Letters to the Editor
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it was indeed a great end.
really...how else could he have done it? the more i think about it the better the end seems.
the whole point of the show (imo) was that tony and his family are americans, just like us, the viewer. we are overfed, self centered, anxious, confused, sympathetic, unsympathetic, etc etc. we like to see ourselves as good and justified....but are we really? that is debatable. nobody ever accused chase of not having a dark outlook.
the poster who pointed out that a blood relative of phil leotardo (son?) was the guy sitting at the counter and then going to the bathroom godfather style confirmed this for me. tony is shot in the back of the head as his daughter walks into the diner. although i love the ambiguity and originality of the ending it really does seem like we the audience are seeing david chase's depiction of what it feels like to be shot in the head....for the first time the victim (rather than the voyeur) of the horrendous violence we have seen depicted in this show. chase is saying "admit it...you got off on the violence even as you cringed...now this is what it is like when you are the target". welcome to "the big nothing" or "the big sleep" if you prefer that.
as coppola has said he linked oranges to death when don corleone is gunned down at the fruit stand...and chase is nodding to this.
it was the ultimate answer to the terrible six feet under "here's how every single main character's life ends in cheesy sentimental detail" ending. in real existence there is no epilogue at the end...just blackness.
freakin brilliant. not exactly cheery....but hard to argue with.
here is another thing: what do people make of the scene of tony walking into the diner and "seeing himself" sitting in the booth already???? just like the end of 2001. chase is a big kubrick fan indeed.
and as for all the "get a life" posters....are you kidding? who needs to get a life if you took the time to post on this thread about a show you hate in the first place? if people can write dissertations about literature and drama of the past we can spend a little time dissecting our taste in entertainment/art.
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"What did the disappointed fans want?"
More than some deep meaning provided by a Journey song!
It said nothing. That show was all style over substance and that it ended with a trite "arty" finish to a Journey song is pretty fitting.
I don't care if was left open ended, but it said NOTHING. It began as a clever show and ended ponderous and meandering. I think it speaks volumes that Chase ended it with a cheap parlor trick. ..to a Journey song (did I mention that?).
I remember being in a sculture class in college. We had to present one of our assignments. there was a broken chair in the corner of the room. One of the girls in class (who showed up every day in Rickie Lee Jones drag) went on and on about the symbolizm and how it moved her, and the composition...Everyone stood there looking at each other wondering who "created" it. It was a broken chair in the corner of the room. Its funny to see people do the same thing over this show.
Robert Altman could take big, complex messes like Nashville and A Wedding and in the final moments summed them up in breathtaking way. Not everything was neatly wrapped up and concluded, but turned the entire thing into a pretty profound statement. The Sopranos finale? All style over substance.
Oooh, maybe tony got shot. Oooh maybe he didn't..and that Journey song. To quote Livia, "It's all a big nothing."
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The cat is Schrödinger's...
... Tony is both alive and dead at the same time.
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Moral accountability?
I got the feeling from the entire episode that there are is no culpability or accountability for evil. I read this fantastic book called Adults Only, which is a very provocative and engaging book, which proves that the human being has a moral imperative which is absolute. It is a great read! it can be ordered from www.thebookforadults.com or at Barnes and Noble.
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JeffM23, it would be hard for the "black guys from Season 1" to come back
Considering that one of them took a bullet to the forehead. But maybe that guy on TV figured it was the same guys, since they all look alike anyway.
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Schroedinger's Cat
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!
Schrödinger's cat is a famous illustration of the principle in quantum theory of superposition, proposed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. Schrödinger's cat serves to demonstrate the apparent conflict between what quantum theory tells us is true about the nature and behavior of matter on the microscopic level and what we observe to be true about the nature and behavior of matter on the macroscopic level.
The cat reinforces the layered way the Sopranos can be viewed, both at face value and as metaphor.
the measurement system (the observer) is entangled with the experiment.
These threads prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
the cat must itself be in a superposition of dead and alive states
I can't figure if this is a reference to Tony being alive, but spiritually dead, or if this has something to do with the fact that Tony sees himself sitting at the table in the restaurant. Help me out here!
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It's all a big nothing
The ending was apt. It ended as it began and there's no mystery. None. The guy went to take a leak. Meadow is as vacuous as ever, choosing a dix figure salary over helping the oppressed, AJ won't save the world, but work at a porn studio, Carmela will still choose money over truth and Tony will end up in prison. Self-centered, consuming Americans go on with their lives amid horror and tragedy. Nothing new here.
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Worst final episode ever.
David Chase took a shit on our heads and calls it a hat. Give a mediocre hack some good press in the New York Times and on NPR and he thinks his shit is golden. Episode 86 proves it was all James Gandolfini. David, you blew it. Well, I should have guessed, there hasn't been a funny malapropism in a Sopranos script since Captain Teebs.
The only Sopranos related question that remains is where can I get a refund? Oh wait, I don't pay for cable. God bless bit torrents. So long, suckers!!!