In “The Sopranos,” characters arrive and take full human shape; children grow into adults—and sometimes, without explanation, like a Russian mobster fleeing through the snowy woods of the Pine Barrens, they inexplicably disappear and frustrate our TV-shaped need for lessons and resolution. It doesn’t matter that we come to “like” Adriana La Cerva. Chase has no use for our sentiment. He kills it off with a .38

…Everyone in The Sopranos has grown older (and we along with them). One after another, the made men and crew members disappear from the stage — an accelerated version of what happens naturally. … The end is a mystery, but we know one thing: The Sopranos defied Aristotelian conventions. It is a comedy that ends with a litany of the dead and missing. Whaddya gonna do?

–The New Yorker EIC David Remnick, in "Family Guy," excerpted from the current issue.