Tomorrow's "Sopranos" features a "season-ending cliffhanger"-worthy twist

March 13, 2006 issue - "The Sopranos" may be the greatest TV drama of the 21st century—pipe down, "West Wing" fans—but it hasn't been above relying on conventions, especially at the beginning of a season. A new bad guy will arrive, fresh out of the slammer and ready to rumble. Tony will circle a new floozy, or, as they call them in Jersey, a hoo-er. And the whole thing will unfold slowly, like the opening chapters of a book or, if there were such a thing, a 13-hour movie. So one of the remarkable things about the new installment of "The Sopranos" is that, like Big Pussy, the conventions have been tossed overboard. Tony and Carmela—who literally took him in from the cold at the end of last season—seem blissful nibbling Japanese food together. There are a few new characters—notably a Mafia soldier hoping to retire—but there's no fresh stone in Tony's shoe. And most unusual of all, the first episode ends with a bang. It would be unfair to give away more (though it will be a miracle if HBO can keep the secret until the March 12 debut) other than to say it's a twist most shows would save for a season-ending cliffhanger. But "The Sopranos" has never been your average TV show. And this is no average "Sopranos" season.

For one thing, it's the end. Or nearly the end—HBO is dividing the final season into two parts: 12 episodes now, eight more in 2007. For fans who have been starved for a decent plate of baked ziti, that's a lot of "Sopranos" to chew on. But will it be enough? The season arrives 21 months after the last one ended—elephants take less time to gestate. Will viewers even remember where the show left off—or care? While "The Sopranos" was on hiatus, a little show called "Desperate Housewives" sneaked into its time slot. These are major concerns for "The Sopranos," but even bigger ones for HBO. Along with the end of "Sex and the City" and "Six Feet Under," the cable network is losing its third marquee show in three years. How do you recover from that? HBO is betting on "Big Love," a drama about a churchgoing family in Utah. The two shows do have similarities. "Big Love" focuses on Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) and his three wives—that's current wives. The Henricksons are polygamists—renegade Mormons. Underneath his aw-shucks exterior, Bill has as many legal headaches as mobbed-up Tony—and three times the number of exasperating spouses. Still, a show where no one even cusses is an unlikely successor to the boys from Jersey.

It's ironic that cutting-edge HBO is staking its future on a variant of the old-fashioned family drama, but since television is dominated by crime and reality shows, "Big Love" might just be great counterprogramming. The fact is, HBO's most successful franchises have been family shows with a twist: the undertaker family, the gal-pal family, the Hollywood buddies. They're exotic, but relatable—didn't you ever fantasize about going to live with your best friend's family? Yet for all their eccentricities, it's worth noting that the Henricksons and the Sopranos are intact families. They have Sunday dinners together. No one gets divorced—whacked, yes, but not divorced. They're positively wholesome, in twisted ways.

The endurance of family is, as always, a major theme in the new season of "The Sopranos." Tony spends a lot of time taking care of Uncle Junior (Janice apparently had a baby during the hiatus and is way too busy). Naturally, facing illness and mortality sends him right back to Dr. Melfi. "Where's the dignity?" he asks her. "I'd rather they hold a pillow over my face." It's nice of Tony to care, since Junior once took a hit out on his nephew. And it's even funnier because, as Melfi points out, Tony once tried to kill his own mother by putting a pillow over her face. There are glints of classic "Sopranos" morbid humor in the new season, but it feels darker than in the past. Maybe because there's a murder, a suicide, a shooting, a maiming and a fatal heart attack in the first episode alone—that's a lot of violence even by "Sopranos" standards. Several episodes take place in a hospital. We see dead people, too. Adriana pops up, smoking literally and figuratively—she's a pretty sexy ghost. But even she's not a lot of fun. Except for Christopher's attempt to muscle his way back into the movie business ("My idea is 'Saw' meets 'Godfather 2'," he says, after beating a screenwriter into working with him), there's not much to laugh at. Death hangs over the new season—perhaps because it's hanging over the show itself.

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