Back-to-back Tonys

I’ve often said my wife has a criminal mind. She’s demonstrated that many, many times in the course of our long, solid, loving, wonderful marriage (Ding! Ding! Ding! Marriage points!).

In the traditions we’ve come to cherish as a couple, one we always look forward to every couple of years is our binge of The Sopranos. Romantic, amIrite?

We recently finished this year’s viewing, but here’s where things took a turn. The minute we saw the very last scene in the final, controversial episode, she turned to me and said, “Meeting you was the best thing that ever happened to me, and being married to you makes me the luckiest girl in the world!”

Nah, I’m just funnin’ ya. She said let’s watch it again. The wife wanted to watch The Sopranos start to finish again after we’d just watched it start to finish.

What’reyougonnado?

So back to the beginning we went. This time, she took a deep dive, listening to the Talking Sopranos podcast with Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Moltesanti, and Steven Schirripa who played Bobby Baccalieri.

This allowed her to give me the play-by-play and behind-the-scenes inside story to each episode we rewatched, while we were watching it.

And who doesn't love someone telling a story and talking over the tv when you're trying to watch one of your favorite shows.

Now, as you may know if you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time — and if you have, you might want to reconsider your priorities in life — I’ve binged Breaking Bad a crazy number of times (16). But Breaking Bad is a solo binge for me, because the wife finds that show too dark.

However, she has no problem at all with the plethora of inventive murders, strangulations, cursing, dismembering, horse-burning (we still miss you Pie-O-My), car crashes, strippers, raw sex, nudity and drug addiction portrayed on The Sopranos.

Now that I think about it, that either makes me the luckiest guy in the world, or someone who needs to sleep with one eye open.

Mob seen

My kids occasionally go away for three-day weekends. I'm never sure exactly where they go - camp, retreat, rehab. Wherever the hell it is, I know I sign the check for it. Usually it's one of them at a time, but this past week the stars aligned just right and they were both gone at the same time, leaving my wife and I to our own devices for three days.

Naturally we took the opportunity to engage in some adult activity that's difficult to do when the kids are around.

We had a non-stop Sopranos-thon.

I don't know how long HBO has been showing reruns of The Sopranos, but I stumbled onto them last week. Monday through Friday afternoons, we record the shows. This weekend we caught up with all of them.

Not sure what season it is, but we're at the part involving Ralphie played by Joe Pantoliano (Joey Pants to his friends). I don't remember every detail from the first time around, but I do remember it doesn't end well for Ralphie. Also Christopher's wife Adriana has just found out that her new best friend is an FBI agent who's been taping her. I don't want to go into to much detail about how she reacts when she finds out, other than to say projectile vomiting is always a nice touch.

It's an absolute pleasure to see the nuance, subtlety, loyalty and savagery of Tony Soprano and family living by their own bent rules while confronting the same problems we all do.

It's "leave the gun, take the cannoli" television at its best.