Did any of you catch The Soprano's tonight?
If not I highly recommend you watch it sometime this week. It had a plot element that we're all familiar with.
Last season one of the main characters was outed as being gay, and was subsequently killed for it, leaving behind a wife and two kids.
Since that time (roughly a year) his son who is around 13-14 has begun acting out and getting into varying degrees of trouble. A large part of the boy's problems seem to stem from abuse he receives at school due to the fact that all his peers know his father was gay.
His mother believes a solution might be to move up to Maine as a means of getting the boy away from a bad environment. She approaches Tony for the money but he feels it might be better to try talking to the boy first. He sends a family member to talk to the boy first (incidentally the same person who killed the boys father to begin with) followed up by making a half hearted attempt himself. When both of these attempts fail to produce real results and Tony cannot come up with the money to help her move he places a phone call.
He recommends one of those "tough love" programs out in Idaho. The mother is reluctant because she's heard that kids are abused in such places. Tony reassures her kids are only hit as a last resort. She then says, "I've heard the reason so many of these places are in Utah and Idaho is because there's no regulation and they're allowed to use corporal punishment."
Eventually she relents and a few scenes later we find the boy asleep in his bed only to be awoken by three grown men who grab him and tell him that he's leaving. They grab some clothes for him and man handle him down the stairs. As his mother is in tears they assure her that shes doing the right thing.
A happy ending over all I thought.
