A fat guy in his underwear. HBO's gleaming, seedy New Jersey mob-family drama returns for a third season Sunday night with its creative juices at full potency. Unprecedented vilification of Francis Scott Key, who wrote our national anthem, and poet Robert Frost. The show's creative team of writers, producers, directors, actors and production crew takes the base elements of crime stories violence, money, power, dishonesty, ignorance and spins them into riveting explorations of the internal human struggle between good and evil. It is, of course, an immensely entertaining mob drama peopled by fascinating and flawed characters.
Colleagues joke sometimes slyly sometimes outrageously at each other's expense.
Familiarity and boredom allow them to shrug off the otherwise arresting tableaux at their workplace, the Bada Bing strip club. Yet the potential for sudden violence is ever-present. Sunday, they return with a two-hour show. That review was written by Matt Roush, who I think is the best in the business. Series creator david Chase, who wrote these episodes, is a master craftsman.