Letters to the Editor
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The reason Tony's lawyer was looking at the montor
One word: Tits
I thought the first time through everyone could be coming for him too. But after watching 3 times, the suspense is no longer there and you pick up details like that. There was a hot naked stripper running down the hallway cuz the Bing is back in business.
Tony didn't die. Everyone looking for a reason for Tony to be dead is wrong. We are dead. We no longer get to see, but they go on. As Carmela said last week "Like Paris goes on, when we aren't there". Our participation has ended. I wonder what Paris is doing. Not that Paris.
It is also funny about AJ talking about bullshit jackoff fantasies. Then he gets to go work for the porn studio.
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How about this?
Most of us cannot condone Tony Soprano's actions, yet we wanted bloodshed on a Shakespearan scale? And we try to justify our bloodlust the way AJ gripes about the world?
Who's the sociopathic immoralist now?
David Chase has us by the onions, peeling layer by layer until our eyes well with tears of sadness, frustration, and disgust.
Kudos David. I want to see a Northern Exposure - Sopranos cross over one of these days. It'll be an existential angst ridden hootenanny!
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Haven't read all the letters here
Sorry if someone already said this, but Tony went down. This is obvious from the details. There were at least three people in the diner that wanted him dead. The guy at the bar is credited as Nikki Leotardo. He was in the first part of season six. He is Phil's nephew.
The trucker was the brother of a man who was robbed by Cwistofuh in season two. Stolen DVD players. The trucker had to identify the body. The black guys at the end were the ones who tried to pop Tony but only managed to clip him in the ear, I think in season three.
The ending was brilliant. Chase is a genius. Of COURSE Tony was going down but thought he was in the clear. Hence the song, Don't Stop Believing. He never stopped believing, but he had another thing coming. Then the scene goes black for about 5 seconds. No sound. We are to contemplate not *if* he got taken out, but only *who* took him out.
Make no mistake, he was going down.
Then the credits rolled. No more music. End of story.
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The Sopranos Ended the Only Way It Could End
What's to argue about? The last episode of The Sopranos ended the only way it could end: With Tony Soprano doomed to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life, trusting no one, suspicious of everything and everyone, and awaiting the next tragic act.
Chase's final episode played out as a great tease so it's easy to see how fams want to read more into it. However, the one thing they keep forgetting is this: Tony Soprano is just not that complex. He never was. So it's befitting that the "end" for Tony Soprano is that it never really ends for him.
Soprano's life is always going to be about his inability to control some impending doom coming out of some place or another as a result of his own dysfunctional choices: his son's car's catalytic converter, the daughter's clutch on her car, the suspicious looking guy at the counter, the dudes who walk into the restaurant, the truce meeting with the other wise guys, the possibility of indictment, etc.
No. Giving Tony Soprano an easy way out through a hail of bullets or a car bomb would have been the cheap way out. The lights go out on the final Scene as Soprano sits trapped in his own special concoction of control, fear, and dread. It never ends.
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The Guy At The Counter
For the record, he was credited as "Man In Members Only Jacket", not as Nicky Leotardo.
The fact that you're assuming that everyone in the restaurant is a potential assassin is exactly what David Chase intended.
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sunny miller re: Schrödinger's cat is about possibilities & probabilities
I think it relates to the idea that Tony's existence is a constant state of the possibility of being dead. If he is not whacked in the present moment, it might very well happen in the next. (Same is true, in varying degrees for all of us!) In the blackout moment, which we can't observe, we don't know what the outcome is. He might be dead. If he's not dead, he might be dead 5 minutes later. As far as meaning goes, it is as Livia's famous last words stated "A Big Nothing."
Apologies if this has already been addressed. -
Here's The Way I'd End The Sopranos (Northern Exposure ending)
The real David Chase finale - according to me.
Tony's placed under the witness protection program after ratting out both his and New York's crew. He moves to Cicely, Alaska (home of Northern Exposure, of which David Chase produced).
There, he comes to know these quirky neighbors of the Tundra. He impregnates Shelly Vincouer, whacking her husband Holling along the way. He also starts an Indian Casino with Maurice Minniefield while driving the Native American population out, even Marilyn. Because Marilyn's gone, Dr. Joel Fleischman approaches Tony and demands compensation. Since Joel is from New York, Tony cuts him some slack and makes Shelly work at Joel's office.
Meanwhile, Tony is still depressed and befriends Chris Stevens. The two criminals ride choppers all day and talk about Carl Jung and Frederich Nietzche. Talking about the collective unconscious and the Ubermenche soothes Tony only a bit until...
...he meets Maggie O'Connell, a hardline feminist. Tony falls head over heels for her and the two become somewhat an ironic item. Everything's peachy until Maggie's boyfriend curse rears its spell again and Tony, while drilling ice for mammoth steaks, gets obliterated when a flying saucer crashes right on top of his head.
The End.
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Back to the Supernatural --- The Mob visits the Twighlight Zone
Heather Havrilesky asks, "Is Chase brilliant for so thoroughly subverting our expectations, or ... is he just an asshole?"
I'd like to think that Chase didn't give up like Lynch did with "Twin Peaks" but put in effort and thought behind this episode for himself and not just to be contrary to audience expectations or give us a blank slate to write our own ending.
So, ignoring the Chase commentary about Bush and the War on Terror (FBI acting immoral, etc) and other tidbits (Chase waves goodbye to the audience: " A.J.: Isn't that what you said one time? Try to remember the times that were good?), here is my take on the final episode:Tony is the star of this morality play and it is dying. Like a real star, his universe begins to collapse. His extended family members are killed or dead (June is effectively dead), his captains are comotose or informants, NY is wounded with Phil's death.
[Note the double Decker tour bus passing announcing, "Little Italy used to be 40 square blocks and now it just one row of shops," and Phil's henchman talking to Phil in Little Italy and then when he hangs up, he's run out of room and sees a wall of Chinese faces--because Chinatown has overrun Little Italy.]
So, at the end, they go to a place we've never seen or heard of before. As Tony sits alone, Carmela, Meadow, and AJ are all satellites unable to escape the gravity of Tony and one by one they fall back into him after almost escaping. Carmela, still as contemptuous of Tony and his life when they split, (see her face as Tony usurps his son's therapist for himself) loses her moral battle and gives into the wealth (Meadows success is measured in money not sacrifice) and (false sense of) comfort Tony provides. And there she sits down.
AJ for all his attempts, active and passive, to not be like Tony, rejects the Army and "Arabic" culture (his view of a noble goal), and becomes his father: in therapy, coming downstairs in his robe, and bought off with new BMW and blond girlfriend, soon, to run a nightclub bought with mob money. And there he sits down.
And Meadow, the least like all of them, trying to fit in (parallel parking --- which is an homage to a classic movie scene which was itself copied in the Untouchables designed to create tension), decides not to help babies, not to help the poor but to make lots of money defending criminals. She is her mother, deluding in thinking that Mobsters are just Italian-Americans being unfairly hounded by the government. And, just before we cut to black, she's being sucked in.
The last satellite.And what black hole is she being sucked into? When I saw the last scene, it looked familiar to me. The American banality of it all (complete with a horrible Journey song ... I can't believe Chase wants us to be reading into these crappy lyrics. Although, it's not coincidence that he ended to series on the line, "Don't Stop.") gives a sense of safety but one by one, in comes someone who you think will be the one to shoot Tony and kill him. The trucker, a disgruntled victim of Mob abuse? The man who comes in with AJ, a paid him man? The two black youths, ready to rob the place and "accidentally" kill Tony? The safety of Tony is an illusion because everywhere, no matter how "safe" it looks, he faces danger. What did the cafe, where we've never been in before, remind me of? A cafe from any number of "Twilight Zone" episodes, which theme song happened to be used in last night's episode.
Tony's universe collapsed like a dying star and sucked his family into his hell; a dingy dinner with danger in every form.
Like Heather said in her column today, "Goodbye, Tony. Looks like you won't go to prison (not yet, anyway), and you won't rat, and you won't finally get your comeuppance, dying in a bloody heap. You'll be immortalized eating onion rings, chuckling, focusing on the good times."
"Just like the rest of us. Going to hell in a red leather booth, with Journey playing in the background. "
But of course, I could be wrong. So, when does Big Love start up again?