Word: chase
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...enough history. What everyone wants to know now is: Who gets whacked this season? People die in the Mob, and Chase has killed off major characters before (including Vincent Pastore's "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero and Tony's mother Livia, after the death of actress Nancy Marchand, who played her). When HBO released an Annie Leibovitz promotional photo of the cast (see opening spread), the New York Post scrutinized it for clues as if it were the cover of Abbey Road. (Why is Paulie wearing a white suit? Is he with the angels?) But when it comes to secrets--down...
...perhaps managing expectations for the season's highly hyped debut, also downplays the showdown. "We're in a different business," demurs HBO chairman-ceo Chris Albrecht. Says Chase: "I never really have paid attention to ratings." But somebody at HBO does: a memo tacked on Chase's bulletin board listed ratings for episodes from last year. And, business-model differences or no, a Sopranos viewer is still two fewer eyeballs for those new-car ads. "[The networks] are afraid to endorse controversial and innovative programming because they're afraid they'll lose the mainstream, but they're losing much...