Tony Soprano was born from between the legs of his vindictive, joyless mother, Livia; and he was caught, when the series opened, in the vise of several other women as well -- his dissatisfied wife, Carmela; his increasingly disdainful daughter, Meadow; his volatile 24-year-old Russian girlfriend, Irina; and his rather unconventional shrink, Dr. Melfi.

That opening shot summed up the show's mischievous intents and some of its limitations. Coppola saw the Mafia as a metaphor for American society; Chase sees it as a metaphor for the American family, a more insular (and less persuasive) construct.

"The Sopranos," one could argue, is merely the darkest sitcom you can imagine, and Tony is just another henpecked husband, all but mugging for the audience, rolling his eyes in exasperation at the demands of his shrill loved ones. The zany hook is that he gets a demanding female psychiatrist to add to his troubles -- and his wife is jealous of her. One of these days, Carmela ...!

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If you haven't seen "The Sopranos," which this Sunday will conclude its third season, you're missing something extraordinary. It's arguably the cleverest and most entertaining extended drama that's ever been on TV. Tony is expertly played with a gruff masculinity by Gandolfini; his emotionally and morally compromised wife, Carmela, is done to a ruined turn by the infinitely expressive Edie Falco; mother Livia, now departed with the death of actress Nancy Marchand, exhibited oceans of pain and scorn in a massive, equine face; proud and bitter Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese), forced to cede power to his nephew Tony, is a study in aging gracelessly.

Tony's crew of goodfellas is played to a thuggish T. It includes Tony Sirico as the charming but lethal Paulie Walnuts; Steve Van Zandt, a shade too cartoony as the mugging caricature Silvio Dante; a smoldering Michael Imperioli as Tony's hotheaded, potheaded nephew Christopher; a stylish, ponytailed Italian import, appropriately named Furio, played by Federico Castelluccio; and an older, Morris Levy-style mobster, Hesh, played by Jerry Adler. Tony's kids are the resentful Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) and the anomic Anthony Jr. (Robert Iler). There is his chaotic, devilish sister, Janice (Aida Turturro). And finally there is the cultured but buttoned-up Dr. Melfi, all shrouded insecurities and false bravado as played by Lorraine Bracco.

The joy of "The Sopranos" is the furious pace of the storytelling, its shotgun approach to narrative, its carefully doled-out violence. Chase, who rarely writes or directs anymore but who presumably still oversees the show from week to week, is a master of looming problems and red herrings. Characters rise out of the muck and achieve ominous proportions, only to fade away -- that is, when they aren't dispatched in more operatic fashion.

Good guys die and bad guys win in "The Sopranos"; Chase clearly is not about reassuring his audience that they live in a just and moral world. He walks a fine line between keeping his cast compulsively watchable and deeply repellent. He makes this clear early on, when we see Tony run down a former associate with his car and then emerge to give the unfortunate man a thorough and unattractive beating; a few episodes later he garrotes an informer in spectacularly brutal fashion. We see the wire cut into the victim's neck and into Tony's own hand, and -- after our hero finishes the job with a final energetic tug -- we see an arc of spittle come shooting out of Soprano's mouth. "Sopranos" fans learn to identify with Tony at their own risk.

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