I’ll start with:

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!

I feel like I just had a joke played on me.

Dude, seriously!  The part at the end where you think your cable just went out?!  WTF!?  And how long does it take Meadow to park her car?!

WTF??!?!? I’ve tried pasting my thoughts from Word like 10 times now, and it won’t take.

I’ll have to hand type then:

OK, seriously though, here’s my take:

There’s an 80 to 90% chance of indictments coming down, Paulie has just been given the keys to the kingdom though he didn’t want it ast first.  A.J. is ####### a hot girl and is a PA on a movie, Meadow is dating a guy who may at some point hurt Tony’s businesses, and Tony after seeing A.J.‘s shrink proves that he obviously still needs therapy.

The ending was a true: “Life goes on” moment, but with one difference:  We were put into Tony’s mind for those last moments and he is jumpy, always looking around, paranoid, a man whose life will never be normal.

He goes to a local place to get some onion rings with his family, and yet he’ll never be able to fully relax.  Those two black guys by the counter, the guy with the USA hat, the dark haired guy heading into the bathroom, every time that entrance bell rang and someone walked in, Tony would watch the door with a look of dread for a half second, before he could “relax” again.  Did anyone else notice that there was only one way in and one way out of the dinner?  A true sense of dread, paranoia, and feeling trapped with only one way out.

That is Tony’s life now and forever, a harsh way to live if you ask me.

Did he die? No, but I bet he wishes he was rather than always looking over his shoulder wondering if this “is it.”

That’s my take, not the greatest ending to a great series, but a sad one.  A man who will never be redeemed and never truly be free.

From Kevin Smith this morning.

So “The Sopranos” came to a close. I will miss it. Even their worst episodes were better than most TV ever aspires to.

However, the great debate seems to be whether Tony was killed or not. Some are theorizing that, since the show is (primarily) told from Tony’s point of view, when his point of view ended (gun shot to the back of the head), the show ended - the last thing he saw being his daughter walking through the diner door.

Problem with that theory is that the last shot wasn’t Tony’s POV. The last shot was of Tony himself - no gun creeping into his coverage (a’la Phil at his SUV window). Were it meant to be his POV, and we’re meant to think he’s been capped, the last image before the hard cut to black would be of Meadow - maybe even Meadow reacting to something we can’t see… because that would be the last thing Tony saw. So, for me, Tony’s still alive. The show simply ended. Granted, there’s room for interpretation; that’s just mine.

Some folks have raved about and raged against the ambiguity with which such an engrossing piece of televised art closed. Look, I’m all for ambiguity, but it feels like they did exactly what everyone was expecting: to not go out with a bang. At all. And I respect that. But let’s be honest: layering in all those inserts of people at the diner (suspicious or otherwise) was kind of like heavy petting that ends abruptly: you think you’re gonna get to nut hard, and suddenly, her parents walk in; or worse, she loses interest. I’m not looking for absolute disclosure to their closure, but call me traditional: if you’re not gonna do something dramatic (like kill off Tony) it just would’ve been nice to, I don’t know… let Meadow sit down and do a pull back on the family (not the Family).

Still, I have always, and will always, love that show. And I’m not bitching about the ending (though, if I had any hardcore complaint it was that there was no shout-out to the ducks that kicked off this nearly decade-long love affair) because they provided one really beautiful moment that I feel summed up the entire series quite nicely: Tony visiting Uncle Junior.

“You and my Dad,” Tony said. “You two ran North Jersey.”
“We did?”
“Yeah.”
“Hm.” Beat. “That’s nice.”

I thought that brief exchange really captured the futility of not just This Thing of Ours, but ambition and accomplisment in general: you struggle and toil and put #### together from scratch, and it all seems so epic and important in the moment, and you make sacrifices, and there are casualties along the way… and ultimately, if you’re lucky, you wind up in a wheelchair, unable to remember most of what you’ve done.

#### the haters: that show’s still the best thing to come out of Jersey since Bruce and Jon Bon.

Forget all the conjecture and speculation.

David Chase chickened out. He didn’t feel like writing an ending. He wanted to make sure something was left open just in case a movie deal comes to a head.

David Chase played an entire season-long practical effing joke on all of us. He wrote the most useless, pointless, slow and ultimately nonsensical season of what was once the best show on television, and we kept watching each subsequent useless, pointless, slow episode until the very last moment… when he delivered the most useless, pointless, slow and nonsensical moment of all.

And we’re all walking around like it was so great. It wasn’t great. It was stupid.

Edie you tool the words out of my mouth before I had a chance to formulate a sentence in my head. LOL!!

I’m beginning to appreciate the ending, though I also recognize that David Chase is a sadistic bastard, but that seems to go with the territory in writing a serial drama these days. 

We know that Tony’s therapy was utimately useless - he has only limited insight, and sure won’t be changing his life.  We also know for sure that Carmela knows exactly what Tony is, and is going along for the ride.  AJ was bought off and corrupted with a Beemer and a PA job, Meadow was corrupted into being a mob lawyer.  So, Tony has managed to pull everyone else down into his hell, and he’s staying there.

In terms of the last scene, some knowledgable and sharp eyed people noted a few things.  For a moment, it looks like Tony is looking into the restaurant at himself - which I think is an indication that this final scene is not a ‘real’ scene.  The man in the jacket at the bar is a cousin of Phil’s, a trucker in the restaurant is the brother of someone Christopher killed, the Boy Scouts were in the store when Bobby was killed, and the African Americans who enter tried to kill Tony (in Season 2, I think).  To me, it looks like Chase is making the point that no matter what happens, Tony can’t escape his actions.  I find it hard to believe all of those people *just happened* to show up in the same place at the same time.  That’s how the show ends because that’s the final message.

You know when Bobby told Tony that you never hear the one coming that gets you?  Well, I think David Chase means that we, the audience, never heard the ending coming, and it got us.  I’d bet on it.

(If there’s interest, I can try and track down the sources for this info.)

I love the Internet, now I read more articles that say that whole explanation for the final scene is a load of crapola.  I give up.  :lol:

I should have suspected.  Sopranos has had a long history of unresolved story lines, why would the series finale be any different?

My impression was that it was left open ended, so that the story could continue in some form at a later time, be it a movie, or another series, or whatever.

How would they make the Sopranos into a movie?  It would just be a 2 hour episode.  What’s the point?

Gemini Ace - 16 June 2007 03:10 PM

How would they make the Sopranos into a movie?  It would just be a 2 hour episode.  What’s the point?

To finnally give it a dramatic ending, and make a butt load of money.