The Night Of “The Art Of War”

There’s a moment in this episode where John Turturro’s character John Stone is told off by a woman from a rehab center.  The woman is played by his cousin Aida, formerly of The Sopranos, and since John Turturro is here as a replacement for the late James Gandolfini, that means we almost got an on-screen reunion between Tony Soprano and his sister Janice.

Sometimes trivia is fun.

But does Naz’s life get any worse?  Well, yes.  Yes it does.

Though he isn’t too interested in offers of protection from Freddy Knight, he does at least learn why Freddy took an interest, or at least the surface reason.  See, Freddy is actually a fairly smart guy who finished high school, and prison isn’t a place for intellectual conversations.  Naz is, according to him, rather refreshing.  I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but that’s what he says so far.  Naz seems to be getting prison survival lessons from another inmate, lessons that are almost identical to the instructions from his hotshot lawyer Alison, but then things turn sour.

He does have some help.  Though John Stone is no longer representing him, he seems to care about Naz enough to investigate the crime on his own, running into Detective Box, but making some progress by finding out the victim was in and out of drug rehab herself rather frequently.  Sure, he sells that info for a profit to Alison’s assistant Chandra, but clearly the thing is eating at Stone.  He even appears at Naz’s court appearances and when Alison negotiates the best plea deal she can, he advises Naz to take the deal.  Serve fifteen years, get out of jail at the age of 35.  It could be far worse.

It gets far worse when, during the plea hearing, Naz recounts his side of the story and, well, he won’t admit to killing anyone.  He says he doesn’t remember enough to make that claim.  As such, no plea.  Alison quits as his lawyer, and though Chandra will take over, the case is no longer being done pro bono.  And the inmate who’d been instructing Naz has a personal problem with the circumstances surrounding Naz’s plea gone wrong, leading to an assault.  As such, Naz lost his best lawyer and then accepts Freddy’s protection.

It can only get worse from here.