Like watching an angel fall
The Sopranos, Episode 4, written by Toni Kalem, directed by Rodrigo Garcia, All Happy Families, an episode without sensational incident, but driven by the voltage of family. AJ's at that difficult age. Carmela thinks he hates her. He doesn't. He just hates everybody. His one aim is to get wasted with the guys. Tony buys him a jeep. That helps a lot. AJ says, "Fuck you" to his mom after being rumbled after a hotel-room stopover in New York (he's supposed to be at his sister's), where the textbook frat boy rituals take place: the passing of a bong, the redecorating of a toilet bowl, the shaving-off of eyebrows and the drawing on of new ones, the writing in marker pen on the bare ass of someone passed out, face down (how homoerotic teenage boys are!) - at which she sends him to live with his father. His father, meanwhile, is having trouble with Feech ("Did I learn nothing from Richie Aprile?"), who's too big for his boots, and too fond of recalling the old days (ie. when he wielded power, and Tony was "a kid"). Instead of whacking him, they get him sent back to the can. I suspect this is not the last we'll see of him. Tony is now paranoid, after an incisive comment by Carmela, that he has no real friends, only associates, who laugh at his jokes even when they're not funny. He tells this one about an accountant and a plane at a poker game ("A Boring 747") and we see through his eyes the likes of Paulie and Sylvio busting a gut. But do they mean it? David Lee Roth is at the poker game, apparently playing himself. Must be a mate of Steve Van Sandt's. And there appears to be romance brewing between Carmela, rattling around in that big house on her own now, and AJ's counsellor, played by David Strathairn. Good night, and good luck.