Woke Up This Morning

 

I love the Sopranos. Hands down one of the best, if not the best, show ever (it depends on my mood when you ask: I also might respond that the X-Files was the best show ever 😄). It blows my mind that it's been off the air for almost 20 years. I started subscribing to HBO so I could watch it and never stopped. I remember when the series finale aired, when it abruptly cut to black and I thought (like everyone else in the world) that my goddamned cable went out at the worst possible moment. Then the final credits started to roll and I had my breath knocked out of me at the sheer brilliance of the ending. I actually started applauding. I know the ending divides a lot of people, I've argued with them over the years about how amazing and perfect it was. And of course Tony died. The whole show was about him and his experiences and then his life was cut short without warning, just like that, black. That's how it must be when someone dies unexpectedly. 

Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher (you know you read that with Adrianna's accent) and Steve Schirripa, who played Bobby, started a podcast right before COVID in 2020, where they talked to various cast and crew from the show and gathered up their fond memories. Lots of fun stuff, like how they shot the entire first season before it aired, so they were basically anonymous, running around New Jersey, no one knew who they were yet. Everyone had wonderful things to say about James Gandolfini (RIP, sir). How generous he was and how he looked out for everyone. It made me very nostalgic for all those great shows that were on cable a decade or so ago. One of the things that really stuck with me was how different HBO was (at least back then) from network television. The book I read a few weeks ago about Buffy the Vampire Slayer talked a bit about how the network would butt in and wants changes to scripts. HBO didn't do that with the Sopranos. They stayed out of it. Very smart decision, I think.