Tony feels depressed over the negative impact he has on people who don't deserve it, while Carmela tries to set up Furio with a friend, AJ...
Plot
Artie Bucco has developed feelings for a beautiful French woman named Elodi who works at the Vesuvio. He makes a loan to a friend of hers, financing a scheme that goes wrong. When Artie tries to collect the money himself -- showing up at the man's location to demand repayment -- he gets beaten and humiliated. He comes to Tony for help with both the money and the face-saving.
Tony handles the situation but treats Artie's attempt at mob-style debt collection with open contempt. Artie is a civilian playing at a world that is not his. Tony tells him as much. There is genuine care between them -- they have been friends since childhood -- but Tony cannot respect Artie's delusion that he can operate in Tony's world without belonging to it. The conversation is one of the series' most honest assessments of the appeal and cost of organized crime viewed from the outside.
Tony is also working through his emotional relationship with the men in his crew in his sessions with Melfi. His attachment to Furio Giunta has grown in ways that are not examined too closely. Carmela has developed an attraction to Furio that she has not acted on and that Tony does not know about. The Furio situation is building across multiple episodes toward something that has not yet arrived.
Credits
Written by: Michael Imperioli
Directed by: Steve Buscemi