REVIEW: 'The Sopranos'

April 5, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN
Chicago Sun-Times

Someone's knocking very hard on the door of the house of the mob boss. It's 6 a.m. Have the authorities finally come for Tony Soprano?

Tony's long-suffering, complicit wife, Carmela, bends up in bed when she hears the surprise banging.

"Is this it?" she panics.

Maybe she's just being paranoid. I'm not saying. What do you think, I'm crazy? Fans have been waiting 136 years or something for the final nine episodes of "The Sopranos" to hit HBO. The first runs Sunday. I'm not spilling serious beans.

But you can be assured of seeing the following in the first two episodes: A machinegun fires. Someone gets his guts ripped out in a chop shop. Naked breasts bounce in Tony's strip club. A mobster drives another mobster through the woods, never a good sign.

And Carmela (Edie Falco) defends her husband's honor.

"Tony is not a vindictive man," she says. (Which Tony Soprano does she think she's talking about?)

"Sopranos" fans and radio DJs will surely be contemplating how it will all end in two months. Judging from the first two episodes, Tony's prospects look as pressured as ever. The feds. Mob rivals. His unhealthy lifestyle. People in his own organization who might not be his friends. Who knows?

So the questions: Will he die? Will he go to prison? Will he end up with no comeuppance whatsoever?

Because the end is near, there's a bit of a "Lost"-ish obstacle in these first two hours. It's hard for me to watch completely fresh without wondering a tad too much where it's leading.

"Sopranos" parlor games are fun, but not while watching it. Besides, each "Sopranos" is like a one-hour movie. Even after the first two episodes, the time-warping drama could go in any number of directions all season, only to arrive at an undiscovered country in its last-ever 15 minutes.

Last season's finale had some great stuff, particularly the accelerated storytelling of Christopher's drug affair with Julianna. What works best in the first new shows is "The Sopranos" feels tightly written and directed.

This season opens just as focused on characters and -- more important -- their conversations, which are ridiculous, realistic, inane and dire. Actors get a lot of the credit usually, but this show would be nada if the scripts didn't zero in so well on the very human ways such human monsters talk.

The show's penchant for celebrity guest stars still blooms. The second episode features guest acting from directors Sydney Pollack (excellent as usual) and Peter Bogdanovich, Tim Daly (in an unenviable position) and Geraldo Rivera (behaving like Geraldo Rivera).

Then there's the guy who says, "I've been accused of being part of a certain Italian-American subculture." His mortality is in peril.

"It's funny. Ironic. Whichever," this gangster says. "I quit smoking after 38 years. Exercised. Ate right. And for what?"

I see an "oh, well" cigarette in this man's future. But that's about the only at-risk future I feel comfortable hinting at here.