Letters to the Editor
mattwa33186
Published Letters: 395 Editor's Choice: 41
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The end of days - SPOILERS
[Read the article: "The Sopranos" goes dark]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, what did we expect? The first hint was that the finale was only an hour long, just like every other episode. Whatever happened, there weren't going to be any enormous plot twists. Half the things we guessed were impossible simply due to a lack of time.
I felt the whole thing with Phil's guys agreeing to a treaty with Tony was a little contrived. A complete 180 for no apparent reason, the most bloodthirsty character left on the show is suddenly overwhelmed by fear of a crew that hadn't earned it.
Maybe he knew things we didn't, the kid who killed Phil was the most professional killer we ever saw in Jersey. No talk, no nervousness, no antics, just a guy doing his job. For the first time I can remember a guy in Tony's crew killed somebody with none of the comedy (or drama) reaching him.
2 things I disagree with Heather. First, Meadow is not in denial. Meadow is brilliant. Of course she knows what her father does, she's the one who told AJ. She just backed Tony into a corner where he couldn't argue any more, ending all objections to her career choice forever. She has a lot of her grandmother in her.
Second, and you put this out there, made me think about it differently, and then walked away from it, is the ending. I think Tony is dead. I think the guy in the bathroom killed him. This entire show, the whole jackoff fantasy we have been imersing ourselves in, has always revolved around Tony exclusively. Every scene and story arc either had Tony in it or had us wondering how it would affect him. Even Paulie's mother dying became about Tony. Silvio is for all intents and purposes gone, and all I thought when he went to the hospital was what did Sil's wife think about Tony now, was she mad that he didn't visit sooner (he did an awful lot of stuff to get his life back to normal before he went there), did she blame him for what happened. And then she just walks out without a word, leaving Tony as the only concious person in the world at that moment - where he was surely thinking about how this was affecting him. The FBI agent cashes in some pretty valuable chips (his integrity, his reputation, and his fuckbuddy) to make a difference in Tony's world because trading his family and his health didn't make one in his.
So, we can believe that Chase played the nastiest trick in the history of TV, getting 50 million people to simultaneously say "What the fuck!", when trickery has never really been his style. Or, he was saying that this was Tony's world all along, and it stopped existing the moment he left it.
It was a brilliant final scene no matter what. For the first time I really understood how stressful and fraught with peril the world seemed to Tony.
AJ was AJ, a lost little boy who wants to believe in something, fighting against the words of his grandmother in his own selfish, whiny, misguided way, but really only needing to feel important to himself. Maybe he won't save the world, but at least he has a cool car (23MPG highway, that really isn't too bad) and a hot underaged girlfriend and he gets to make bad movies. Junior shows that AJ's fight is futile, but I think also led Tony to coddle AJ once again. If you don't even get to keep your memories, family really is the only thing that matters.
This is an ending that is growing on me. One that makes you think before you can understand it. Maybe the best episode ever.
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The Sopranos Movie
[Read the article: "The Sopranos" goes dark]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Will be about Junior and Johhny. JG has already said he won't do it, so Tony is still only as alive as you want him to be.
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Plausible reasons for Tony to get whacked
[Read the article: "The Sopranos" goes dark]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]1. The New York mob didn't die with Phil. 4 other families, one of which is going to step into the power vacuum since Phil left no successor. Maybe one of them didn't think Tony should get away with taking out Phil, or they did it out of vengeance.
2. Tony is about to be indicted. This is apparently not a secret. His sessions with Melfi were not the world's best kept secret, and he was perceived by some as weak because of them. Taking him out means not having to worry about him flipping on NY - the real prize the FBI and AG are after.
3. Maybe Paulie is tired of having to take orders from someone he still sees as a kid - lots of foreshadowing of that on the Miami trip. Maybe being forced to take over the Bing was teh last straw.
4. Maybe Phil called in someone else when his guys weren't getting the job done. A contract is a contract, even if the guy who paid you is dead.
5. Tony has killed a lot of people in his time, or had them killed. Maybe one of them has a brother or father.
Tony getting whacked is not implausible, in fact it is probably more plausible than the fact that he lived as long as he did.