Absolutely, not seeing the Chris/Tony scene in this episode (and seeing it
when we did) made this episode stronger and made the scene itself
stronger when it was finally shown and we have a better idea of the cost Christopher paid for choosing Tony over Ade.

"Think like a bureaucrat, not like a cop"

@ uselessbeauty

They made that point in the episode when Christopher was made. They specifically say that the made guy is expected to put everything else (including family) in second place.

Cause he wasn't in the life.

"It often seems like “The Test Dream” is an elaborate test run for Tony’s
wanderings in Purgatory at the start of season six, which would give
that episode title a whole new meaning"

Having Tyler be RubberMan would be better than Tate…. just saying.

I was assuming that maybe Ben was killed back in Boston when Vivien cut him. Viven's despair was so great that the house reached out to her and clouded her mind and allowed Ben to manifest in physical form outside the house until it could draw her there.

They were always doing weird little one-off things. My favorite was from season 2 when Janice is trying to convince Livia to move in with her and Livia has a vision (via fire escape poster?) of Janice pushing her down the stairs.

To me the dinner scene is when Tony completely and irrecovably becomes his mother. I could so easily imagine a younger Livia doing exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason.

Yeah I have no recollection of it either. And there were so many quirky editing things going on that I have a hard time figuring out why everyone hates it so much.

"his engagement to Meadow not-so-coincidentally begins after Vito starts
threatening him, and even-less-coincidentally ends after he finds out
that Vito is dead"

"He's basically a good guy, though, one I'm sure you wouldn't mind your daughter bringing home"

@ Dude Manbrough

No, AJ actually has a couple of personal traits that Tony doesn't have - empathy for one, caring about people other than himself as another. He was insufferable as a pre- and full fledged teenager but he was horrified about the bike beating the way a normal person would be.

"Meadow is at this point very clearly Tony's heir in the family business"

I dunno, AJ is almos likeable in a pudgy slugabout way. At least we know he'll never get into the business.

To be fair, I never minded Meadow as an annoying teen because … teenagers are generally completely fucking annoying.

" I didn't find his storyline tragic, but that may have been because I wasn't invested in his character at all."

In other words there were definitely scraps in Johnny's scrapbook…