by John Bear
Daily Lobo
The horrible sting of disappointment sears all five of my senses like an eyelash a millimeter too close to a crack lighter.
The new season of "The Sopranos" is terrible.
I feel like a schnook. I feel worse than a schnook. I feel dead inside.
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Allow me to explain.
I have always felt a certain amount of empathy toward Tony Soprano. Not because I am a maniac mobster, but because, just like the character on the show, I pass out whenever I get upset. I fall down flights of stairs and occasionally get whisked away to the nearest emergency room for a healthy serving of saline and Librium.
This is nothing to boast about, but it explains my love for that fat ruffian.
It goes beyond that.
I have nearly perfected my bad New Jersey Italian cursing. I hung Mr. Soprano's portrait prominently on my living room wall, right next to Johnny Cash. I own a T-shirt with Tony and his nephew Chris Moltisanti pasted across the front that I wear to go out macking. Not really. I eat so much capicola that the sodium levels in my blood must be reaching near lethal levels. I own three complete seasons on DVD, none of which I paid for and acquired mostly by illicit means. My biography on the Daily Lobo Web site proudly proclaims that I do mostly nothing except watch this show, over and over.
Let's face it. I am mobbed up, at least as mobbed up as a high desert English major can be. I am a super fan. I am to mob shows what Trekkies are to Star Trek.
The show has hit its snags before. The fourth season was pretty much a total bomb - the entire season was dedicated to characters getting in touch with their feelings - except when Tony and Ralphie Cifaretto fought to the death with a toaster and a frying pan, right after Ralphie gave him excellent advice on how to make the perfect scrambled eggs.
Other than that sorry excuse for a season - one I wouldn't even steal - the show has been what I consider to be the absolute height of Western civilization - it's all downhill from here, folks. People get shot in increasingly horrible and highly entertaining manners, and beautiful women take their clothes off. What else could one possibly ask for?
Nothing. And now that all this has been taken away from me, I am admittedly sour.
Tony got shot the first episode and ended up in what I guess is hell where he gets bitch-slapped by a Buddhist monk, emasculating to say the least. Ruthless bastards Johnny Sack and Paulie Walnuts cried. Vito Spatafore was finally outed as a homosexual and now resides in some kind of gay heaven, a small hamlet in New Hampshire with numerous antique stores and "Johnny cakes," whatever those are. Carmela, Anthony and Meadow have become too obnoxious to even watch. And Silvio Dante, the scariest guy on the entire show, has an asthma attack and passes out his first day on the job as acting boss. Not only all this, but perennial sissies Artie Bucco and Bobby Bacala are now the roughneck characters. I am not buying any of this.
Let's face it. The show has gotten soft. I know they don't want to follow the standard rise and fall gangster movie archetype, but that's what I demand. The show has run its course. Tony has risen to power. It is now time for a nice "Casino" style ending - "House of the Rising Sun" playing in its entirety while grizzled old thugs in blue track suits pop caps in asses. I am hopeful the producers are just getting me riled up and pissed off so they can let the proverbial shit hit the fan the last few episodes.
This is what must happen. I have spent the last three months hyping this show to one particularly unforgiving girl. She now rolls around on the floor and laughs a little harder - while endlessly questioning my manhood for watching such sensitive drivel - with each subsequent bad episode.
They were called the "Sopranos." Now they are just a soap opera.
