Sweet and Innocent? Fuggedaboudit.

This month for our book club we read The Ladies' Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis. One of the minor characters in the novel is a convert to Orthodox Judiasm with a secret craving for shrimp salad. Since shellfish is a definite no-no in her community (not to mention mixing milk and meat), she hides her obsession from everyone she knows, even her husband, and keeps a container in the freezer at all times in case a craving strikes.

Eddie and I also have a habit that would be frowned on by our friends at church. Every eighteen months or two years we get the chance to indulge ourselves. On Sunday nights we put the kids in bed, close their doors, draw the blinds, pop some popcorn, and wait for the music to start. "Woke up this morning/Got Yourself a Gun." Scenes of the New York skyline, the Jersey turnpike, and Satriale's meat shop flash on the screen. I'm giddy as a I type. Only eight more days.

That's right, my friends: Tony and Carmela, Meadow and Anthony, Christopher and Adriana (oops, not Adriana, who got whacked last season), and the dancers at the Bada Bing will all be back next Sunday night.  We just got our HBO hooked up again.

Why do we love The Sopranos? I'm not ordinarily the kind of girl who goes in for a lot of violence. Last season there were twelve epiosodes and twelve people met their ends. And we're not talking about minor characters. I'm not joking when I say that a quarter of the show seems to take place at funeral parlors and cemeteries. It takes guts to bump off both one of the leading men and one of the leading women on the show in the final two episodes of last season (the equivalent of Phoebe and Ross both dying in the season finale of Friends). And that's what makes it fun to watch-- things are totally unexpected. Did anyone really think Meredith Grey was going to die when she had her hand on that bomb? No-- think about it, the show is named Grey's Anatomy. But if she had been on The Sopranos she would have blown up alongside Kyle Chandler. Last season wasn't the first time a major character died. Ralphie's death and decapitation made season four memorable. And it was grotesquely funny to watch Tony and Christopher carry around his head in a bowling bag for the next few weeks.

As hackneyed as it is to say that The Sopranos is interesting because it shows the "softer" side of a big-time mobster, that part is also true. After two seasons of marital discord, I'm eager to see if Tony and Carmela can work things out. Will Tony go nuts from the blood on his hands or from the problems of his teenage son?

I know The Sopranos isn't a moral show, but it does make me think. And it says a lot that for the next few months, I'll be setting the TiVO to record Desperate Housewives. What can I say? I'm loyal. And in the family, loyalty reigns supreme.

--originally published 3/4/06