New Republic resident intellectual (and former guest star) Leon Wieseltier offers a kaddish for "The Sopranos."

Carmela is right to aspire to more and better love, even if Madame Bovary is a lovely thing to have in a den. Don't stop believing. It is true that every trust that Chase depicts is drawn into the Soprano corruption—cops, therapists, priests, doctors, lawyers, officials, teachers, writers, and above all wives—but corruption, too, interests him as a human expression. Chase never relieves his people of their responsibility for all this physical and emotional violence: even as he inquires into the experience of depression, he laughs at the alibis of psychology. And in the end he wisely insists upon the invincible on-goingness, the eternal suchness, of the life that was chosen. The door of the diner opens and closes, opens and closes, admitting joy or danger

Uh, yeah, that's what we were trying to get at before, the "eternal suchness" and the "invincible on-goingness." Sorry we were so biguous.

Addio [TNR]