Again, another disappointing episode. An entire hour of not much. If their goal is just to tie up loose ends from earlier seasons then maybe this is OK, but I would prefer they focused on entertaining me instead. At this rate I may not even wait until the season is over to cancel HBO. The two main story lines in this episode are Vito Jr. is a troubled child and Tony has financial problems and he is developing a gambling problem to fix them.

So to start the show, Vito’s widow (You remember Vito, the fat gay wise guy), comes and talks to Tony to ask for $100K so she can take her troubled son Vito Jr. to Maine. Tony believes this is Phil’s problem because, Phil was the one who wacked Vito (one of Tony’s top earners) and he is her cousin. Tony says he’ll talk to Phil for her. Phil is not really interested in helping to put it nicely. Phil talks to Vito jr. His therapy session is real sensitive (not). Tony also stops by to talk to Vito Jr. his talk is a little more sensitive than Phil’s but, not much. After Tony loses the $100K he was going to give Vito’s widow on a football game, he pays to have Vito Jr sent to one of those tough love camps for troubled kids. (Yawn.) The only interesting part of this story line is that Tony says he will never forgive Phil for not giving Vito’s widow the $100K. So Tony has one more reason to go to war with the NY family. Oh and Vito Jr. takes a dump in the shower in the boys locker room for no reason and then steps in it (this did nothing for the story but it at least woke me up for a second ).

On to our other main story line, Tony seems to be developing a gambling problem. Through out the course of the episode, we discover that Tony does not have a lot of ready cash and that to make up for that he is trying to gamble what little he does have to make up for it. They try to portray this as a result of Vito being killed since he made a ton of money for Tony but, the link is very tenuous. The fact that after all these seasons Tony suddenly has a gambling problem was a little hard to swallow for me. Tony primarily takes out his lack of money on Carmela (who finally sold her house so she has some ready cash) and Hesh, his old Jewish friend, who he owes $200K to.

We finally get to see the good Dr. Melfi in this episode when Tony talks to her about his gambling problem. She’s is getting a little long in the tooth. I remember the first season thinking she was pretty hot. In the end Tony makes up with Carmela promising her that nothing will happen to him and that she will be taken care of financially and after Hesh’s black girlfriend dies in bed, Tony squares with Hesch, giving him the $200k. So much for his gambling problem. Good thing he beat it before the episode was over.

There were two other items of interest tonight which may (or may not) be important later in the season:

-Tony sees a bunch of Muslims hanging out, notices a couple that he recognizes. This may be a preview to his helping the feds who stopped by a few weeks ago.

-Anthony Jr. asks his girlfriend to marry him, she hesitantly says yes, then later in the show dumps him for no apparent reason.

All I can say is next week has got to be better.

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