Despite the past several episodes, I had high hopes going into this one. Why? I couldn’t tell you. Maybe I got sucked in by the preview again. I don’t know. In any case, now that I’m done watching it I’m not sure whether I liked this one or not. Which is an improvement as I know I didn’t care for the last two (episode 3 and episode 4). They say that frustration is the result of unfulfilled expectations. Well I’m frustrated. Sopranos was such a good show, I have waited so long for these, and the previews look so good every week. You know, they also say that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. Does this mean the Sopranos is driving me crazy? YES!
There were two main plot lines in this episode: AJ is a cry baby about Blanca and Christopher’s non-drinking is an issue for everyone.
AJ spends most of the episode crying like a little girl because Blanca left him. Carmela is concerned, Tony thinks he should buck up, and Meadow is afraid he is going to kill himself. Tony has a heart to heart with the boy and his advice is go get a BJ. After AJ quits the pizza place, Tony sets him up to go to a party at the Bing with the son of one of his boys, Jason. AJ starts hanging around with these guys and starts to get over Blanca. Now Jason is making book on the Rutgers campus which is why Tony likes him. At the end of the episode he takes AJ to go collect from another student who owes him. AJ is made to hold the kid down while he gets the snot kicked out of him and acid poured on his feet. In the end Tony and AJ get home at the same time to find Carm and Meadow digging in to some left over pasta and the four of them sit down to a nice late-night family dinner.
As in the past couple of episodes everyone is ragging on Christopher because he isn’t hanging around any more in an attempt to avoid alcohol and drugs. He has also hooked up his father-in-law with some hot power tools which he sells out of the back of his shop. Pauli’s nephew steels Christopher’s father-in-law’s saws twice but Christopher can’t get Pauli or Tony to do anything about it so he beats up young Pauli and tosses him out a window. In response Pauli tears up Christopher’s lawn with his Caddi. In the end after a heart to heart with Tony in which Tony explains that “dis is a face to face business,” Christopher makes nice with Pauli by having a drink with him. They get drunk, Christopher starts talking about his family and Pauli and the rest of the crew bust his balls about it. He gets pissed and leaves. Christopher goes to visit his fellow AA member J.T. Dolan (the guy who wrote Cleaver for Christopher) for help. J.T. wants to help Christopher sober up but wants nothing to do with Christopher’s problems so Christopher shoots him in the forehead. After which he drives home and replants one of his trees before going inside.
That’s about it. The only other thing that happened in the episode of interest was Tony meets with his FBI buddy on the terror task force to tell them about the Muslim guys that he saw, Achmed and Mohamed which could get him a reduced sentence should he ever be convicted of a crime. There was nothing about a war with NY family. This is what I have been waiting three seasons for and we did not get any closer to it tonight.
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Posted on: Monday, May 7, 2007
