By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

The moment has passed, the mania has died but the medium may never be the same.

Unless you’ve been “sleeping with the fishes” since early June, you know HBO’s acclaimed series “The Sopranos” has ended. The finale centering the duality of fictional New Jersey mobster Tony Soprano and his struggles balancing business and family was a chief focus of this sweltering early summer. Naturally, the hype leading to the conclusion was as ubiquitous as other American pop culture staples but as creator David Chase has done from the beginning, that familiar tension was used like no other.

Since premiering in 1999, “The Sopranos” seized public attention and reshaped the premium network’s approach to grabbing viewers, spurring them to jump into development of a succession of series that resulted in some of the medium’s best moments of the last decade. Once chiefly the domain of movies and occasional sports-themed programming, HBO proved the American public was ready for something altogether different from standard and predictable fare.

Any regular reader of this space has heard my distaste with the general state of television programming. The opinion is rooted in a wealth of acquaintance with its content, far more than I’m often comfortable admitting and to hook my attention, much less my loyalty is a feat. Chase did so twice, as executive producer of the marvelously unique “Northern Exposure” and this latest drama.

I can hear the questions, now. “What’s this got to do with Mobile?” Well, considering more locals watched the series finale on June 11 than will attend the symphony, opera and ballet all combined this year, I’d say it certainly has some concern with Azalea City artistic sensibilities.

Admittedly, what made “The Sopranos” so rich and irresistible was the freedom from conventional censorship found behind HBO’s shield. The lack of advertising breaks also enhanced the storytelling, allowing each installment’s arc to unfurl in a glorious continuum.

Its darkly existential plots, twisting multi-textured journeys into the psyche of both the individual and the culture, were a delight to experience. Chase was brash in his storytelling, unafraid to say what he wished and to reveal ugly truths within us all. No one was saved his scrutinizing eye and we all withered at various times under the light.

For instance, when Tony’s therapist was raped and the justice system failed her, she had opportunity to reveal her attacker’s identity to the mafioso knowing full well he would enact swift and ultimate retribution. She fell back on her sense she must rise above the temptation and act within society’s framework. However, were one to ask the women the rapist undoubtedly went on to ravage, they might differ with her moral certainty pointing out the price they paid for her self-satisfaction.

In that world, much like this one, we’re all dirty, all compromised in some fashion. Cops could be as vile as capos, housewives as complicit as hustlers.

Sure, it was profane and violent but those factors were essential to underlining the sociopathy involved. Depression, self-discovery and denial, dysfunction and passive-aggressive manipulation were omnipresent but joined by the mundane and accessible. Murder stood beside parental concern, graft next to marital turbulence.

Was it, is it “art?” It’s certainly drama as finely tuned and layered as many works that have graced the stage. Besides, anything that can plant the banality of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” in the forefront of your consciousness for days while suffusing the rock ballad with heretofore unknown gravitas is doing something right.

Some would classify cinema as the most American of art forms, something perfected on our shores and “The Sopranos” certainly qualifies in that measure. Every aspect of the production was as excellent as that found in theaters and better than anything this writer has ever seen on the small screen.

The scripts were smart, both tragic and funny, dialogue tight and story movement crisp. It was replete in symbology and effectively tense in all the right measure.

Foremost in its success was an exemplary cast, most notably lead actor James Gandolfini. A bear of a man with an incredibly nuanced face, his highly charismatic performances propelled viewer involvement and Chase admitted the show would have been impossible without him. Gandolfini was able to draw us into a character even he found reprehensible and make us like him. We reluctantly related to him in a way that made us feel both guilty and energized.

Ultimately, in the mark of all great art, “The Sopranos” made us think. Even down to the controversy revolving its last episode, and in particular its last scene, Chase was unafraid to kick-start the gears in our heads, bringing forth reflexive emotion that gave way to pondering and eventual acquiescence to the recesses we scanned.

There was no pandering to trite formula, to the viewers’ ego or necessity to have things neatly tied together. It was ambiguous and unapologetic. It hammered home the fact that despite what we desperately want to believe, life doesn’t blink without us. It merely steamrolls our existence, oblivious to our conceits.

And in that lies the show’s beauty and worth.

Remember this well, folks. We’ve seen the potential of a medium stretched and witnessed a high-water mark possibly unequaled in our lifetimes.

And for those of us fortunate the make the journey, we’ve learned something about our humanity along the way.

Grazie, Signore Chase. Grazie.

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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