I enjoyed "I Like to Watch" speculating about possible outcomes. I'm attached to the characters and for example thought it was cool that Tony turned down the Julianna Margulies character (!!) (didn't she look great) so hard as it is for me to believe these kinds of guys ever change, I'd love to see Tony and Carmela sail off on Tony's boat into the sunset. And for Vito to be safe in New Hampshire. I don't know about AJ -- he's such an untapped resource, been so one-dimensional all these years and it looks like they're trying to "tease out" more from him this season -- he's actually been featured a lot this time and it seems something even more interesting could happen. I loved when Tony said, "Well, maybe I could set him up in a club ..." and Carmelo goes, "For God's sake Tony he's not even of drinking age" and Tony goes, "Oh yeah. Right." (sigh). The writing is SO brilliant, this season as much as ever. That hasn't changed and why I always watch and am NEVER bored.

I know it would be really out of character not to "take someone out" again BUT maybe the whole message of the series is that even as scary an organization as the Mafia -- which used to be synonymous with omnipotence, power and ruthlessness --is helpless in the face of the much larger indignities and intrusions of corporate culture. The "Jamba Juice" offer, the (also hilarious) attempt by the street-enforcer guys to get payoffs from Starbuck's -- were so brilliant. And actually it does seem to me the writers MIGHT be setting up for that kind of ending (just simply, the passing of the "old ways" -- brutal yet with their own code of justice, etc.) in the path of faceless, much more brutal and irresponsible corporate (and now culturally created) "omnipotence." Foreshadowed by the fact that, a couple of seasons ago, Tony and Carmela realized Tony could control all these things in their world (well, Tony could anyway), but not their own teenagers, before whom they are as helpless as any other suburban parent (up against MTV, street drugs, etc.) I think the show has evolved and shows our evolution as a culture. So what I'm hoping for is a wonderful, "ties it all together" ending (as in "Six Feet Under") with a possibly harsh overtone yet still an overall redeeming (truthful) message. But hey, I'm a dreamer.