Whether it ends tonight with a shocking bada-bang for America's favorite mobbed-up sociopath or a disappointing bada-bust, "The Sopranos" has already assured itself a place of prominence in television history and popular culture.

	Craig Blankenhorn, HBO
	James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano -- Capturing a kind of American dissatisfaction, a searching and lostness that resonated even if people didn't realize what it was they were responding More on the story How do you think "The Sopranos" will wrap up? Vote in our poll now.

Last week's penultimate episode set the stage for a series finale showdown on HBO at 9 p.m. between more modern, suburban (dare we suggest, more enlightened?) gangster Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and rival old-school, New York mob boss Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent). The big question for fans is whether or not Tony will survive.

TV critics belted out mighty praise for HBO's "The Sopranos" from its debut forward, and with good reason. The series pushed networks -- broadcast and basic cable -- to take chances in developing more serious-minded, literate programming and encouraged the development of morally complex lead characters.

NBC's 1981-87 series "Hill Street Blues," created by Carnegie Tech graduate Steven Bochco with a title inspired by Pittsburgh's Hill District, is largely credited as the show that ushered in the maturing of TV dramas. Before "Hill Street," one-hour dramas were primarily plot-driven. Mr. Bochco introduced the idea of character-driven, continuing stories.

"Bochco brought down the fruit where ['Sopranos'] creator David Chase could grab at it," said TV writer Jeffrey Stepakoff, who chronicles his Hollywood experiences in the book "Billion-Dollar Kiss: The Kiss that Saved 'Dawson's Creek' and Other Adventures in TV Writing."

"David Chase took the character-driven, adult television drama to a new level with more compelling characters and a character who, at times, isn't likeable, who does bad things. Chase reinvented the concept of the family drama and one-hour storytelling."

"Because of 'The Sopranos,' television audiences started looking off the big three networks for quality series," said Miranda Banks, a visiting assistant professor in the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. "That was a critical shift."

In the post-"Hill Street" era, broadcast networks provided homes for quality dramas such as "St. Elsewhere," "China Beach," "thirtysomething," "Twin Peaks," "Profit" and "ER."

Since the onset of the "Sopranos," quality, character-driven dramas are also likely to be found on basic cable channels such as FX, TNT, USA Network and Sci Fi Channel. Writer Matthew Weiner, for example, will be moving from "The Sopranos" to basic cable -- as executive producer of "Mad Men," a July drama about 1960s advertising executives for AMC.

Free of Federal Communications Commission content restrictions, premium cable networks such as HBO can afford the creators of its shows broad latitude when it comes to sexual and violent content and profanity. Although still under FCC restrictions, broadcast networks have tiptoed closer to the edge of what's permissible in the years since "The Sopranos" debuted.

HBO's mob drama also changed expectations of television in other ways:

It taught viewers to crave TV shows that air in short, uninterrupted batches.

It accustomed viewers to long delays between seasons.

It presaged the wave of serialized shows that flooded network schedules last fall.

It set a standard for quality scripted series at HBO that has been copied by Showtime. In the past year Showtime has begun to out-HBO HBO.

And the release of "The Sopranos" on DVD taught viewers how to watch TV on their own schedule, a routine that's become increasingly common with both TV on DVD boxed sets and DVRs.

Low expectations
Those involved with "The Sopranos" from the beginning had no expectation of the show's place in TV history.

Brett Martin, author of "The Sopranos: The Book," an official chronicle of the show, which is now in paperback and will be republished in an expanded hardcover edition this fall, said producers didn't think the show would move beyond its initial pilot.

Mr. Chase and many of the show's cast members thought it was a happy accident that the series was given a green light, Mr. Martin said. "Everybody I spoke to who was involved in the pilot said they went home from that thinking, 'Well, it's one of the better things I've worked on, but it will never see the light of day.' "

Of course, it worked better than anyone anticipated, and "The Sopranos" became a sensation, drawing an average of more than 10 million viewers weekly at the height of its popularity, huge numbers for a premium network show. (Some basic cable shows are considered hits with as few as 2 million viewers.)

"Without putting too fine a point on it, Tony captures a kind of American dissatisfaction, a searching and lostness that resonated even if people didn't realize what it was they were responding to," Mr. Martin said. "This kind of suburban angst, this kind of, 'What does it all add up to?' "

That was a question Tony often faced as he dealt with turmoil both on the home front and in the mob business, in which he sensed a lack of commitment from his proteges, particularly nephew Christopher (Michael Imperioli), whose life he snuffed out earlier this season as a reminder to the audience that Tony, sympathetic as he sometimes can be, is still a killer.

That's a far cry from the lead character in Mr. Chase's first TV experience. He started writing for TV with "The Rockford Files," starring James Garner as a private eye who was a bit of a scalawag but not a killer. In Mr. Martin's book, Mr. Chase says that's where he first learned he could saddle a hero with foibles "as long as he's the smartest guy in the room and good at his job."

Past credits of "Sopranos" writers show other seeds from which the HBO hit grew. Mr. Chase and several "Sopranos" writers previously worked on "Northern Exposure," another series with a male lead at its center and a darker-than-usual sense of humor.

Simply put, "The Sopranos" domesticated the gangster, USC's Ms. Banks said. Look no further than Tony's repeated visits with therapist Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) for proof.

"We're used to seeing on television a family melodrama, but this was a drama centered on a man's emotional life, and a middle-aged man, the kind of character you usually see in a sitcom," Ms. Banks said. "Here he has to manage all these personal problems: An emotionally abusive mother, a troubled marriage, troubled children, problems at work. We typically think of melodrama as a female genre, but here it is as a man's story."

That male melodrama theme has carried on in programs that have premiered since the debut of "The Sopranos," Ms. Banks said, including "24," which often focuses on the family turmoil of Counter Terrorist Unit agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland).

Ms. Banks also noted the complexity of "The Sopranos" characters as a key to its success.

"It's psychological. All of these characters have incredible depth, but the idea of bringing the gangster home to suburbia and imagining the everyday normalcy of the life of a mob boss, it's like making him look like middle management," she said. "It's a very different representation of the American man."

Both Ms. Banks and Mr. Stepakoff pointed to a first-season "Sopranos" episode that defined and encapsulated the show's dominant themes. In episode No. 5, "College," Tony takes daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) on a visit to a typical, small-town New England college and encounters a mobster-turned-rat-turned-witness-protection-program-dropout. Tony strangles him with a wire while Meadow is at her college interview.

"Tony has to negotiate his professional life with his personal life and the drama it creates," Banks said. "It has elements of humor and horror at the same time. It's a great example of domesticating the gangster film, showing this anxiety Tony has of literally trying to take care of family and [living] a very upper-middle-class, suburban life and [trying] to live the American dream and dealing with this dark underbelly of the crime world.

"It's another side of that classic American narrative, even though it's not an experience lived by many people."