Chris in La La Land, Artie Going Wacko

Okay, it's late Wednesday night and the Sopranos aired on Sunday. Why have I waited until now to post about it? For those paying attention to the blog, you may have noticed that my son was born on Monday, and I had to put that ahead of the blog. So to the 4 of you who read this, I apologize for the delay and the brevity of this post.

Let me start with Artie. He has some serious, serious issues. It can't be too smart to (1) go to a mobster's house to fight him (albeit impressively win) and then (2) mention his mistress in front of his pregnant wife. At least by the end of the episode, he had returned to his true love--cooking. Perhaps risotto will provide more help than Dr. Melfi ever could.

As for the LA interlude, it had some very funny moments but it was a little too much inside baseball. All the talk about about swag and the obscenity of it all may have been true, but it was a bit much. Sure Ben Kingsley (aka Sir Kingsley) was fantastic, and Lauren Bacall looks great for 81, and it was good to see her get to act instead of having to make a fool of herself at the Oscars. That said, this interlude seemed to serve 3 purposes: (1) show Chris he should be in NJ, (2) get Chris back on coke, and (3) comic relief. Amused, yes, but not my favorite.

Hopefully, I'll have more next week.