I get the feeling that maybe the writers had some or all of the things we wished would have happened in store, but had to stretch after they found out this wouldn't be the very last set of episodes. I can't think of any other explanation for this snore inducing half-season.

I understand the frustration that Ms. Havrilesky is experiencing. I would direct more of my ire at the decision to split up the season, then what's going on in the show. As she writes, the last episode would be "...a great mid-season scene, signifying the calm before the eventual storm.". This is what it is. Personally, I feel like cutting Chase and co. a lot of slack, considering they have created one of the best television shows ever. My favorite part about the show is how it simulates real life, and in real life, people don't get whacked that often.

As far as splitting up the season, I think that's the big mistake. It's like splitting up "Kill Bill" - totally unnessecary.

I understood the irony of the Christmas scene. People sitting around counting their blessings and looking all comfy with each other while they are lying to each other, cheating on each other, doing drugs, killing people and sitting pretty in a house paid for with blood. OK. I get it. But I've gotten the irony before, at least two dozen times in this series and let's face it, we've had it pretty much spelled out for us in capital letters in the scenes where Carmela visits a psychiatrist. Though Melfi tries to get Tony to give up the life, she softens it a bit, tiptoes around it, while the first therapist Carmela saw verbally bludgeoned her (and the audience) with what her life really is and refused to take her blood money. In the second scene where Carmela sees a (different) therapist, she is the one who spells it out. There are much bigger crooks than my husband, she says. She knew Tony's game from the beginning when Tony brought her father an expensive stolen power tool as an offering for dating his daughter. Carmela's fealty to the Church is another irony - we get it.

She could have had a different life. Tony could have had a different life. The kids could have had a different life. But they don't.

We get it.

Time passes, bodies pile up, the feds make one blunder after another, mob bosses succumb to or are afflicted with various diseases of aging, middle-aged Tony survives a shooting and is as fat and hearty as a twenty year old couch potato, Carmela continues her charity work for the church while passing judgment on the recipients of her faith-based largesse and Uncle June is an institutionalized old fool.

I'm beginning to think the series will carry on until these characters are in their 90s, with the producers and writers doomed to come up with new and more boring set-piece scenes of Mob Family Irony.

Quite a few things HAVE happened during this season. But since many of these things have to do with characters that we don't care about, it makes it seem like nothing has happened. Maybe this exposes a shortcoming of the show that few of us have been willing to acknowledge.

Like AJ, for example. He is extremely annoying, but not in a love-to-hate kind of way. We just hate him. I personally don't want to see him at all, except as background. I don't care that he has a girlfriend, or that he is becoming responsible. Maybe if there was a feeling that AJ will play prominently in the final episodes, perhaps through his death in a Godfather III shooting-on-the-opera-house-steps-type scenario, he would be more compelling to watch. But I just don't think that's how it will end. It would be "too Godfather," after all.

Compare it to Six Feet Under. I have come to appreciate how good the show is, for some of the same reasons that The Sopranos is lacking. Each character is compelling, and their storylines are crucial, whether it is the David and Keith husband/wife dynamic, or Ruth's marriage to crazy George, or Nate the whiner's inability to have a good life, or Rico and Vanessa's problems, or annoying Claire's art-world failures.

At this point I almost expect the "each day is a gift" theme to continue. I would not be surprised if Tony and Phil L spend the last 6 or 7 episodes finding a way to ease out of the lifestyle, and run off together to fish and play with their grandkids. All the bloodthirsty fans will feel cheated, and David Chase will pull off his final F-You to the fans.

They're getting really tiresome this late in the game. The "Goodfellas" homage in the scene where Sil and Carlo kill Dom was halfhearted and this week's lame "Vertigo"-homage kaleidescope drug deterioration of Christopher and Julianna wasn't nearly as good as Scorcese's Rolling Stones-fueled deterioration of Henry and Karen Hill, even if Chase used a Rolling Stones drug song at the beginning and end of the episode. How many films and flimmakers can you reference in one episode?

While I'd like to think that there is genius behind the decision to cut the season in two, I really think this is all about marketing. "Hey, if we have a six month hiatus, these dorks - uh, I mean our faithful audience - will stay tuned to HBO. You know - reruns, retrospectives, marathons - all that stuff. And we don't have to add any new material!" That, my friends, is true genius.

Our solution is to cancel HBO for six months.

Ironic that Livia Soprano would be the one to sum up this series. Certainly the first two seasons were magnificent, but it nose-dived after that. From season 3 onward its been trite, predictable and familair. Six Feet Under was a much richer series and OZ in its heyday ran circles around the best The Sopranos had to offer. We keep hearing about the great writing. Great writing is more than some smarmy, smart-ass dialogue gussied up with immaculate art direction. This season (as in past seasons) have had themes and stories simply evaporate or suddenly wrap up with no apparent meaning. Vito's homosexuality was played for smirks. the storyline was a dead end and went on far too long. Go back and rewatch The Krays. You'll see just how vicious and monstrous a gay mobster can be.

The biggest failing of this series is the cuteness. Chase is so afraid we won't adore his beloved creations he's defanged them. The slick one-liners, the silly outfits, the arch mannerisms...the show has become a series of tics and affectations. Underneath it all none of them are likeable characters, but I feel like we're being force-fed them as cute and loveable despite their actions.

After the series ends (and I think the final show will be much like last night's so David Chase can revive things as a movie or movies), and time has passed, I think people will look at this show and...well quote Livia..."Its all a big nothing."