After watching the rebroadcast a couple times, then ashamedly a third and once more for good measure, I'm sticking to my position: Tony Soprano's fate is obvious.

Knowing the familial history he shares with mental illness and diagnosed Early Onset Alzheimers as Kevin Finnerty, he comes face-to-face with a "fate worse than death" during his visit with Uncle Jun. It doesn't matter if he lives, flips or goes to jail; in spite of power, there will come a day when he doesn't remember his family.

Quick note, chalk this up to AJ's ignorance. It would be pointless for him to learn Arabic if he wants to be an Afghani Liaison. Instead, he should learn Farsi and/or Pashto. And, yes, there's red-white-and-blue in every gas station shot.

In a way the viewer has rarely if ever been slapped by the television, the diner scene - awkward from the start; Americana, not Italian - is an admonishment only if the show is perceived as a series of more narcissistic plot points. "Everybody wants a thrill" covered by a shot of Members Only Jacket Man; Chase is laying it on thick. The appropriate level of suspense is applied according to the viewer. The anxiety ridden final episodes have routinely featured characters asking variations of "is this it?"

Tony's aware that he's slipping when he uncharacteristically grabs AJ's arm in affirmation, having already 'embarrassed' himself in front of his wife when speaking frankly for the first time about his mother to AJ's therapist. Its vaguely reminiscent denizens crosscut with the absurdity of his offspring's parking adventure, Holstens serves simply as a location in Tony Soprano's continuing descent toward the Twilight Zone of dementia. End of story.

eligit -

Great leap of imagination, and very plausible interpretation. If you're right, and the diner is a microcosm representing America, then we know where all the terrorist trails are leading. Too ghastly to portray as anything but metaphor, that final obliterating blackness might be the blast that tens of thousands of people never hear. Truly horrifying conclusion, when a hundred wrong decisions catch up to us and culminate another national tragedy.

Ending The Sopranos with the family in an ice cream parlor as their life goes on is a fine choice. Too bad David Chase couldn't commit to that choice. Instead, he spent the last minutes of his majestic creation manipulating the audience with cinema techniques of foreboding. So overdone it screamed gimmick, gimmick.

I think Chase trivialized what he'd accomplished as an artist by ending his show with a rather banal comment about the audience's expectations, rather than risk making a clear artistic choice.

If the ending to The Sopranos was - Meadow gets a parking ticket, it would have been more satisfying and more emotional.

well it's all been said one way or the other.

i am sure chase got EXACTLY the response he wanted....confusion, anger, joy, introspection, hate, dismissal...the full gamut. no "one ending" could have possibly been as provocative and ballsy. would the goodfellas witness protection ending really have been more satisfying? the dead daughter/dead soul godfather ending? the ultraviolent death al pacino scarface ending? the "somewhere in between" casino ending?? no. none of those would do as well as this vaguely david lynch/2001 type ending.

so here is just ONE crucial plot point: who the hell was the shady guy who went to the can?? if he was not directly related to phil we cannot really assume tony's death and we are left floundering in a sea of ambiguity. since tony has clearly set things straight with new york the only mob guy with a clear motive would be a blood relative of phil.

which is fine. and how the hell would the guy happen to know where they were going to dinner anyway? so even if he had somehow followed tony there without his knowledge...how would he know to hide a gun in the bathroom a la michael corleone? it's not really possible.

but this leads to another thought:

the final scene, unlike everything up to that point in the series (with the exception of the dreams) depicted some sort of non reality (from the reality of the show wise asses).

i could be reaching here but i think the weird edit that introduces the scene...as WELL as the impossibly coincidental nature of the people in the restaurant (collected from various episodes) , indicates at the very least heightened reality...and maybe a flight into PURE metaphor. the boy scouts, the jukebox...it all seems like a symbol of...america itself. as tony is.

so you could easily see the scene with it's comfortably banal family dialog set against the ultimately american backdrop of the diner but with a number of potentially ominous people around as a microcosm of tony's every day existence. this is how it has always been....and always will be...until the final blackout, whether or not that occurs as meadow walks into the diner...or 20+ years down the line. we the viewer are left to be as confused, deluded, frustrated, angry, and introspective as tony has been for much of the show.

either way it is NOT a cop out...a simple random (or not quite random) assassination of tony shown in typical sopranos gruesome realistic style WOULD have been the cop out...a lack of imagination. the weird existential ending was the perfect capper to this most brilliant of american television shows.

bravo.

and to all the naysayers.....sorry you missed out. it was a great thing.

Again this show had so many layers that it's hard to dissect all that was touched upon. I think Chase took this whole fascination with a fictional story and made a huge statement about our values and the world in which we live.We as audience members want it to be a show about the mob and criminal justice which was secondary to its central theme : a family in disorder . It was a search for truth and meaning in a life that had been dictated to them through the generations. Sins of the Father. How do we change our lives unless we can admit the truth and take responsibility for the consequences of sin.? The family contract was one of deceit and denial and whenever that was violated chaos reigned. AJ was deemed a mental case for trying to escape that agreement and only when he was brought back into the lie could harmony be restored. His attempt to make sense of this world by actually participating in something outside his own narcissist desires was quickly abandoned with the offer of producing a cheesy horror flick. A rather heavy handed indictment of a culture in which a majority of it's citizens could not find Iraq on a map yet could give you a blow by blow account of Paris Hilton's latest travail. Meadow's quest for social justice looks a lot more attractive attached to a 170k salary. And Carmella's attempts to create the perfect nuclear family is constantly thwarted by the ugly face of reality so she will continue to design spec homes to perpetuate that dream.

As for Tony-I can't stop thinking that there was a sense of peace amid the anxiety of that final scene. As he scoped out that diner and all the possible assassins- I don't believe it was a question of if, but who and when. The palatable lie of the indictment was chosen over the truth of his own death. The illusion of family stability was continued amidst the threat of death which swirled around them. The overall frustration dramatically is that none of the characters significantly changed. They maintained that contract of deceit and denial until the very end. Perhaps Tony knew the outcome and instead of a blaze of glory he chose to die in the comfort of that illusory world. In this culture of 24 hours of news and where complex issues are reduced to 15 second sound bytes, I thought it only fitting that the story ends in black and silence. No resolution, no change. On to the next shiny object.

The Greek dramatists would have been appalled at the lack of climax and a proper denouement. It might not have been the most satisfying end, but it was probably the truest