But just the System in America. We got the seasons 3 and 4, and started watching all episodes after Christmas, starting from season 1. I had not seen them before. I admit - I did not like th first 3-4 episodes very much. The actors were not completly comfortable with each other, but after the first few episodes, it started to get on pretty well.

Yesterday we saw that episode of the season 2 where the Sopranos went to Italy. There were things that were accurate, and others that were made to look accurate, and others that were made just to look good. The guy who will be brang US to be in the Sopranos next episodes had a wrong accent. It sounded fine, he has learned even relatively good and relatively local accent.. but his look was wrong. His gestures were too big. He has a face of a topino, a street crminal, a pickpocket who would go after the german turists digital cameras and purses. A topino face, not a face of an elegant person. Yet his family and the family business is not that of a rural family business. They were not the old skool, countryside mafia, they were not even Sicialian mafia.. just some. something around Napoli (Naples).

You never discuss certain things in public. Right, like in the series some things are communicated very short, and always in public phone. You can always be listened to. The fine restaurant (in the program) would not contain any word that would give suspect. If the restaurant was in central Naples, the (fiction) family with whom the business was made with, would have to be the family of that zone.

The boss was a woman. True. Can happen. But the boss is more often the grandma. The oldest woman of family. Not a 30 years old ex-model who has kids and dresses very visibly and goes out with American men. When the woman is a boss, for an outsider she would look like any woman. Like any weak grandma. What the others think is important - she could not wear prominent, sexy clothes, or go out with American turists. Or suggest them having sex. Some things change, some change faster than others, and the fittest will survive logic will have to exist even in crminal parallel systems of the state (mafia, camorra, ndrangheta, yakuza, etc etc) but ... you can not be seen. You will have to act like anyone. You should not be seen or remembered.

And yet if everyone knows who are the bosses of a zone or a city, everyone will continue their life as if they knew nothing. How can you sleep tranquilly when you know who are the bosses of your city or block? (Wondering like Lisa Simpson how to sleep when there is so much pain and sufference in the world). 99 % of the people do sleep tranquilly. The remaining 1 % are too connected to the family, or have ended there by mistake. Once you are in, everyone will know everything about you. Never keep any secrets, objects etc not in your home, not in your diary, never tell anything in the mobile phone, and if you use the pay phone, use coins or throw away the phone card after. Never say things that you don't want to be connected to yourself even in pay phone, and never anywhere in public. The world is small, and even if you were in the most remote place of this planet, never be sure the Japanese or Jamaican people or kangaroos around you don't understand what you say. Never say anything. Live your life, adapt to your limits. What would you want to change?

What do you think anyone or anything can change? The police isn't as dumb as it acts or seems. They know who are behind the control, and they don't normally do anything about it. There are guys collecting the protection money even under the police station. Sounds bad? It is not. As long as you adapt to the space you have, you are safe.

The psychiatrists of the show (some other Sopranos episodes) were joking about specializing in mafia depression. Interesting. They might have the need for also the post mafia depression. ... one day you wake up and everything is gone. One day something happens too much. If you go, if you manage to just get out anywhere, you'll spend a lot of time not living, but your body thrown to be on the survival mode. You just survive. You will somebody, somewhere, having a fiction past and no willingness to trust anyone any more. There will have to be a way to switch to switch the life back to the normal life mode... or a "How to live a normal life, a guide for the mafia refugee dummies."

And some more guides if you are too famous or half-breed etc, not qualifying for the state protection programs "DIY escape from your old life" "What they would have not told you about the protection programs anyway", "How to lose your friends in 20 easy steps" and so on.