"The Sopranos" starts its final run this evening. Based on the breathless prose from most TV critics, you'd have thought the table was being reset for the Last Supper.

I watch the show. I appreciate its craft. But I always felt its most critical element is being broadcast on HBO. If you held "The Sopranos" to network TV standards -- i.e. no cursing, limited violence, commercial breaks -- it would quickly lose its glitter and many of its cheerleaders.

Still, as the buildup for these final episodes reaches religious proportions, I wonder what it means when we are more fascinated with criminals' lives than our own.

This is nonsense. They are not like us because -- in addition to getting great dialogue and wonderful lighting -- lurking behind them are murders, drug deals, strippers and people who get whacked with baseball bats. Saying, "Yeah, but take away that stuff and they're just like us," is like saying shave a lion, stand him on his hind legs and he could pass for a gym teacher.

No, what fascinates many Americans is that the Sopranos seem more interesting than us. They argue over what's for dinner, but there's a gun in the drawer and a mistress on the phone. They go to work, but the office is a place where strippers dance on poles.

Their families seem fascinating, as did the Corleone clan in the "Godfather" saga. Mafia men have become the new American cowboys, admired for the way they go out and take what they want and how they tame the world and make it their own.

The truth is less romantic. The country really does have mobsters and Mafia. They're not as witty as the Sopranos. They're not as fascinating. They don't kiss their psychiatrists. Most cops will tell you they're pretty standard-issue punks.

We might remember that as we say farewell to Tony and his crew. Yes, there always have been gangster wannabes -- from haircuts and silk suits in the 1930s to suburban rappers spewing junk in 2007. But that was usually because they envied the stuff -- money, power, sex.

Given who they are and what they've done, almost everyone on "The Sopranos," if they stepped out of the TV set and into the real world, would be in the same place.

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