Terrific post, jennifer rexroat. You nailed it.

I'd go a step further with one of your ideas. Among the song choices Tony flipped through on the tabletop jukebox, these titles were prominently featured:

Somewhere in the Night

Turn, Turn, Turn

Only the Strong Survive

Victim of Love

I've Gotta Be Me

A Lonely Place

This Magic Moment

I'm Alive

Who Will You Run To

Magic Man

Don't Stop Believing

Any Way You Want It

Anyone who thinks David Chase is vague, sloppy, lazy or disrespectful to the characters and his audience just isn't looking too deep.

There's a very inspired video on youtube (done back in April) that mashes up a finale Six Feet Under-style. With edited clips pulled from previous Sopranos episodes, everybody dies to the mournful strains of "Breathe." It's an interesting alternative imagining for those who feel shortchanged by the actual finale. (It's called "The Sopranos Six Feet Under Ending.")

Loved the ending. Made me laugh out loud. I didn’t think the cable went out, and I don't think it's a set-up for a movie. I knew it was David Chase. Who references the slouching off to Bethlehem to be reborn line by that poet guy Yeets? AJ watching his vehicle burn and being reborn by the experience of a wild and lively fire? That scene with Paulie sunning himself at Satriale’s as the cat sits down on the sidewalk was framed so beautifully – it looked like a moving painting. Vermeer in Jersey. Chase has always worked intelligently on multiple levels. It's why I love The Sopranos.

Find the reaction of the American public a little daunting, though. Nobody can handle ambiguity anymore? The Unknown makes people feel shortchanged? Now we don't just want "closure" we demand it -- or else. Is this what Reality Television hath wrought upon our cognition?

Hey here's a weird question...

Exactly what loose ends were left at the end of the show?

Let's take a look whose stories got resolved:

Phil Leotardo: Resolved with the Wheel of an SUV.

Christopher: Resolved by Tony's own hand.

Bobby Baccala: Resolved and he didn’t see it coming.

Janice: Is the grieving widow, but seems to have mended her relationship with her brother, and hasn’t given up on her own schemes.

Little Carmine: Still in the game, still working, still respected in the New York Mob.

AJ: Working his way up the Film Business Ladder, happy and content with a hot blonde on his arm.

Meadow: Finds here true calling, Mob Lawyer, it's even in the family business. She's even found true love, or a reasonable approximation there of.

Paulie: Gets a big Cash Cow promotion and recognition as Tony's new Right hand.

Sil: In Bed in a Coma, doesn't look good, but it looks like he's still loved.

Uncle Junior: Lost in his own mind in a state mental hospital.

Carmela: In love with Tony despite it all, with multiple properties in her name to make sure she can support herself if the unthinkable ever happens.

Tony: He's still the head of the Jersey Mob, The Feds are still on his tail, but he's shown himself to be the shrewdest nut on the hill. (Note Tony uses Prepaid Cells while in hiding, so he can give orders and get updates without being traced. Phil uses public payphones meaning all conversations are one-way and he's exposed. Likewise Tony uses the government's fear of terrorists to get info from the Feds on his real threat's where abouts and plans. Tony was always the guy with the edge on this one.)

The Cat: Has found a home, even if he drives Paulie nuts.

The Russian:...O.k. that's the one untied knot to keep us humble before God.

So aside from a high tension ending (which really is caused by your anticipating an obvious ending, and really is that why you watched the Sopranos?) what was left hanging?

My first rumination about the finale is that the initial scene of the first episode of "The Sopranos" began at a random moment in time, so why couldn't/shouldn't the final scene of the ultimate episode of "The Sopranos" end at a random moment in time? Just as there was an arbitrariness to David Chase's decision regarding when we, the audience, started observing the Soprano family in action, Chase decided when we stopped watching them with the same arbitrariness. This may be wildly frustrating and/or dissatisfying to many people, but I think that the larger point is that the Sopranos "existed" before we came to know them, and they will continue to "exist" after we ceased to know them. Just as there does not have to be any logic or rationality to the beginning of a television series--I have never seen this level of outcry over what we do not know about television characters BEFORE we begin our voyerism into their lives--there does not have to be any logic or rationality to the end of a television series and what we do not know about its characters upon its conclusion, either. David Chase has repeatedly said that he firmly rejects the traditional arc of the mob drama, and we have known from his choices in prior episodes that Chase defies television and film convention at every turn. The finale is merely his latest example--the show ends at a random point, we stop watching, and the world of the Soprano family mirrors the reality of human life: once we end a relationship, sometimes we never find out what happens to people we have long and deeply cared about.

That said, there is a significant piece of foreshadowing that I have not seen others comment about anywhere else. Did anyone else pause their DVR's and closely read the other song selections on the jukebox? Two are most glaringly crucial to me: "Only the Strong Survive," and "I'm Alive." This important foreshadowing, coupled with Chase's interview comments today in which he now does not firmly rule out a future movie but states his concerns about what its plotline might be (Chase has considered "going back to a day in 2006 that you didn't see, but then (Tony's children) would be older than they were then and you would know that Tony doesn't get killed. It's got problems...If something appeared that really made a good 'Sopranos' movie and you could invest in it and everybody else wanted to do it, I would do it. I never say never." msnbc.com) clearly suggest that Tony lives on and we just stopped watching and knowing him. After all, what would a "Sopranos" movie be without its protagonist?

The beauty and originality of "The Sopranos" was not in its violent action, but in its illustration of the show's characters living their daily, often mundane, but always fiercely human lives. The finale closed with the show's most central theme: the importance of one's family, which, in the end, is all that really matters. There was no need (or, I submit, desire on Chase's part) to end the series with violent theatrics, because the contribution of the show has always been its celebration of ordinary life and humanity even in the midst of adversity and chaos. Chase's use of "Don't Stop Believin'" to underscore the show's final scene holds the key to the castle here: despite the scene's allusion to otherwise tragic red herrings and its symbolic tributes to classic works of film and literature, Chase overtly asks us to continue our belief that, even in the midst of omnipresent threats of death and destruction, the life of the Sopranos, like our own lives, "goes on and on and on and on..." We are all "Made in America," in the shadow of the American dream, and like the Sopranos, our fates are all filled with endless possibility; the decision of who we become is ours to believe in, ours to fight for, but ultimately ours alone.