…Still, I have always, and will always, love that show. And I’m not bitching about the ending (though, if I had any hardcore complaint it was that there was no shout-out to the ducks that kicked off this nearly decade-long love affair) because they provided one really beautiful moment that I feel summed up the entire series quite nicely: Tony visiting Uncle Junior.

“You and my Dad,” Tony said. “You two ran North Jersey.”
“We did?”
“Yeah.”
“Hm.” Beat. “That’s nice.”

I thought that brief exchange really captured the futility of not just This Thing of Ours, but ambition and accomplisment in general: you struggle and toil and put shit together from scratch, and it all seems so epic and important in the moment, and you make sacrifices, and there are casualties along the way… and ultimately, if you’re lucky, you wind up in a wheelchair, unable to remember most of what you’ve done.

SModcast 15: The Pretty-Good Worker

In which things go back to normal and our heroes discuss the passing of a bear-like legend, ruminate on the emotional and physical perils of pet ownership, confess to being cat people, fret over Weiners hunting weiners, become the Jolie of dog adoption, and incur the wrath of all right-thinking and decent people by spending nearly an hour trying to figure out whether Helen Keller was truly impaired or just party to an elaborate ruse.