It just went on & on & on & on, all about Meadow & Noah. No one was remotely interested in either of them. Meadow being a peripheral character. A tiresome uninteresting one at that.
You just don't spend so much time on peripheral characters. Just spend it on the core ones and their interactions with core characters or on occasion their interactions with peripheral ones. ........... Not spend time on peripheral characters and their interactions with even more peripheral characters.
Followed by that peripheral peripheral characters interactions with an even more peripheral character. .......... You end up with a scene of some guy down the street shown waxing his car for 20 mins cause Carmela's hairdresser's tax accountant passed by down that street once on the way to a shopping mall.
This is where David Chase should have tidied things up. It was sloppy & boring, wanting to attract a then growing wider audience but instead alienating the core audience. Nobody was interested in Meadow Soprano from START to FINISH, or her dozy brother, especially with the Meadow & teen gang SINGING fiasco. Cringefest.
Anymore than anyone was interested in the Chris Moltisanti acting & Hollywood movie script malarkey later on. That story line was totally scraping the barrel, we already had that earlier on, which went on & on & on. More POOR script writing by David Chase, he didn't get it right all the time. No hero of mine.
Yes this episode also has Ralph Cifaretto killing his girlfriend in the Badda Bing car park. It was a shame for her, it brought out the fact these organised crime characters were absolute scumbags, that we should not warm to any of these nasty criminals or their enablers, total mismanagement by Tony S that it ever got that far.
No CCTV though you notice. You would have thought the whole place would be surrounded by them & constantly watched in case the Feds & Cops showed up in great numbers or even a rival mass hit. So Tony S was paranoid about being heard in his house but not paranoid enough to have CCTV cameras around the Badda Bing. Very inconsistent & also very unlikely.
So even with the Ralphy Badda Bing murder it can't be worth more than 2 stars for this episode of The Meadow & Noah show. That almost totally spoilt it. At least we found a use for the Fast Forward button.
Later on in the later dragged out seasons we certainly need it. There are memorable moments and also quite a bit of dross as well. An entertaining series over all though I bet Chase wished he'd have cut some of the scenes out. Someone needs to sit down cutting out all the rubbish, don't matter who they are. As much as 5 or so mins an episode if needed. It'd be interesting to view. We may enjoy the series even more then.
