I finally got around to watching the much-debated Sopranos finale last night.

I should add, incidentally, that I was a TV writer myself for a while. Not a particularly accomplished one. Mostly small stuff nobody ever saw. I wrote for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation for most of the third season, but I got tired of all the death, frankly. Some people might have loved the job, and the money was great, and I still respect the folks there for being so incredibly good at what they do, but it just wasn’t a good fit for me. Anyway, my point: during the year of my life that I helped devise ways to hang dwarfs, make parasailers go all Icarus, and poison poker players with lead-filled candies, I saw first-hand just how meticulously the little details could be fussed over for the cameras – and that was on a show with a breakneck production schedule and no particular auteur nursing his vision through every single shot.