Bada bing!

It's hard not to greet the new 13-episode season of "The Sopranos" with anxiety. How could this HBO phenomenon possibly approach the brilliance of its freshman year, a year in which creator David Chase covered more dramatic territory than most TV shows do in a decade? A year whose captivating themes - depression, family politics, infanticide, baked ziti - seemed to leave nowhere else to go? Can it be that, like so many pop-cultural returns to the well, "The Sopranos" will return to the air as a shadow of its former self, a thing lacking in bada bing, the "Phantom Menace" of classic TV?

Fear not. The first three new episodes of "The Sopranos," which is back on Sunday at 9 p.m., suggest that this will be a very strong season indeed, that Chase has kept his vision unspoiled despite the torrents of praise, hyperbole, and Emmy nomination that have rained down on his show. Yes, the exhilarating sense of discovery that electrified the first season of "The Sopranos" is gone; the first cut is always the deepest. But last season's revelatory buzz is replaced by a certainty that this show has got legs, that the writing is as comic and edgy as ever, and that Chase has a few new monsters up his sleeve - most notably Tony's sister, Janice "Pavarti" Soprano, who may rival Nancy Marchand's Livia in the scheming department.

Chase opens the season with a quick nod to the show's success by setting a wry montage to Frank Sinatra's "It Was a Very Good Year." The images reacquaint us with the characters - Tony, still cheating on Carmela; daughter Meadow learning to drive; Livia hiding behind an oxygen mask; Dr. Melfi seeing clients within the cardboard walls of a cheap motel. Without giving plot twists away, I will say that a rage-filled Tony, the street boss now that Uncle Junior is in jail, has a mantra: "She's dead to me." Melfi, who has a therapist of her own (played by Peter Bogdanovich in Episode 3), wants nothing to do with Tony, despite his need for her. Christopher is running a new wing of the business, a brokerage firm. And Livia continues to spew repulsive self-pity from her hospital bed. "It would kill him to see me now," she bleats about her late husband, probably more right than she realizes.

You wouldn't ever expect to find Tony Soprano in the same room with a Birkenstock-wearing, miso-soup-drinking Seattle hippie. But such are the realistic incongruities that "The Sopranos" manages to pull off. Aida Turturro, cousin of actors John and Nicholas, fits right in as sister Janice, a vegetarian pothead who moved to the West Coast 20 years ago and renamed herself Pavarti. ("She's a cheese now?" asks Carmela's mother, whom we meet briefly.) No pushover, Janice is back for some triangular power struggles with her mother and brother, and to create a place for herself in Livia's will. Oh, and to pitch a self-help video that she'll call either "Lady Kerouac" or "Packin' for the Highway to a Woman's Self-Esteem."

Is the sly comedy in "The Sopranos" - some of which is easy to miss on a single viewing - the magical key to its popularity, the reason it has engendered a passionate TV cult in only 13 episodes? The very names (Pussy Bompensiero, Paulie Walnuts) are a hoot, and some of the props (Junior's black-rimmed glasses, Silvio's hair) are irresistibly kitschy. The nods to mob movies are clever (Sunday, the prize goes to an "Analyze This" allusion), and the playful one-liners are delicious, such as when our own city of Boston is indelibly dubbed "Scranton, with clams."

Or is the "Sopranos" magic the way that raw, opera-size emotions are set in the grit of New Jersey suburban realism and deli capicole? Maybe we are all Tony and Livia Soprano, brimming over with murderous fantasies that they can act out for us. Or is the magic the way each episode feels like a little movie, with no artificial dramatic peaks to set up commercial breaks? Or is it the Scorsesean use of music, from the tough-guy opening theme, A3's "Woke Up This Morning," to tonight's skipping "Smoke on the Water" CD and next week's hysterical insertion of a Paul Simon song? Or is it the pitch-perfect acting, from Marchand's relentless Livia to James Gandolfini's sympathetic-against-all-odds Tony? Or is it the show's slippery morality, which has you rooting for Tony and Carmela and compartmentalizing as much as they do?

That is the question critics and fans have been teasing out endlessly since the show premiered last January. And that is exactly what makes "The Sopranos" so exciting: It cannot be easily summarized, or reduced to a formula. Unlike most TV drama, cable or network, "The Sopranos" is so vivid and unpredictable and organic, it defies easy explanation. To say that Tony's mother tried to have him whacked, for instance, is to do injustice to the complexity of the first season, which had Livia exerting her will through Junior but never overtly calling for Tony's death.

"The Sopranos" is a show for viewers who want an alternative to TV dramas that too often ask us to accept oversimplification and feel-good-ism. Even high-quality series like "Once and Again" and "The Practice" tend to cap each episode with some kind of resolution, to leave us feeling the possibility of redemption or character nobility. "The Sopranos" is not only comfortable with character flaws and messiness, it thrives on them. The redemption comes in the form of knockout scripts and killer acting.

Sunday night's episode is a little choppy compared with last season, but next week, "The Sopranos" hits its stride once again as the familial and criminal battle lines become clearer. And by the time an ultraviolent ex-convict named Richie Aprile arrives in Episode 3, dressed in tacky, dated leisure clothing, the show is, as we would hope from "The Sopranos," back with a vengeance.