Even on The Soprano's worst episode, they wouldn't stoop so low as to borrow from The Godfather Part III.
I could listen to "Chatterbox" for hours when I played GTA III. Good times.
Still, seeing Tony kill Ralph was satisfying and one of the more grizzlier "death scenes" of the series between the beating and Tony's and Christopher's dispatching of the remains.
Svetlana was a great character. I liked Gloria, too. Both affairs brought up the issue of what Tony is attracted to in women. You can see two different patterns - psychologically balanced women of strong spirit (Carmela, Melfi, Svetlana), or difficult, needy, volatile, (self)destructive women that, as Melfi pointed out, have that in common with his mother (Gloria was the most obvious example, but Irina had some of those traits as well). On the other hand, it is obvious that Tony's extramarital love interests tend to be, more and more often, strong independent women (starting with Melfi, then Gloria, Svetlana, and there's another successful professional that he becomes interested in later on, which prompts him to notice that he has a thing for that type of woman) that he admires because they are able to make it on their own - which underlines the problems in his marriage to Carmela. Carmela is a strong woman who could have made it on her own, but had chosen a life of the mafia wife instead, willing to overlook Tony's crimes, as well as his infidelities, to keep up her life of comfort. There was a scene in season 3 when Carmela met Gloria but had no idea who she was, when Gloria hinted at that when she said that at least her daughter won't have to latch to a man for success (but the implication went over Carmela's head), and Tony spells it out in that brilliant break-up scene in season 4, where all the mutual resentment comes out and they both throw all their anger and accusations at each other.
I don't understand what you mean here.
You're not saying that Carmela shouldn't have affairs even though Tony does it all the time, are you? 
Tony's murder of Ralphie was one of the more memorable moments in the show for me, and made for one of the two best episodes of the season. There's a subtle reminder of the events of "University" in season 3 at the end of the episode - when Tony, after having disposed of Ralphie's body, is in the Bada Bing, looking at the mirror, we can see a picture of Tracee over the mirror. I think that the death of Tony's beloved horse was a straw that broke the camel's back, but that it was just the logical end of Tony's long standing resentment against Ralphie that had to give way at some point. While beating up Ralphie, Tony shouts "Why did you have to kill her? She was a beautiful harmless creature who never did anyone any wrong!" which refers to the horse, but could also refer to Tracee.
Ralphie's role was - kind of like Richie in season 3 - basically to be an antagonist to Tony who is a "Complete Monster", in contrast to Tony who shows some goodness despite his crimes.
Wait till you see season 6! That's all I'm going to say...And man given how much heat Junior was afraid he'd get (and did get) for performing cunnilingus on one of his girlfriends I can only imagine the heat Ralph would've taken if his proclivities got out!
I don't understand what you mean here.
Well I didn't think she would have an affair out of spite... but simply out because she was attracted to, or fell for another man. We've seen her attracted to a few men during the course of the show. And she did say to Tony that she had been in love with Furio. The thing with priest was, of course, never going to go anywhere, even before Carmela saw through him. The guy in season 2 (?), Vic something, that she kissed, ran away the moment he realized who her husband was. And Furio told the guy in Italy (it was a while ago so I don't remember if that old guy was his cousin or what?) that he was in love with Carmela, but the mafia has its rules, and he would have to kill Tony to have her, which he wasn't ready to do. (Especially since it would probably mean he'd be killed afterwards by Tony's crew.)I don't understand what you mean here.
No, no, no no. If Carmela had an affair it'd be little of a bid deal considering Tony's affairs. But Carmela stuck me as "better than that" that she wasn't the kind of person to have affairs and mostly just "put up with it" with Tony unless it got into the house and the kids were exposed to it. She seemed "better than" having an affair simply out of spite.
But her attraction to Furio seemed to be nothing more than that, just her heart fluttering over something new. It also seemed to me that she "accepted" Tony's affairs and Tony would be a hypocrite if he were to disallow Carm from having affairs of her own.
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Plus, The Test Dream is one of my favourite episodes in the show.Melfi would never date Tony, she couldn't justify it to herself. She resolved that part of her arc in Employee of the Month, for her to start dating Tony would have been character regression.
The episode was filled with meaning, although I must admit that I didn't catch on to a lot of it at first. The point of the dream (as I see it) was that Tony's subconscious was preparing him for the fact that he was going to have to kill Tony B even though he didn't want to. That was the test he wasn't prepared for, and when Tony met with Johnny Sack in the next episode, Tony refused to do what needed to be done until way too late. That one act of compassion/regret, is possibly the biggest "business" mistake Tony ever made, so it's good that there's an episode that explained why Tony screwed it up.
