Guest starring:
Written by: Todd A. Kessler
Directed by: Allen Coulter
First Aired: April 15, 2001
It's Thanksgiving week and the only thing frostier than Tony's frozen turkey is his relationship with Ralph Cifaretto.
Ralph can't get over the fact that Tony hit him. By so doing, Tony violated one of the biggest taboos of this thing of ours: a made man never hits another made man. "Rules are rules," says Ralphie, and besides, he reasons, "all this over some dead whore?" As Ralph sees it, Tony owes him an apology, at the very least. "The money I put in his pocket...he should hit his knees."
But if Tony's going to hit anything, it's not going to be his knees. "He's lucky I didn't put one in his fuckin' head," he tells Silvio, "He disrespected the Bing." "So he's barred from the place," Silvio shrugs. But then Tony leans in and reveals the real source of his lingering animosity: "He bashed that poor kid's brains in." Tony can't forget Tracee -- the "poor kid" who reminds him more than a little bit of his own daughter. Whatever his reasons for hitting Ralph, Silvio sternly advises Tony that he has two choices: "Make him disappear or make nice."
And speaking of making nice, Meadow's been doing just that with none other than Jackie Aprile Jr. Meadow and Jackie Jr. ran into each other at a frat party and since then have been sharing saliva and hits of Ecstasy. It's not lost on Rosalie Aprile that her son is wooing Carmela and Tony's daughter -- in fact, she's thrilled. "Can you imagine the beautiful children those two would make?" she asks Carmela. But when Carmela tries to talk to Tony about the budding romance, he only stares at a TV commercial for Mercedes Benz. "I'm thinkin' of getting one of those," he tells Carmela.
Why the sudden urge to go car shopping? It turns out that what Tony's jonesing for isn't fine German engineering; it's a fine Mercedes sales rep named Gloria Trillo. Tony ran into her in Dr. Melfi's waiting room and couldn't help but notice her sales binder -- and her legs. Gloria's beautiful and flirtatious, and Tony decides to find her, eventually showing up at her dealership. "Mind if I take it for a test drive?" he asks her. "You have to be accompanied by a sales rep," she replies. And so they take a spin that ends up between the sheets on the Stugots.
As it turns out, the universe solves the Ralphie problem for Tony -- unfortunately at Gigi Gestone's expense. When Gigi dies suddenly from a heart attack while on the toilet, his demise paves the way for a resolution. Tony awards the captaincy of Gigi's crew to Ralphie, thereby restoring peace to the Family.