What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a TV show is better than any mainstream music released this year?

Music used to be cutting edge, music used to touch your soul, you used to look to music to help you understand yourself, point the way.  Now you’re better off watching "The Sopranos".

Oh, of course, last season was a bummer.  But you’ve got to give David Chase credit for TRYING SOMETHING DIFFERENT!  Which Bono and U2 refuse to do.  Musical acts used to test the limits when they were at their peak.  That’s why Neil Young’s a legend.  "Time Fades Away" was a fuck you to all the wimps expecting a new "Harvest".  Now, you’ve got to get the fans in a club, you’ve got to get them on a cash gravy train, you’ve got to have your hands in their pants.  You’re ripping them off every which way and yet you still expect them to believe, ain’t that a laugh.

I remember driving down the freeway hearing Marvin Gaye’s "Sexual Healing".  Even Alanis Morissette’s "Hand In Pocket".  Where are the one listen tunes of today?  That make you run to the record store, to purchase, to play?  Sure, there’s good stuff out there, but it’s not TRANSCENDENT!  Oh, we had Marshall Mathers for a while.  But he’s no Syd Barrett.  He stopped making music and just did stupid things.  We want to scrape his remains off our jackets.  But we’re constantly peering in on "The Sopranos", we want to see what Tony and the gang are up to.

The right wing press says the show’s success depends on violence.  Well, if that were true why doesn’t every TV show, every movie with blood succeed?  No, the physicality, the excesses, are just a backdrop to the family story.  This is us.  More than we ever were on "Seinfeld" or "thirtysomething", certainly more than we ever were on "Little House On The Prairie" or "The Brady Bunch".  America is about individual fiefdoms, known as families, and how you try to stay connected while establishing a separate identity, as you try to accumulate wealth.

Oh some substitute status for wealth.  But oftentimes they’re the same thing.  That’s what we revere in our celebrities.  Not their talent, but their access, their lifestyle.  We want to play too.  EVERYBODY wants to play.

And everybody bends the rules.  But HOW FAR?

Tony Soprano is just the hothead down the street, with a temper, except for the fact that he’s a mafioso.  Oh, you know the kind of guy, he makes small talk when you run into him at Fountains of Wayne, but then you get an agitated phone call, telling you to make sure you take in your garbage cans, that your dog doesn’t take a shit on his lawn.  The line between civility and chaos is fine in American society.  And the culture of the street is not the same as the culture of the university.  It’s not about civil discourse, but STANDING UP FOR YOURSELF!

Bobby Bacala was no different from an underling at the office, who’s been kowtowing to the boss for too long.  Tony went too far.

But doesn’t everybody go too far when there’s alcohol involved.  Oh, Monopoly is fun when you’re ten.  But when the game transpires over hours in the heat of an evening drenched with spirits, there’s going to be trouble.  And it won’t be about truth so much as a release of tension.

Or maybe it’s just my family.  The explosive moments.  It could be totally calm and then my dad would erupt like a supernova.

And what’s up with Meadow.  Is she going to be a professional or is she going to take over the family?  Because loyalty is key in our society.  Did you catch how offended she was over Tony’s arrest?

And Anthony, Jr.  What do you do with a kid like this?  Who can’t go to school?  Who’s good at heart but who is so easily influenced by others?  If you don’t have a similar member of your family, you don’t have a family.

But the greatness of the episode came in the foreshadowings that didn’t come true, that didn’t come to pass.

You saw that kid playing in the lake, and you just knew she was going to drown.  But then Tony said what you were thinking, and Carmela told the story of the pool party and it never happened.

And when Tony pulled off the highway for Bobby to take a pee, you were sure he was going to beat the shit out of him.  But when they reappeared with the Canucks, Bobby was unscathed.

We didn’t feel like we were being tricked, we felt like we were being respected.  And this drew us in further.

What do you do with a sister like Janice?  Who’s got an eternal chip on her shoulder?  Always believing she is the best and the brightest and your success is not only unjustified, it should be HERS?

Watching "The Sopranos" is watching us.  And we’re forever riveted by our own story, how did we get here, how is it going to work out?

Traditional entertainment serves us a fantasy, believing like Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men" that we can’t handle the truth.  But it’s what we’re confronted with 24/7.  We hold it inside because we don’t see it reflected in the media.  We feel completely alone until we watch "The Sopranos".

It doesn’t cost much.  Just a few extra bucks on your cable bill.  You don’t have to pay to park, and you don’t have to be worried about being elbowed aside by the hoi polloi.  If you want to be a VIP, you lay down for a plasma or an LCD set and are able to watch it in HD.

And Sunday night at 9 PM, as you nestle on the couch with your popcorn and Coke, you start hearing that song, never a hit, but better than anything on the Top Forty.  And your adrenaline starts to pump.  Tony’s put the money in the toll.  He’s on the New Jersey Turnpike.  And then he turns into his driveway, the music screeches to a halt, the image fades to black, and you’re inside.

That’s what we’re all looking for, to be inside.

It’s not about gloss, or shine.  Tony is overweight.  Carmela doesn’t fit the image of a babe.  But they’re three-dimensional in a way none of the usual suspects are.  We know them, we are them.  Living compromised lives, yet still trying to fulfill our dreams, all the while laughing, eating and having a little fun, in the bedroom, at the restaurant, in front of the TV.

This is the kind of art we marvel at, that we can’t get enough of.  One containing truth, about the human condition.