Letters to the Editor
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loved it
I loved it. And it ended exactly the way I hoped it would - not neatly, not tidily. The guilty don't always suffer; most of the time they just sort of go on with their lives. Meadow becomes Carmella. Janice becomes Livia (masterful makeup job on her!), and A.J. looks like some day he might yet become dad.
As an aside, I spent half of last night's episode writing a letter to Cary in my head: Dear Cary, is it allowable to murder people who tap their fingers during tense moments on TV? No? Well... darn.
The culprit was my mother, who also interjected her hopes and fears out loud, periodically, throughout the night: "Now is when it happens, Paulie's going to do it... look, this is going to be an ambush... it's this guy, the guy walking through the door of the diner, no, this guy."
Tap tap tap, tappity tap tap tap. Geez, mom, would you relax already?
No, Tony lives, going out in a blaze of... banality, grease-scented air, to the strains of a song I saw performed live when I was 13. Made in America, indeed.
Chase makes us feel it, during those last seconds, what it's like to be Tony. Is it this guy? How about these two guys? How about those onion rings. We even get to watch him pick the show's closing music, hmm, hmm, hmm... perfect.
When the screen went dark, I laughed out loud. Meanwhile Mom was saying, "Did we lose the satellite?" No, mom, Chase is just a bastard. How I love him.
On top of all this, Phil's death - pure fan-service.
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DOM1878, you can't possibly not be joking, but I'll take the bait anyway
The definition of Idiot is the person who A) reads an article about the last episode of a show if they haven't yet seen it and still plan to. And B) goes to a letters section where people discuss said episode.
And then C) invites him/herself into such ridicule by complaining about it.
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Pragmatically Speaking
Certainly Chase is aware that if you kill off all of your main characters, there can never be a movie or a follow up special.
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Happy with the ending
Heather did an incredible job with her article about the final episode. Best one I have read of her's since I started on this site, which was I think the 4th to the last episode. Way to end with a bang, Heather!!
Someone posted about the cat symbolizing Tony's conciousness. I think that was good, but I also think it was symbolic for getting on with life. That is why it liked Christopher so much, he was finding other things in life that made him happy, he tried to focus on good times. Paulie didn't, his superstition kept him from enjoying himself. That cat eventually came up to him and looked at him, Like it was approving of him. I think there is more to the cat, I really hope to see a lot of theories on the cat.
The ending was perfect. It showed how Tony has to live with that kind of paranoia, the "Ya gotta wonder what's next" way of life (when Tony was in Florida with Paulie and Sil told him that Jackie Aprile was post-humorously taking the fall for Tony's first victim). The 2 people Tony brought in to insulate himself from possible self incriminating acts (Bobby and Chris) are now gone, so Tony is now wide open, just when Carlo flips and he is most likely going to be indicted.
Of course the fact that we as viewers get so caught up in a "Jack off TV show" and freak out when the show ends like that just proves exactly what AJ was talking about at Bobby's funeral.
A couple questions remain and will never be answered -
Who was that guy Butchie was with when he was on his cell with Phil? The guy looked like he might be FBI. Does that explain Butchie's change of heart with Phil's plans to take over the NJ crew? Is he flipping? What about that recorded call with George and Tony about setting up the meeting? Was the meeting recorded too?
But all that would be for a whole new season, if there was to be one. But like Tony, we are now left to wonder, what's next?
"You can take 2007 and give it back to the Indians!" - Paulie
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An ambiguous ending... Who'da thunk?
Impression #1: my cable went out (Heidi, anyone?)
Impression #2: The show didn't "end", it just stopped. I thought that would be appropriate.
Thinking about it, tho, I'm leaning towards the diner killing. Much foreshadowing of it, in retrospect. But more, as someone above (sunny miller? I want to give credit...) noted, the character at the counter, that went into the bedroom, was apparently identified as Phil's nephew Nicky Leotardo. Also, some guy on TV this morning claimed that the black guys were the same guys that tried to kill Tony in season 1 (I cannot confirm). Meadow's otherwise-unexplained parking problem delays her entrance just enough to avoid getting caught in the crossfire (the timimg would be right).
Or maybe that was all just Hitchcockian manipulation, one last "Pine Barrens Russian" from the friendly folks at Brad Grey productions...
Also, who above said the cat was Schroedinger's? Brilliant insight...
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Revenge? This makes sense
"Chase got his karmic revenge on us for caring too much about this "jack-off fantasy on TV" in the first place."
So... he got his revenge on us for making him incredibly rich by purchasing HBO so that we could watch his show. I was thinking of watching this new show they have out - the one about the surfer. I think I'm going to skip it, though. I'm not really interested in having my mind messed with by somebody who doesn't care enough about the audience to make hard decisions, but would rather play games. It's funny, because I usually limit my television viewing to history, science, and cooking shows. I don't usually get involved in series. Now I know why.
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Rats. -- I meant "bathroom", not bedroom.
it's Monday...
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AJ = Your average Salon reader
Heather's quote: "Disgusted with the idle Oscar-related small talk at his table, he rages, 'You people are fucked. You're living in a fucking dream!' Then he snipes that Americans distract themselves from their country's atrocious acts by 'watching these jack-off fantasies on TV.'"
That sums it up. Sanctimonious people who lecture that we are all doomed, that we are destroying the world, and that we all spend too much time focusing on trivial matters while Rome burns. And they they get back to commenting about the ending of a TV show.