BY TOM GLIATTO
DRAMA
The first few hours of the final nine-week Sopranos season move slowly but with great, grim promise. No portentous hints that this is the windup of one of the most influential series of the decade. And none of the near-death fantasies that gunked up last season. It's just the Sopranos going about their business. Tony (James Gandolfini) tests brother-in-law Bobby Bacala (Steve Schirripa), sending him out on a hit job. Christopher (Michael Imperioli) finally screens his horror-Mafia movie for friends and family—the audience of mobsters makes for a fine, absurd gag—but one central character has an uncomfortable resemblance to a certain bowl-bellied thug.
If the acting and writing are dependably superb, the show still feels ready to go, whether or not Tony ultimately gets whacked. The Sopranos is a giant squid of an epic, with a theme or plot grasped in each tentacle. But since the death of Christopher's tragically muddled lover Adriana (Drea de Matteo, in one of the series' best performances), for me there's a sense of anticlimax. Her murder in the woods was somehow too awful for the show to recover from or fully digest. A dramatic agita, maybe. We'll see.
HBO (Sundays, 10 p.m. ET)
COMEDY
That immaculately groomed demon known as agent Ari Gold will not be sent packing. As a new batch of episodes gets underway, Ari (Best Supporting Actor Emmy winner Jeremy Piven) has lost his favorite client, rising star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier). Vince now depends on a gorgeous and savvy lady agent named Amanda. She's played by Carla Gugino (Spin City, Threshold) with a scrupulous lack of the neurotic exhibitionism that, in this environment, comes across as healthy. (Although her temper, when it does erupt, is scarier than Ari's.) She wants Vince to sign on to a classy Edith Wharton project, but Ari knows that Vince's artistic dream is to play drug lord Pablo Escobar. And so he sets about luring him back.
Ari and Amanda are each playing games of seduction with Vince that involve real consequences in terms of friendship, romance and career. Sometimes it feels like Dangerous Liaisons with cell phones and expense-account lunches. The tension between the agents is entertaining in the extreme. Vince, on the other hand, remains fundamentally somewhat implausibly happy and childlike despite his clout, connections and personal manager (Kevin Connolly). You wonder if his dream project shouldn't actually be a Ronald Reagan biopic.
ABC (Thursdays, 10 p.m. ET)
COMEDY
This new sitcom about young couples having babies arrives with a fundamental problem that should have been spotted in the gestation period: The most entertaining character is neither pregnant nor married. In fact she's a divorce attorney named Cooper, and she's played with scene-stealing, stork-loathing acerbity by Rachael Harris, a comic actress probably best known from The Daily Show and T-Mobile ads (she was the chattering, unhinged real estate agent).
The show, which will be airing double episodes in the slot that's been occupied by October Road, is definitely an improvement on that stale slice of small-town diner pie. It's brisk and bright-looking, most likely thanks to director and coproducer Barry Sonnenfeld, a man who specializes in brisk, bright comedies like Men in Black. But apart from Harris, the cast has an ordinariness that's a little too believable. The one who comes closest to making any sort of impression is Jennifer Westfeldt (Kissing Jessica Stein). As a private-school counselor who's just discovered she's expecting, she gives off a sort of Jennifer Anistonian glow: unforced, soft and pleasant.
Court TV (Mondays, 10 p.m. ET)
DRAMA
Whisking into view like Alfred Hitchcock slimmed down to the breadth of a baguette, John Waters serves as the mordant, tongue-in-chief host of this shabby murder series. It's Court TV's first original scripted drama, and it's bad. Based on actual cases, the half-hour episodes are cheaply made, bluntly told stories of marriages that go wrong and end with one partner doing in the other. With more gore, the show could have been decent pulp. With more camp, it might suggest Waters's Polyester. Instead it's a clump of mold. Oh well: Star Jones Reynolds is returning to Court TV, and that's something to live for.
"I was a 40-year-old fat Italian guy with two kids living in Las Vegas," says Schirripa, now 49, of life before being cast as Bobby Bacala, Tony's brother-in-law. How things change—and don't. "The other night we had this big premiere and you're a big star, and then my wife calls and tells me, 'Make sure you take the dogs out.' Last night I was a big deal, and today I'm just another schmuck."
Little People, Big World(TLC, April 9, 8 p.m. ET) A fresh season about the now celebrated Roloff family, headed by little-person parents Matt and Amy.
Thank God You're Here (NBC, April 9, 9:01 p.m. ET) New improv comedy show hosted by David Alan Grier. The premiere features dependably nutty Jennifer Coolidge (Best in Show).
The BRICK Awards (The CW, April 12, 9 p.m. ET) Salute to heroic do-gooders age 25 and under. Mandy Moore performs.
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (PBS, check local listings) This powerful documentary about charismatic madman Jim Jones plays like a real-life Apocalypse Now.
Desperate Housewives (ABC, April 8, 9 p.m. ET) A visit from Lynn Redgrave as Teri Hatcher's prospective mother-in-law. She probably won't be nice.
Jay Manuel
The Toronto-bred America's Next Top Model maven (and classically trained opera singer—who knew?), 34, also works his magic on the Style Network's Style Her Famous.
ON HIS FAMOUS CONCEPT If someone has blond hair and blue eyes, it doesn't mean they can't have J.Lo's style. That's what we focus on.
ON THIS SEASON OF ANTM For the first time in Model history, someone I thought would be in the final three is not. I was very shocked.
ON HIS SILVER-WHITE HAIR My [natural] hair color is black. I have to get it colored every two weeks! [groan] It's a problem.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Life-after-death has been anything but quiet for Morgan, 40, the still-lamented Denny Duquette from Grey's Anatomy. He's solo host of a clip-recap episode of the ABC hit April 12.
ON MEMORIES OF GREY'S I just loved the cast and crew—and the character. Every time I was around, everyone got along great. Maybe I was the good luck charm.
ON HIS GROWING STARDOM I just wrapped The Accidental Husband with Uma Thurman and Colin Firth. Romantic comedies are a whole new thing for me. I've always done serious dramatic stuff. I think I'm funny, but the jury's out. I was always a blue-collar actor; I would work once, twice a month. Being able to look at material to choose from is great.
ON FINDING LOVE WITH MARY-LOUISE PARKER It wasn't something I was looking for, and I don't think she was either, but it's going great. She's the best person I've ever met, and I'm really lucky to have her in my life. It makes waking up in the morning a lot more fun.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
