Sopranos/Big Love

I loved the end of the Sopranos. It was perfect symmetry. Personally, I think he bought it listening to Journey with an onion ring in his mouth. Do I feel the need to see it spelled out like all the other bloody murders? No.Greatest show in television history, after the Simpsons. For me, it finally edges out Oz as HBO’s best.
The season premiere of Big Love may have the been best so far. I love this show, for lots of reasons. Ok, the acting/script type reasons, obviously. I love that alternate sexualities are normalized, to an extent; despite the macho, Joseph Smith/patriarchial take (admittedly more than just a “take” of course, in world history), it shows very imaginatively how some Americans would deal with a stigmatized, alternative sexuality. The whole show can be read as an allegory of homosexuality circa 1975. Why shouldn’t people be able to form this kind of family if they want, and are not constrained or coerced or brainwashed (the Juniper Creek bogeyman)?
The show also makes me think of the interviews I’ve heard on NPR recently where fundamentalist Christians express surprise at the incredibly bizarre things that “otherwise intelligent” Mormons believe. Indeed! Mormonism is so weird and so American and so Christian in a sense that it is a constant reminder and reflection of the deeply irrational basis of Judeo-Christianity in general. The Republican primary is going to be so interesting in this respect: So, paradise is in Independence, MO? Yes, well, the Bible is a biology textbook? So, Jesus was hanging out in Central America? Yes, well, Jesus was born of a virgin? Etc., etc., etc.