Luxury Lounge

In the second season of The Sopranos, Christopher's passion for movies and screen writing led him to a memorable encounter with Jon Favreau which showed how rotten the film business can be at times and anticipated HBO's hit comedy Entourage by four years. Luxury Lounge treads similar waters with equally exhilarating results, providing further proof of the show's great choice of guest stars.

With Little Carmine willing to produce his gangster-horror movie, Chrissy heads out to L.A. to meet with Ben Kingsley, his scary work in Sexy Beast making him the ideal choice for the role of the mob boss. Sadly, Sir Ben isn't impressed, leaving Chris with nothing to but drink and do drugs again. Oh, and mug Lauren Bacall just for the sake of it. Back in Jersey, things get bad for Artie Bucco as he discovers one of Chris's pals has been using his new waitress to run a credit card scam. When things threaten to turn bloody, Tony has to step in once again.

Juxtaposing two story lines, Luxury Lounge alternates between sincerely touching in the Artie section and cruelly satirical in the Hollywood plot batch. The latter part is particularly appealing on account of Kingsley and Bacall's willingness to get their hands (and mouths) dirty, Kingsley especially having a great time making fun of his Englishness. Then again, his casting probably wasn't accidental: perhaps David Chase read Roger Ebert's famous review of Sexy Beast, which ended with the following sentence describing British crooks: "These are hard people. They could have the Sopranos for dinner, throw up and have them again." Judging from Sir Ben's hugely enjoyable self-mockery and cracking final line (it's just one priceless word), Ebert had a point, although the man who played Don Logan never actually meets Tony. Maybe he found him too hard to swallow.