Yesterday’s overview of the television of the Aughts made the claim that this was the Golden Age of television. Well, here’s the proof. These are the ten best seasons of TV to air from 2000 to 2009. The criteria are simple: The season had to begin and end between January 1st, 2000 and today (that rules out Season Four of Friday Night Lights). Also, I have to have seen it. (A person can only watch so much TV, so with apologies to fans of Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Rome, The Shield, and Breaking Bad Season Two–all of which I have yet to watch–I cannot include these seasons.) Finally, the list is not limited to one season per show, but it is heavily weighted against a show’s second-best (and third-best, etc.) seasons; I didn’t want to just make a list of seasons of The Wire and The Sopranos, but depth deserves some credit. Even within those parameters, though, several very good shows could not make the cut. Here is the illustrious “Honorable Mention” category:

All seasons of The Wire and The Sopranos not already included, Lost Season Four (2008), Mad Men Season One (2007), Breaking Bad Season One (2008), Heroes Season One (2006-07), The West Wing Season Two (2000-01), Dexter Season One (2006), Firefly Season One (2002-03)

And now, the Top Ten:

10. 24 Season One (FOX 2001-02)

Best Episode: 11 PM-12 AM

The decline of 24 was fast and precipitous. Season Two was still good, but it felt formulaic and somewhat predictable when compared to the first season. Later years of the show would get laughably bad. Even so, it’s hard to deny how groundbreaking this series was when it first aired. 24 wasn’t the fist network show to have a season-long arc, but it was the first to make the arc the driving force of the show (with the possible exception of Twin Peaks). This season was one of the first on television to really embrace its serialized nature and utilize action to such an entertaining effect. Not to mention that the first season, before Jack Bauer became a superhero, actually had some compelling character moments.

9. Friday Night Lights Season One (NBC 2006-07)

Best Episode: Mud Bowl

Here’s an important rule to keep in mind when evaluating things: Something can be overrated and still be good. Friday Night Lights is one of those things. FNL is a very good high school drama—that somehow got credit for being the best thing ever to grace television screens. The New York Times called it “not just television great, but great in the way of a poem or painting.” Another review called it “perfect.” To paraphrase Winston Wolf, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Season One of FNL was very good. The dialogue was realistic, the characters were complex, and the directing was often beautiful. But I fear a lot of the acclaim came from critics and fans who wanted to pat themselves on the back. The show got credit for doing unusual things for a high school drama (centering the show on a poor community, dealing with Southern racism, employing the “shaky camera” cinematography) even if it didn’t do any of these things particularly well. What the show did do well was capture the dynamics and vocabulary of high school better than pretty much all other shows of its genre.

8. The O.C. Season One* (FOX 2003-04)

Best Episode: The Heartbreak

It’s easy to forget, but The O.C. was huge when it debuted in the summer of 2003. In high school, I remember being slightly embarrassed that I was watching such a “girly” show, until slowly it was revealed to me that practically all of my male friends were secretly watching the show as well (the process by which this revealed itself was very secretive; a girl would usually mention it, and one of our eyes’ would light up, or one of us would casually mention that we’d “seen a few episodes,” or maybe we’d say we were watching for Rachel Bilson or Mischa Barton, or someone would bravely admit that he thought The O.C. “wasn’t that bad,” until eventually it became an [almost] acceptable thing for guys to like). And while the show was widely considered a soap opera, it appealed to audiences on levels beyond mere drama. The characters (except for Marissa) seemed like likable high school kids. I may lose some credibility for putting The O.C. ahead of Friday Night Lights, since the latter is a critical darling while the former is remembered mainly as a fad. But here’s the thing: The O.C. was better. The writing on The O.C. got lazy and repetitive in later years, but we’re comparing seasons (and at least The O.C. never threw in a gratuitous murder scene), and the first season of The O.C. was great. The dialogue was clever and funny, and the stories always balanced the somewhat outlandish soap-opera drama with realistic character pieces and writing. Plus, the show really perfected the art of indie music montages.

*It’s noteworthy that the first three seasons on the list are all first seasons. All of these shows had good premises that wore thin and ultimately ended up with diminishing returns. The rest of the shows on the list, however, are all shows that more or less reinvented themselves after their initial seasons, to great effect.

7. Dexter Season Two (Showtime 2007)

Best Episode: There’s Something About Harry

I briefly considered putting this in the top 5; the character of Dexter, as played by Michael C. Hall, is one of the best characters from this decade of TV. He owes a great deal to other television antiheroes such as Tony Soprano (and also to his literary source material, written by Jeff Lindsay), but Hall gives him an original and vital perspective. By playing the killer Dexter as someone so disarming and likable (almost too much so—the character is often in danger of losing his edge) who nevertheless acts out the most violent urges, the show delves into questions of moral intent vs. moral action and the nature of evil. At times, the show becomes too formulaic/mystery-oriented, but Season Two featured the most in-depth exploration of Dexter’s own world and values. The discovery of the bodies of Dexter’s victims and the final confrontation between Dexter and Doakes would have been a fitting climax for the series, and it was admirable of the show to play those cards in the show’s second season. What holds the show back, however, are all the storylines that don’t involve Dexter: the love interests of Deb Morgan, the inner workings of the Miami Police Department, the personal lives of Dexter’s friends. All of these seem like discarded plotlines from Generic and Forgettable Cop Drama; it’s not really the fault of the cast, who do the best they can with pretty flimsy stuff, but the non-Dexter centric stories are really very, very bad.

6. The Sopranos Season Six (HBO 2006-07)

Best Episode: The Second Coming

After Nancy Marchand, who played Livia Soprano, died, The Sopranos lost its raison d’être; the show was, at its heart, about Tony Soprano’s relationship with his mother. So where do you go with the story when that mother is dead? Well, the show went a lot of places, and many of them were brilliant. Season Six, which was essentially two seasons that aired almost a year apart, featured some of the series’ most brilliant stories: Tony getting shot by Uncle Junior and going into a coma, Christopher revisiting his dream of making movies, A.J. dealing with depression. As was often the case, the season, particularly the middle, had a lot of filler (mainly the “Vito in New Hampshire” story). A bad episode of The Sopranos is still better than almost anything else on TV, but the show, as was often the case after the first two seasons, lacked direction at times. With that said, the first four episodes of Season Six Part 1 (centering on the shooting) and the last five of Season Six Part 2 (centering on A.J.’s depression and Christopher’s death) are two of the best stretches of episodes The Sopranos would ever have.

5. Lost Season Five (ABC 2009)

Best Episode: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham

It’s hard to choose a “best season” of Lost because the show in Season Five is so fundamentally different from the show in Season Four, not to mention in Seasons One and Two. There is no denying how successful and influential the series itself has been; one need only to look at how many shows since 2004 have tried to position themselves as “the new Lost” (I’m looking at you, FlashForward) to see its impact. The storytelling of the show really hit new heights, however, after Season Three, when the producers ditched flashbacks for flashforwards. Instead of using trite flashback stories to “color the characters,” the flashforwards were used to advance the story and create suspense. At the same time, they were able to deftly balance movement of the plot with great character-centric episodes, like “The Constant” and “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.” Season Five gets the edge over Season Four for more fully embracing the unknown—Season Four had a known endpoint, but Season Five had more mystery—and having fewer dud episodes. Season Five also proved that it is possible to successfully do a time-travel story (take that, Heroes!), and for a show that has always known how to do cliffhangers, the finale of Season Five really raised the bar.

4. Mad Men Season Two (AMC 2008)

Best Episode: The Jet Set

Mad Men is probably the most compelling drama on TV right now, but it has yet to attain the brilliance of The Wire or The Sopranos. The closest it has come was during its second season. This season was the best example of the show’s slow, deliberate pacing building towards an impending and worthwhile climax. Multiple threads, including both the major threads—Don’s troubled marriage, his ongoing tensions with Duck at work, his personal crisis of identity, Betty’s development as an individual—as well as the more minor (and too often neglected) stories—Pete’s maturity, the inner workings of Sterling Cooper, the personal lives of less prominent characters—all dovetailed beautifully in the end. The show offers such a rich gamut of characters that it too often feels like someone like Sal or Pete is getting shortchanged (usually in favor of some stupid Peggy story), but Season Two managed to incorporate all of its themes in its final act. This season also featured some of the show’s more arresting episodes that more or less stand alone, like “Flight 1,” “Maidenform,” and “Six Month Leave.”

3. The Wire Season Three (HBO 2004)

Best Episode: Middle Ground

I could have just made the top five section of this list all five seasons of The Wire, but I feel that would be repetitive. What makes Season Three of The Wire stand out? Well, there are a lot of things. For one, the entire Hamsterdam plotline was a brilliant look at drug legalization plans and different police strategies. It also highlighted Major Bunny Colvin, played by Robert Wisdom in one of the show’s most memorable performances. The third season also introduced the City Hall storyline, opening a whole new way for the show to examine the impact of the drug trade, as well as a slate of compelling characters, most notably Thomas Carcetti. The introduction of Cutty Wise as an ex-con was also one of the series’ few stories of redemption. All of those reasons are well and good, but the main reason for Season Three’s excellence was the culmination of the Stringer Bell/Avon Barksdale storyline. The Wire had always modeled itself after Greek tragedies, and the show had many tragic elements throughout its run. But no storyline in its first three seasons encapsulated tragedy like the Barksdale/Bell relationship. Both of them have a tragic flaw—for Avon it’s his ruthlessness, for Stringer it’s his calculating nature—that ultimately results in their demise. The work of actors Wood Harris and Idris Elba also raises the status of this story; every scene between Avon and Stringer is riveting, particularly their confrontation after Avon is shot and their final scene together on the balcony. Enough cannot be said about this season.

2. The Sopranos Season Two (HBO 2000)

Best Episode: D-Girl

To quote the estimable Larry David on HBO: “‘It’s not TV’? It’s TV. What do they think people are watching? You watch it on TV don’t you?” HBO likes to pretend it stands apart from a lot of the rules of traditional television, and in a lot of ways it does—it can show cursing and nudity, it doesn’t have commercials and, therefore, doesn’t need to appeal to advertisers, it doesn’t follow traditional network schedules, etc.—but looking back at Season Two of The Sopranos, it’s remarkable how many traditionally “second season” problems or clichés it falls back on. Did you kind of write yourself into a hole at the end of Season One? Check. Are you rather hastily introducing new characters into the picture? Check. Picking up old plot threads that appeared to be dead in Season One? Check. The difference between The Sopranos and most other great shows, however, is that, even when its writers appeared to make a “mistake,” they did it well. The two new characters they introduced in Season Two, Richie and Janice, ended up being compelling characters, particularly Janice, who stuck around so long that it’s easy to forget that she was not in Season One. The apparent feud between Tony and his Uncle Junior didn’t actually burn their bridges, but rather set up an even more tense and asymmetrical interpersonal dynamic that would pay dividends throughout the series. Even keeping Tony away from his mother for most of this season allowed Livia’s relationship with other characters to be explored. It also made the impact of Tony’s “What chance did she have?” line to Livia even greater. Season Two of The Sopranos also features three of the ten best episodes in the show’s rich history (“D-Girl,” “Knight in White Satin Armor,” and “Funhouse”).

1. The Wire Season 4 (HBO 2006)

Best Episode: Final Grades

When I talk about this decade being a “golden age for dramatic television,” this is really what I mean. New art forms are generally dismissed as fads until they produce a truly transcendent work. Film needed a Citizen Kane, novels needed a Don Quixote, and the dramatic stage needed an Aeschylus.* Well, anyone who has seen Season Four of The Wire knows not to denigrate the medium of television: Anything that can produce something this good is worth watching.

*As in REALLY needed him. Aeschylus, after all, invented DIALOGUE, which seems pretty important.

This season is great in the way all great works of art are great: It changes the way you think about the world. Whereas the early seasons of The Wire had changed the way you might think about a specific American institution—the police force, drug dealers, labor unions, local politics—the show’s universe had sufficiently expanded by Season Four to seem complete. Ostensibly, this season dealt with the school system, but what it really did was illustrate childhood, and how individuals are socialized into the modern world.

There is a great scene in this season in which Bunny Colvin takes a handful of students from his middle school class to eat at Ruth’s Chris. These kids are not stupid, or illiterate, or uninterested, or unmotivated, but the mere act of ordering food in a restaurant with waiters completely overwhelms them. By the end of the experience, they are completely demoralized.

This is not an indictment of the school system, or politicians, or the police force, but something bigger; it is a clear demonstration that our choices and identities are shaped by the world we inhabit, and not the other way around. The message of Season Four is less obviously social and more poignantly human than any other of this great show.

The fact that Season Four is so focused on children obviously gives it an advantage—the emotional stakes are always higher when you’re dealing with kids—but the fact the show never drifts into after-school special territory is important; it makes the kids feel like natural, real pieces of the world the show has already built. It is, after all, this world that lends the season its most powerful moments, like the demise of Bodie and the Wee-Bey/Colvin confrontation. A show with moments like this, that stay with you for years after first seeing them, is clearly the best show of the decade.

Probably the best illustration of television’s place in the culture at the beginning of this decade are the routes taken by its most prominent auteurs to the field.

David Chase, the creator, head writer, and executive producer of The Sopranos, settled for a career in television when he was unable to break into film; when Fox didn’t pick up the pilot, Chase planned to re-edit it and release the first episode as a film. Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing, was a screenwriter for plays and films; The West Wing was actually developed from unused plot elements from his script for 1995’s The American President. Joss Whedon, creator of cult hits Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and others, originally wrote Buffy as a film. Friday Night Lights, of course, was developed loosely from the film—and book—of the same name.

And, of course, David Simon and Ed Burns, the creative duo behind The Wire (as well as The Corner, Homicide, and Generation Kill) came directly from the subject matter they would be writing on: Simon as a crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun and Burns as a homicide detective, and later a school teacher, in Baltimore.

In short, good TV was something that seemed to happen by accident. Accidentally or not, though, the television produced during the Aughts was better than anything that came before it.

A lot of factors combined to cause the creative leap that television took this decade: the proliferation of pay cable, a pool of talented writers and producers in the medium, the gradual breaking up of traditional network models, the medium’s acceptance as a legitimate source of art, etc. The best way to sum it up, however, is that people like Chase, Simon, Sorkin, Whedon, Matthew Weiner, J.J. Abrams, Peter Berg, and so many others, whether TV was their original goal or not, figured out how to take the medium to new heights of artistic expression.

It’s not as if the TV of the 1990s was bad. The ’90s, after all, saw two of the best comedies of all-time—Seinfeld and The Simpsons—as well as critically acclaimed dramas like ER, NYPD Blue, and Chicago Hope. Even The Sopranos, arguably the best television show of all time, debuted in 1999 and always remained, in many ways, essentially a ’90s show. TV’s ascendancy predates the Aughts, but this was the decade in which television that was smart, well-written, and well-acted went from being a rare exception to a new standard.

A lot of that can be attributed to The Sopranos. I’ve already gone over what was so great about the first season of The Sopranos in creative terms, but maybe just as important is what the show did for television in general. For one, it ushered in the halcyon days of HBO; between 1999 and 2004, HBO premiered The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, and Deadwood—four shows often included in discussions of the greatest series of all time—as well as such miniseries as Band of Brothers, The Corner, and Angels in America.

In addition to the quality programs HBO aired, The Sopranos put cable TV as a whole on the map. Cable television was formerly the home of reruns, niche programming, and cheaply produced TV. Imagining the television landscape without cable now, though, is like imagining movies without sound. Cable—both premium and basic—produces some of the most original, groundbreaking television, including Mad Men, The Shield, Dexter, Rescue Me, and plenty of others. Since cable networks are not bound to the same constraints as broadcast networks—constraints like traditional seasonal scheduling, having to appeal primarily to advertisers, higher ratings standards—shows on cable are often the most daring and inventive: They can be more violent, more sexually explicit, and more linguistically realistic than shows on network television.

But the increased quality of television this decade wasn’t limited to cable. If anything, the immense popularity of The Sopranos proved to networks that large audiences were willing to watch a show that was smart and gritty. Contrary to popular opinion, viewers didn’t like only formulaic, predictable procedurals; they could keep up with long plot threads. As a result, networks not only stopped shying away from complexity and dark subject matter but actually encouraged it.*

*Of course, complex and dark shows weren’t invented in the Aughts. Shows like Twin Peaks and The X-Files were around in the 1990s. But Twin Peaks was cancelled after two seasons. The X-Files persisted for nine years, but began as a cult hit. Compare these shows, for example, with Lost—a series whose complexity has thousands of websites devoted to it—which has been one of the most popular shows on television since its debut.

The Sopranos was a symbolic moment for audiences—in that it lent the medium artistic credibility—and a telling moment for the industry—in that it demonstrated the possibilities of both cable television and less familiar stories. But it could have just as easily been the exception that proved the rule–the one bright spot in a perpetual abyss of mind-numbing programming. What prevented that and allowed for a more general and sustained qualitative leap, however, was the growth of the serial format.

Serialization, of course, was not new to television, having existed since soap operas made the transition from radio to TV. Most scripted shows had always had varying degrees of its story serialized. The Aughts, however, saw the full embrace of serialization and its use for powerful dramatic ends.

The dangers of serialization had always been that audiences wouldn’t be able to keep up with a story. Or that if they missed one episode, they’d be unable to catch up with the series. Instead, shows stuck with, for the most part, telling complete stories in each episode. Occasionally shows would introduce a two-parter, or a muli-episode arc, but generally they would stick with one plot per episode. It’s no accident that almost every one-hour drama on TV during the 1990s was either a legal, criminal, or medical procedural, or a primetime soap opera; these are genres in which a variation on the same story can be done for every single episode.

Eventually, though, writers started to realize that the most compelling parts of these procedurals were the elements of the story that persisted through each episode. A show like NYPD Blue was known for its treatment of police officers as real people, enriching their characters from episode to episode.

Procedurals still exist, of course, but they are now accompanied by a wide range of shows that specialize in their ability to sustain a story over a full season. 24 was probably the first show where the season-long arc was the primary draw for viewers. The suspense sustained and accumulated throughout the season brought viewers back for each episode. Shows like Lost, Desperate Housewives, Heroes, and Dexter became adept at ending each episode with a cliffhanger.

Serializing to facilitate suspense was a key trend of this decade in television: It allowed genres like Thrillers, Mysteries, and Sci-Fi (or SyFy, as the network is now annoyingly spelled) to do things on television that they could never do in movies, since movies generally tell one self-contained story. But if suspense were the only element added by serialization, then TV never would have attained the status of high art that it did this decade.

What truly Great Shows started to see during the Aughts was that serialization allowed television to employ a kind of storytelling that was novelistic, and even epic. It has often been pointed out that Charles Dickens wrote in a serialized format, and the similarities are telling: Modern show-runners, like Dickens, view each installment as a piece of a larger puzzle, but also as a complete piece in and of itself that keeps the audience engaged; show-runners, like Dickens, are willing to gauge an audience’s response to certain characters and developments, and incorporate their findings into future stories; show-runners, like Dickens, understand that dumbed-down writing and broad jokes and stories are not the only way to appeal to a wide audience.

This novelistic style allowed certain shows to create large and rich worlds, in the style of Victorian novels. Episodes were part of a larger story–one that grew to include characters, themes, and stories that were far-reaching, vibrant, and relevant to a modern audience, and not mere escapism or predictable melodrama. Look, for example, at the way The Sopranos, originally just a story about Tony Soprano, grew to vividly illustrate his entire family and all of his associates, doing so in a way that allowed the show to cover stories from the college admissions process to gays in the Mafia.

The best example of a show that used its serial format to tell a story epic in scope is The Wire, the prize jewel in TV’s artistic crown. If there are any remaining skeptics of television’s ability to produce beautiful and poignant work, then they haven’t seen The Wire. The Wire is the greatest work of art to emerge in the Aughts, regardless of the medium. And part of what makes the show so great is that it perfectly utilized its medium: The Wire could not be a movie—its story is too grand. It could not be a novel—the visual element is too important. It could not be a play—too many scenes are nonverbal. And yet nothing feels extraneous or wasted. Unlike other shows, even shows of the quality of The Sopranos or Mad Men, none of the stories are uninteresting or irrelevant; it does not feel padded or built around any fluff. Every episode has an arc of its own while remaining integral to an overall story that is more important and has an even bigger emotional and intellectual payoff.

What’s important about The Wire—and Mad Men and Lost and The Sopranos and so many other shows from this decade—is that its format and medium is so important to its success. They were not good in spite of the fact that they were on TV, but because they were on TV. And this is a necessary step for a medium to become an artform. People don’t think Hamlet is good “for a play,” or The Brothers Karamazov is good “for a novel,” or The Godfather is good “for a movie”; those things are just good.

And the truly great works of television that have been produced this decade are works of art on par with those works. The characters on Mad Men are just as rich, the dialogue on The Sopranos is just as witty and realistic, the portrait of the world on The Wire is just as incisive and important, as those offered by a novel by Dickens (or Hemingway, or Faulkner, or plenty of other novelists).

Of course, most TV still sucks. But so do most movies, most books, and most plays. What’s important is that TV has now come into its own. TV clearly can, and does, produce great works. People can make good TV and people will watch (they don’t always, but they usually do). And now, at the end of the Aughts, people are even making great TV on purpose.    

Sam and Tom venture into the world of Surrogates for no good reason, but emerge stronger for the experience fails to kill us. We move on talk of justice and Roman Polanski, to David Cronenberg remaking himself and to drawing a new career path for Tarantino. Next, the boys all convene to talk about a multitude of documentaries and the pilots of FlashForward and Bored to Death. The conclusion comes in tribute to Patrick Swayze, celebrating him in Road House and Point Break.

Download The Movie Overdose Episode 36

Show notes will follow in a later post.

The Sopranos

El rumor no es nuevo. La posibilidad se incubó en la mente de miles de fans y en la prensa después de ver el controvertido final. Quizás el intrigante hoyo negro en la pantalla el día del final, podría llenarse con una película que narrara en dos horas lo que de verdad pasó con Tony y su familia.

David Chase lo negó en su momento y la verdad es que parece que la razón le asistía: Gandolifini ha gritado a los cuatro vientos que no quiere hacer más el papel. No había mucho que agregar: los fans irredentos de la serie saben que la mafia mata a los líderes, pero no a la familia consanguínea, a la que se comprometen incluso a cuidar. Si mataron a Tony, Carmela sabía donde estaba el dinero y Paulie- quién debió tomar el control de la “famiglia”- seguramente se ocuparía de que a Carmela y sus Sopranitos no les faltara nada.  Es posible que AJ se integrara al negocio en algún momento.

Si para contar eso te tomas cerca de 120 minutos podrías tener una película. Pero… ¿ realmente es tan importante confirmar los hechos? Para el negocio aparentemente si.

El caso es que Cinemablend, revive el rumor citando una declaración de Lorraine Bracco ( La Dra. Melfi) para New York Daily News , donde sugiere que David Chase está trabajando el guión. No niega ni afirma nada, aunque dice que no sabe si Gandolfini aceptaría volver a hacer el papel.

El caso es que hay dos posibilidades: hacer la cinta de los Sopranos después de que Tony ha muerto y entonces solo hay que convencerlo de que se deje filmar en un charco de sangre( ¡¡¡¡¡noooooo!!!).

Convencer a Gandolifini de aprecer en flash backs o algo así, contando una historia alterna que los fans no vimos en la serie.

Complicado en ambos casos. Y poco viable. Y no sé la verdad, si quisiéramos ver eso…Hay cosas que se terminan y punto, que es cuando comienza la leyenda. ¿no?

I finished “The Sopranos” on Saturday – just as Dave was starting. I didn’t watch the second half of Season 6 when it aired on HBO because it had been too long since I had seen everything up to that point. I wanted to begin from the beginning, which I did in early May. I watched 86 episodes in six weeks, an average of 2.047 episodes per day, mostly on lunch breaks and late at night after Kate and Molly were in bed. I didn’t read any fiction in that time. “The Sopranos” was my novel.

After watching the final episode (don’t worry, no spoilers), I read excerpts of an interview with David Chase, the show’s creator, in which he said this about loyal viewers and their expectations for the series finale: “They had gleefully watched [Tony Soprano] rob, kill, pillage, lie and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted ‘justice’ . . .The pathetic thing – to me – was how much they wanted his blood, after cheering him on for eight years.”

I had such a different experience than what Chase described that I’m considering four possibilities: 1) I didn’t pick up cues in the show that I was supposed to be rooting for Tony as he used and abused nearly everyone with whom he came in contact, including his family and closest friends; 2) I watched a different version of the show, the non-director’s cut, perhaps; 3) Chase’s cynicism put him so far outside the mainstream that he failed to understand his audience, even as he created one of the greatest television shows of all time; and/or 4) I’m the one outside the mainstream, I’m the one who doesn’t get it.

I admit I lived vicariously through Tony. But it wasn’t during those scenes in which he robbed, killed, pillaged, lied, and cheated. It was in the rare quiet moments with his family, usually at the end of a season, and especially in the office of his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi, when he tried to make sense of himself and his place in the world. I understand, in my own way, the depression and the feelings of being trapped. I recognize too in Tony the rage, the self-deception, the hunger and lust and hubris – and also the consequences of yielding ground to those urges. For me, watching this show again, I had no shortages of second chances for Tony, even when Tony didn’t extend a second chance to someone else. I rooted not for Tony’s sins, but for his redemption, as I hope for my own redemption.

All those years of therapy and Tony never left organized crime. But he learned enough to keep his kids away from it. Live or die in the final episode – no spoilers here – the Soprano family’s cycle of violence and betrayal will end with him. That makes Tony a kind of hero. That is a kind of redemption.

Update: My friend Jordan makes a great point in response to this post:

What’s telling, though, is that we rooted for Tony against almost every antagonist he faced (with the possible exception of Big Pussy…I may be forgetting others). We certainly wanted him to beat Phil Leotardo in that last season, even though he was becoming more and more dark. Maybe it’s that he was at least seeking a way out through therapy.

I think Agent Harris’ reaction at hearing the gang war’s outcome was emblematic of what Chase felt viewers believed: maybe we pretended to want justice, but we still often root for the evil we like best

Los Soprano en el Vips

Nunca fuí un tipo seguidor de series, películas o cualquier otra obra que requiriese de cierta concentración, cierta constancia, ciertas dotes para asociar huecos de tiempo libre con hobbies que en este caso yo llamo transicionales: hacerte muy seguidor de algo, de alguien, hace que con el tiempo se pierda interés hacia ello y acabe sepultado bajo harapos (grunge) en algún rincón de tu casa.

Hace tiempo ya, mi hermano, figura omnipresente en casi todos los momentos de mi vida, me sugirió através de la entrega en mano en dvd del mismo, una serie que hasta hoy no había terminado de ver, al menos no del todo;  aquel ofrecimiento no andaba en la misma liga que el prestarme, también por su parte (todo un visionario el tío), el segundo albúm de Korn, “Life is Peachy“,  etiquetado por éste en tiempos en los que sólo nos despertabamos con Nirvana, Alice in Chains o Pearl Jam, cómo “gente con ardor pegando gritos por exceso de problemas y gilipollez“.

Eran Los Soprano, una serie oscura pero atractiva, con tintes hogareños y altas dosis de dramatismo en ocasiones cómico, en ocasiones hollywoodiense; una historia bien arbolada en donde cada personaje toma un rol social y de comportamiento bien diferenciado, y que centra casi todas sus miradas entorno a la familia que da nombre a la serie, y en especial sobre el padre, Tony Soprano, y sus altas dotes para controlar situaciones tanto de puertas para dentro, como de puertas hacia fuera.

Y es que estaba claro que, en una sociedad en donde el término Mafia denota “algo chungo” pero a la vez “algo llamativo”, mediatizado televisamente por figuras como Marlon Brando y Al Pacino en “El Padrino” o de éste último en “Scarface”, Johnny Depp y Michael Madsen en “Donnie Brasco”, o Robert De Niro y Paul Sorvino en “Uno de los nuestros”, entre otros muchos ejemplos, un producto como Los Soprano atraería a una cantidad ingente de público deseosa de hacerse una idea más aproximada de lo que una “Familia no parental y con armas” pudiera significar.  (Y sino, navegar por cualquier foro relativo al tema y toparéis con comentarios de verdaderos piezas, hooliganmente hablando claro)

Por allá entonces logré engancharme, en un intento de acercamiento sistemático a todo aquello que proveniera de un hermano mayor (el que tenga hermanos mayores, sabrá lo que es eso, más cuando se es adolescente e insconsciente, en donde se buscan modelos a seguir diariamente) y por el propio condimento adictivo de la serie, pero por razones que se me escapan, lo cambiamos al tiempo por empezar a salir a correr por el Parque Municipal El Soto (vendita la hora, que cuerpo fibroso aquel).

Hasta hoy, en donde todavía nos relamemos con el final abierto, y con la necesidad de una continuidad, algo más que improbable, de la serie (esa costumbre de echarme al iphone un capitulillo para ver con un té “Relax” marca Hacendado al cerrar los días no es tán facil de borrar del planning semanal mental). David Chase, director de la serie, lo tiene al menos claro, aunque sostienen la idea de llevarlo al cine, idea con la que no ando muy de acuerdo (No, no me veo yendo de primeras a los cines del centro comercial Xanadú con palomitas y cuatro que venían de frikear en Game, cuatro guaperas con sus novias que pedían acción y que preguntaron a la taquillera por algo a lo “Bruce Willis con explosiones” y cuatro madres  que se confundieron de sala).

Vista durante varios meses, y en versión original (inicialmente puede resultar algo para hacerse el  interesante, pero acostumbrarse lleva poco tiempo, y ganais mucho en oído y en calidad del material – muerte a la asignación de voces por dobladores con operaciones de rinoplastia – ), el final arroja la necesidad de querer a la serie como algo propio e indispensable; no entraré a detallar los últimos segundos, por aquellos que todavía no lo hayais visto y porque análisis también hay cientos en la red, pero si anotar la canción escogida de fondo de final del acto como la elección mas acertada posible.

Todo final denota un punto de inflexión, una medida de rigor sobre la que tomar valoraciones, especular y actuar en consecuencia; todo final presume de generar incerteza entre los que la suscitan o la presencian; todo final conlleva a creer que algo nuevo va a entrar y algo saldrá en un entorno en un espacio temporal acotado. Todo final deja siempre, siempre, lugar a la duda.

Don’t stop, believing!

Ismael Rihawi Soprano Aragón
Underlife // Syntra

This week’s classic theme tune comes from one of the all-time great detective dramas, The Rockford Files.

The show, which ran for six seasons between 1974 and 1980 (plus eight TV movies in the mid-to-late 1990s), starred the inimitable James Garner as Jim Rockford, an amiable ex-con who spent five years in jail after he was wrongly convicted of armed robbery.

After he is released and pardoned, he becomes a private investigator specialising in helping other wrongly-convicted people and other types of cases which the cops consider to be solved and closed but in which he believes mistakes have been made.

The Rockford Files was created by Roy Huggins, who had previously worked with Garner on 1960s comedy western Maverick and wanted to create a similar but contemporary series to showcase Garner’s charismatic charm, and Stephen J Cannell (who also co-created The A-Team, among others).

The quality of the writing, in comparison to most 70s cop dramas, is often considered one of the main reasons for The Rockford Files’ enduring popularity through reruns and DVD releases. The prolific Cannell alone wrote some 36 of the show’s 122 episodes.

The series also provided an early chance for viewers to enjoy the writing of future Sopranos creator David Chase. He worked as a producer on the show and also wrote 16 episodes.

Interestingly, two of the episodes Chase wrote involved Rockford becoming entangled with mobsters – in one of them, an organised crime family from New Jersey…

The Rockford Files is one of my earliest TV-watching memories and that famous answering machine message (in an age when telephone answering machines still seemed like something out of science-fiction to most British viewers – hell, even Jim Rockford had to lease his) is forever etched in my brain.

And, of course, the answering machine message was followed by the theme tune, written by the legendary partnership of Mike Post and the late Pete Carpenter.

Here is the original version of the theme tune from the show’s first season:

And here is a slightly tweaked, rearranged version (the difference is most notable in the more funky section towards the end) from later seasons of the show:

Short? Maybe not.

“The Sopranos” ran as long as its creator, David Chase, wanted it to. And HBO mini-series have been as long as 12 hours.

So it’s unlikely that Chase will take a minimalist approach with his just-announced history of Hollywood moviemaking.

That’s okay: An exhaustive television history of Hollywood, done right, could be television worth watching. By definition it will be more compelling than the mediocre and vastly contrived “reality” shows cluttering up the airwaves. Isn’t their 15 minutes about over?

The Chase mini-series, to be titled “Ribbon of Dreams,” a reference to Orson Welles’ description of film, could go into production as soon as early next year, according to a report by New York Times television writer Bill Carter.

Here’s what’s on order, according to Carter:

“The series, “Ribbon of Dreams,” will begin with the behind-the-scenes roles played by two fictional characters — one a cowboy with some violence in his past, the other a mechanical engineer — who work for the famous early film director D. W. Griffith. It will follow them and their professional heirs through the development of the movie business.

The project is expected to cover each period of Hollywood movies, beginning with silent westerns and comedies, through the golden era of the studio system, to the emergence of auteur film directors in the 1970s, and up to the current mix of studio blockbusters and independent films. The cast of characters will also include many of the biggest names of Hollywood’s past, including John Wayne and Bette Davis.”

Chase will write and executive-produce the mini-series, and will direct the first few episodes, according to a piece in The Hollywood Reporter.

Also in the works is a similarly themed project from Turner Classic Movies, a 10-part documentary titled “Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood.”

Set to premiere in 2010, that miniseries will cover more than a century of history, dating all the way back to Thomas Edison’s inventions. Read more about “Moguls and Movie Stars” here.

Here’s trusting that Chase and the other writers of the HBO series, and the creators of the TCM series, dug up some new research and consulted Gerald Mast’s “A Short History of the Movies” and other classic film-history books.

BROADCAST/CABLE

President Obama will take his economic strategy to Jay Leno’s comic couch on Thursday in the first appearance by a sitting U.S. president on a late-night TV talk show. Obama will appear on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” to discuss his economic plan and “other topics.” (Iwantmedia 3/17, http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSTRE52F5MR20090316 3/16)

HBO has landed David Chase and Brad Grey — the masterminds behind “The Sopranos” — to create a miniseries titled “Ribbon of Dreams” that will chronicle the birth and rise of the American movie industry. It’s unclear, at this point, exactly how long the miniseries will be or when it will begin production. The New York Times (3/16)

Oxygen, according to this article, is nearing a deal to pick up a series based on saucy Dallas-based chef Blythe Beck. Sources quoted in this report say that the show, which has performed well in test screenings, would be titled “The Naughty Kitchen.” The NBC Universal-owned channel said a deal had not yet been made final. Variety (3/16)

The Council for Research Excellence next week will release what is described as “the largest and most significant observational study of media activity ever undertaken.” It’s expected that the results will indicate which age groups do the most media multitasking, if young viewers are abandoning traditional TV and the volume of commercial time viewers take in. Broadcasting & Cable (3/16)

The big film news of the day doesn’t have much to do with film at all. It’s that David Chase, whose The Sopranos became a kind of Mahābhārata of the Mob, is headed back to HBO and making a miniseries about the days when Hollywood wasn’t much more than an orange grove.

Ribbon of Dreams will unspool around the friendship between a cowboy and a mechanical engineer who both go to work for D.W. Griffith. They graduate to becoming producers of their own, and are soon negotiating the nascent business of the movies–as well as real life characters like John Ford, John Wayne, Raoul Walsh, Bette Davis and Billy Wilder. An unconfirmed and possibly imaginary report implied one episode would see the two guys barely surviving a drinking bout with John Barrymore, Errol Flynn and W.C. Fields.

Nevertheless, as the title comes from an Orson Welles quotation, don’t be surprised if the Kinosha Kid himself doesn’t appear somewhere around the final episode to utter a few choice words before Journey’s “Don’t Start Believing” kicks in. He’ll probably be old, drunk and doing Transformers voice-overs by that point, as the multi-part series is expected to take in two generations of filmmakers, wheelers and dealers. No word on how many episodes of Ribbon there will be, but Chase is writing all of them and directing the initial installments.

In interviews given around the time of The Sopranos final episode, Chase made no bones about his frustrations with TV and his dreams of being a filmmaker. Scholars have also noted the similarity between gangsters and Hollywood types, who both deal in things like ten-percenteries and horse heads in the bed.

The announcement was followed by much puffery from the people involved which we’ll spare you here. TCM threw their hat onto the ground and stepped on it in anger, as their own announcement that a 10-part documentary Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood would kick off in 2010 was met with cries, “Hey, do you mind? I’m flattering David Chase!”

David Chase, creater of the Sopranos is back with a new show for HBO.  In case you haven’t watched the Sopranos recently, or ever, here are some great video clips to get you up to speed.  The first one is downright brilliant, featuring quite a bit of language and memorable quotes from the series:

And two of the best characters on the show, Christopher and Paulie:

According to the Times, Chase’s new show will be a mini-series:

Having previously struck gold for HBO with his mobster series “The Sopranos,” the writer and producer David Chase is returning to the cable channel with a new mini-series about men who swear relentlessly and resort to ruthless tactics to get ahead, only this time, it’s set in Hollywood. In a release, HBO said that Mr. Chase’s mini-series would be called “A Ribbon of Dreams” (taken from Orson Welles’s famous metaphor for film) and would follow two characters through the birth and development of the American motion picture industry. The two protagonists, a mechanical engineer and a cowboy, will begin working for D.W. Griffith, and encounter the likes of John Wayne, Bette Davis and Billy Wilder as they rise through the business. No casting or premiere date was announced.

A truncated adventure for the hosts this week with a concentration of PR from Marvel and the roundabout of directorial talent seemingly interested in Ed and Bel. They shift sideways to consider whether they think more watchers should witness the watchmen and sprint in the direction of anything new from the bada bing man. Finally one makes a promise to stop cheating while the other invents an annual feature on the spot, one which may never again return.

Download Episode 10

This is Paul Weitz. This is Chris Weitz. We were wrong on half counts.

Alexander Skarsgard is this dude.

Is Watchmen a failure?

Find us on Twitter here.

The Internet keeps distracting me.

* This is brazenly dishonest, even by Fox standards.

* When Reagan tried to convert Gorbachev to Christianity. You mean that’s not the job he was elected to do?

* Great news, or greatest news? New Line pursuing a MacGyver movie. The opening to the MacGyver This American Life (free to stream) goes a long way towards explaining his continued appeal seventeen years after the show went off the air.

* David Chase’s Sopranos follow-up has been announced: it’s an epic history of the movie industry beginning in 1913.

* And get your “disrepecting the office” talking points ready: Barack Obama will be the first sitting president to go on The Tonight Show. If only Conan had already taken over…

David Chase, the man behind The Sopranos, has returned home to HBO to helm a new mini-series which will chronicle the very early days of Hollywood. A Ribbon of Dreams (the title taken from a quote by Orson Welles) will follow a cowboy and a mechanical engineer who form a producing partnership and become pioneers of the burgeoning film industry in 1913. Chase is writing the series and will direct the first few episodes while being joined on the project by Paramount’s Brad Grey, an executive producer on The Sopranos and now exec on this project also.

It’s a major move for Chase who has been near silent since the highly controversial fade-to-black ending of The Sopranos. The film itself will blend fantasy and reality as the characters first work with the likes of DW Griffith (he of Birth of a Nation and Intolerance) and go onwards to end up working with marquee golden age names like John Ford and Raoul Walsh. The story will take the progression of Hollywood right up to present day and really seems like it should be both fund and taylor-made to win a bunch of Emmys and Globes when the times comes around. It also sounds like a wild departure from the genre television of The Sopranos onto a grander, significantly less violent canvas.

En los pasados días ha culminado un ciclo brillante en mi vida que quiero compartir con todas mis hordas lectores: Me he visto desde el primer hasta el último capítulo toda la serie de “Los Soprano”.

Tenía muy buenas referencias de la serie, llegué a conocerla por medio de buenas críticas. No se cuando fue, hace unos cuantos años, no recuerdo si en una revista o en un periódico, hablaban de cómo esta serie había renovado el lenguaje televisivo. No era una sitcom de buen rollo, en esta los protas eran una familia cuyo padre era nada más y nada menos que un líder mafioso de New Jersey. Se rompían los tabúes, había sexo, violencia, palabrotas a mansalva e incorrección política. La serie la pasaban por HBO, un canal de pago. Esto de ser de pago era fundamental para tener independencia respecto a la publicidad y a las audiencias y por eso pudo volar alto y llegar lejos.

Me iban llegando estas críticas y me iba convenciendo de que tenía que verla. Al cogerla empezada, comenzaron mis manías de orden. No podía ponerme a ver un capítulo al tuntún y engancharme a partir de ahí, tenía que ver todo, desde el principio. En Tailandia me hice con la primera temporada y en las noches junto al Mekong veíamos, la reina y yo, todos los capítulos que podíamos. La primera impresión fue buena, así que el siguiente paso fue conseguir, vía majestades de Oriente, la serie completa en DVD.

“Los Soprano” trata, para el que no lo sepa, de la vida de Tony Soprano y sus dos familias. Una es la tradicional, compuesta por su esposa, sus hijos, su madre, su hermana… la otra es la “familia”, su familia mafiosa, dedicada a los negocios sucios. Sólo hay un nexo entre ambas, su tío Junior, que es al mismo tiempo capo mafioso y tío carnal. A lo largo de la serie podemos ver el desarrollo de ambas familias y la interrelación que tienen.

Lo revolucionario de esta historia es que no nos presentan al protagonista, un mafioso, como un tipo duro con un código de comportamiento muy específico y plano. No, el protagonista es un mafioso, pero también sufre por sus hijos y por su madre y tiene que ir al psiquiatra para hablar de sus problemas porque tiene ataques de pánico. En esto debo decir que sigue la estela de “El Padrino”. En esta mítica película, fue Coppola el que dijo que no quería hacer una historia de mafiosos (porque daban mala fama al colectivo italoamericano del que él era parte) sino que quería hablar de la vida de la familia. Si este fue el precedente, los Soprano lo desarrollan al máximo y, en ese aspecto, incluso mejoran la consecución del objetivo.

Entrar en el universo Soprano es una droga dura difícil de abandonar, puesto que sólo quieres más y más, te va enganchando por todas partes. La historia familiar contribuye a que nos metamos en la piel del protagonista, posibilita que podamos empatizar con un criminal sangriento. A partir de ahí, ya podemos entender mejor a su grupo, su sector dentro de la familia Di Meo de New Jersey.

Esta serie es de lo más grande que he podido ver en mi vida, a todos los niveles. Los actores son brillantes, los guionistas magníficos, la dirección elegante, con un estilo muy clásico. La selección musical es sensacional. Está todo atado y bien atado, por todas partes, todos los personajes tienen su por qué y todo funciona de una manera determinada, al tiempo que todo evoluciona. No hay nada dejado al azar en este pedazo de serie. Decía el crítico de cine Carlos Boyero que “Los Soprano” es una de las mejores películas de la historia del cine, aunque dure 4300 minutos y nunca se haya exhibido en sala oscura (a esto último habría que ponerle remedio, yo firmaría por un pase demencial en pantalla grande). Le doy la razón y de paso las gracias porque fue este crítico con su insistencia otro de los que me animó a verla. Es una serie que lo tiene todo, tiene todo lo que se puede pedir a una historia y es de lo más grande que se ha hecho nunca.

Pocas veces me ha pasado, pero me ha pasado. Con libros y con películas. No querer que acabe y, cuando acaba, sentir un vacío enorme. No os voy a engañar, me he quedado con el corazón encogido cuando me he dado cuenta de que ya no habría más soprano.

El final, por cierto, es bastante controvertido. Lo voy a comentar más adelante, a ver si alguno la ha visto y me comenta lo que le parece. Si no has visto la serie, mejor que no sigas leyendo.

[Enlace recomendado sobre Los Soprano: http://www.lossoprano.tv ]

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SI NO HAS VISTO LA SERIE, MEJOR QUE NO SIGAS LEYENDO

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SI NO HAS VISTO LA SERIE, MEJOR QUE NO SIGAS LEYENDO

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Bien, el final, de la serie, como sabemos los que la hemos visto hasta el final, transcurre en un restaurante. Los miembros de la familia Soprano (los miembros reales, no los mafiosos) quedan ahí y van llegando por separado. El primero en llegar es Tony, que se sienta y selecciona una canción en la gramola. Cada vez que entra alguien en el local suena una campana y Tony levanta la cabeza y mira quién es. Es una pauta que se repite: campana y entra alguien, campana y entra alguien. Más o menos vemos lo que Tony ve con esa dinámica de campana-entrada. A veces entran en el restaurante personas desconocidas, otras veces son los miembros de la familia los que van llegando. Primero su mujer, después su hijo. Mientras entran otras personas vemos como su hija está fuera intentando aparcar el coche. Finalmente lo aparca, se dirige al restaurante. Suena la campana, Tony mira: FIN.

Como vemos, es un final bastante abierto que no se sabe a ciencia cierta lo que puede significar, si es que significa algo. Desde luego deja a todo el mundo estupefacto y hay circulando teorías diversas. Ninguna está confirmada, pero la que se señala más como la correcta es la de la muerte de Tony Soprano.

Uno de los que entran es un señor con una chaqueta que mira hacia la mesa de la familia Soprano. Se dirige al baño del restaurante y es lo último que sabemos de él. Lo que pasa es que si estamos desde el principio viendo y escuchando lo que escucha Tony, cuando de repente se funde a negro y se deja de escuchar todo… ¿estamos en el lugar de Tony? Si es así, ¿qué ha pasado para que Tony deje de ver y oír? ¿Por qué suena la campana y no se ve quien ha entrado?

Se da la curiosa circunstancia de que en uno de los últimos capítulos Tony habla con Bobby Bacala sobre la muerte y este dice que piensa que no te enteras, que ni ves ni oyes nada. Curioso que metan esto y justo el final sea así. De repente, ni se ve ni se escucha nada.

Una pieza que no encaja a muchos seguidores es ¿quién iba a matar a Tony, si llegados a ese punto de la serie acababa de terminar una cruenta guerra con la familia de New York? Y siendo el restaurante en el que están un restaurante no habitual de la serie, ¿quién iba a saber qué estaban ahí cenando?

Siendo cierto que no encaja esta pieza, a mí me parece el final más lógico para la serie. Hay gente que dice que es un sueño, otra gente que piensa que le da un ataque de pánico como otras veces (esto no lo descarto, ya que el dice que pierde la visión cuando eso sucede), se dice que simplemente eso nos crea una tensión para ver que es la tensión habitual que tiene Tony, otros dicen que lo que pasa es que le detienen (aunque esto tiene menos sentido) y otros, que no significa nada.

Aunque David Chase, creador de la serie, no ha especificado nada, si que ha dicho que no hay que interpretar demasiado, que todo lo que hay está ahí y que no hay que darle más vueltas. En otra entrevista dijo que para el final no sólo importa el último capítulo, sino muchos de los capítulos anteriores (ahí cobra sentido lo de Bobby Bacala). En fin, hay varias entrevistas en las que, si bien no lo dice abiertamente, da a entender que eso es así.

Una reflexión interesante que hace el autor de la serie es que durante la serie, los telespectadores nos convertimos en “alter ego” de Tony. Este personaje es un mafioso, putero, bebedor y jugador con muy mala leche y con actos despreciables. Sin embargo le reímos la gracia. Decía el autor que muchos espectadores pensaban que, en el final, Tony debía morir, debería verse su muerte. Como en tercera persona, vaya. Lo que ocurre sin embargo es que nos ponemos en su lugar y “morimos” con él (esto no lo dice directamente Chase). Si hemos sido “alter ego”, la serie no acaba al margen de nosotros, acaba abruptamente, como una muerte inesperada.

Mucha gente se come la cabeza con simbolismos y quizá estos también tengan que ver. Se habla del “a la tercera va la vencida”. Tony sufre dos intentos de asesinato en la serie y análogamente a esto, Meadow en la escena final intenta aparcar sin éxito dos veces. A la tercera vez aparca… ¿a la tercera matan a Tony? A mi realmente la parte de Meadow me parece un macguffin que sirve para que tengamos tensión sobre la gente que entra al restaurante.

Desde mi punto de vista, es lógico que acabe así. Una cosa que sucede con las películas de mafiosos es esta empatía que se nos genera. Debo decir también que a mi se me genera más empatía con Vito Corleone, que es un tipo recto y honesto, aunque con sus propias reglas, que Tony Soprano. Aun así, es un personaje al que le reímos los chistes y es un personaje que hace que nos pongamos de su lado. Queremos que gane a sus rivales, por eso celebramos que venza, matando, a Richie Aprile o Phil Leotardo, entre muchos otros. Porque Tony es nuestro caballo ganador y sus rivales, los nuestros. Pero, ¿por qué empalizamos con Tony? Si la serie se hubiese centrado en Phil Leotardo, habríamos empatizado con él, lo mismo si se hubiese centrado en Pussy Bompensiero. Pero lo cierto, objetivamente, es que empalizamos con Tony porque la serie se centra en él, pero es un tipo como sus rivales, un criminal sin miramientos al que no le importa matar a otras personas para seguir adelante con sus negocios. Es un tipo que funciona de otra manera, sí, pero sigue siendo un tipo con las manos manchadas de sangre no por algún fin benéfico o noble. Igual que mueren tantos otros jefes o soldados de la mafia, igual que muere el entrañable Bobby Bacala o queda en coma Silvio Dante, el final lógico de este gran personaje es morir asesinado. El mismo, por cierto, lo dice así en una de sus conversaciones con Bacala.

Por eso, aunque siguiendo la historia, pueda no tener sentido el hecho de que le maten en ese restaurante, en un momento de paz entre familias, quizá el final sea simbólico, pero nos deja el mensaje de que un tipo como Tony Soprano está en cierto modo destinado a morir de un disparo inesperado. Alargar la serie con un Tony feliz y contento al que nunca pasa nada tendría poco sentido.

Yo lo veo así, las señalas indican eso, aunque, como decimos, el final está abierto y se puede pensar otra cosa.

Buena Explicación sobre el final de la Serie

http://www.bobharris.com/content/view/1406/1/

On Youtube, Vimeo and the like, you can find lots and lots of great montages. The end product of a beloved piece of pop culture, one talented editor and lots of free time.

Today, I heard about what will rank in my top 5 ever (up there with “The Wire” one minute recaps and the David Caruso classic from CSI:Miami.) Every cuss word ever, ever, uttered by a character in The Sopranos is cut together for your enjoyment. WARNING: what you are about to hear (and see) are real bad words, lasting almost a half hour. Click at your own risk, then we’ll talk.

(montage compiled by Editor Victor Solomon)

Wow. Looking back, this seems like quite the potty mouth show. And after about the 7th minute or so, is it just me or do you kind of get immune to words that were so taboo to us the first 12 years of our lives? (I had that discovery when Howard Stern first came to Sirius radio. The words flew so fast and so furious, I found myself using bad language so much more, without even realizing.)

But actually, over the course of the series, I contend  there really wasn’t that much cursing uttered by Tony and his crew. Probably more than, say,  Sunday morning Evangelical hours, but let’s think about this: They say if you tape a football game and count up only the time of actual plays, a three plus hour game only has 12 minutes of action. That means just about 6% of the time you spend watching a football game on tv is filled with action. So, if the Sopranos lasted 6 seasons of 13 episodes each X 60 minutes per program, this results in .6%. Yep, less than 1% of the dialogue in The Sopranos was a bad word. I can’t keep my foul language under 1% a day. I say David Chase and his writers were downright admirable in their craft.

Now, the percentage of naked boobs shown during the course of the series… that’s a different story.

Attention, Rockford fans in Northern California… KOFY TV, Channel 20 in San Francisco (and Channel 13 on most cable systems throughout the Bay Area and beyond) will be showing a mini marathon of The Rockford Files this week as part of Retro Night, the station’s weekly salute to classic TV shows from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Not only that, KOFY invited me to co-host the program, along with my friend (and fellow Rockford aficionado) Ronn Owens of KGO Radio. Ronn and I recorded several wrap-around segments that will air coming out of the commercial breaks, in which we talk about Rockford, Angel, Beth, the Firebird, Rocky and, of course, James Garner. Here’s the lineup:8pm KOFY Channel 20 (cable channel 13)
“The Dark and Bloody Ground” TONIGHT, Sunday, Jan. 25 9pm KOFY Channel 20 (cable channel 13)
“Exit Prentiss Carr” Wednesday, Jan. 28 10pm KOFY Channel 20 (cable channel 13)
“In Search of Carol Thorne” Friday, Jan. 30 10pm KOFY Channel 20 (cable channel 13)Ed Robertson
Author, THIRTY YEARS OF THE ROCKFORD FILES
Co-Host, TV CONFIDENTIAL
Every other Tuesday at 10pm ET, 7pm PT
Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org
www.tvconfidential.net
blog.tvconfidential.net
Also available as a podcast via iTunes and FeedBurner

“The Kirkoff Case” TONIGHT, Sunday, Jan. 25

Lech Walesa - Commanding Heights

Lech Walesa is regarded as a hero for the cause of liberty in the twentieth century. His contribution is remembered alongside other, more widely known names like Reagan, Gorbachov and Thatcher.

His activism fueled demands for free elections, and his Solidarity Party brought down the Polish communist regime, giving rise to similar movements in other countries of Eastern Europe. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was Poland’s president from 1990 until 1995.

Click here and here for two clips from the excellent PBS documentary Commanding Heights. Walesa’s (pronounced Walensa) role in the burying the communist regime is featured prominently.

In his My Encounter with the Rebbe interview, Mr. David Chase tells of how, before a business trip to Poland, the Rebbe gave him dollar bills to give to someone there, someone “that will deserve it, who can help the Jewish people”.

Mr. David Chase, My Encounter with the Rebbe

A holocaust survivor, Mr. Chase had deep reservations about the widespread antisemitism he he remembered from his youth in Poland. In a meeting with Walesa, he voiced this concern, to which the Polish nationalist responded: “Tfoy Buggoyes Moy Bug, your G-d is my G-d”. Set at ease, Mr. Chase gave the Rebbe’s dollar to the future president, together with an explanation about the man who sent it. He keeps the dollar in his pocket until this day.

From the transcript:

Years later, we went to Israel, by air force, by Polish Air Force One, ten ministers, I and Wałęsa. We went to-not Jerusalem but we went to Tel Aviv, to the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv and there are pictures of many, many Jewish people from different countries, including a picture of the Rebbe of blessed memory.

And we stood in front and General Arad was next to us, he was the head of the holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, at the mountain, with us. When we looked at, when Wałęsa looked at the picture, he bowed in front of the Rebbe. And Arad said, what is he doing? Mah Zeh? I said it’s very simple; that’s his Rebbe. And I said to him [He says it in Polish], this is your Rabbi…

For more on this topic, click here.

Last year’s visit with Chabad in Israel  here.