The Sopranos -- SPOILERY!

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The Adventure Starts Here!
Okay, gang: For those of you who've seen the Sopranos up to the series finale (an hour ago), let's discuss!

Yoda and I watched it here, with home theater speaker sound. I spent the entire hour being very nervous any time Tony or family member stepped into the open anywhere.

I thought the ending was almost a second or two too early. It was *so* abrupt, and the black screen was a few seconds too long ... because I honestly thought the cable went out. I like the idea of that kind of abrupt ending in this case, but honestly, another second or two, or perhaps a second or two LESS of the black screen, and I might not have started to pick up the remote to see if the cable had been zapped at a really bad moment. DUH.

I won't discuss any more of the actual plot till someone else weighs in. Heck, I'm still not even sure what I thought about it. After a sixth season that was mostly disappointing and way too slow with way too little actual forward-motion plot, the past two or three episodes (with Christopher M's death onward) have felt as if everything was rushing headlong into chaos.

I'm not sure why the pacing suddenly changed totally from too lulling to almost too fast, but the season felt very uneven to me. The past few episodes barely saved it for me.



I always loved that the pacing changed from season to season and episode to episode. What is this, "24"? It's "The Sopranos", and when you look at the over eighty hours of storytelling, it's damn brilliant. I think.


To anybody expecting "closure" from the finale of "The Sopranos" I'd have to ask, have you not seen the previous eighty-five episodes? David Chase has never been about closure and clean, standard endings of plot points. Whether or not the various strands moved forward or backward or disappeared was never important. Thank God, I say.


I loved the existential and almost dream-like ending in the diner (and I adored that abrupt black-out: very European art housey, brought a smile to my face, and ended the scene and the series on a sustained note of happiness and dread). Whether there was a gunman there about to strike is not the point, of course. The fact that that possibility will always hang over him and his family is the point, which was illustrated perfectly and with appropriate tension. And not just an actual gunman, but the Sopranos will always be beset by very real and sometimes tangible threats due to the criminality of Tony's life. After all is said and done, we see that his family, his real family (Carmella, Meadow and A.J.) truly are the only thing he really cares about. Even those he trusts with his life and business like Christopher, Bobby and Silvio are ultimately interchangeable and expendable. But not his daughter, his son, his wife. And while Dr. Melfi has correctly concluded their therapy has gone as far as it can go, it wasn't a complete failure, either. No, he's no less of a sociopath and still has no compunction about killing or crime (she was kidding herself all these years if she thought she was going to change any of that), but the scenes where he makes peace with both Janice and Junior shows he has indeed changed, and for the better. He'll always be a dangerous Mafioso, but his familial relationships are now less toxic and there's a real chance he will be able to consciously break the unhealthy cycle his Mother started. THAT is closure, closure on a character level, and it was done artfully by Chase over the long arc of the series as a whole. Whether or not we should care that a sociopath has made only that one part of his life a little better is the great pull of "The Sopranos".


As for viewers who wonder about Russians in the woods and lovesick, hunky pony-tailed Italians and if the cub scouts or the trucker or the guy in the bathroom are about to whack Tony, well, you've missed the point entirely.
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The Adventure Starts Here!
I think Chase left us with only two possible endings (and of course, it's interesting that he found a way to leave us with two endings in one):

1. Tony's life goes on, same-old, same-old. This is life for the Sopranos, always has been and always will be. Looking over the shoulder, never entirely relaxing. Indictments hanging over one's head.

2. The screen went black abruptly, with no sound or music, because that was the moment Tony got whacked. I rewatched the episode last night and that really seems like a possibility given the way the whole last three minutes were cut. Especially given his revisiting the conversation with Bobby where they ponder whether you ever see a hit coming.

However, previous plot points just don't get us there. He's taken out Phil, so why would Butch have him whacked now? I opt for #1.

As for pacing, sorry, Holden, but I'm not going to declare Chase a cinematic storytelling god just yet. This past hunk of episodes since they restarted were not all paced well. I'm not complaining that they weren't paced the SAME WAY. I'm complaining that they weren't paced PROPERLY given the story arc. Chase chose to dwell on things that were at best distracting in some episodes. Other episodes felt like filler. And, in a series that was rapidly winding down to the final nine or ten episodes, there really shouldn't have been filler at that point.

The fact that Chase sped up the pace in the past two or three episodes only drove home the point that episodes earlier in the season were too meandering and/or slow. We're going to have to disagree on this one.



Here's a good piece from Salon.com's Heather Havrilesky on the finale...



"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 @sshole?

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 fu*k 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 fu*ked. You're living in a fu*king 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 ***** 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 clichés? 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.


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



Right after seeing it, I was fairly certain that we'd just been shown, for five excruciating minutes, what it was like to be Tony Soprano. Everyone he sees could be an assassin, and every random glance could foreshadow an attempt on his life. Of course, in any other show, it'd just be a scene about a guy eating onion rings and a girl who can't parallel park to save her life. In The Sopranos...in a finale where everyone was wondering whether or not Tony would live...it becomes a pressure cooker. Somehow, Chase pulled off the whole Hitchcock "bomb under the table" thing...but without showing us any bomb.

Now, whether or not I especially like the ending, I'm not sure. It was gutsy, and I think seeing the world through Tony's eyes for a couple of minutes was interesting and inventive. But I think it was just a shade gimmicky, too, and I can't really fault anyone for wanting more obvious closure after six seasons.

Anyway, this is all much ado about nothing. No one would be flipping out if the screen just faded to black with music in the background, per usual. Everyone would assume that Tony lives on (for the time being), and life continues for the Sopranos, with all the usual threats to his life and freedom. He may make it, or he may not, but he's survived a particularly dangerous chapter of his life. This is all perfectly self-evident.

Of course, by cutting to black instead of fading to it, and by having the music so loud and prominent, and by showing us random little shots of meaningless bystanders, everyone's all in a tizzy, because the camera angles indicate that something was about to go down. Ultimately, though, the episode just shows a very pedestrian ending in a very unusual way, presumably to make a point about the kind of life Tony leads. Think about that last scene: pretty easy to understand why he had panic attacks now, isn't it?



Another thought I had: it seems that all the talk about Melfi's therapy sharpening his skills as a conman was right on. In the end, AJ has taken a step towards his father's world, working for an associate in hopes that Tony will finance a club for him at some point. Meadow's convinced that her father has been unfairly targetted by law enforcement (we know better), and Carmela is going to continue turning a blind eye. Meanwhile, nobody knows he killed Christopher, and he's even got an FBI agent tipping him off now...and getting all excited when he kills Phil.

Clearly, Tony's sharper than ever. I think it's fair to say that he only survived his dispute with Phil because of Agent Harris' tip, and that therapy had helped him hone his abilities to the point at which he was able to obtain Harris' loyalties. In the end, Jennifer Melfi did what she had originally set out to do: she saved Tony's life.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Great review, Holden -- thanks for posting it here. And I largely agree with it. When I rewatched it this morning, that abrupt cut is exactly as Yoda has laid it out: It says something that a subtle fadeout (with appropriate end music) wouldn't have done. It makes us wonder. Just a little. Just enough.

The past several episodes (from about when Moltisanti dies) were marvelous, and I was thrilled to see David Chase as writer and director of last night's episode. I knew we were in for something special, and good ending or bad, the episode itself delivered. It had that great humor it's known for (the stuff with Paulie and the cat was hilarious, and Tony's malapropism of "miffled" instead of "miffed" was great). It had fun plot twists (Phil's head under the car was hilariously gruesome). It had perfect pacing. It was true to the characters.

I'm thinking today that the last three episodes saved the second half of the season from itself. Season six (the whole thing on both sides of the hiatus) started and ended strong, but felt a bit muddy in the middle.

I'm increasingly glad Chase didn't end it definitively one way or the other. The fadeout to black would have been a mistake. Tony dying in our view would have been a mistake. Tony being dragged off in handcuffs would have been a mistake.

He did it right.



The Adventure Starts Here!
Side Note: I have read a BUNCH of posts, threads, and articles that all mention that everyone thinks their cable went out with the blackout at the end. And my parents thought the same thing, although my dad thought an Emergency Broadcast System thunderstorm warning was about to come on the screen.

Too funny.



Well, that's certainly a clever way to do away with a character. Have lots of people become very afraid that they're going to miss the ending! Too memorable.

I don't watch the show, but I'm intrigued now.



Side Note: I have read a BUNCH of posts, threads, and articles that all mention that everyone thinks their cable went out with the blackout at the end. And my parents thought the same thing, although my dad thought an Emergency Broadcast System thunderstorm warning was about to come on the screen.
I actually laughed out loud when it cut to black. I took perverse pleasure in the fact that so many people were going to a) hate it and b) think their cable went out. It was a perfect Chaseian moment, in that sense, and I love that it ends the entire series on a sustained note of dread and happiness.

It was the second biggest laugh of the show for me. THE biggest was the frozen expression on Tony's face when A.J. tells him "We have to break our dependence on foreign oil". I almost shot popcorn out of my nose I was laughing so hard.



The Adventure Starts Here!
I'm rewatching it now and I keep laughing at all the stuff with Paulie and the cat. He's just priceless when he gets going.

Long ago, he had a great scene where he talked about shoelaces getting wet in men's rooms. What a riot he is.

This last episode had so much campy humor in it. Frankly, I wish Chase had written all the episodes this season. I think it would have been tons better.



Well, David Chase has spoken. There's nothing terribly insightful about it, but Chase confirms that he wasn't just messing with people, and it appears that a lot of time was taken to decide how to end the series. He does shed a bit of light on a few characters' motivations and development, though.



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Beware The Probe!
I dunno...
I never watched the show before (more of a Shield fan) and after hearing people complain about it for days now and knowing what they did to end it I think I'd feel cheated.

I was hoping to watch the finale but missed it and now I'm glad I did.
Seems like they didn't know how to end it so just ended it and figured it'd make good controversay.

I always thought they would have had Tony:
A) die
or
B) go to prison
Something deserving of a mobster anyway.

I really hope when Shield ends Vic Macky (as much as I love the character) gets what he really deserves.
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The shirt Tony wears in the diner in the final scene looks like the shirt he wore in The Sopranos pilot episode. As well as the shirt he wore when he was shot by Junior.

In the pilot episode when he wore the shirt he had a anxiety attack

When he wore the shirt in season 6, he was shot by uncle junior

Did he have a anxiety attack or did he get shot?

Answer

Tony kept looking around, maybe being paranoid. He triggered an anxiety attack off.

Because what did he say to Melfi when she asks what happens when u have an attack?

He said "I Black Out"



The ending is said to offer no closure or catharsis for viewers.[1] Instead, it is left open ended allowing for the viewer's own interpretation. David Chase has often noted the influence of European film, particularly Fellini, on his work, and such an abrupt refusal of closure and redemptive humanism is typical of some European art films, particularly the work of the Dardenne brothers.[citation needed]

The family may go on living their lives normally, as symbolized by the use of Journey's song "Don't Stop Believin'": "And the movie never ends/It goes on and on and on," or the family may have been killed, as symbolized by the abrupt ending. The final scene is described as:

"Tony is the first to arrive at Holsten's for a family dinner. He sits in a booth and plays a song on the jukebox, watching the door. Carmela enters and joins him, asking about his meeting with Mink. He tells her Carlo's gonna testify and she takes the news with a sigh. AJ arrives next, complaining about the more mundane tasks of his job but quotes old advice from his father: "Try to remember the times that were good." Meanwhile, Meadow struggles to parallel park outside. Customers come and go - a shady looking guy who's been sitting at the counter enters the restroom. Finally parking the car, Meadow runs inside to join her family, just in time for dinner. [2]"



We've gone on holiday by mistake
I wish he hadn't confirmed it. Some things are best left unsaid.

Tony went to manage the CIA though, I saw it in a film.
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David Chase confirmed Tony’s fate, after all these years.


https://nypost.com/2020/06/11/sopran...-final-scene/?
I doubt Chase inadvertently leaked this. Probably just wants to sell his book.
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“Sugar is the most important thing in my life…”
I agree, he would definitely have made them omit it if it wasn't intentional.



The Adventure Starts Here!
David Chase confirmed Tony’s fate, after all these years.


https://nypost.com/2020/06/11/sopran...-final-scene/?
I just did a rewatch of the entire series about a month or so ago. Watching them all back to back, close together, changes my perspective a little bit. That ending (the abruptness) definitely leans toward a "death scene" to me this time through. Despite the fact that this article from the NY Post calls it a FADE to black and says that there is music playing. (Both points are wrong.)