HBO's The Sopranos has been called the best TV drama ever and the greatest work of American pop culture in 25 years. So naturally its creator, David Chase, wants to pull the plug on it next year. Why? "I'm just concerned," he says, "about this jump-the-shark thing."
"Jumping the shark," in TV parlance, refers to the moment at which a good show turns bad. The actors get bored; the plots become outrageous; next thing you know, as Chase puts it, "Paulie Walnuts"--one of the show's Mob captains--"gets abducted by aliens." There may be another warning sign: merchandising. This fall The Sopranos Family Cookbook, offering Italian recipes and anecdotes from the show's characters, hits bookstores. You can buy plans of Tony and Carmela's New Jersey rococo house and build one for yourself. And coming soon to your grocer: Sopranos gourmet foods, from pizza to marinara sauce (call it the it's-not-TV dinner). Can Sex and the City spermicidal foam be far behind?
You can excuse viewers if they're literally hungry for a taste of their favorite New Jersey mobsters. It has been 16 months since the last new episode (a delay, says Chase, caused by cast illnesses and the long shooting schedule necessary to give the show its cinematic look). That's 16 nail-biting months since mobster Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) had his daughter's ex-boyfriend killed; his wife Carmela (Edie Falco) began studying for her real estate license and worrying about her complicity in her husband's crimes; his psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), was recovering from her rape; son Anthony Jr. (Robert Iler) was challenging Tony's parental authority; Mob captain Ralphie Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano) was testing Tony's authority; and Paulie (Tony Sirico) was making overtures to a rival family.
But if you're one of those starving Sopraniacs, relax. Cheesy tie-ins aside, judging by the first four episodes of the upcoming fourth season (9 p.m. E.T., starting Sept. 15), the only sharks in the Soprano family's immediate future are the kind that wear pinstripes and tracksuits. In most respects, the episodes easily equal last season's, which in turn surpassed the show's 1999 debut for power, popularity--and controversy. Last season established The Sopranos as cable's highest-rated series ever, but it also drew renewed criticism for its unflinching violence, especially against women, in episodes showing a stripper's brutal murder, Dr. Melfi's rape and Tony's beating of his mentally ill mistress. Italian-American groups and some women complained, and the president of NBC sent a tape of one episode to other executives, asking how the show's envelope-pushing would affect TV as a whole.
Chase was incredulous. "I thought, 'Oh, so it's O.K. we've been killing all these men for three years?'" he says. Tony's mistress, he adds, "was a woman who was dating a gangster, who was very unhappy and sick and wanted to be killed. And here she is spitting in his face, threatening to tell his wife, and guess what? He doesn't kill her. I could make the argument that it was unrealistic, that he should have killed her. He's killed people for a lot less."