Hey, Don't Whack the Messenger

Disclaimer:

The following column contains information that may -- or may not -- be a spoiler for Sunday's series finale of "The Sopranos." DO NOT READ THIS COLUMN if you do not want to possibly glean information that may -- or may not -- be accurate as to what happens on the final episode on HBO. If you are reading this column, it means you are old enough to read, which makes you old enough to know better than to continue if you don't want to know about what may -- or may not -- happen in Sunday's telecast. If you continue, you waive your right to whine about The TV Column having ruined your day.

End of disclaimer.

If, as a recent poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University suggests, the majority of "Sopranos" viewers want mobster Tony Soprano to survive the finale -- as convincing an argument for doing away with our trial-by-jury legal system as anything I've ever seen -- they'll be happy to know that the spoilers floating around, while not agreeing on much, seem to all think Tony will live to see Monday.

(Specifically, the poll, conducted from May 29 through June 3, discovered that 40 percent of participants hope Tony lives and another 40 percent "don't know" whether they think the man who has done so much to decrease the surplus population of New Jersey should live or die in the finale.)

Don't know? Don't KNOW?

And of the lousy 21 percent who conceded he probably should die, one-fifth of them wanted to make sure he died -- of "natural" causes.

Hello? He's a mob boss, people -- and just a TV character. It's okay to want to see him die a grisly death -- it doesn't mean you're a bad person.

TV series finale spoilers are a badge of honor. They separate those series that have become pop-culture phenomena from shows that are just shows. Notice the dearth of "King of Queens" spoilers.

On the other hand, who can forget the "Seinfeld" finale script that had everyone atwitter back in the spring of '98 as it made the rounds in news reports weeks before the final broadcast. In that script, Jerry is offered a variety show and moves to L.A., Elaine falls for Jerry's real estate agent and also moves to L.A., George meets a newspaper exec who is a Yankees fan and offers him a job as a TV critic, and an NBC suit who saw an old clip of Kramer on "Murphy Brown" offers him a sitcom and he too moves to L.A.

Sadly, that finale-script frenzy was cut short when "Seinfeld" co-creator/exec producer Larry David called Los Angeles Times columnist Brian Lowry and told him he had not yet finished writing the finale, and the script making the rounds was "obviously" the work of "a mental patient with time on his hands."

We say "sadly" because, as it turned out, the bogus script, while not great, was better than the finale penned by David, which is regarded by many as the worst series wrap-up episode in the history of hit TV show endings. Maybe that other, already completed script written by someone who, while possibly crazy, clearly knew how to write TV comedy, put David off his game.