I must admit, especially being from Staten Island, I have found it hard not to sneak a peak. Call it train wreck curiosity? Having said that, I must say, I think the show is in very poor taste. There are some great mob movies and I loved The Sopranos and have a sort of guilty pleasure interest in the mob, but I don't think they're cool or glamorous, and I really resent the spectacle of these ugly, foul mouthed, aging guidettes obtaining a sort of celebrity status and potentially some serious pocket change simply because they were either born to or (worse) chose to marry criminal low lifes. Take Lee D'Avanzo, the 'New Springville Boy' bank robber. I mean, come on; bank robbery? That's not very glamorous. You have to be pretty desperate to rob a bank (twice) and get caught (twice). the funny thing is, I remember those New Springville Boys robbing the bank in the Staten Island Mall back around 1990 or so. They were just one of several quasi 'gangs' of guides, some of whom were the children of or otherwise connected to mobsters (others being "The Sheldon Boys"' "The Wanderers"', "The Stallions" and even "Jr. Stallions"). That punk thug Chris Ludwigsen (aka 'Paciello') who became a big club owner in South Beach Miami was a New Springville Boy also.

Knowing first hand how utterly stupid, thuggish, racist, and uninteresting these 'big shot'
mobsters really are really brings home the fact that movies are one thing but in real life these guys are typically really stupid and evil, not people to be "oohed" and "ached"
at like movie stars or something. At the end of the day they're just guidos with guns,
and if you look at their rap sheets their crimes (e.g. bank robbery) are pretty much white trash sort of crimes. I also wouldn't call D'Avanzo's house a 'mansion', it's a pretty ordinary middle class south shore Staten Island home, and based on his predilection for robbing banks, he apparently wasn't keeping up with the payments. [Real estate on S.I. is ridiculously over priced, by way; crappy, 2 bedroom condos duplexes there typically go for about half a million. No wonder all the guidos are moving to Jersey.]