Maybe it was the mood I was in last night (I watched about six episodes in a row and finished at half five this morning), but looking back, I'm a tad disappointed with how lazily things were dealt with this season, this episode in particular.

It had none of the psychological complexity of previous seasons - I think that peak was achieved in seasons 4 and 5.

I feel a bit cheated, to be honest, that characters we've come to be fascinated by for seven years, week in, week out, are dealt with and killed off without any sort of emotional swamping. Although I'm against it normally, I think the actors and the writers are capable of milking certain situations and pulling it off without seeming too indulgent. They did it when Tony was in hospital last year, you got a real sense of the gravity of the situation.

But this season, Chrissy's death really annoyed me, for starters; not so much the death itself, but the way his character just disappeared after that. I liked how it was all set up prior to that, too, the way we really feel for Christopher (in many ways he was the main character in the episodes before this), but Christ, now we're onto the sort of shallow callousness of The Godfather Part II. I think it was a fantastic opportunity for Gandolfini to stretch his acting chops, but instead we're reduced to a whisper of "He's dead" in a casino.

The episode's dark streak reminded me of the season four opener, in which Tony edged Chris into killing that cop, "avenging" his father's death; but I used to hate that episode, and now I really like it, so I can't wait to revisit this, and the season as a whole.