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April 29, 2007 | When I was a kid, my brother and sister and I made up an alternative version of Clue that we called "Cousins." Instead of trying to solve a murder, players would draw cards to receive their murder assignments: Kill Colonel Mustard, in the Billiard Room, with the candlestick, for example. This meant that you had to retrieve the candlestick, kidnap Colonel Mustard wherever he was on the board (sometimes he was another player), overpower him (by rolling dice, "Risk"-style) and drag him into the Billiard Room to be killed. Afterward, you had to escape without being apprehended by the police, and you had to make sure there weren't any witnesses.

This is where the cousins came in. A herd of faceless nobodies pilfered from Sorry, cousins would migrate together through the rooms and hallways of the Clue board, based on a roll of the dice and a spin of a compass lifted from our Bermuda Triangle game. If a cousin was in the room when you committed your murder, you'd have to track him down and kill him, too.

While it was endlessly engrossing to formulate and debate the parameters and rules ("Colonel Mustard should be able to grab a weapon to fight you, and if he does, he should also get another die to roll."), the game itself was sort of tedious. It turned out to be exceedingly difficult to murder someone and escape without notice. Plus, thanks to the herdlike movement of the cousins, cousins would eventually become lodged in the hallways and doorways, trapping players in the Ballroom or the Lounge with no way of exiting. Even when you eventually did end up in the right place with the right weapon, there could be four or five cousins in the room with you, and once you murdered someone, the cousins would disobey their Northeasterly lemming-like movements and just move away from you as quickly as possible.

Looking back, the notion of a game of murder doesn't bother me. But why were they called "cousins"? Why not "witnesses" or "bystanders" or "strangers"? Apparently it seemed perfectly natural to my brother and sister and me that the pesky mob that would sooner or later be our downfall would be made up of blood relatives.

Darkness in the sunshine state
Like long trips in the car with the family, "Cousins" taught us an important lesson about the purgatorial nature of commitment and blood ties and sticking with your kin, no matter what. Even when things are good, there will always be lots of cousins around, gumming up the works and just generally making life difficult. You can be on top of the world, personally, but it doesn't pay to get too cocky, because chances are a cousin is about to wander in and ruin everything.

That's where Tony finds himself in the final season of "The Sopranos" (9 p.m. Sundays on HBO). Everything's finally good in his life. Business is solid, he and Carmela are getting along reasonably well, Meadow is close by and isn't about to take off to California, A.J. is still annoying but at least he doesn't seem anxious to do something stupid and get himself killed for once. Tony could finally relax and enjoy himself if not for all of those damn cousins.

Tony's life is filthy with cousins: Business associates who are either blood relatives (like Christopher) or who were chosen by his father and who've been around long enough to demand the same level of loyalty (like Paulie Walnuts). As always, Tony is straining under the weight of his commitments, but these days, those commitments transcend the mundane demands of providing for his family and putting up with their crap. The feds are on his trail thanks to some unknown informant, and Tony is discovering that, even if he dodges the law, he's still got cousins to contend with.

(Don't read this if you haven't seen the third episode of the season, which aired last week.) When the FBI digs up some old bones from a murder that Tony and Paulie committed more than 20 years earlier, the two are forced to take off and lie low for a while, so they pack up their bags and drive down to Florida. Tony seems cheered by Paulie's company at first, making small talk about old times.

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