Goodbye Sopranos

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - When HBO introduced Tony Soprano to audiences in 1999, he was mashing a cigar between his thin lips and gazing intently at a family of ducks that had taken up residence in his swimming pool.

That pilot episode saw the patriarch -- swathed in a white robe, with swatches of hair perked up on the sides of his head like ears -- slowly wading into the water, unable to avert his gaze.

In this tranquil scene, Soprano was not the mobster who would go on to shoot his friend on a boat then dump the body overboard, cut off his cousin's head or even smother his beloved nephew following a car crash. He was, in his awed and delighted way, just like us.

Both sociopathic killer and troubled human being, Tony (James Gandolfini) has confounded and defined his audience in a way no other character on television has.

Both he and the show -- whose Sunday series finale is appropriately titled "Made in America" -- have spent six seasons in a kind of elevated televised consciousness.

The series occupied a rare place where a show could be written with a literary vision, from a creator who didn't much care for his antihero, then telecast on a network that didn't have to worry about advertisers, focus groups or censors of any stripe. It broke rules, changed and enforced stereotypes and told complex stories.

I came to the Sopranos late. When it began I didn't get HBO and by the time I had a satellite dish it had been on several years and trying to get into it seemed too much work. Then I found a box set of the first season on DVD for about $15.00 and thought, "why not".

I was hooked from there. I used Amazon's resellers to get the rest of the first five seasons cheaply and watched HBO to stay current. Even though the past two seasons were below the standards set by the show in the beginning it was still fun.

Then there was tonight's non-ending ending where it was set up to appear as though a hit team might be setting up to take Tony out while he ate dinner with his family and then the action simply cut off with a black screen. Then the credits.

To say that this is a rather crappy payoff to the show's fans is an understatement. But then that seems to be what fans of any TV show of late can expect.