that stripper that ralphie beat to death in the back parking lot of the bada bing.
completely unnecessary and caused a lot of headaches.
as for ralph, he had to go sooner or later. as a boss, so what if he is a top earner. how long do you let him sit there and basically do what he wants, screw everybody else over, and just be plain disrespectful and piss off nearly everybody he comes across.
Ralph was changing, people were beginning to like him, both the mobster's and their wives. People felt for him when his son died and after that he was never the same prick Ralph. This was alluded to during Tony's dream in which Ralph is in the front seat with the catepillar on his head. The catepillar turns into a butterfly, is the saying, and Ralph was blossoming into something other than what he'd been in the past. David Chase also said this after the show ended.
In that sense, I don't think he was living on borrowed time, he made his mistakes in past and people acknowledged and moved past it. Once he started becoming likable his relationships with other guys in the family began to change. His soldiers became super loyal to him because of this as well.
Adriana getting bumped off wasn't "unnecessary" at all. She knew too much, she was privy to a lot of information regarding the criminal workings and hierarchy of the family. She brought an agent into Tony's home and immediate presence, she brought her to dinners, and other gatherings, which as we know from real life occurrences is punishable by death in itself. She also implicated them in a murder when they brought her in the office and asked her about a guy who disappeared and she told them she'd last seen this person with Tony, Chris & Co. and when she went to go snoop around, they had him tied down or something. At the end of the day, she was an informant, woman or not, she knew the rules and she broke them, she was a risk to a lot of people and she had to go.
