Steven Schirripa

In their first scene together on "The Sopranos," Steven Schirripa, who plays Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri, is sitting in the waiting room at the eye doctor's with Dominic Chianese, who plays Corrado "Junior" Soprano. Junior has just been released from prison after a high-profile arrest. Bacala, a mammoth of a human being with a gut the size of Mt. St. Helens, is the crew guy assigned by Tony Soprano to be his uncle's caretaker-errand boy. Junior: "You see me on TV?" Bacala: "You were on TV?

In their first scene together on "The Sopranos," Steven Schirripa, who plays Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri, is sitting in the waiting room at the eye doctor's with Dominic Chianese, who plays Corrado "Junior" Soprano. Junior has just been released from prison after a high-profile arrest. Bacala, a mammoth of a human being with a gut the size of Mt. St. Helens, is the crew guy assigned by Tony Soprano to be his uncle's caretaker-errand boy. Junior: "You see me on TV?" Bacala: "You were on TV?

Thirty-five years after audiences got their first glimpse of Columbo, the rumpled LAPD lieutenant has just one more thing to prove: Can he compete on a TV schedule seemingly bound together by crime-scene tape? ABC is hoping so, as it airs a new installment of the mystery tonight at 8: "Columbo Likes the Nightlife." (No, Peter Falk doesn't got to boogie on the disco 'round.

In THE first few scenes of the 1994 pilot episode of "My So-Called Life," the short-lived series against which all subsequent teen shows will forever be judged, Angela Chase (Claire Danes) stares down her future as a sexual being. Her father sees her in a towel and can't come to terms with her coming of age. In school, she regards her crush, Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto), mutely. "School," she notes, "is a battlefield for your heart."

When "The Sopranos" debuted, no one knew quite how to describe it, and everybody has spent the last eight years trying. A struggling mob boss enters therapy to deal with his mother issues and spends the years vacillating between what seems to be the private search for mental health and the public actions of a sociopath.

Think you have problems? Try being New Jersey's preeminent specialist in "waste management." Yes, you know who--bravo!--is bada-binging back. Brutal but ever conflicted, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) returns to HBO Sunday with fresh challenges after three seething seasons of mingling popular entertainment and high art.

Alexandra Wentworth rolls her eyes upward and smiles somewhat uncomfortably. Mario Cantone, who plays the gay stylist Anthony Marentino on HBO's "Sex and the City," has just gone over the top as a guest on her new syndicated show. Wentworth is supposed to play the blabbermouth role as a co-host on "Living It Up!

Carmela SOPRANO is beset by bears. Overturning her garbage, damaging her lawn, and generally freaking her out. Why, she wonders, "in the most densely populated state in the country," is she having to deal with bears? An animal control officer gives her the short answer: It has to do with human encroachment on the black bears' natural turf and open garbage cans.

A PRETTY ODD coincidence, if you ask me -- 400 miles apart, in L.A. and San Francisco, two billboards suddenly show up in very prominent places, both of them about famous boys supposedly behaving badly. "Trade Barry!" blared the billboard outside Giants Park, or AT&T Park, or SBC Park, or whatever it's called this week. And on the Sunset Strip, there's dead comedian Chris Farley, his face looking as big as a hot-air balloon, and the phrase "It wasn't all his fault."

"THE SOPRANOS" begins its final run of nine installments this Sunday on HBO with the sound of law enforcement banging at Tony Soprano's door. "Is this it?" Carmela says, sitting up in bed. I took that line as a poke at the audience, mocking the otherworldly hype and expectation about the conclusion of the series, which is to say who gets to live and who gets to die.