky with her. Okay, just kidding. It's actually just a friend or a cousin or something. Although I guess if anyone would know from dresses, it'd be Monica Lewinsky. Anyway, they chat about various other weddings (including the horrible faux pas of someone not "covering [their] plate") until Adriana mentions that the only reason she's getting married now is so that she can't be called to testify. Monica, however, begs to differ with that assumption, because she once saw an episode of Murder, She Wrote where that rumor was proven to be untrue. And I guess if anyone would know about the various legalities of grand jury testimony, it'd be Monica Lewinsky.
Cut to a sleazy law office, where a lawyer basically tells Adriana that she can, in fact, be called to testify against her husband. The only thing worth really caring about in this scene is the FDNY hat Adriana is wearing, and that's only because it's entirely possible that it was my father who sold it to the prop department. Hi, Dad!
At the Bing, Silvio is paying out the profits from the scam to Boon and Vondie. He mentions that Tony has graciously rounded up their take to $60,000 each. As they pocket their envelopes and head for the door, Boon is feeling nostalgic. "Do you ever feel bad about any of this?" he asks. "When I think about where we started out…" Vondie has a slightly more practical view of the situation. "You cut corners, but you help out," he rationalizes. "Do the best you can. Hey, if it ain't us, it's gonna be somebody else. What are we supposed to be? The only honest men?" Boon still can't shake the feeling that he's failed at being a liberal, and the fact that this entire conversation is taking place while naked women are being oppressed and dehumanized on the stage behind him probably isn't helping. I know it's certainly not helping my concentration. "We were going to lead a revolution," he says. "The revolution got sold," replies Vondie, before referencing the Beatles appearance in an H&R Block commercial. I can't believe they passed up the chance to go meta by having him say "the revolution will not be televised," instead. That song kicks ass. The scene ends with Boon ogling Foreshadowing's silicone-enhanced breasts as he says, "Sometimes I feel like I should be punished." Be careful what you wish for, my friend. Be very, very careful.
Upstairs, Tony, Silvio, and Joey are toasting their success. "Here's something I never thought I'd say," says Tony. "Here's to the federal government." "Depends on which department," adds Silvio, which causes Joey to break into peals of hysterical laughter.
And then the Ironic Segue Fairy cuts us from Joey's cackling to an entire coven of mob wives cackling as well. By the way, see what I did there with the coven reference on Halloween? It's not much, I know, but it also hasn't been Halloween for three days now, so it's the best I can do. We're at Chez Soprano, watching Adriana open gifts at her bridal shower. Well, that's what most of you were probably watching. My mind is still dirty from the strip club scene, so I'm watching the incredibly short skirt Meadow is wearing. The kid may be a total brat, but she can really work that Jersey-girl look. Adriana opens a series of progressively more and more domestic gifts (including a cappuccino machine and same type of Cuisinart that Mrs. Little Stevie uses to make cheese-melts for Silvio), and everyone "oohs" and "ahhs" appropriately. Everyone except Adriana, that is, who looks quite forlorn now that her only ostensible reason for getting married has disappeared. She's even more depressed when the gift turns out to be a hideously ugly giant leaf-shaped plate. Personally, I think she should just be thankful it's not a plastic singing fish.
If last week's episode was all about the Billy Joel, then this week's is clearly about Tony's Suburban. He's back behind the wheel yet again, and this time he's rocking out to Bachman Turner Overdrive. Which I suppose is better than Maximum Overdrive, because that would mean that the car was evil and trying to kill people. And since it would also mean that Emilio Estevez could show up at any minute, I vote we just stick with BTO. Tony disagrees, however, and fiddles with the dial until the Chi-Lites song we heard earlier comes on. Proving that certain songs have a very powerful capacity for sparking emotional memories, he quickly begins to cry as the music plays. I'm not going to quote the lyrics here, but you can just assume that they capture the theme perfectly.
And as the music keeps playing, Tony pulls up in front of Boon's house. He rings the bell and Irina answers, looking just guilty enough in her silk robe to make us think they're having an affair. So, of course, the shot is of Tony walking into the bedroom to find a half-naked and pasty-white Boon sitting on the bed in his underwear. Be honest: How many people's thoughts went to a very icky place when they saw that? No one? Really? I must be watching too much Red Shoe Diaries. Boon is confused by Tony's unexpected arrival, and the fact that Tony remains completely silent isn't doing anything to alleviate his anxiety. Suddenly, Tony strips off his belt and very calmly begins beating on Boon with it. Peter Riegert just crumples to the floor and takes it without even trying to fight back, and not even Irina's screaming can convince Tony to stop. Finally he steps back (after delivering a particularly vicious blow to Boon's ass), and looms over him while wondering, "All the girls in New Jersey, and you had to fuck this one?" And are we to believe that's really Tony's motivation here? That he's upset because he misses Irina? Or is it because he has no choice but to miss Gloria? Or perhaps it's frustration that he can't beat some sense into his own son like he's doing with Boon here. Using a belt like that would seem to support that idea somewhat, as would the fact that Tony was unable to talk about his frustration over AJ with Melfi earlier in the show. But I think it's most likely that the song and the belt were in his mind solely because that's what was going on when he first heard about the whole thing. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, I guess. Tony gives Irina one last lingering look, and then he pats her on the cheek and walks out the door. We finally fade to black over Irina trying to decide which man she should run to.
Wow. Good episode. I suppose that's what happens when you let the entire writing staff take a crack at it (five different people worked on this script). In fact, it was so good that there's really only one thing left to be said here, while the image of Boon's beating remains fresh in our minds: Thank you sir, may I have another?