Hodge podge

In this week's "Lost" wrap-up, Andrew Dignan at The House Next Door makes a great reference, comparing the scene in which Sawyer makes Cooper read the letter that Sawyer wrote as a child to Inigo Montoya's revenge fantasy in "The Princess Bride." Brilliant. Dignan wonders if Sawyer, having finally carried out the revenge that was so tightly intertwined with his very identity, is primed to be bumped of by the show's writers. Personally, I still think Sawyer has demons to exorcise, but it's not for me to decide his fate.

Meanwhile, the boys at Slate, in their regular "The Sopranos" discussion, have completely ruined the ending of "Anna Karenina" for me by revealing that the title character kills herself. Of course, the point of the discussion is that in great drama, regardless the format, endings matter less than the journey that got us there, an important point to keep in mind as "The Sopranos" draws to a close.

You don't have to have read Tolstoy's classic to know its famous opening line: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This idea has often been discussed in relation to "The Sopranos", and an episode in season five was titled "All Happy Families." It reminds me too of a line in "The Godfather, Part III." (You're quoting part three? you ask. Hey, it wasn't that bad.) Michael's son, Anthony, tells his father that he'll never work for him because "I have bad memories," to which Michael replies "Every family has bad memories."

Indeed.