sopranos

watched the season opener of the sopranos with rob while we drank lemmy's favorite beverage: whiskey and coke.

as always, they do the opening montage so right -- a weird william burroughs prose poem with a montage including drea de matteo back from the dead, a check for $2 million, and...meadow dancing in her underwear. this is right up there with the montage set to PiL, and my favorite, the "very good year" montage.

i kept commenting to rob: "this show is SO GOOD!" and it is. its easy to forget after 2 years just how good it is, and that's mostly because of the writing. they reestablish everything they need to with such economy: junior's senility, christopher's bumbling, the odious materialistic relationship between tony and carmela, and gene's subplot about trying to get out. so well-written! to give a character a choice like that: kill a guy and MAYBE we'll finally let you out of the mafia. so powerfully, so simple, so good. and the conclusion to that subplot was both technically amazing (how did they get him to swing for over a minute?) and totally unexpected.

that a trend so far -- the unexpected. and why not? its the first show of the new season and so anticipated. so that's why they start with a bang and keep it coming. count the ways: adriana's brief return, a rat's heart attack while ratting, hesh's ass kicking, and how about that ending? this show will surprise you and surprise you.

the only thing that shouldn't be a surprise is tony's demise. my feeling is that he's going to have a heart attack and die. they' ve been planting the seeds for a while now, and they laid it on thick this week -- showing tony on the scale, him eating sushi alone and getting heartburn, comments from the fat/skinny about tony getting a coronary. everyone is waiting for david chase to kill off tony with a bang, but letting him suffer a heart attack may be his biggest surprise yet.