My, a REALLY Terrible Review in the NY Post of The Sopranos 5th season Premiere. How sad :)

The NY Times is its usually sycophantic style not unsurprisingly lauds the show,
but makes a couple of comments that are telling. See further down.
=========================================
Thanks to IAOV

TIME TO LET THIS OVERRATED BORE SLEEP WITH THE FISHES

New York Post
By Andrea Peyser
March 9, 2004

SORRY, mob fans.

"The Sopranos" returned Sunday to fill our empty, little lives with all the blustery self-importance and clumsy criminality of Martha Stewart covering up a stock sale. It was - I can't resist this - bada-bad.

Like much of America, I'd fallen passionately in love with the suburban crime family who'd made telecommuting to New Jersey each week not only bearable, but a downright thrilling, sexy adventure.

But I guess a television show, like a decomposing corpse, tends only to get more rotten with time. And the 15 months that "The Sopranos" creators arrogantly assumed we'd wait for new episodes didn't help breathe any fresh oxygen into a series that, judging from the season opener, seems ready to be put out of its misery.

Admit it. The show was worse than tedious. It was annoying.

Maybe worse than that. When it was over, after the pretentiously arty camera shots faded to black, and the hipper-than-thou soundtrack dissolved into next week's promo, I was left with two words running through my head. Words that should bring terror into the heart of any producer of supposedly must-see pop culture:

That's it?

Tony, I missed you. So much, I actually signed up to pay $12.95 a month to reconnect my dormant HBO. For what? Tony Soprano, who once exuded a fiercely magnetic presence - at once strong, seductive and brutal - was older, fatter, and, most unforgivably, mellower, than when we last saw him.

It got so bad, I found myself envying the stiffed waiter who found himself on the business end of Paulie Walnuts' pistol, after he had the temerity to suffer an epileptic seizure when Christopher bashed him in the head with a brick. At least the dead waiter didn't have to endure Tony's pathetic mewling over his shrink, Dr. Jennifer Melfi.

The resurrection of Tony's infatuation with Melfi, a plot line long ago abandoned, was a bad sign of monotony to come. The next time Tony's one-legged Russian lover shows up, I'm ripping HBO out of the cable box.

The beauty of "The Sopranos," at its best, was Tony's ironclad authority in the world of men, contrasted with his hapless flaccidity in the face of his wife, daughter and mother.

Now the daughter's grown up, the son is a moron, the wife has wised up and the mother is dead.

Tony, meanwhile, confessed his Melfi crush to his man, Silvio, a sign of unparalleled wussiness in his world.

If I want true confessions, I'll answer my office telephone.

"The Sopranos" has committed a sin worse even than a cheating mob wife: It was dull.

New York Post Online Edition: commentary
http://nypost.com/commentary/20262.htm
========================================
BULLIES, BEARS, AND BULLETS: ITS ROUND 5

New York Times
By Alessandra Stanley
March 5, 2004

...Ever since "The Sopranos" began, its creators have been under siege from Italian-American groups, which have complained that the series perpetuates Cosa Nostra stereotypes. Last year Mr. Chase seemed to buckle a little under the pressure, devoting an entire, ill-conceived episode to the issue of oversensitivity, pitting the locals against American Indians who threatened to disrupt a Columbus Day parade because they viewed Columbus as a slave-trading imperialist.

Mr. Chase appears to have bounced back. Episode 4 reaches beyond the ghetto of Italian-Americans to a louche Jewish milieu — the lavish wedding of the daughter of a crooked accountant who is a poker buddy and "friend" of Tony. While the revelers celebrate, thugs steal the guests' fancy foreign cars. They race out to the near-empty lot and as a doctor examines the smashed head of a prone valet parker, other guests ignore the battered victim and keen over their lost cars. "They got the SL," one of them shouts at his host. "Do you know how long my brother was on the waiting list for that thing?" (The brother, a cameo role played by Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, indicates that it was a year, using one of the show's favorite obscenities.)

Mr. Chase also seemed a bit inhibited by criticism of the show's violence....

TV Weekend | 'The Sopranos': Bullies, Bears and Bullets: It’s Round 5
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/05/arts/television/05TVWK.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACCENTUATE the Positive, ELIMINATE the Negative!!!!

Speaking out with One Voice against Negative Stereotyping

Italian-American One Voice Coalition is a national network of activists enabling the Italian American community to act as one united voice when dealing with defamation, discrimination and negative stereotyping.

Member organizations provide a liaison with the IA One Voice Coalition to disseminate information to the Italian American community and protest with one voice against each outrage against our heritage, culture and character.

Italian American One Voice - Who We Are

Web Site:

Italian American One Voice Coalition
http://www.italianamericanonevoice.org/iaindex.html