Comedy writer Ken Levine ponders how the finale of The Sopranos would have gone had it aired on a major network:
The finale would be at least two hours.
There would be a one hour clip show hosted by Bob Costas preceding it.
There would be live coverage of the cast party on the network's local 11:00 news. It would be the lead story even if Hurricane Katrina hit that day.
There would be a little animated promo swooshing across the bottom of the screen after every commercial break of every other prime time show on that network for two weeks. A little gun would shoot a little mobster. The blood would spell out SOPRANOS. ...
That ending, which was brilliant in actually delivering something as memorable as the show, simply could not have happened anywhere but on HBO. HBO is remarkable. It pumps millions of dollars into avante garde programming, and they make money doing it. It is what NBC wants to be, though maybe there aren't enough smart people to subsidize intelligent programming.
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