Eish! Is Tony getting along with anyone these days? This season he has bumped heads with his demented Uncle Junior, hapless Bobby, the fractured Lupertazzi crew, Christopher and even his son AJ.
Now it appears Tony has no further use for Paulie "Oof madorn" Walnuts! How can that be, especially after the two share some quality time on the road while laying low after evidence of a 1982 hit that made Tony’s bones - on a bookie, Willie Overall - is dug up from a downtown basement.
Road trip!Their trip takes them down to Miami where they meet up with old friends and reminisce about the old days and old ways. All the nostalgia reveals just how close a bond Paulie and Tony had back in the day, with Paulie playing Tony's cool tough *bleep!* mentor. Paulie recalls wistfully the day Tony was born and how it brought tears to Tony's father's eyes. Paulie is especially vocal about his past conquests and misadventures, something that irritates Tony and then concerns him. As Tony says huffily during dinner with his friends and some prostitutes, “The lowest form of conversation starts with, ‘Remember when’”
It becomes clear that Paulie's verbal diarrhoea is giving Tony serious headaches, so much so that he is considering doing the unthinkable - robbing the world of one its greatest, most entertaining residents! But things are not as clear cut - there is obviously a deep love between the two and Tony perhaps realises that Paulie has a new lease on life after beating prostrate cancer. But he is vulnerable to the Feds because he does not have any steady income, and Tony doubts his mental capacity for discretion.
The two decide to get a boat and do some sport fishing, perhaps snag a marlin, after word from home reveals that the Willie Overall murder had somehow been pinned on Jackie Aprile Sr, who's dead anyways. As Paulie tentatively boards the See Vous Play, he has flashbacks of the last time he was on a boat - that fateful day when the guys got rid of Big Pussy Bonpensiero and threw his body into the ocean.
So is Paulie still feeling nostalgic, or is he fearing his own fate will follow a similar path? Amazingly, Paulie has lots to worry about. Tony suspects, and had for a long time, that Paulie was the one who blabbed to Johnny Sack about Ralph Cifaretto's whale jokes about Ginny Sacrimoni - an act which heightened tensions between the families. Of course we know that Paulie had indeed told Johnny Sack about the joke - but Johnny's now dead and Paulie continues to deny any involvement.
To kill or not to kill?As they sit on the deck of the boat, enjoying lunch, Tony continues to goad Paulie into confessing about the Ginny Sacrimoni joke, but he doesn't bite. Tony even asks him if he'd ever had himself checked for Tourette's Syndrome! Tony eyes an axe and knife on board the boat as a possible weapon - and the vast ocean is too tempting a dumping ground.
The look of indecisiveness on Tony's face is quite clear. How do you kill someone you love, or should you? I guess us ordinary folk aren't usually faced with such difficult decisions. At this point I was fearing the worst as Tony knelt down to pick up his weapon, but at the last minute, Tony changes his mind and throws Paulie a beer. I think I only remembered to breathe once this scene was over.
In New York, Phil Leotardo has a lunch meeting with the white-haired Doc Santoro, heir apparent to the Lupertazzi family now that all the other leaders are falling. Santoro insults Phil by eating off his plate. Later, Santaro and one of his bodyguards are killed by three men in a hit outside a massage parlour. One of the getaway car drivers reveals that Phil was behind the hit, making him the head of the Lupertazzi family now.
Ghostly visit
On his return home, Paulie walks through his front door shouting "What do I have to do for some dinner round here" but I don't know why since he lives alone. There's noise coming form his kitchen anyway and Paulie grabs a baseball bat as he tiptoes towards the noise. In his kitchen he finds Big Pussy cooking something. Ah, so it's a dream! Paulie seems to pale at the sight of Puss and asks him, "When my time comes, will I stand?" Paulie then awakes startled and then pumps iron to relieve the stress.
So it would then appear that Paulie had suspected Tony's motives and intentions all along and is grateful to Tony for sparing his life. He shows his gratitude the next morning as Carmela receives his gift of a 2 000 dollar espresso machine (earlier in the episode, Carm was unable to make Paulie an espresso because her coffee machine had packed up).
Nuthouse fun and gamesSomewhere else entirely different, in a mental facility for the criminally insane, Uncle Junior appears to have made good friends with an emotionally unstable young man, Carter, as the two organise poker games for the crackpot assortment of nutjobs they find themselves living with. To achieve this he makes a deal with in an orderly, Jameel, whose payment is autographed pictures of Junior which he then sells on eBay.
The poker game goes as well as a game between demented kooks can go (top prize: a KitKat), until another orderly breaks up the party after a vindictive inmate, the Professor, tells on them. Junior later assaults the Professor and is put on stronger medication. He and Carter then hatch a plan to fool the nurse into thinking he took his mind numbing pills until a little accident in his pants reveals that Junior has been cheating his doctors. He is given an ultimatum by the registrar: either Junior is moved to another facility, or he agrees to take his medication.
Junior relents and quickly loses any spark he once had: no more wisecracks to entertain his buddies and no more poker games. This frustrates Carter, who has come to see Junior as a father figure after his own treated him so cruelly. As Junior rebukes Carter's attempts to have some fun during a music session among the inmates, Carter becomes incensed and attacks Junior, punching him and bashing his head against the wall.
At the episode's close we see just how well the criminally insane are treated: the inmates, excluding Carter, are outside in the facility's garden enjoying a petting session with some cats. Away from the group, Junior sits by himself, stroking a gorgeous-looking Persian cat (at least I think its a Persian) staring blankly out into the distance.