Military TV, Television - Military Times

‘Sopranos’ body count soars

It all comes down to this: “Sopranos “fans are obsessing over who goes next as the show ends its nine-year HBO run Sunday (9 p.m. ET/PT).

Last week’s bloodbath saw the execution of Tony’s crew members Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri and — apparently — Silvio Dante, who was shot and lies gravely wounded in the hospital. Viewers learned secondhand that doctors don’t expect him to regain consciousness.

Bobby had the more flamboyant death scene, gunned down by rival family Phil Leotardo’s goons as he purchased a cherished model train (the episode’s title was “The Blue Comet”).

“I thought I was going to die with a bunch of Bada Bing broads in bed with me,” says actor Steve Schirripa. Instead, “I got stuck with the train sets.”

He figures he’s lucky to have made it this far — “the more you do on the show, the better chance you have to get killed” — and he relished his cinematic exit.

“If you’re going to go out, there’s no better way than that, man. When I saw it, it was pretty disturbing,” he says. “The intercuts with the train, the little people and the screaming. It was an incredibly well-edited scene.” The scene was filmed in Long Island, N.Y., during a bitter cold snap a day after a mid-February blizzard.

In contrast, Silvio was gunned down more conventionally, as he made a hasty exit from the strip club with cash. (His colleague Patsy Parisi escaped on foot.)

Actor Steve Van Zandt says he has been getting “dozens and dozens of calls” from horrified friends, who were surprised because Sil was more “consigliere “than enforcer. “There’s quite a lot of sympathy, which is kind of touching.”

Echoing his former castmate, he shrugs off his shooting, deferring to creator David Chase’s “one-man vision” and noting that “it’s the next-to-last show. It’s not exactly that big a deal.”

Executive producer Terry Winter says reaction to Sunday’s episode was “bittersweet”: It pleased fans of “Sopranos”-style violence but caused “a tinge of sadness that people they have come to love” meet their maker. “It’s hard to watch,” he says. “If you do your job right, people care.”

He says the windup actually was mapped out by Chase while writing the fifth season, which aired in 2004. “We’ve never written to audiences’ expectations. That’s a recipe for disaster. Whatever you do, somebody’s going to complain.”

Winter clears up a couple of unclear points in the episode: The Italians recruited for the botched hit on Phil did in fact kill the Soprano rival’s mistress, but they mistook her gray-haired father for Phil, who wasn’t there. And Tony’s hideaway, in which he’s last glimpsed slumped on a mattress, clutching a huge rifle, isn’t his mother Livia’s or Uncle Junior’s home, but a previously unseen safe house used to store loot or host sexual conquests.

As is customary, the actors learned their fates from Chase, who paid his first visit to Schirripa’s apartment to break the news, saying, “I guess you know why I’m here,” Schirripa recalls. “I said, “How’s it happen?’ Then I thanked him for changing my life and making me part of this thing that will never happen again.”