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I felt vindicated in my abject dismissal of Season 6A when I read that David Chase interview that posted here in which he touched on the ending of the season and addressed crictisms of the whole last season. I felt vinbdicated in that he basically admitted that extending the season over that many episodes was an error, or at least they erred by not having enough story to cover that many episodes. That's why you had the whole Johnny Cakes storyline lasting as long as it did and why THE FUCK was Hal Holbrook anywhere near the set? But what I don't get is why focus so much time on Vito's story which was played as a (wink, wink) nod during the Kevin Finnerty stuff and then seemingly dominated the show for a few episodes, when you had great stuff to deal with in Pontecorvo, Ray Curto, and Carlo all being snitches but all that was delat with in one episode, maybe two. (one for EP & RC, and perHAPS 2 for CG). There was great set-up, and one episode of fantastic exploration, of the Soprano kids growing up and joining in the self-delusion but before that you had episode after episode of AJ being unwatchable.

My biggest problem with Season 6, on the whole, is just how much David Chase & CO. turned on the fans, and the characters, and just made everyone unfathomably loathesome. They wrote like they now detested the idea of the show being popular. It left the realm of probability. The storylines got dark for no other reason than being dark. I said, dark...not deep. I absolutely HATED what they did with Vito Jr. There was nothing interesting or relevant at all. Silvio's run at the #1 spot made ZERO sense both in the real mafia world and in the Soprano's world where Sil was T's ace numero uno. And Bobby Bacala cried and pled for his life from kids!! This is a couple episodes after he willfully and eagerly beats up his boss, a man he knows would murder him with a smile onhis face.