Watch: Little Carmine: Smarter Than Everybody Thought

Little Carmine Lupertazzi talks like a man reading a thesaurus underwater, and walks away from the series with the best life of any mobster in it. Watch the video above, then read the case for Carmine.

Ray Abruzzo plays Carmine Jr. as the show's great stealth argument: the malaprop-spouting son ("a pint of blood costs more than a gallon of gold") who everyone dismisses, and who alone among the contenders decides the throne isn't worth dying for. He brokers peace, survives the war, fixes a few wet t-shirt videos' worth of pride, and ends the series alive, wealthy, and at peace in Florida-adjacent comfort. In a show about men destroyed by ambition, Little Carmine's willingness to be underestimated is the closest thing to wisdom anybody manages.

Quick answer: Little Carmine survives and thrives because he gives up the crown nobody else can let go of. The joke is that the "idiot" played the game best.

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