millions of viewers wondering if their cable had gone out is not a desirable outcome ...

IF he had wanted to effect such a thing, a black screen with concerned voices, etc. occurring some time NOT IN THE LAST 30 seconds of the FINALE would have worked better ...

I thought the final episode, minus the last scene was largely a waste of air-time ... even the "loose ends" that were touched on were not resolved ... How BAD are Silvio's wounds ... will he recover? for instance. Did Jun actually recognized Janice ... might he remember where he put his stash? and Why shouldn't Janice and the kids get Jun (who Bobby cared for well and a great deal) get the money?

For me, the biggest question of the last few episodes has been, "What happens to the NJ mob -- and all the people and families and projects -- without Tony?"

I expected Tony to get quietly capped early in the next-to-last episode and we would get to see the reverberations and adjustments and ... yes, life goes on.... and someone who's not Tony Soprano might have a ball and be successful running the New Jersey mob ... or not... or New York might move on in and take over and everyone would "adjust."

I was disappointed. I didn't want to see bullets and gore ... but the essence of drama is how events and situations CHANGE people.

I found Carmella urging AJ into film work because that's where all his little buddies he used to club with were PROFOUNDLY disturbing and out of character ... gee, maybe AJ can discover drugs and bookies and loan sharks along with the porno industry -- every mother's prayer ... And what dissatisfied mob wife wouldn't want her mob princess daughter to marry a mob prince ...

No, there was a lot in the last episode I found contrived, patched together and unsatifying ...

No one that I've read mentioned, however, my impression at the diner, that Carmella and Tony were pretending in that faux-nostalgic way people have that they were "regular folk" ... that small town girl who married the high school football player boyfriend, and it's Saturday night at the diner with the kids ... a place so "not-Carmella" with all her pretensions as to boggle ..

Oh, similarly, I might well have loved the cat and Paulie in some OTHER -- NOT THE FINALE -- episode ... I thought it was a waste of viewer loyalty and expectation ... A really GOOD finale would have been a wonderful thing ... ambiguity has been done to death, imho.

enough, I have to go back to work.

When a writer creates characters and a story line and the audience "buys in" -- well, that's as good as it gets -- the audience isn't "stupid" or unobservant ...

Fwiw, I've been firmly of "tony got capped by the guy in the member's only jacket" school and I NEVER wondered if my cable had gone out ... and that ENDING is fine with me ...

Honestly, I would have been just as fine or even "finer" if the series had ended at the end of the previous episode -- remember that scene ... big old sweaty tony in his nighshirt, secreted up in that ice blue top floor bedroom of that old house, cradling his machine gun like it was some carny stuffed animal, with only that "second string" plus Paulie downstairs, the dregs of his "team" -- dreading whatever lay behind that ethereal gray-blue door ....

Hell, I could have lived happily with a send-up "to sleep perchance to dream" final episode ...

Just too much thrown together, out of character and extraneous bullshit in the finale ... not respectful to the story, the characters or the viewers, imho.

Hell, "Bobby Ewing in the shower" might have worked better ...

and -- fuck it -- respect for his absurdly enthralled audience ...

This last mini-season has been full of Tony-debunking ... and it's amazing how many viewers express their deep sympathy/empathy and what all with this loathsome person ...

Please remember Anne Frank's line about how "all in all I still believe people are good at heart" ... before she ended up in the concentration camp.

... and, god knows, many writers get bored shitless by their successful characters (see also dozens of mystery writers saddled for life with the main character of some fluke runaway best-seller) ... so, great, so maybe it's not "disrespect" but "self-indulgence" ... he might have used broader paint strokes.

too bad "Media Whores Online" is already or still "taken" ...

I stopped feeling "sad" about Salon's slide into knee-jerk conventional wisdom and "star-fucker*" adoration (even of some people I genuinely admire, Ms. Diana Spencer not being one of them).

Joan, like Bush, seems to believe she has some sort of "mandate" and intends to "go for it" and reshape Salon in her image .. which is why, after several years of happily paying for Salon I "failed to renew" about 3 years ago.

Have no "confusion" -- this is increasingly "Joan Walsh's Salon" ...

you go girl ...

* the original rolling stone lyrics have run through my brain too often reading too much of Salon's "original material" for far too long.

Gotta say, however, that imho Laura Miller turns in a thoughtful hard day's work for her money ... 90% the rest of Salon's "feminist" content is, imho, embarrassing crap ...