First, let's dispense with all the seemingly unlikely possibilities.

1. Vito Spatafore at a gay club. Actually, not so unbelievable. Back in 1992, Anthony Capo, a former mafia hit man turned government informant shot New Jersey mafia boss John D'Amato after his girlfriend ratted him out about his secret gay life in New York City's sex clubs. Vito knows what happens to gay "family" members. Here are his options:
   a) take himself out, i.e., Barrel-Bite the Beretta.
   b) turn mob informant and go into protective custody.
   c) take out the two witnesses [is it too late - he let them leave?]

   As to suicide, I doubt it. He could have done it at home, although some may think he wouldn't want his wife and kid to find him with his brains splattered against the wall. The call to Sil was testing the waters to see if anyone ratted him out. If so, he didn't want to be home to defend himself against any untoward visits. This looks more like a wait and see thing. Tony has already noticed that Vito is AWOL and flags should be raising all over the place. Missing usuals equals flipping. I would have been more concerned, sent a few goombahs to track him down. If I can't locate one of my employees for more than an hour, I start checking homes, hospitals, police stations and I am not in the mob, not anymore anyway.

   Go read excerpts from the interview with Joseph R. Gannascoli at bottom of this article on why he suggested the gay plotline. But if we follow the outline of that book, then Tony [returning to the kindler, gentler Tony for a short time] convinces everyone to accept Vito for what he is, mainly because he's a good earner and has many people in his control: e.g. the guy from the planning commission overseeing the municipal swimming pool bids is willing to play ball - "He's f%$#in' Joe DiMaggio."

   Or try this scenario: most likely the New York boys that spotted Vito are part of Phil's crew. Phil approaches Vito and blackmails him into taking Tony down. Phil knows that Tony is going to take down Rusty (the only other guy in line for Johnny Sack's position) and Phil figures he can take over both New York and New Jersey.

2. I don't believe Arabs are buying credit cards with CVV codes. It's not that the Mafia doesn't sell credit cards (7 bucks a pop for the actual plastic cards), but Arabs do not need to resort to credit card fraud to raise money for weapons, they get more than enough money from Muslim charities. But let's pretend we buy into this script ploy. If Christopher actually sells weapons to them he'll have problems with Tony. Remember Tony worrying about weak port security and terrorists bringing bombs on containers? Also one cannot miss the obvious connection between this scene and the FBI asking Christopher to keep an eye out for Islamic terror threats. So we'll keep an eye out as well.
3. Is that 250 pounds of Bobby Bacala slam dunking? What was this scene about? Just to contrast energetic Bobby against lethargic Tony? But so what? I'll have to think about this. I mean why put something like this in unless later in the series Bobby has to jump 7 feet into the air to knock some poor shlub who didn't pay a gambling debt?
4. The Fed Marshals would never have treated Johnny Sack like they did at the wedding. The judge said 6 hours from the start of the wedding to the end. Another few minutes wouldn't have killed anyone. No Marshal wants to needlessly provoke anyone to have a beef with them. Absent any bad behaviour on the prisoner's part, they will usually cut that person some slack. Having said that - I understand that it was needed to move the plot along and show Johny Sack as a cry-baby. It would have been better had they written something more believable than US Marshals treating a non-convict with so much disrespect - remember he is not yet convicted, he is merely awaiting trial.

   By the way, unless security cost Johnny $300,000 no way he spent $450,000 on a wedding at Leonard's in Long Island.

5. Tony's fight with his new bodyguard Perry Annunziata. I don't buy it. Granted that Tony notices that his crew is beginning to disrespect him (they cut him off when he started to talk about his medical problems at the card game), but he would never pick a fight with a hothead like Perry unless he was sure that his belly wouldn't get pummeled. The smile in the mirror to me seems like a plan well executed. I don't care how strong you are, a 40 something year old can't take a 20 something powerhouse like Perry.

   That slow pan across the room moments before the fight were more to confirm in his own mind that they were ignoring him as opposed to him sizing up who to pick a fight with. Who else could he have possibly picked a fight with, anyway?

   One giveaway is that before he threw the punch he adjusted his pinkie ring to the smooth side to avoid giving his body guard a very bad cut. If you want to hurt someone and make them look really bad for dramatic effect you leave the sharp side of the ring up.

   A side note: Tony applied the moniker "penne arrabbiata [red-pepper flakes] to his new body guard. I checked "The Sopranos Family Cookbook" and the only spicy meals of note are the Lobster Fra Diavolo (pg 131) and Zuppa di Cozze (pg 120). If you want to actually taste this meal try the recipe at allrecipes.com.

6. Johnny asking Tony to whack New York mob captain Rusty Millio (played by Frankie Valli). Although we saw Rusty's dislike for Johnny Sack in Episode 56 "We'll steam roll right over John," he tells Little Carmine, "And I predict the guys on the street...they'll welcome us as fuckin' heroes." but is this enough for us to buy into Johnny's worry that Rusty is planning to take over now that Johnny's in the can? A little more foreshadowing would have been appreciated.