Humor us for a bit while we complain about a brave new world obsessed with prequels and sequels and spin-offs. Today’s potential potential franchise news involves no less a perfect piece of art than “The Sopranos.” And please don’t ignore us when we grumble this is why we can’t have nice things.
Of course, there is no concrete news. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, “Sopranos” creator David Chase poo-poo’d the idea of a sequel to The Greatest Show Ever (Although Maybe That’s “The Wire”).
“I wouldn’t want to see that happen, no,” Chase told EW. “Like recasting? … Everybody’s getting older, you can’t match people anymore.”
Phew! Except that then Chase had to go and say this: “I could conceive of maybe a prequel of ‘The Sopranos’ … I could never see [a return of the show] except as a prequel.”
Note: He didn’t say he was seriously considering a “Sopranos” prequel. “I could conceive of maybe” is as far as he went. HBO has since confirmed that there are no plans to prequelize the show that kickstarted our current Golden Age of Television. It’s just Chase spit-balling, idly thinking out loud, except he was thinking out loud to a journalist with a running recorder.
Still, even an “I could conceive of maybe” was enough to drive the Internet into a tizzy. Perhaps you’re already mentally casting a young Tony. Maybe John Magaro, the young actor who played the late James Gandolfini’s son in Chase’s terrific, depressingly ignored 2012 film “Not Fade Away”?
But you know what? Stop. Stop right there. There doesn’t need to be more “Sopranos.” Isn’t 86 episodes — each one rich enough for endless rewatches — enough? How greedy are you? And isn’t your obsession with filling in the entire lives of fictional characters — with prequels and sequels, trailing them from DNA to the cold touch of death’s hand — maybe a little sick? By obsessing over characters who aren’t even real, aren’t you really betraying your fear of your own mortality? Just be thankful for what you’ve got, namely six (or in some cases less) seasons with Tony and Carmela and Dr. Melfi and Christopher and Adriana and Paulie and that one hooker Tony was banging that one time.
Anyway, it’s time to move on and accept that there should be no more “Sopranos” — and, while we’re at it, that Tony [SPOILER] totally ate it in the last episode.
