http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Thu, 10 Oct 2002 11:05:32 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/10/10/110532.php Radley BalkoThe title of this episode was "The Weight." May as well have been "The Tease." Writer Terence Winter tickles us with not one, but two potential hits, and a scurrilous affair between Carmela and Furio. In the end, we get nothing. Johnny "Sack" Sacramoni cancels his hit on Ralphie Cifareto at the very last moment. Johnny Sack himself comes around on making Ralphie's unfortunate comment about his wife a hit-worthy offense. The episode ends with Johnny informing Tony that he "accepts Cifareto's apology." It's not entirely clear if Tony cancels the hit on Sack. As for Carmela and Furio, she takes great pains to put checks on her lustful ambitions. She brings A.J. along, for example, when she visits Fioro's house, and instructs him to stay close by. The episode ends with an awkward and uncomfortable lovemaking session between Tony and Carmela.This episode was mostly an effort to subvert public fantasies about mob life. We see Johnny Sack display the kind of chivalry we sort of delude ourselves into thinking exists in the underworld. Yeah, wiseguys gun one another down. Yeah, they take mistresses, deal dope, and embezzle. But the do have a moral code, right? They value loyalty. They may cheat on their wives, but they still love them. They take vows of fidelity to the Family, and they respect other made men. This episode rocks those alleged foundations.Sack's love and respect for his wife earns him nothing but grief from his fellow mafiosos. Ralphie's crack about the size of her ass was by no means the first time someone's made a joke at Ginny Sack's expense. And when Johnny demands that Ralphie get whacked for the crack, not only does Carmine, the boss he's served most of his life not oblige, but Carmine then turns and orders a hit on his number one guy? Why? Because "there's millions of dollars at stake." Winter's reminding us here that the motivating factor in the underworld isn't loyalty or chivalry or Family, it's money. And not even a lot. Sure, the Newark waterfront project is worth "millions," but it isn't as if Ralphie is the only guy who can manage it. At most, it'd cost a few thousand to reposition a new capo to oversee the operation.Tony's then put in the position of arranging a hit on a guy he respects in order to protect a sleazebag he doesn't respect in the least. But as a don, he has no choice but to protect his capos. He has to kill a guy who stuck up for his wife in order to spare a guy who just walked out on his best friend's widow and who's been sleeping with his sister. So, again, money trumps all the other values Tony would like to think he holds dear.This of course brings lots of cries and calls about "the way things used to be." "Used to be a crack like that about another guy's wife would get him killed," Uncle Junior says. But the old guard isn't all it's cracked up to be, either. Let's not forget that Carmine, who ordered the hit on Johnny Sack, was himself a member of the "old guard." And Winter's takes more shots at "the way things used to be" when he sends Sil and Christopher out to Rhode Island to hire a squad of geriatric assassins to carry out Johnny Sack's hit. They come on Uncle Junior's recommendation, but they prove to be doddering old fools with bad or no eyesight.In the end, Winters seems eager to emphasize that there's really nothing redeeming about this lifestyle. Fittingly, the episode ends with Tony coming home and throwing himself onto Carmela, the half of his life he (usually) finds rewarding.But even that side of life is tainted by the mob side. The theme of money trumping other values again rears its ugly head. In an earlier argument with Carmela, Tony offends her when he pays no heed to her questions about the family's financial health should something happen to him. She breaks into tears when he mocks her concerns. Angry, he scolds her for "equating love with money." Of course, he's projecting. It's Tony who binds love and money, and Carmela quickly points this out to him. That's the way his Family works (it's all hugs and cheek kisses with his capos -- until the spigot stops flowing -- then he gets angry), so that's the really the only way he knows to run his small-"f" family as well. Just before his argument with Carmela, in fact, Tony had paid a surprise visit to Meadow while he was in New York. They too get into an argument when Tony raises his concerns over Meadow's newfound interest in a campus legal aid society. When Meadow erupts and says, "you know, the world doesn't revolve around you," Tony folds. "How 'bout we visit the bookstore," he says. "I bet you could use a new sweatshirt." Likewise, Tony precedes his amorous come-on to Carmela with the gift of a slinky new Nieman-Marcus cocktail dress.I had some problems (as did the Slate crew) with the plot coincidences in this episode. Seemed a little farfetched that Meadow and Tony's shrink Melfi's son and Melfi's shrink Elliot's daughter all go the same school. Even more farfetched that Meadow and Elliot's daughter would have met over a common interest in legal aid. Even more farfetched that Melfi's son and Elliot's daughter would have dated (especially considering the cartoonishly lesbian appearance of the latter). Even more farfetched that Elliot would have been visiting his daughter the same day Tony was visiting Meadow, and that the two would have bumped into one another in the parking garage. Eep.That said, this was still the most fun episode of the new season. Lots of intrigue and suspense. The turnaround hit ordered on Johnny Sack was a welcome twist. Furio's best impression of a harlequin romance hero was priceless. And Edie Falco's less-than-enthusiastic coitus session with Tony was some marvelous, marvelous acting.Best lines:"Maybe it was the feds...you know...trying to sow the seeds of dysentery between the families." --Christopher, speculating on who's leaking Soprano Family secrets to the New York family."He thinks he's all high and mighty, like a regular Sir Walter Raleigh." --Ralphie, referring to Johnny Sack."He needs to remember who makes the money to keep that fat bitch in Devil Dogs." --Ralphie, again referring to Johnny and Ginny Sack."Ralphie wants to fuck Ginny?" --Carmine, misinterpreting Johnny's complaints about Ralphie "dishonoring" his wife. Video1200@blogcritics.org Thu, 10 Oct 2002 11:05:32 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/10/03/092705.php Radley BalkoThe world's a jungle. You want my advice, Anthony? Don't expect happiness. You won't get it. People let you down...in the end, you die in your own arms.-- Livia Soprano, giving advice to Anthony, Jr.There's a theme of rugged individualism (dare I say, "libertarianism?") that runs through The Sopranos. At the very least, there's a sense that we're all responsible for our own actions. Such is why the show's protagonist, Tony Soprano, is subject to anxiety attacks, needs anti-depressant medication to function, and frequents a shrink. He's forever trapped by the realization that he's not a legitimate person. He can't be a father, or a husband, so long as the moral realities of his mob life continue to haunt him. He wants desperately to raise his kids right, to teach them responsibility and right-from-wrong. But he can't, because he has no moral authority to stand upon when it comes time to admonish them. "Oh, listen to you, Mr. Mob Boss," Meadow says, when he attempts to tell her she's making a mistake by skipping college for Europe. And last season, when A.J. dips into mischief after learning the truth behind his dad's "waste management business," Tony's helpless when it comes to straightening him out. Tony can hide behind the moral code of the mafia. He can attempt to lose himself in his "legitimate" life - his family. But in the end, he's challenged to reconcile the irreconcilable: he's a liar, a thief and a murderer. And that's how he makes his living. No amount of twist or spin or revisionist code he puts on those truths can change them. They are in fact truths, and the truth will continue to gnaw at Tony's soul until he owns up to it. Ultimately, he's responsible for his person.The theme of individualism has played itself out in other aspects of the show as well. I've referenced it in a previous review, but a most telling and understated display of the theme occurred last season, when a state's witness to a murder carried out by Tony and Big Pussy was seen in his home reading Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia. Nozick was a widely respected Harvard philosopher and libertarian (or, at least, a classical liberal). He believed in a minimalist state, and that individuals ought to be held accountable for the choices they make - and they ought to be free to make them. Nozick believed that one of the few legitimate functions of the state was to protect us from one another. Just after the shot of the witness reading Nozick, he learns that the murder he witnessed was not a random act, but rather one perpetrated by the Soprano crime family. Shaken, he recants his testimony. That's a pretty powerful statement coming from the Sopranos' creators. We can't count on the state for even the most basic of governmental functions - protecting us from harm. Ultimately, we're all on our own. We die in our own arms.That's a lengthy introduction into the third episode of The Sopranos fourth season, but I think it lays some important groundwork. In all honesty, I thought the episode was one of the weaker installments in the series. It was written by Michael Imperioli - the guy who plays Christopher Multisanti in the show. Imperioli also wrote "The Telltale Moozadel" from season three, perhaps the worst episode The Sopranos has yet to produce. Goes to show that perhaps Imperioli should follow the lead of his character, who gave up dreams of screenwriting to stick with what he does best - thuggery. This week was, basically, an exercise in grudge-settling. It was the Sopranos' finger in the eye to the Italian-American activists (such as the fallen Senator Robert Toricceli, who actually tried to condemn the show by way of a US Senate resolution) who protest the way his show portrays their ancestry - and, more broadly, it was a general middle finger cast in the direction of identity politics. I happen to love the message, but the way it was delivered leaves much to be desired. The entire episode struck me as didactic and polemical. The dialogue was trite and forced (at least by Sopranos standards). There were the usual great lines and outstanding scenes - and the show was still the best thing on TV all week - but on the whole I found it a little wanting.The plot centers around Columbus Day, and a planned Native American boycott of the town's celebratory parade. The Soprano Family feels that the Italian explorer's being slighted when activists call attention to the fact that he murdered and enslaved thousands of American Indians. Silvio serves as the writers' chief (pardon the pun) representative of Italian-American interests. In one particularly over-the-top scene, Silvio is attempting to persuade Tony that the issue is of grave concern to him - enough so that he'd like Tony to get involved. He mentions that he himself helped start an Italian-American Anti-Defamation organization - but of course, any check Silvio wrote was written with blood money, money garnered by the very means Italian Anti-American Defamation organizations consider defamatory. In another scene, Father Phil arranges a luncheon in which a successful Italian-American woman extols just how far women of her ancestry have come. She scolds stereotyping with uninspired lines such as, "They say John Gotti, we say Rudolph Giuliani." Of course, Carmela and the other wives of the mafiosos are in attendance. Carmela manages to be simultaneously offended by the stereotype that Italian-Americans are mob-connected, and by the assertion that being mob-connected needs to be a negative stereotype.In another unfortunate scene, Hesh, his Puerto Rican aide, Tony, Christopher and the nephew of Paulie Walnuts are talking in the horse barn at Hesh's place. The conversation about Columbus day degenerates into a free-for-all in which each guy vouches for his ethnicity while calling attention to the historical shortcomings of the ethnicities of everyone else. I understand Chase's point - that once you tattoo yourself with identity politics, you can't divorce yourself from your chosen interest group when it becomes inconvenient - but the scene really felt contrived, and not at all within the bounds of what we might expect from the characters involved (Hesh, for instance, has never been the ADL card-carrying Jew. If anything, he's been self-deprecating. For him to start throwing out anti-Semitism charges at his aid for likening Columbus to Hitler rang really hollow). I was really disappointed that we didn't see more from the ex-husband of Melfi, Tony's therapist. David Chase has used the guy numerous times in previous episodes as the microphone for Italian-Americans fed up with both the mob image, and the mobsters who make that image possible. He would've been the one guy in the show who could speak on the subject and remain within the context of his character. Yet we don't see him until the end, and even then, he merely flips on a television and displays his disgust at the Columbus Day showdown.That's not to say there weren't a few redeeming exchanges on the topic. In the episode's opening scene, the boys are all lounging on the sidewalk in front of Satriale's meat shop when Bobby Bacala first reads of the protests in the newspaper. The fellas' in turn all weigh in on the injustice being done to Columbus when Furio - the only first-generation Italian in the bunch - says he loathes Columbus. Columbus, it seems, was from North Italy. The northern Italians have all the money, and so turn their noses up at the south. Furio spits on Columbus and his northern descendants. It was a nice - and wholly believable - turning of the tables, and a reminder that every ethnic group, no matter how loathed, can find a subset ethnic group to loathe even more.The other saving dialogue comes at the end and, unsurprisingly, is delivered convincingly and passionately by Gandolfini. He admonishes Silvio for his constant griping about the "discrimination faced us Italians." "Look at you," Tony says, "you got a smart kid at Lakawana College, you own the best strip club in Jersey. You got a wife who's a piece of ass - or at least she was when you married her. Did you get all of that because you're Italian? No. You got it because you're you, because you're smart, because you're...whatever the fuck." In other developments, for reasons completely unclear to me, the writers decided to kill off Karen Bacala, wife of just-named-capo Bobby Bacala, in a car accident. This series is dark, and perhaps the writers are making a "cruel world" point here. Bobby of course is the most sympathetic goodfella in the Soprano family. He's dim, but compassionate, and an avowed family man. At Karen's funeral, the wives all watch with heavy hearts as Bobby weeps openly over Karen's casket. Meanwhile, Tony, Ralphie, Sil and Christopher all talk business in the corner. Sil's wife Gabriella whispers to the other wives, "I once heard Sil talking with somebody on the phone about how Bobby was the only one of them who didn't have a goomara. They were laughing at him [note: a "goomara" is a mistress]." Two observations from that quote: 1) Fucked-up mafia world observation: Odd, isn't it, that the wives of the mafiosos would nod approvingly that Bobby's a good man for not having a mistress - acknowledging without question that the implication there is that each of their own husbands has one? 2) So the writers of the show reward the series' only faithful husband by killing his wife. Other plotines:Ralphie then walks out on Ro, who is particularly hit by her friend Karen's death, considering that in the last two years, she's lost her husband and her son, too ("I've had big chunks of flesh ripped out of me," she says). Ralphie's leaving Ro for Janice, who has second thoughts the moment he steps in the house. In the night's most comical scene, Janice and Ralphie are in bed when Ro calls and asks him to come home. The two are - ahem - deep into a game of "bend over boyfriend," as Janice is pleasuring Ralphie with a sex toy. "You're my little slut, aren't you," she says. Ralphie nods. The scene's a pretty literal illustration of the habit Soprano family (that's "family" with a small "f") women have of emasculating their men. Tony by his mother Livia, his daughter Meadow, and, at times, by his wife Carmela. Janice, now emasculates Ralphie - literally, with a vibrator, and figuratively, when she ditches him just as he's left his "legitimate" girlfriend for her. The scene takes on even more significance when, later, Janice concludes through her new-age therapist that she's only dating Ralphie because he reminds him of her father and of Tony - the paternal influences she feels never gave her love.Janice and the individualism theme. Janice too plays out the individualism theme. She's probably the most striking example because, frankly, she isn't much of a real person at all. She's constantly groping for a new religion to define who she is (in just the past season, she's been Hindu and born-again Christian). She never takes responsibility for her decisions. She's constantly asking Tony for money, and calling him to bail her out when she's in over her head - such as, say, when she's shot her boyfriend dead on the kitchen floor, or put herself in the crosshairs of the Russian mafia. Consequently, she's the most pathetic and irritating character in the series, and we're regularly waiting, hoping, for her to get knocked off. The pending turf war. Paulie Walnuts is talking. He's dishing all that's going on within the Soprano family to Johnny Sack. Tony at this point is unsure where the leak's coming from, but notes that "It's costing me fucking money." Johnny Sack, meanwhile, is openly dissing Ralphie, still pissed about the joke Ralphie told about the "90 pound mole taken off" his wife's ass. Previews for next week indicate we'll soon see the first shots fired.Uncle Junior's trial. The first Soprano on trial in 16 years. Uncle Junior could get life if convicted. He's still bitching about his legal bills. He's going to get even angrier when he learns that his nephew hung him out to dry on the parking garage in Newark, that's set to skyrocket in value once the surrounding waterfront is developed.Furio. All the wives - most notably Carmela - continue to fawn over Furio. Carmela and Furio share yet another moment or two, this time over cookies and coffee. I suspect the writers are going to continue to tease us here, but that the act we'd all love to see will never actually happen. Great lines:"I wanna' talk about this new movement you're spearheading. No pun intended." --Ralphie, attempting to intimidate a Native American activist."He was gay, Gary Cooper?" --Christopher, in one of his few lines of the night, completely misinterpreting the point about role models that Tony's trying to make."...and this is my graduate TA..." "I can see that." --Ralphie, admiring the Native American activist/college professor's assistant, and hearing the abbreviation for "teaching assistant" as "T & A.""I had some business in Manhattan." "Not again!" --Artie Bucco, to "Chief" Doug Smith, making another American Indian jab."I had a racial awakening." --Chief Doug Smith, on discovering that he's 1/8th Native American, and that said discovery enabled him to open up a tax-free casino.Previous episodes reviewed here and here. Video1054@blogcritics.org Thu, 3 Oct 2002 09:27:05 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/09/24/113753.php Radley BalkoThe New York Times said this was as good an episode as the Sopranos has yet to produce. I'm not sure I'd go that far. But it was one of the most entertaining, probably because it was primarily plot driven. Plot driven episodes are fun, but they don't lend themselves as well to analysis. Nevertheless, let's give it a go:First, a few complaints. Top of the list: Meadow. The writers need to lay off the pretentious college girl schtick. It was fun to watch her make the clumsy allusions of the half-learned, and to hear her pepper conversations with hundred-dollar vocabulary words that didn't quite fit the context she was using them in - the first four or five times. But it's getting a little old. This week, we had to listen describe a guy friend as "so duplicitous," instruct Carmella to "read Henry James sometime," and invoke the western canon. Enough. Also, Meadow's new therapist, on the recommendation of Melfi, isn't remotely believable. I'll leave it to Slate's team of shrinks to cut her off at the knees. But because I'm such a fan, I'm inclined to side with the school of thought that says the writers are satirizing the psycho-therapy profession, not attempting to portray it accurately.Toward the end of the episode we see Meadow enroll in a class entitled "Morality, Self and Society." The writers of this show have been deft at weaving philosophy into storylines and tweaking great thinkers to fit their purposes, whether blatant - as they've done with Nietzsche and Sun Tzu, or more subtly - as when we saw the state's witness to a hit carried out by Tony and Big Pussy reading Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia just before he buckles, and recants his testimony. Meadow's course should be a nice jumping off point for more of the same.My other complaint concerns Tony's tap of Christopher as acting capo while Pauly sits in the can, and his endorsement of his nephew as his heir apparent. It just doesn't make much sense. Producer David Chase has spent three seasons demonstrating to us that Tony is, for the most part, a capable don. "Contrarily," (as Christopher has been wont to say), in the last season-and-a-half or so, we've also been shown that Christopher Multisanti is little more than a smack-hooked, power hungry buffoon. Just in this episode, for example, we watch him give the thumbs-up to the theft of fiber-optic cable from the construction site he's been tapped by Tony to oversee, jeopardizing a quarter-billion dollar project. He's also oblivious to the fact that his fiancé has just befriended an undercover agent. He nearly demonstrates some level of competence when he begins piecing together the odd aspects of the agent's personal life (no boyfriend, "great ass," over all the time). For a moment, we're led to believe Christopher might stumble onto a clue. Of course, he then blows it when he comes to the meathead conclusion that "she's a dike!" He then attempts to work his fiancé and the federal agent into a threesome.All of this hugely entertaining, and certainly consistent with Christopher's character. But what's troubling is that Tony doesn't see any of it. How can this guy oversee a huge operation that includes stock fraud, construction fraud, insurance fraud, truck hijacking, gambling, drug running, and all matter of paper crimes, but not realize his nephew is a complete fuck-up? Chase wants us to believe that Tony's blinded by his belief in family. That's why it took Tony a couple of months and a lot of therapy to draw the obvious conclusion that it was his mother and his uncle who put a hit on him - he couldn't fathom such a scenario.But Christopher isn't blood - he's related to Tony by marriage. And Tony's had no problem recognizing and straightening out the kid's intransigence in previous seasons. I just find it a little suspect that a guy with Tony's intuition can't see that Christopher as capo - much less as don - is a calamitous train wreck waiting to happen.All that said, again, there are still lots of kicks in this episode. Once you've stomached Meadow's faux intellectual routine, the writers have given her a delicious subplot in which she subversively taps Tony's guilt over the death of Jackie, Jr. to win her wants - in this case, a year off from college to cavort about Europe. Meadow's the light of Tony's life. Consequently, we get to watch the spectacle of a guy who, a) obviously wants what's best for his daughter, b) knows that means she needs to keep as far away from him as possible, c) is too wrecked by guilt and feelings of hypocrisy to insist she "do the right thing," and, so, d) inevitably gives in, and allows her to do what's not the right thing, which undercuts his desire to want what's best for her. Add to that that he's devastated by the fact that what's best for the light of his life is that she be as far away from him as possible, and you have the agony of a guy being ripped in about six different directions.We've seen all these themes play out throughout the series. The death of a Bada Bing! stripper last season (at the hands of Ralphie Cifareto) Meadow's age sank Tony deep into depression. And in the first season, when Tony and Meadow take a road trip to visit prospective colleges, Tony spies a snitch who flipped and is living under witness protection. He sneaks off and strangles the guy with his bare hands while Meadow meets with a guidance counselor. Consequently, he's loathe to scold her when she parties with newfound friends and comes back to their hotel room stumbling drunk. When you've just collapsed a guy's windpipe until his heart stopped beating, can you really berate your teenage daughter for underage drinking?Picking up on a few other threads:Ralphie continues down the road to whackdom. Tony finds evidence to confirm his suspicions that Ralphie and his sister Janice are having an affair. This, while Ralphie's dating (not married to, as I incorrectly asserted last week) the widow of Tony's mentor, Jackie Aprille. Great scene: only a couple as twisted as Ralphie and Janice could cuddle on the couch with a bag of popcorn to watch....Faces of Death! Great line: Janice implores Tony's warnings with "my love life is none of your business." Tony retorts "It is . . .considering I had to haul your last boyfriend out of the kitchen in a Hefty bag." Ralphie also makes a crack about the wife of New York underboss Johnny Sack getting "a 90-pound mole removed from her ass." Problem is, the crack was delivered in front of the nephew of Paulie Walnuts, whose animosity for the Jersey family is building, who's thinking of jumping to New York, and whose contempt for Ralphie is already well-documented. Here's hoping Chase has us chasing red herrings, as he did last season, when Ralphie's offing seemed to be a sure thing. The guy is just to damned colorful to kill off. And Joe Pontaliano, the actor who plays him, is one of the best character actors around (remember him in "Memento?"). My favorite scene last night finds Ralphie sitting on the edge of the bed as Janice reads by a nightstand lamp. He's clipping his toenails. One nail chips off and pelts Janice in the cheek. "Whatsamatter?" Ralphie chuckles, "you get hit with some shrapnel?"Carmella again flirts with adultery. First season, it was the creepy Father Phil; last season, the hunky house painter. This year, it's Fiorio, the muscle Tony brought back with him from Italy. In episode one, I found it odd that when Christopher came to pick up Tony, Carmella's first reaction was, "Where's Fiorio?" Now we see why. This week, when Fiorio announces himself at the door, Carmella makes a quick stop at the mirror to primp. She throws open the door and greets Tony's driver with wide bedroom eyes. She's got a crush. The question: Is Fiorio smart enough to keep his hands off of her?Adrianna gets pinched. The vomit-on-the-feds scene was classic. Note how the producers made undercover agent Deborah Ciccerone into a bombshell while she's befriending Arianna, but once she's in the office, she's remade as an icy, calculating federal agent. More of the way they manipulate our loyalties - trick us into pulling for the morally midgeted mafiosos over the feds, even though we all know better. Not to mention the seedy treachery Deborah shows in showering Adrianna with fake sympathy over the prospect that she's barren. Deborah even goes so far as to give Adrianna false hope - "an OB-GYN I know" - who she implies might be able to help Adrianna have children. We're seduced to sympathize with the mob slut over the federal agent.Adrianna's an interesting contrast to Meadow, too. At first blush, the two appear to be polar opposites. Meadow's a student at Columbia. Adrianna's dumb as nails. But both have long reaped the benefits of blood money - Adrianna openly, and by choice; Meadow passively, and by birth. Both are just now coming to grips with the repercussions of living high on the mob hog - Adrianna's life will never be the same (she's either going to jail, or she's going into witness protection); Meadow's still coming to grips with the death of her first love (though she has no problem exploiting it to get what she wants). Meadow of course is a far more complex character. But look for Chase to shatter the stereotype we have of Adrianna as her stint with the feds plays itself out. Coming questions: Will Adrianna cooperate with the feds? Will she get Christopher pinched? What if Christopher finds out she's been pinched before the feds can act? Will he off his own fiancé to protect the family? Will he flip?Odds of getting whacked this season:Revised, as of week two:Ralphie: He just keeps fucking up. 4-6.Christopher: He's got Tony's blessing. But he's pissing everyone else off. 3-1.Tony: Last week: Never. This week, there were some grumblings. Patsy's not happy he was passed over for capo. Paulie's ready to bolt. Even Silvio, the loyal lieutenant, undermined Tony's authority by okaying a heist of some floor tiles. Odds this week: just a little less than never.Paulie: I see him getting some clout in the New York family - that comes with protection. I think his odds drop from last week. 8-1.Patsy: A new addition to our odds game. He's a minor character whom Chase could use to satisfy our bloodlust with little downside. I can see Christopher blowing up and knocking him off. 5-2. Video782@blogcritics.org Tue, 24 Sep 2002 11:37:53 EDT