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April 30, 2006 | People repeat themselves. A lot. It can be a little bit disappointing, actually, when you first hit that point in the friendship or relationship where someone starts telling you the same old stories or repeating the same old opinions over and over again. We all do it, but that doesn't keep us from hoping that someone out there will remain fresh and entertaining indefinitely.

I had a boyfriend in college who loved to tell the story of how his dad got him a dog for his birthday when he was 8 years old. His dad had since left his mom, moved to the city, married a big-deal magazine editor, and was relatively out of touch with his son's life, but in his mind, their father-son relationship was really special, as evidenced by that fateful day when his dad gave him a doggie. He always ended the story by saying, "I can't wait until I can give my son a dog for his birthday, too." "Aw, that's nice! Dad, son, dog," I thought, as if it pointed to some sweetly romantic notions that made the boyfriend eminently lovable.

After the fifth or sixth time he told this story, though, I stopped getting it, and started wondering how such an anecdote could possibly be so important. Something about man-boy bonding, something about the joy of telling his tale in a warm, macho, fatherly tone. Charming but pretty empty, as far as I was concerned, but what did I know? I wasn't a man, a boy or a dog.

Then one day I visited my boyfriend's family home in suburban New York. We were sitting in the backyard, by the pool, when a mangy-looking mutt with a hump on its back and scraggly-looking hair wandered up. "Get that thing away from me!" my boyfriend yelled at his mom. "It's disgusting!" His mom fretted about how she couldn't let the dog inside anymore, because it smelled too bad, so it wandered around the neighborhood most of the day.

I asked and, yes, this was the same cherished, symbolic dog his dad got him on that wonderful day years ago. Oddly enough, while Dad maintained his hero status even after escaping to the city to raise his pretty young wife's kids, Dog was treated like a leper. This discovery made me feel sick to my stomach. Why was Dog being blamed for Dad's sins? Was Dog demonized so Dad could continue to be deified? Or was my boyfriend just an asshole?

When I pointed out that I found it strange that he would tell such a glowing tale about the day he got this dog, and then ignore the dog as it grew older, the boyfriend blinked at me, uncomprehendingly. "It stinks," he repeated, emphatically. "It's disgusting."

Suddenly it seemed clear that marrying this guy would be a very bad idea, indeed.

His story repeats itself
As boring and exasperating as they can be, the stories people repeat over and over again end up telling us a lot about them as human beings. In my boyfriend's case, his parents had separated right after he went away to college, and maybe he was haunted by the sense that something innocent and sweet from his childhood, some moment when he was the most important thing in the world to his father, was lost and gone forever.

This same sense of melancholy and loss is what has made Tony Soprano a compelling character over all these years. He was a sensitive boy, but his mother and father weren't capable of giving him the love that he needed, so as an adult he's fated to look back with anxiety and grief. He worked tirelessly for his mother's approval, even as she treated him with disrespect, insulted him and plotted to kill him.

Still, like my college boyfriend, people who are caught up in golden moments from the past are likely to neglect people that are in their lives here and now. For Tony, mangy-looking, stinky mutts are wandering around every corner, but like the mom who shrugs and leaves the dog outside instead of giving it a bath and taking it to the vet, Tony tries gingerly to solve his problems by following his own instincts, but inevitably ends up shrugging his shoulders, cutting his losses, and shutting the dog outside in the rain. The question is whether or not, in the final season of "The Sopranos" (9 p.m. Sundays on HBO), Tony is going to continue to make the same brutal decisions that are necessary to fulfill his duties as mob boss, or whether he's finally lost his stomach for the heartless requirements of mob life.

Each season, this is the repeating story of "The Sopranos": There's a bad little sheep in Tony's flock, and Tony is forced to pull out his shotgun and eliminate the problem. From Big Pussy to Ralphie to Richie (whom Janice conveniently gunned down so Tony didn't have to) to Tony Blundetto to Adriana, Tony has struggled, year after year, with the unsavory responsibilities of keeping his business up and running.

This season, it may be that Tony's humanity and his loyalty as a friend are being tested more than ever before. After putting business first so many times before, Tony suddenly seems less able to make the same kinds of barbarous decisions he's had to make in the past.

Next page: "The Sopranos" pulls out its favorite bedtime story. Again