Season by Season Guide to "The Sopranos"

HBO's Emmy-winning TV series "The Sopranos" pushed the envelope in its frank depiction of organized crime by inviting viewers into the world of Tony Soprano, his family -- wife Carmela and their children Meadow and Anthony Jr. -- and his "Family." Millions of loyal followers have been tuning in since 1999, and beginning Sunday, April 8th, the show will premiere the first of its final nine episodes.

Season 1

# Tony Soprano begins visiting psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Melfi after anxiety attacks; eventually he hires a detective to investigate her
# Tony moves his mother into a retirement home against her wishes
# Jackie Aprile dies, Uncle Junior Soprano becomes the new boss of the New Jersey family
# Meadow Soprano reveals to her brother Anthony Jr. their father's true line of work
# Tony's mother Livia persuades Uncle Junior to put a hit out on Tony, which fails
# The crew kills Jimmy Altieri for being an FBI informant
# The FBI arrests Uncle Junior

Season 2

# With Uncle Junior locked up, Tony is the new mob boss
# Tony's long-lost sister, Janice, returns to tend to Livia
# Former boss Jackie Aprile's brother, Richie, gets out of jail, challenges Tony's leadership
# Tony resumes therapy with Dr. Melfi after she refuses to see him; she resorts to drinking vodka before their sessions
# Christopher Moltisanto, Tony's "nephew" but really Carmela's cousin -- survives being shot
# Janice kills Richie Aprile after he hits her
# Tony discovers "Big Pussy" is a federal informant, so consigliere Silvio Dante and capo Paulie Walnuts whack him

Season 3

# Tony's mother, Livia, dies
# Janice steals the prosthetic leg of her Russian housekeeper, Svetlana; Russian thugs retaliate by breaking three of Janice's ribs
# Dr. Melfi is raped
# New York crime boss Johnny Sack moves to New Jersey
# Uncle Junior undergoes chemotherapy for stomach cancer
# Tony dates Gloria Trillo, whom he met in Dr. Melfi's office
# Meadow's ex-boyfriend Jackie Aprile Jr. is shot to death because of a card game robbery

Season 4

# Christopher's fiance Adriana La Cerva unwittingly befriends an undercover agent; she is faced with an ultimatum of getting arrested or informing
# Janice and Ralph Cifaretto develop a relationship; she breaks it off by shoving him down stairs
# A distraught Tony learns his ex-girlfriend Gloria committed suicide
# Tony grows fond of the racehorse Pie-O-My; when the horse dies in a suspicious fire, Tony suspects Ralph and kills him. Christopher helps Tony dismember the body
# The family stages an intervention for heroin addict Christopher
# Carmela and Furio Giunta -- recruited from an Italian gang -- become attracted to one another, leading to Furio's return to Italy
# The judge declares a mistrial in Uncle Junior's case
# With Tony and Carmela's marriage strained, Tony moves into a hotel

Season 5

# Tony's cousin, Tony Blundetto, is released after 15 years behind bars; he tries and fails to work legitimately
# Uncle Junior's behavior seems odd; it develops he suffered several small strokes
# Tony B. takes things into his own hands to revenge a friend's killing by New York's Leotardos. He kills the New York operation's Billy
Leotardo, little brother of the powerful capo Phil. Johnny Sack wants Tony B. dead
# Tony and Carmela reconcile on the condition that Tony funds her spec house project
# Adriana, threatened by the FBI with jail, tries to get Christopher to escape with her; Christopher rats on her; Silvio kills Adriana in the woods
# With a heavy heart, Tony kills Tony B. -- saving him from a torturous murder by Phil Leotardo

Season 6

# A paranoid and unbalanced Uncle Junior shoots Tony, leaving him in a coma
# Tony recovers and is released from the hospital
# Johnny Sack, arrested by the Feds, is sentenced to 15 years
# Johnny, in prison, petitions to attend his daughter's wedding; he openly cries there and loses the respect of his crew
# A.J. (Anthony Jr.) vows revenge on Junior for shooting Tony but cannot go through with it
# Christopher, once again abusing drugs, marries his pregnant girlfriend Kelli
# Word gets out that Vito Spatafore, one of Tony's associates, is gay. Vito's wife is related to Phil -- who's furious and goes behind Tony's back to have Vito whacked
# Phil has a heart attack; Tony visits him in the hospital and pleads for peace

Thanks to CNN.

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Sopranos Ready for Final Whacks

Friends of ours: Soprano Crime Family

They're all gone now.
Big Pussy: Gone. Richie Aprile: Gone. Ralph Cifaretto: Gone.
Gloria, Adriana, Vito, Tony Blundetto: Gone, gone, brutally gone.

But not, in the mixed-up mob-family world of "The Sopranos," forgotten. Like Shakespearean ghosts, the departed haunt the living, a reminder of the thin line between their desperate, shifty lives and a place six feet under -- or 60 feet under water, or buried in the woods, or decapitated and inserted in a bowling bag.

So the survivors smile over the anger and violence that lurks just beneath the surface, and cover it up with pretty suburban estates and snappy clothes and money -- always wads of money -- and try to stay one step ahead of the ghosts. But death awaits us all, and for "The Sopranos," the moment of reckoning has arrived. The HBO series about a mob boss, his family, his crew and his therapist -- widely hailed as one of the finest shows in television history -- begins its final season of nine episodes Sunday. (HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Time Warner.)

The stars have mixed feelings about the series' end.

"This is really hard. I've never had a job for 10 years before," Edie Falco, who plays Carmela Soprano -- wife of mob boss Tony (James Gandolfini) -- told CNN at the show's New York premiere last week. "It is really not easy."

"The Sopranos" made lots of reputations during its seven-season, nine-year run.

Creator David Chase, a TV veteran who had written for "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" and "The Rockford Files" and produced "Northern Exposure," can now write his own ticket in Hollywood.

Gandolfini, a beefy character actor, became a star -- as have many of his co-stars, some with such unorthodox backgrounds as guitarist (Steve Van Zandt, the longtime Bruce Springsteen sideman who plays Tony's pal Silvio Dante) and ex-con (Tony Sirico, who served time for some stick-ups before turning to acting, and now plays mobster Paulie Walnuts).

And HBO, which had had only mild success with original programming before "The Sopranos," became the go-to place for water-cooler TV series, including "Big Love," "Six Feet Under" and "Sex and the City" (which, although it predated "The Sopranos," caught fire after the mob drama began).

The series was an unusual smash: as intricate as a novel, with flashes of fierce violence and equally uncomfortable humor. The four major broadcast networks all had their shots before Chase took the show to HBO, but all turned it down.

With the scope, the pacing, the language and the darkness of the show, the rejections were for the best, said Sirico. "It could have never happened on network," he told CNN.

Producer Brad Grey, who shopped "The Sopranos" around, agrees. "I believed that the net[work]s would be open to taking some risks at that time," he told Vanity Fair. "I was foolish. ... It was basically a waste of time, really bad judgment on my part, because even if they had taken it, it wouldn't have been 'The Sopranos.' "

The show pushed the limits of television -- and HBO's patience. It was expensive from the outset, it was full of unknown performers (probably the best known at its debut was Lorraine Bracco, who plays Dr. Jennifer Melfi, Tony's therapist) and HBO didn't like the name, believing people would think it was about opera. And nobody was safe in Chase's underworld. Characters died -- and they died suddenly, with the risk of alienating viewers. The actors who played them also walked a tightrope of emotion, knowing they could be whacked at any time. "I was really, really sad," said Steve Buscemi (Tony Blundetto) at a gathering of performers who played killed-off characters. "That's really just about missing the greatest job I've ever had."

But the show also had many moments of humor -- often directly contrasted with the violence -- and was willing to be as brutally honest in dissecting family relationships as it was in showing a mobster's corrupt world. Some of the show's most dramatic moments have come between Tony and Carmela, arguing in their kitchen.

"It really pushed the envelope. I think people were expecting it to be just a mob show, but it's really not," Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who plays Soprano daughter Meadow, told CNN. "David uses it as a vehicle to express a lot of his opinions on social issues and family issues and political issues. ... I think people were afraid to do that for awhile. 'Sopranos' sort of broke the mold with that."

Naturally, the show's performers -- adhering to the mob code of omerta -- have been tight-lipped as to what's in store for the final run. "Everything you were waiting for, you're gonna see. Everything you've been waiting to feel, you're gonna feel. Trust me. Trust me," was all Sirico would tell CNN.

The series may have peaked a few years ago; ratings, which began strongly and have stayed high for HBO, topped out at 11 million viewers per episode in the fourth season; last season the numbers were closer to 8.5 million. With Chase sometimes unsure of whether to continue, there were huge gaps between some seasons. And in recent years, "The Sopranos" has been attacked for not always measuring up to its own high standards. But, even with the show available on DVD and in (expurgated) reruns on A&E, it will haunt -- like a ghost.

"It's been such a big part of my life -- it's been almost 10 years. I was 16 when we started and I've been through so much through this whole ride," said Sigler. "I only hope to do something half as good."

Thanks to CNN

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Ray Ryan Book Still Under Development

Friends of ours: Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo

It's been nearly two years ago since we first wrote in this column about a book that was to be published about Ray Ryan, one of the biggest names connected with Watertown's rich history.

It was back in May of 2005 that Herb Marynell, a freelance writer and photographer from Newburgh, Ind., stopped by our office at the Daily Times to discuss Ryan as part of his information gathering process which is to lead up to a biography of Ryan.

Herb has been fascinated with Ryan for many years and has collected a vast amount of information about his life. Herb's fascination with this “larger than life” personality came about while he was a reporter for the Evansville Courier & Press in Evansville, Ind. It was back in October of 1977 when Ryan was killed when a bomb went off in his car in Evansville. The explosion and Ryan's death were widely speculated to have been the work of the mob, which had been intertwined in Ryan's life for a long time. (Joey the Clown Lombardo has been widely regarded as the top suspect by law enforcement authorities.)

Herb's visit to Watertown included a number of stops and interviews with people, and he said he learned a great deal.

Back when he visited two years ago, Herb had hopes the book would be in print by this time, but that hasn't been the case. A number of our readers have been asking us about the book and when it might be available, and as a result, we visited with Herb recently, and he said he continues to gather information on Ryan and that he has a fair amount of work to do before the book is published.

At the present time he has over 100,000 words in the initial draft of the book, and plans to add thousands more before it's ready for editing and final proofing. His estimate is that the book could still be a year away from publication.

Herb told us in recent days, “Last fall I visited Hot Springs, Ark., and two important oil towns of Tyler and Snyder, Texas, to get the feel of those places. Just before the end of the year we visited Las Vegas and Palm Springs, Calif. to learn more. I didn't think much of Las Vegas but Palm Springs is a wonderful place. If only we had the money to live there permanently - I can see why Ray Ryan loved that place.”

Herb told us one of the best parts of those trips was meeting the old-timers, the folks in their 80s and 90s with great stories about life in those communities back in the 1950s and 1960s when Ryan was around.

He said, “Through the folks I ran into in Las Vegas I got to meet Tony Montana, a Chicago guy who grew up in The Patch and knew the important guys in the Chicago Mob in the 1940s and 1950s. Tony is a hoot! He lives in Vegas and will be working in Chicago this year doing a movie about the 42 Gang from which several of The Outfit's later top mob guys started their ‘careers.'”

Herb said he's still looking for more information on when Ryan testified in 1964 against two mob guys who tried to extort money from him. That chapter will likely lead Herb to Washington, D.C., where he wants to take a peak at some U.S. Tax Court documents from when the Feds went after Ryan in the late 1960s.

Herb also appealed to me to see if anyone in Watertown could help fill in a few more blanks about his years in this community. Questions Herb raised included:

Did Ryan attend college in the area after high school and did he graduate from Watertown High School? (The indications are he did not.)

Did he play sports in high school or college?

Was he a “ladies man” as a youth?

When did he become interested in horseback riding?

He was also interested in the time when Joe Davies came to Watertown to announce his plans to form the scholarship foundation that has been so big here in Watertown. Herb believes Ryan was one of the speakers when the announcement was made and we're checking into that for him.

Herb said he still doesn't have a publisher for the book but because it's not quite ready for publication, he has not been looking for one. He said Tony Montana is affiliated with a publishing company and would help to make it happen if that becomes necessary.

Herb also said he would be e-mailing to us some sections of the book that pertain to Watertown to check on accuracy and to see if there is anything more local residents can add to the story.

He's excited about the book, and we told him there will probably be some good sales of it right here in Watertown. Old-timers remember Ryan well. He was a pretty “flashy” person and he was always dealing with huge projects, and that often kept him in the news, not only in Watertown but throughout the country. As a result, there is a lot of interest in this Watertown man who made it big and made news even in the way he died - probably at the hands of some disgruntled mob boss. But, we'll never know that for sure.

If any of our readers have more information they can share on the life of Ray Ryan, and especially his years in Watertown and his return visits here, drop a note to us here at the Daily Times. We'll be sure to pass everything along to Herb as soon as we receive it.

So, we hope this update helps our readers to know just where Herb is with publishing the biography of Ray Ryan. From what Herb told us in our recent conversation, we shouldn't get overly anxious about the book any time soon. It will likely be at least a year before it makes it in print and it's actually available for purchase. We'll keep you posted if there are any other new developments on the quest to get this book published.

Thanks to WDT

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