A week after the airing of the final “Sopranos” episode until next year, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

Yeah, there was way too much Julianna Margulies in a drug-soaked affair with Christopher. Yeah, there wasn’t a resolution of any of the countless plot threads. And it was, indeed, jarring to celebrate a New Jersey Christmas on a warm June Sunday night.

But the fact that the show lingers for so long in a viewer’s memory is a sign of just how different the HBO classic is from just about everything else on television.

You can argue with friends about it, you can curse creator David Chase for sending Carmela to Paris because he wanted to take a trip there himself. You can always make cracks about Johnnycakes or Vito.

And it’s easy to speculate on whether A.J. or Uncle Junior or Christopher or even Tony himself will survive the final eight episodes now scheduled to start next January (never hold your breath waiting for the beginning of a “Sopranos” season).

For the record, Inside TV & Radio’s longtime hunch for the final scene of the very last episode features Tony padding to the end of his driveway to pick up the Newark Star-Ledger. A car drives by and a shot is fired and he falls to the ground.

Or maybe he just keels over without the benefit of a gunshot and dies. Then the credits role for the last time.

The biggest fear after watching the sorta semi-finale of this half-season or so, without any closure, is that Chase will end it all without ending it at all.

Let’s hope not. But it’s something to think about until the show returns.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=434523