There are certain pop culture phenomenons you only have to whisper in a crowded room to elicit passionate reactions from complete strangers. Right now, America has two. But while the aristocratic romances of Downton Abbey remain in the fictionalized past, the in-fighting and gaudy lifestyles of a group of Mob-associated women on Staten Island are so close we can almost touch them. And so it is that America has fallen in love with Mob Wives and the cast’s defacto godmother, Angela Raiola.

There are certain pop culture phenomenons you only have to whisper in a crowded room to elicit passionate reactions from complete strangers. Right now, America has two. But while the aristocratic romances of Downton Abbey remain in the fictionalized past, the in-fighting and gaudy lifestyles of a group of Mob-associated women on Staten Island are so close we can almost touch them. And so it is that America has fallen in love with Mob Wives and the cast’s defacto godmother, Angela Raiola.

He came to my house with roses, a vase, and a knife that doesn’t show fingerprints.

—Big Ang