The Sopranos: includes potential SPOILERS!

[glx]

I was initially upset and disappointed with the final episode. I am still upset that they spent too much time on AJ, one of my lease favorite characters. I think, however, that I am coming around to really appreciate that ending and the suspense throughout the episode. The episode was much more for what it didn't show than what it did show. Leaves it up to our imaginations.

And the whole cat catching a rat in the cellar- then staring at the picture of Chris and following Paulie around- was kind of cool.

Yeah.  I sat around and thought about it last night and now that I really think about it, I'm a lot more into the ending than I initially was.  They went into the series in the middle and ended in the middle.

Also cool is the symbolism that someone said about the cat - it was Aide back to haunt them.

[glx]

Best.  Journalism.  Ever

As the screen went black in the middle of a line from the song "Don't
Stop Believin'" by Journey, it was hard not to wonder, Is Chase
brilliant for so thoroughly subverting our expectations, or... is he
just an asshole?

[RB]

I was initially upset and disappointed with the final episode. I am still upset that they spent too much time on AJ, one of my lease favorite characters. I think, however, that I am coming around to really appreciate that ending and the suspense throughout the episode. The episode was much more for what it didn't show than what it did show. Leaves it up to our imaginations.

And the whole cat catching a rat in the cellar- then staring at the picture of Chris and following Paulie around- was kind of cool.

[elgoodo]

now that the Sopranos is over, i'm gonna start watching it.

[Mr_Grieves]

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2007/06/11/sopranos/print.html

[ in retrospect, i think it was very clear that Tony and perhaps his whole
family were going to die in just a moment, but it obviously wasn't
that clear to everybody ]

[ i do think it was telling us that there are loads of loose ends
throughout our lives, and that we don't die with things all neat and
tidy. we live, maybe make a mess, then go... ]

[ the tv club guy at slate is pissed...
http://www.slate.com/id/2163797/nav/tap1/]


"The Sopranos" goes dark
David Chase gives fans the finale they deserve -- one they can argue
about for years to come.

By Heather Havrilesky

Jun. 11, 2007 | For his final trick, "Sopranos" writer/creator David
Chase made Tony Soprano disappear without fanfare. In what may go down
as the most heart-stopping final scene of a drama series in the
history of television, Tony walked into a restaurant, sat down at a
booth, ate a few onion rings, and . . . that was it. Roll credits.

As the screen went black in the middle of a line from the song "Don't
Stop Believin'" by Journey, it was hard not to wonder, Is Chase
brilliant for so thoroughly subverting our expectations, or... is he
just an asshole?

Reading the predictions leading up to this final episode, it was easy
enough to see why Chase might want to mess with our heads. There were
the expected ones: Tony would get killed, go to prison, go into
witness protection and rat out the New York family. But then there
were the theories that tied together every loose end from every
episode into one big tangled mess: The Russian mobster from Pine
Barrens was going to return, finally, seeking revenge! AJ was going to
kill his own father! Adriana secretly survived and was going to come
out of hiding! Dr. Melfi's shrink and colleague, Elliott Kupferberg,
would be revealed as the secret boss of Phil Leotardo! Everyone would
die in a massive terrorist explosion!

If we got sick of hearing about other people's speculations on how
"The Sopranos" would end in just one week, imagine how Chase has been
feeling for the past three or four years. Creating a cultural
phenomenon this huge is an experience that can change a sensitive
soul, after all, and make him act out against his fans. Look at J.D.
Salinger. His books were obscenely popular, but no one understood!
They were all jackasses, as far as he was concerned. Was Sunday
night's finale Chase's way of telling us all to fuck right off?

If so, it was fitting that the big F.U. should come from the mouth of
the show's least respectable character, self-pitying, idiot-savant
A.J., who explodes in an angry outburst after Bobby's funeral.
Disgusted with the idle Oscar-related small talk at his table, he
rages, "You people are fucked. You're living in a fucking dream!" Then
he snipes that Americans distract themselves from their country's
atrocious acts by "watching these jack-off fantasies on TV."

Later, after A.J. has been coaxed out of following his convictions
into the military and to Afghanistan, and led into temptation by his
parents with a new BMW and the promise of a cushy job working on --
what else? -- some crappy film cobbled together by a bunch of
halfwits, he sits on the couch with his high school girlfriend,
snickering at viral videos of rappin' Karl Rove and Bush dancing.
There we are, America! Sending each other YouTube videos, chuckling at
"The Daily Show," instead of rioting in the streets. Crisis of
conscience narrowly averted!

Even so, Tony may not have eaten lead, but he didn't exactly get off
easy in his final days onscreen. Chase turned up the flame on his
boiling pot until we were all sweating, showing us how nasty Tony
could be, making us hate ourselves for ever caring about him, and
demonstrating how miserable things could get for Tony if his luck
didn't hold. In these last few hours, Chase crafted each episode into
a dense, claustrophobic, melancholy work of art, each one more solemn
and heartbreaking than the last.

But on Sunday night, he returned to the show's original twisted
tragicomic roots: A.J. watches in awe and disbelief as his car goes up
in flames because he parked too close to a patch of dry leaves; Phil
Leotardo is shot, his head then crushed under the wheel of his own car
(Grandbabbies waving bye-bye from the backseat! Bystanders vomiting!)
in a scene so rich and silly it felt like "The Sopranos" parodying
itself; Tony and Carmela speak to A.J.'s shrink and Tony slips easily
into a discussion of how incredibly cruel his mother was to him. We
can see the next few decades flash before Carmela's eyes: This is
Tony's never-ending sob story, and it doesn't matter who's listening.

As we've been reminded all season, Tony is all about Tony, no matter
whom he pretends to be protecting. He's not necessarily a complete
sociopath. He's just your average self-interested, smug American. What
was Steve Perry singing in that final scene?

Working hard to get my fill,
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin' anything to roll the dice,
Just one more time
Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

(Chase really does have the last laugh, here, making us pick apart
lyrics to a Journey song, for Christsakes.)

The comedy didn't begin and end with Tony, though. One of the best
lines of the night came from darling daughter Meadow, explaining to
Tony why she decided to give up on med school in order to pursue a
career in law instead:

Meadow: You know what really turned me? Seeing the way Italians are
treated. It's like Mom says. And if we can have our rights trampled
like that, imagine what it's like for recent arrivals.

Tony: Well...

Meadow: If I hadn't seen you dragged away all those times by the FBI,
then I'd probably be a boring suburban doctor.

Of course we know that Tony wishes Meadow were a boring suburban
doctor, but the look of suppressed disbelief on his face goes beyond
that. It's almost like he wants to say, "Med, let's get real, here. I
am a criminal."

He says nothing, but it's official: Meadow's denial is as complete as
her mother's -- and her fate matches her mother's fate as well.

And speaking of matching fates, Detective Harris is made out to look
like Tony's long lost twin, working long hours, yelling at his wife,
then sleeping with a coworker, presumably the agent in Brooklyn who
told him where Leotardo was hiding. When Harris hears that Leotardo
has been shot, he cheers. The home team pulls off another win! There
is no moral high ground here - not among FBI agents, or among
therapists. Everyone is out for themselves.

Of course, some of these are scenes we've seen before: Tony sits next
to an unconscious Sil in the hospital, silently, just as he's done
with so many of his guys. Paulie is reluctant to take a top job
because he's superstitious, since the others who've filled that post
have died before him. But Tony wants him to do it, so he agrees, a
grim look darkening his face after he's surrendered to Tony's wishes.
It's not just Tony who's trapped in this life for good.

And then, we see where it all leads: Tony finally takes a trip to see
Uncle Junior, who doesn't even recognize him. When Tony reminds June
that he once ran the North Jersey mob with Tony's father, the old man
replies apathetically, "That's nice." As Tony strides away, like he
can't get out fast enough, we recognize that look on his face: It's
all a big nothing. June may as well have told him, "This thing of
ours, it doesn't amount to shit in the end, so you'd better enjoy
yourself while you can."

Afterwards, as Carmela and A.J. settle into the booth with him, we can
see that Tony once again feels his luck is changing. In response to
A.J.'s premature complaints about his new job, Tony tries to joke
around to keep from busting his jaw.

Tony: It's an entry-level job. Now buck up!

A.J.: Focus on the good times.

Tony: Don't be sarcastic.

A.J.: Isn't that what you said one time? Try to remember the times
that were good?

Tony: I did?

A.J.: Yeah.

Tony: Well, it's true, I guess.

Even as Tony agrees, once again, that each day is a gift, this last
scene may have been a gag gift sent special delivery to the loyal
Sopranos audience. Chase played us like a grand piano, dragging out
every suspenseful trick and visual reference in the book. Of course we
thought Tony and his family were going to die in a hail of gunfire.
There was the surly-looking guy, glancing at Tony, slipping into the
bathroom, sure to emerge seconds later with a gun, "Godfather"-style.
There was the blasting music, the close-up on Meadow's clutch as she
tried in vain to parallel park her stupid car, over and over again,
and then almost got run over crossing the street. This was it!
Something big was going to happen!

But does Chase really want to go out like that, subverting a few
decades of mob clichis? When "The Sopranos" has always transcended its
genre with smart, lovely moments that went to the heart of suburban
American angst, was it really fair to end in a flurry of inside jokes
and a great big head fake?

Instead of taking Tony down out of karmic retribution, Chase got his
karmic revenge on us for caring too much about this "jack-off fantasy
on TV" in the first place.

And yet... is it possible that we're witnessing Tony's last moment
alive? What did Bobby say to him on the boat, in the first episode of
this last run? "You probably don't even hear it when it happens,
right?" Maybe the abrupt ending is Tony getting shot, without even
realizing it?

That's probably wishful thinking, like hoping that there really is a
Santa Claus simply because it would make the holidays much more
interesting. We've never seen things from Tony's perspective, so why
would we start now? And wouldn't we at least know who killed him?

No. Tony's story simply ended abruptly. Since we didn't have to a
chance to say it before, we'll say it now: Goodbye, Tony. Looks like
you won't go to prison (not yet, anyway), and you won't rat, and you
won't finally get your come-uppance, dying in a bloody heap. You'll be
immortalized eating onion rings, chuckling, focusing on the good
times.

Just like the rest of us. Going to hell in a red leather booth, with
Journey playing in the background.

[skwirrlking]

heard interesting take - abrupt ending = 3rd party viewer getting whacked.

[Mr_Grieves]

Meadow:  The state can crush the individual.
Tony:  New Jersey?

The finale made the front page of the Times... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/11/arts/television/11sopr.html

June 11, 2007
The TV Watch
One Last Family Gathering: You Eat, You Talk, It’s Over
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

There was no good ending, so “The Sopranos” left off without one.

The abrupt finale last night was almost like a prank, a mischievous dig at viewers who had agonized over how television’s most addictive series would come to a close. The suspense of the final scene in the diner was almost cruel. And certainly that last bit of song — “Don’t Stop Believing,” by Journey — had to be a joke.

After eight years and so much frenzied anticipation, any ending would have been a letdown. Viewers are conditioned to seek a resolution, happy or sad, so it was almost fitting that this HBO series that was neither comedy nor tragedy should defy expectations in its very last moments. In that way at least “The Sopranos” delivered a perfectly imperfect finish.

The ending was a reminder of what made David Chase’s series about New Jersey mobsters so distinctive from the beginning. “The Sopranos” was the most unusual and realistic family drama in television history. There have been many good Mafia movies and one legendary trilogy, but fans had to look to literature to find comparable depictions of the complexity and inconsistencies of American family life. It was sometimes hard to bear the encomiums — the saga of the New Jersey mob family has been likened to Cheever, Dickens and Shakespeare; scripts were pored over as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. But its saving grace was that the series was always many different things at once.

The decline and fall of the Sopranos — Tony; his wife, Carmela; and the rest — served as a parable of America in decline, yet week to week the series was also just a gangsters’ tale, with lots of graphic sex, gruesome violence and most of all a sense of humor.

In last night’s episode Meadow Soprano, trying to explain to her father why she wants to be a civil rights lawyer, said earnestly, “The state can crush the individual.” Tony replied, “New Jersey?”

And, as last night’s episode showed one last time, a troubled marriage struggles on, devastating intergenerational conflicts scab over but never quite heal, and power comes and goes. Some things endure, but nothing is permanent in American culture, or in the Soprano family.

Tony remains alive, still in business, his wife and children are safe, but he resumes his criminal enterprise surrounded by ever-darker shadows of prosaic impeding doom: an indictment and most likely a trial.

From the very beginning of the final season, there were myriad hints and red herrings suggesting completely different conclusions. It wasn’t hard to suspect that a cornered Tony would be turned and enter a witness protection program. And that seemed to be where he was headed when he went to the F.B.I. agent named Harris whom he had mocked and dismissed for so many years, and offered information about two Muslim acquaintances, saying, “Can I bank the result in good will?”

Soon both Tony and the F.B.I. learned that Phil Leotardo, a rival mob boss, planned to take down the Sopranos and rub Tony out. Last night when Tony asked for a secret meeting with Harris to seek his help in locating Phil, he was sent away. Later Harris changed his mind, leaking to Tony Phil’s whereabouts, which he learned during postcoital pillow talk with a female agent.

And that breach of F.B.I. ethics led to one of the series’s most revolting death scenes. Phil, who had gotten out of the S.U.V. in which he was riding with his wife and their two grandchildren, was shot dead by a gunman. His wife, horrified, leapt out of the car with the shift still on drive. As the vehicle drifted forward with the two babies strapped in their car seats, the scene seemed headed toward a tragic tableau of innocent children destroyed — the collateral damage of organized crime.

Instead it veered into sick comedy: the wheels slowly crushed Phil’s head with a juicy, crunching sound that made a bystander vomit.

Tony’s troublesome son, A. J., seemed headed for disaster all season, and instead ended pretty much where he began: a spoiled, materialistic layabout. A. J.’s obsession this season with being jilted, as well as with the Iraq war, terrorism and the heedless materialism in American society, led him to a suicide attempt; after a ziti-laden buffet that followed his Uncle Bobby’s funeral in last night’s episode, A. J. lashed out at guests cheerfully discussing “American Idol” and “Dreamgirls.” He quoted a line from Yeats’s famous poem, “The Second Coming,” though he pronounced the poet’s name as if it rhymed with Pete’s.

Tony even made his peace with Uncle Junior, so senile he didn’t recognize his nephew or remember that he had shot him.

Yet Tony’s rift with his longtime psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi — so sudden it seemed hastily added in the show’s final hours to make room for a last-minute dramatic resolution — was not mended. Instead Tony went to see A. J.’s new psychiatrist, an attractive woman, and, perhaps reflexively, began to tell his own family history: loveless mother and miserable childhood. Carmela, at his side, scoffed and sent him dagger looks.

But Mr. Chase’s last joke was on his audience, not his characters. Tony, Carmela and A. J. are gathered at a diner in a rare moment of family content that cried out for violent interruption. A shifty-looking man walks in and eyes them from the counter, then, in a move echoing a scene from “The Godfather,” ominously enters the men’s room. Outside, Meadow is delayed, trying to parallel park, then begins walking toward the restaurant.

Nothing happens. Credits. What?

Mr. Chase wanted to end his tale without melodrama or even a splashy denouement. He succeeded. 

[Wolf]

Thought it was fantastic.  Appreciated the helter-skelter ending.

[Pinky]

I've read about 5,000 different potential spoilers at this point.

Here's my amended theory:

- Phil dies

- The foreshadowing about terror and something happening to the kids is both BS

- Tony either steps down or is forced to step down.  Paulie takes over.  Doubt the feds are involved.

- Done.

DING, DING, DING....WE HAVE A WINNER!

[CeeDub]

And rabbitch swallows.

C'mon, guy, drop the attitiude.  We ain't about that.  keep it in the box

[rabbitrabbit]

Journey sucks

[jennymayla]

Now that I have had a little while to get over the shock, I think it was great.  Totally unexpected and the ending was nerve-wracking but brilliant.  Just another American family meeting up for dinner at the local diner/ice cream shop.  Maybe.

So many little things throughout the show were such good red herrings and made me think things would go differently than they did.  And I love that the Fed was as much a scumbag as the rest of them.  And I love that the cat was so totally Adrianna coming back to haunt.  And I love that AJ is working on a Danny Baldwin movie.  And Hunter!  Oh to see Hunter again!  Made me laugh out loud.  So many good nuggets like that.

Still, I screamed at the black screen and got chills when there was no music over the credits.

Don't stop believin'

[glx]

Yeah, it's movie time.  But they could've at least whacked the cat.

$5 on a prequel in 5-7 years.

[Mr_Grieves]

Yeah, it's movie time.  But they could've at least whacked the cat.

[glx]

I so disagree.  Chase has a way of doing the opposite of what everyone expects.  I thought the suspense that was built throughout the entire episode was the show.  And it probably should've been called the cat show.  And awesome choice for a closing song, totally out of left field.  Not Springsteen, like half the world expected.

Notice there was no music with the credits, though?  That's 180' from normal.

I know they aren't really shopping for a movie, but come on...

[NON]

Not Springsteen, like half the world expected.

Also not even remotely satisfying, like half the world expected.

[Mr_Grieves]

I so disagree.  Chase has a way of doing the opposite of what everyone expects.  I thought the suspense that was built throughout the entire episode was the show.  And it probably should've been called the cat show.  And awesome choice for a closing song, totally out of left field.  Not Springsteen, like half the world expected.

[NON]

*YAWN*

[glx]

That ending may have forever ruined that series for me...  Though the whacking of Phil was awesome.

[Mr_Grieves]

Awesome ending!  And we all know Holstens has the best onion rings around, though I don't think they got a chance to find that out.

[jc_insomniac]

you can say that again!

[size=8]OMGWTFBBQ

[CeeDub]

[size=8]OMGWTFBBQ

[Pinky]

I
CANNOT
EVEN.






Help me.

unreal!

[jennymayla]

I
CANNOT
EVEN.






Help me.

[glx]

[ closes eyes, places thumb and middle finger on temples ]

Okay, I'm getting a strong sense of the restaurant guy, Artie
whatsisname, finally snapping, sort of out of the blue, a result of
accumulated humiliations and general bitterness.

No way.  If anyone's going to lose it and kill someone, it's going to be Janice.