Preparing to get jilted by Tony Soprano
by Beth Teitell

Wednesday, May 2, 2001

I know that letting go is a part of life, but no matter how prepared you think you are, when the time comes, it's hard. So hard.

``In a few weeks,'' my husband said sadly the other night, ``we're going to have an empty nest.''

We thought about Sunday nights, and how from now on it would be just the two of us in the living room, reading or talking, getting to know each other again.

No brutal beatings. No prosthetic legs. No ricotta pie. Three more episodes, and that's it. ``The Sopranos'' is over for the season.

``What will we do now?'' I asked, as we clung to the previews for next week.

We should have been ready for this. It happens every year around this time. You open your heart to a show and then what? It leaves you. That's life, I guess.

At first it's just for a few months - the show goes to summer camp. You can handle that. You'd be fine, except for that little voice in your head, the one whispering, ITAL ``Sure, it will come back, but it will leave again, and one day it will go for good. Just like ``Seinfeld'' did, and ``M*A*S*H,'' and all those Aaron Spelling shows you never admitted you watched.'' UNITAL

Maybe you didn't even like the show at first. Maybe you said, ``I don't see what the big deal is.'' But you gave it a chance. You put in the time, week after week, even when you had housework you should have been doing, and soon you came to care about the characters. To hope that Meadow finds someone better than Jackie Jr., to pity Carmela, to forget that Tony is a violent thug, to wonder how exactly, Christopher and Tony are related.

But does the show even think about you and your feelings? No. It knows you wait for its visits, but it goes on its merry way.

Just the other day, for example, you read that Meadow - oh, excuse me, Jamie-Lynn Sigler - is playing Cinderella in ``Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.'' She's planned herself a nice little spring, and you, you're left hoping - hoping! - for reruns.

And so you say ``fine.'' After all, you have better things to do than sit inside and watch television, especially now that the weather is warm and the days are getting longer. (Or do they just seem longer because your beloved is gone?)

You have a garden to weed, or at least to talk about weeding, and soccer games to watch, and reading you should be doing (the Pottery Barn catalog does not count!), but you know you won't be doing any of those things. You'll just be biding your time until the season premiere, visiting the HBO homepage, taking their stupid little polls - What should Tony and Carmela do about their marriage? - sending e-postcards with Anthony Jr. on them, checking out Meadowcam.

Not that it makes you feel any better, but you know you're not alone. You've talked to other people, and they have problems, too. Which, to be honest, aren't as serious as yours. Who in her right mind could really care that ``Survivor II'' is ending tomorrow, or that the ``Once and Again'' season finale is about to air?

Anyway, you - OK, I - was feeling all sorry for myself yesterday, until a woman who's in deeper than I am showed me a way out.

``Yeah, I'm going to miss `The Sopranos,' '' she said, oddly cheerful, ``but `Sex and the City' starts in June.

I've never watched that show, but I just might start. Is it cheating if I don't get emotionally involved?