Letters to the Editor
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They got whacked, all right
Yes, I believe the family got whacked while sitting in the diner, eating onion rings. Several shady characters coming and going..you see a guy at the counter who goes into the men's room..shades of the Godfather!
They're whacked when the screen goes black...guess Chase thought we'd seen enough blood and gore, so you'd just had to imagine this scene. After Phil is shot and the SUV rolls over his head, that's the last gore we're getting.
Maybe Paulie and Janice continue to run the mob. Will Sil recover? Who will take Phil's place?
We'll have our imagination to fall back on.
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What ambiguity?
Yes, the final scene was tense and mysterious, but, ultimately, I think it was pretty clear. The end is near for Tony, Paulie, et. al. Carlo is ratting them out, and they're all looking at lengthy trials and jail time.
But David Chase, it seems, couldn't tolerate seeing Tony arrested or killed. Thus, he ends his show on what turns out to be a typical American scene -- a family out at a restaurant eating onion rings. (Nice homage to The Godfather, too).
I hear Chase is developing a new series for Animal Planet called "Baciagalupa: Mafia Cat."
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Tony is dead and so is the series
After leaving so many loose ends and abandoning the original plot line, Chase subtly whacks Tony but doesn't have the juevos to do it himself, so he leaves it up to the viewer. But the scenario had been described more than once. You never see it/know it, hear it coming...like losing your cable signal...
Maybe Chase decided to loosen control on the series as he didn't want/have time to write every episode, so the hollywood types came in and had fun without worrying about actual plot lines, loose ends, consistency or reality of the overall scenario of a family of men who bond together through a blood oath and murder. These writers tended toward hype and Hollywood bs which has been the downfall of so many really good series.
So little time, so much detail, so many loose ends, everybody's getting tired so let's just end this thing somehow.
Kind of a pity, a great series slowly stripped of it's uniqueness and power through a series of scripts that remove the detail, destroy the original focus until all you have left is the somewhat blank star of a fuzzy kitty.
Of course ending a series is one of the hardest things to do...I have seen so few with a really good satisfying ending...
Still, with all it's faults, a great series and all I can say is it could have been greater, but I still enjoyed what was done. Like everyone else, I'd conveniently forget things and forgive things so that I could go on watching the series for the good stuff it had in it. Looking for more good stuff in the future from HBO.
tchii
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Absolutely Perfect
I thought the episode and ending were perfect. From a commerical perspective it will be easy to continue the story line when JG recovers from the Tony fatigue he is suffering from now. But, even if another minute of film is never shot this episode provided us plenty for us to ponder.
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a brilliant ending...
Well, no one saw that coming. No Coppola-esque hail of gunfire, though it certainly was hinted at. I watched this episode here in Canada wearing headphones (WHOSE brainless idea was it to air The Sopranos in prime time - though my 9 and 11 year olds have pretty much 'heard and seen it all', hearing some guy's head getting crushed is pretty over the top at 8:30 PM - not to mention the marital strife of having your favorite TV show come on as the kids are going to bed)...
That JOURNEY song has always been a huge guilty pleasure of mine - like the 'theme from Rocky' or some unutterably bad 'rock anthem' (Tony has rocked out to this stuff before, and don't Bon Jovi come from Joisey as well??). I kept turning the volume louder and louder, totally digging the song as the suspense ramped up to arena-rock levels - then, darkness... WOW!
It's the suburban cliche that is truly 'Made in America." "Family is everything." "Love conquers all." The Sopranos - the real family, not the mobsters, are focusing on the good times. Tony will ride out the witness protection thing, AJ and Meadow will turn out OK and "it goes on, and on, and on, and on..."
I still have that dorky song in my head!
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I was shocked for a minute...
I was shocked and unhappy with the series finale for about one minute. Then, it began to grow on me. This was a great way for Tony and Co. to go out and a perfect ending to Chase’s 8 year insistence that we never know what the fuck is going on. Why would he give us clear answers? Why would he make sure that everything is spelled out for us? The answer is…he wouldn’t.
I believe that if David Chase could reach through the television and shake us and speak to us personally, he would say, “Look, you fools. The answer is right in front of you. If you need it explained, then you’re not the kind of audience that I’m catering to anyway.”
Here is what we know:
First, there is an eight to ninety percent chance that Tony is going to be indicted, which means, certainly, that there will be a trial. Although Tony’s lawyer confidently tells him that trials can be won, history is not on Tony’s side here. Countless guys have gone off to prison already on the show. Think of Johnny Sack’s last days…not pretty. My thinking is this, if the Feds are going to the trouble to indict him on this so-called bullshit gun charge, they have enough to take down our hero. So, prison time is a realistic fate for Tony.
Second, the final scene at the diner was filled with an unbelievable amount of tension and angst. Every time the door opened, someone walked by, the guy at the counter looked at Tony, the camera focused on Meadow as she tried in vein to park her car, I, and I am sure countless other fans, was wracked with fear for my favorite TV family. Did the guy at the counter go to the bathroom to retrieve the gun from behind the old-fashioned toilet and come back out in a sound vacuum reminiscent of the subway train, a la The Godfather, and then shoot Tony in the face and neck? Maybe. The thing is, that is not the point. The point is, if it isn’t this guy, it will be the next one. Tony will forever live with this angst that almost gave me a heart attack in a three minute scene. He will forever have to look over his shoulder and wonder if the Feds, or an assassin, are coming to call on him. He will never, with or without Dr. Melfi, be at peace.
Right now it really sucks to be Tony. Thankfully, though, Chase lets us off the hook. We do not have to see our hero go down, we do not have to watch as Tony’s family is murdered in front of his face or he is hauled off to prison. As AJ says, we can remember the good times, remember why we loved this family and this show, and hope that Television can deliver something that can come close to the emotion that The Sopranos has elicited from fans for the past eight years. Thanks for the ride, David Chase, and thanks for keeping Tony alive in my mind, even if the fade to black meant something other than what I want to believe.
*my one complaint…I wish we could have seen Hesh one more time. He’s one of my all time favorite characters from the series. Oh, well. I can’t have everything.