Nearly two decades after it went off the air, The Sopranos still holds up as one of the greatest TV shows ever made. It revolutionized television; by introducing grownup themes, grownup language, cinematic visuals, and a morally gray antihero, The Sopranos turned one of the stiffest art forms into a transcendent medium on par with cinema and literature. The Sopranos singlehandedly kicked off the Golden Age of Television, and paved the way for The Wire and The Shield and Breaking Bad and Mad Men and True Detective and all the other great television we’ve enjoyed throughout the 21st century.

But in its final season, The Sopranos very nearly jumped the shark. “Jumping the shark” is a term coined after an episode of Happy Days that saw Fonzie jumping over a shark on waterskis. It refers to the moment that a long-running TV show finally ran out of ideas and became a shell of its former self. For The Simpsons, it was when Principal Skinner was revealed to be an impostor. For Game of Thrones, it was when Daenerys Targaryen decided to commit mass murder on a dime.

For The Sopranos, it would’ve been when the final season dedicated two whole episodes to Tony’s coma dream. The Sopranos had toyed around with dream sequences before — just look at the iconic scene with Big Pussy at the fish market, or the one with Annette Bening — but these coma dream episodes are completely divorced from the world of The Sopranos, and it could’ve been the death knell of the series.

The Sopranos’ Coma Dream Episodes Almost Ruined The Show

The Sopranos kicked off its final season with one of the most shocking twists in its entire run. While Tony is reluctantly looking after an increasingly confused Uncle Junior, Junior mistakes Tony for an intruder and shoots him. But, as shocking as it is, it sets up arguably the worst storyline in The Sopranos’ history: Tony’s coma dream. As the doctors scramble to save him, and his family rallies around him, Tony is off in his own world. He doesn’t have his New Jersey accent; he’s a precision optics salesman from Arizona named Kevin Finnerty.

It was such a weird direction for the show to go after Junior nearly killed Tony, but these writers always took the weirdest way out (see, again, that fish market dream). James Gandolfini did a great job with this new role, but it just felt like David Chase wanted to write a little indie movie, totally separate from The Sopranos, and wedged it into The Sopranos under the guise of Tony’s subconscious hallucinations. Chase just about pulled it off with his signature surreal subtext and symbolism, but this is the closest The Sopranos came to losing the plot in a near-flawless run.

Coma Dreams Need To Die As A TV Trope

I find myself rolling my eyes every time a TV show introduces a coma dream. It’s okay for a standalone gag in an absurdist show like The Simpsons or South Park, but it’s never satisfying as a dramatic device. Coma dreams have taken up entire seasons of shows like Archer and My Name is Earl, and since they’re non-canonical and entirely inconsequential by their very nature, they stop the actual story dead. Coma dreams are just an easy way for writers to externalize their character’s internal struggles.

My Name is Earl turned Earl subconsciously pining after Alyssa Milano into a traditional multi-camera sitcom, and it just didn’t work. The Sopranos just about made it work, because The Sopranos’ writers are the best in the business — they can do subtle things with unsubtle concepts — but, as a TV trope, coma dreams need to be taken off life support.

The Sopranos

10/10

Release Date

1999 – 2007

Network

HBO

Showrunner

David Chase

Directors

Tim Van Patten, John Patterson, Alan Taylor, Jack Bender, Steve Buscemi, Daniel Attias, David Chase, Andy Wolk, Danny Leiner, David Nutter, James Hayman, Lee Tamahori, Lorraine Senna, Matthew Penn, Mike Figgis, Nick Gomez, Peter Bogdanovich, Phil Abraham, Rodrigo García

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  James Gandolfini

  Tony Soprano

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