• by Jack Feuer , July 18, 2007

An ending. A beginning.

Bathos.

That's it. That's all the column you get this week.

Don't know what I'm talking about?

Good. That means you are in a frenzy to figure it out. You are permanently wedded, like a sneer on the face of Victoria Beckham, to my bylined brand. You will neglect your children, forgo bathing, forget your job, in your desperate search to discover what I'm talking about. But you will get no more from me.

Can't wait to read my column again next week, now, right?

Sure, you do. I know you do, because David Chase and J.J. Abrams did the same thing with their gangster saga and forthcoming film, respectively, and their "to hell with the audience" shtick got more buzz boost than Britney's breasts.

The national Sopranos obsession is just as virulent now that Chase has whacked his show--with an incomprehensible blackout--than when it was alive. The beyond-obscure trailer for Abram's new movie that ran before Transformers has become the newest Internet mega-storm, saturating cyberspace with agitated electronic conversation about, well, nothing.

And in the obscene union of entertainment and marketing, it is inevitable that this kind of reptilian "viral marketing" will show up in every movie campaign and media plan on the planet for the next year.

We may be on the cusp of a new communications era. One in which the mantra is "tease, don't please." No more consumer control. Now, we're going to treat them all like co-dependent bitches, which is kind of retro.

So I had to chime in on the most arrogantly dismissive ending in TV history and the beginning of what looks like a new low in movie marketing--and that's saying a lot.

The Sopranos was a great show once. I was really excited about Star Trek: Academy when I heard Abrams was going to do it. But that was before he demonstrated that he's never seen a plot he felt obligated to finish. (Do you really think he is ever going to tell you what really happened on that damn island?)

Bathos: "a ludicrous descent from the exalted or lofty to the commonplace." And that's all you're going to get in this column, even though as a reader, I owe you an ending.

Like Abram's mystery film, however, you can log on to a Web site, dropdead.com, where you will find some stills of me mooning you.