Woke Up This Morning . . .

It's that time again. In less than two weeks, HBO will be premiering the first episode of the final season of the wildly popular series, The Sopranos. Incidentally, that day falls on my first wedding anniversary, but that's an entirely different story.
For 8 years with breaks in between, many cable subscribers have become fixated on the series about a depression-riddled New Jersey crime family boss who visits a psychiatrist to seek balance from his hectic life.
The series that managed to portray an authentic look at the modern-day Mafia lifestyle with its array of intense and wild characters while doing its best to avoid Italian stereotypes will be coming to an end. From what I heard; this season will serve its purpose to tie up all the story's loose ends from the Russian mob to the ongoing FBI investigations.
I believe the show has had a very good run and it is definitely time for its end. I feel compelled to compare it to how it was when I graduated grade school. When I did graduate grade school (it was almost the same amount of time [8 years] , Pre-K to 6th grade) I was a bit sentimental - I had some great teachers and classmates and lots of interesting memories, but it was time to move on to bigger and better things. I remember feeling a little sad a couple of weeks after and wondering what life in junior high school would be like.
Before I fall off on a tangent, I'll leave it at that. After this show wraps, I think many will experience a void where The Sopranos was. Fortunately for myself, I have already substituted with another fantastic HBO series, The Wire. One of the greatest things about that show is that it's a quiet storm, a well put-together crime series that explores a multi-tiered community in Baltimore from the insides of the schools to the crime syndicates to the police to the politicians of the city. It's shocking how this show isn't that mainstream popular yet.
Perhaps after The Sopranos are long gone, either dead, in witness protection or in a federal prison, the mainstream American TV audience will find out how really good The Wire is.