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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
At the beginning of the first episode of "The Sopranos," back in 1999, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) sat in a psychiatrist's waiting room, about to embark on what would be a transformative journey--not so much for Tony but for TV viewers. The series has penetrated the culture to a degree that no one could have predicted (certainly not all the network executives who passed on it when David Chase, the show's creator, pitched it to them). The first three seasons are out on DVD and have brought in more than seventy million dollars; some dozen "Sopranos" books have been published (a cookbook, a psychological study, a collection of essays by Italian-Americans, a selection of scripts), and in September the first episode of the season that just ended drew a larger audience than any HBO show ever. To all the jokey marketing (a cookbook?) and publicity about the show (each time a cast member sneezes, there are eighteen Times articles about it), we may say "Basta!," but the show itself continues to pull us in; our marriage to this mob is one of such devotion that we even put up with a sixteen-month hiatus between the last two seasons. Though there is another season to come, sometime this millennium, in at least one way the show has come full circle: in the third-to-last episode of this season, Tony quit therapy.
Tony's relationship with Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), the psychiatrist, has been central to the show--the fact that he sought help for his panic attacks and depression raised...
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