[aderack]

Saving this space for after Agnes has returned from vacation and I can watch the final three episodes.

Although I was vaguely aware of this series, I never paid much attention to it until about a year ago, when I started poking around Netflix at high-profile TV series I hadn't seen. For the one thing, I didn't have HBO. For another, the way people talked about it kind of repelled me. All I ever heard was gamer-flavor froth about how awesome and creative the violence was -- he hits the guy with a stapler, lollerz! -- then complaints about the scantness of it in later seasons.

I recall a couple of years ago, when I first moved here yet before I had found an apartment, I was staying with Woodard for a few days while covering the GDC with Brandon; one of his family members came to get me, asking if I watched the show, because the season finale was airing. I was kind of disoriented anyway, and it really didn't seem like a good place to start watching the series, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to in the first place -- so I begged off and did something else. More than anything, that's probably what gave me the idea to seek it out later.

Anyway, yeah. Now it's over. And turns out, it was fucking amazing. Most of the time. The later seasons have come in for some criticism; aside from Christopher's narcovacillation, I generally only found the show more compelling as it went on -- particularly as it moved from examination of one relationship to another. Season one: mom. Season two: sister. Season three: kids. Season four: wife. Season five: friends and associates. Season six: self. Always one step closer to Tony's self-actualization. To some kind of conclusion about his life. It always felt like it was going somewhere -- with this whole last season, in two parts, a kind of epic and inevitable resolution.

So hey. I hear someone is actually planning on producing Cleaver.

[Baron Patsy]

The ending, as I hear, was something!

[Ebrey]

The Sopranos is what got me in to TV. Before it there were only two shows I had watched more than a couple episodes of (The West Wing and 24), and they were fun, but didn't inspire me to seek out more. The Sopranos led to Six Feet Under, and then Oz, and then all sorts of good stuff.

And I'd recommend it as the first show for anyone else who doesn't watch TV. Perhaps The Wire is more complex, but The Sopranos has it all - family drama, mob politics, inventive violence and raunchy comedy. In a strange way it's TV for the whole family (I think my mom was more addicted than anybody).

My aunt complained that there wasn't enough killing in the fifth season, but as you said, the show honed in on Tony. Most shows take the lazy way out by doing the opposite - shifting to supporting characters so that they don't have to keep developing the central figure. Although Oz does not get nearly enough credit for it's amazing first four seasons, several of which were pre-Sopranos, it isn't as consistent as its more famous younger brother.

[gooktime]

I think we can all agree that the best episode was season three's "Pine Barrens".

[jdoe]

Last night's finale was disappointing. I liked how the final scene supplanted us into Tony's role (the constant tension that he just accepts, his need to "don't stop believing" in his self destructive lifestyle, and his role as an American), but the abrupt cut was such an obnoxious gimmick that was there just to rile up fans. The lasting meaning of the scene changes from summarizing the three major themes of the series to some sort of "choose your own adventure" bullshit. Most people are going to remember the finale as whether Tony died or lived, which isn't the point.

It's also too bad the ending didn't come 3 years earlier. Sorry, but the past 2 or 3 seasons were too repetitious and silly to give the ending the sort of impact it deserved.

[Legal Step]

David Chase could be applauded for stealing all of Scorcese's best ideas from Goodfellas and milking them for however many seasons The Sopranos ran.

[Kappuru]

What was up with that ending, seriously.
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