The Sopranos, season 3

The FBI spends the premiere wiring the Soprano basement, a project rendered absurd by events: Livia dies of a stroke before her deposition, leaving Tony with grief he cannot locate and a funeral where everyone is asked to say something nice and nearly nobody can.

The new problem is Ralph Cifaretto, the crew's biggest earner and its least controllable man. What he does outside the Bing one night - to a girl of twenty, pregnant, who had asked Tony for nothing much - is the season's moral floor, and Tony's inability to answer it properly, because the rules protect earners, poisons everything after.

Melfi's own year is the series' hardest hour: an attack in a parking garage, a justice system that fails her on a technicality, and a dream that offers her a different kind of justice - one phone call away. She wakes, considers it, and says nothing. The refusal is the point.

Meadow's boyfriend Jackie Jr., meanwhile, tries to become his father and has none of the equipment. His attempt at making a name - a card game, a gun, a panic - ends in the snow, on an order Tony delegates and Ralph executes, and the season closes on the funeral of a boy everyone agrees was a shame.