But this savagery underlines one of the show's strengths. Unlike Francis Coppola's "Godfather" epics or Martin Scorsese's "GoodFellas" and "Casino," David Chase's "The Sopranos" deals brutally and honestly with the relationship between men and women. And it paints the female characters just as vividly as the male ones.

Sure, "The Sopranos" is mainly about New Jersey Mafia men. But it's just as much about the women trying to live with these men. While the men go about their business on the mean streets, the women are at home, in restaurants, at school or at Bada Bing! trying to be gladiators (gladiatrixes?) in their own right.

But as the film "Gladiator" (which has replaced "Godfather" as the series' cinematic touchstone this season) tells us, survival comes through sticking together against a powerful enemy. And the men in "The Sopranos" have had more practice at this. They work together based on the last remnants of the Mafia code: Don't rat, don't mess with another made man and stay loyal to a good leader until he proves otherwise. Paulie, Silvio, Furio and Christopher do what Tony Soprano needs from them and they respect, obey and protect him. They move as a unit.

The women have a harder time; there is less opportunity to stick together. Tough Carmela, the soul of the show along with her husband Tony, is alone in the world except when everyone gathers around her dinner table. She gets her daughter's love occasionally -- when Meadow has been chased out of her college dorm room by a psychotic roomie or needs new clothes. And she gets disdain from the neighbor women, who fear her husband. And then there's restaurateur Artie Bucco's wife -- who is an old "pal," but in one episode lets slip quite wickedly that she had sex with Tony one time long ago when he and Carmela had broken up. Ouch.

But Carmela is a survivor and has her own gladiatrix version of the strength and honor code. She is of the old school -- she married and sticks by a man she loves and still has the hots for (last season's mink coat episode showed that), but she also knows she has made a pact with the devil. Her hubby kills guys and screws a Russian mistress and gets blow jobs from the dancers at the Bada Bing! at least once a week. Yet he usually shows up for dinner -- and Carmela will continue making his pasta as long as Tony shows up. She knows it and he knows it. They have a marital contract that is often strained, but has deep practical underpinnings. Carmela knows that Tony delivers the goods. (In last night's show, Tony doesn't show for dinner and Carm ends up at a shrink of her own, who tells her she should leave him. It's not certain what Carm will ultimately decide to do, but in the meantime, she uses her emotional leverage with her husband to squeeze $50K out of him for Columbia's building fund -- her way of cleansing the family name.)

Though Tony is the philanderer, Carmela is arguably the less faithful of the two: She strays emotionally. She swoons for the priest and the wallpaper guy, and the fact that she makes baked ziti for the priest is in some ways more of a betrayal of her marriage than the kiss she has in the powder room with Mr. Wallpaper. She cooked for someone else! (She was planning to cook for wallpaper man until he came to the wise realization that cuckolding Tony Soprano might not be a life-affirming decision and quickly disappeared.) Carmela is searching for what all women want -- a man who appreciates and craves both the nurturing and the sexual aspects of her personality.

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