Swompdonkey

How about some nice gabagool?

Some people remember the first time they heard their favourite band, or where they were when they heard something tragic happened, like the JFK assassination for boomers, or maybe 9/11 for Gen Xers, for example.

I, however, remember the first time I saw that show about a mob guy who saw a therapist.

It was at Mike Arpin's house up in the Bay in '99. Mike, as anyone who knows him will remember, was a sucker for new electronics. If a video format or new satelite was coming out in six months, chances are he already had it. He had video game systems in his house that only existed in Japan, he had dozens of movies in multiple formats --including lazerdisc --and he had just about every cable channel that existed hooked up to his bigscreen, including a pay tv channel that was just starting to dabble in original programming in the late nineties: HBO.

One day, Fabian Silva and I were over at his house when he started raving about this new show he had been following. It starred that big dude who had that harrowing scene with Patricia Arquette in True Romance



and the guy who plays Spider, who gets shot by Joe Pesci in Goodfellas



and I was intrigued! No shit? I thought that scene with Gandolfini as the hit man character really stood out in TR... well, that one and the one with Chris "the anti-christ" Walken and Dennis Hopper --Come to think of it, I love that movie! What does that say about me, I wonder?



Anyway, Mike told us that unlike network, HBO did not have to insert commercials in its shows, and because of this, the programming tended to be more "cinematic" in nature. HBO also didn't need to tone down the violence or language either, so you almost ended up with some kind of bastard hybrid... like a pygmy movie, or a souped-up network drama.

So, intrigued by all this, we sat down to watch an episode of this new HBO show with the weird name at Mike's --what would turn out to be the first of 86 episodes, as it were-- and, from minute-one, I was transfixed.

All the superlatives have already been exhausted on the Sopranos, so I won't even bother trying to match the praise I've seen elsewhere. I'll just say that it is the closest thing I have ever seen on TV to literature, in terms of scope or ambition. And, what's more, it is yet to be surpassed in that regard. Can anyone point to any other programme on the small screen that painted universal themes in such grand strokes on such a broad canvas? You may be able to, but you could probably find someone who would call you on it, maybe someone who isn't even a Sopranos fan, but who recognizes it for what it is. Is is Sui generis.

It really did rewrite the rulebook of what could and could not be done on TV, and in the process, dared one to embrace it and invest in it. And yet, for all its complexity, loyal viewers have managed to stay hooked for eight years, and have been richly rewarded for their continued attention.

Some creative fans have gone to great lengths to plot out the overarching narrative of the show: who would have thought that the first five-and-a-half seasons of David Chase's opus could be summed up in such a clever way in seven minutes?



I wonder if he'll ever give us an updated version incorporating part 2 of Season 6...

Now the show is over. After a marathon viewing of the last 8 episodes, I watched the finale on Sunday night, and it was sublime. Once again, I'll refrain from providing a review. The final episode has been dissected to death by every Johnny-come-lately reviewer who wouldn't know a goomar from a garbanzo. If you want to read the thoughts of some really smart people who just happen to be big fans, you should go here.

I'll just say it was everything it needed to be, and so much more. David Chase, never concerned about meeting the expectations of the viewer, thumbed his nose at convention with the sudden shocking ambiguity of the ending, and, refusing to tie things up neatly in a bow, the Sopranos simply left us.

The end is bittersweet. Even moreso when you consider you can't really "re-experience" watching an episode for the first time. Like revisiting a favourite childhood park when you are an adult, or tasting candy you used to eat as a kid, the return visit is never quite the same. Not that repeat viewings aren't rewarding, but even before the final touches of this masterpiece had been applied to the canvas, TV turned on the show, like Saturn devouring his children.

Over the past couple of years, instead of airing the Sopranos in its unadulturated form in syndication, networks began wedging commercials into a format never designed for them. The result, as I found out watching "The Sopranos on CTV", was disconcerting, to say the least. The breaks are jarring. The flow of the narrative is interrupted. The end result is a facsimile, a fairly convincing imposter. Something exceptional masquerading as something mundane.

What's more, who would have thought that they would ever think of airing the Sopranos without the foul language? A&E is doing just that, and the result ain't pretty. I now refuse to rewatch the bastardized episodes:




OK, that clip is not actually from A&E, but you get my point. Colourful language makes for realistic dialogue in a show about the mob, and the dialogue is such an integral part of the Sopranos, that when you mess with it, the show suffers as a result.

Let's face it folks, the real Tony Soprano, the Tony of HBO is gone, and we shall not see his like.

Except on DVD.