"All the shit we been through, you really think I'd kill ya?"

There's surely something inappropriate to be said about the resurrection of the character of Tony Soprano, the final season of The Sopranos finally premiering on Easter Sunday and all. But I'll leave that to someone else. I just hope it's good. I no longer expect great, or even for the season to be worth the wait, these last episodes having been strung out for so long that I barely recognize my phone's ringtone as the show's theme song anymore.

As David Chase stretched his once untouchable story arc into seven seasons, the glory days receded into the past: Paulie and Christopher have been out of the Pine Barrens for six years. A show's momentum is rarely sustained for a decade, even when it doesn't disappear from the screen for years at a time, even when the lead character doesn't lapse into a coma. Over its run, the TV landscape has also changed. Four seasons of The Wire mean that my favorite fictional sociopaths are now Baltimore drug dealers, not New Jersey mobsters. HBO is no longer the sole cable home to DVD-worthy TV; I can't wait to catch up with the second season of Weeds.

But the end of The Sopranos is end of The Sopranos, so I'll probably even do it the DVR-era honor of watching it in real time this week, or nearly. Here's hoping it's worth the trouble for the next nine.