[dfwgator]

One of the things about the show, and you only realize in the last season, was that the families were fighting each other so much, they didn’t even realize the whole time the world was starting to pass them by.

There’s a great scene where won of the mobsters starts talking on his cellphone in Little Italy only to realize at the end of the call he was in Chinatown. That scene showed how much Little Italy had shrunk, and it served as a metaphor for how much the clout of the mafia had waned by that time.

[DesertRhino]

Or how about the scene where they try the old protection racket against the Starbucks, and the kid managing the place tells him how much every bean is accounted for. LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gsz7Gu6agA

[SamAdams76]

That is a great observation about how Little Italy had shrunk. The show was really about the decline of the mafia. The show certainly did not glamorize the mafia, as many who have not seen the show seem to assume. Almost every character on that show came to a bad ending.

Another scene from that show that brilliantly demonstrated how the mafia was losing their grip on power was when they tried to shake down that Starbucks-like coffee joint for protection money. The manager of that shop basically said that every nickel had to be accounted for out of Seattle and that he simply had no access to any discretionary funds whatsoever to pay out protection money. So sorry. They ended up slinking out of there totally defeated.

[catnipman]

“they didn’t even realize the whole time the world was starting to pass them by”

one of my favorite scenes in the entire series perfectly illustrates what you said, namely when Paulie Walnuts tries to extort a Jamba Juice franchise for “protection”, and the store manager said he had no authority to respond to that and would have to contact corporate about what to do ... it’s absolutely hilarious to imagine a guy like Paulie trying to extort the Jamba Juice corporation for “protection” ...