Personally, I always thought Paulie was one of the ones who ratted on Tony. True, he's ridiculously superstitious -- the cat walking up and staring as he suns himself was classic. But I think the reason Paulie was so hesitant to take the deal is because he's already flipped.

He was always the character I loved to hate the most. How appropriate would it be, then, if he were the one to survive and thrive after all the dust settled. Or maybe that Russian will find him and get his revenge. I hope, I hope, I hope.

That will be remembered as the worst series finale in tv history. Murky, sloppy and sophmoric in its conclusion. I would expect a highschool drama student to find that finish clever. It certainly can't compare with the brilliant Six Feet Under finale (a series which, by the way, held up much better than the Sopranos). An open ending was more in order for this series, but this was inexcusably bad. The real entertainment is hearing people try to convince themselves that it was good.

The first season was magnificent and the second season was very good...after that it was gassed.

How much time elapsed in last night's show? The narrative seemed to move along at one pace, however, the seasons seemed to change from scene to scene. Poorly, poorly done. I'm suprised HBO didn't insist on a better conclusion.

This is one of the best quick-response critical essays I've ever read: bright, funny, and profound. Heather Havrilesky is a national treasure in the making. Thanks, and may you never lose your joyful clairity.

Everyone will have an opinion about the finale -- some will love it, some will hate it, and others will be compelled to tell us why they don't care. My two cents is that the finale remained true to the core premise of the show: most of us live the lives we are born with, are shaped by the good and bad influences of our parents, make decisions and live with the consequences, and get up and go to work every day. Life goes on.

What do Paris Hilton and the Sopranos have in common? Gosh! How about the obsessed attention of almost everyone? I guess having never seen this show or Paris on ET I am unqualified to comment much but it seems that we Americans have little but pop culture to bind us – even to our friends and family. My suggestion: check a book out from the library and read it to your lover. Write a poem and send it to family member. Pick up your guitar and sing a song to your kids after dinner (that you ate together). Go help a neighbor mend a fence. Run for office. Just do SOMETHING other than let pop culture invade our commons.

Just a few other things to kick around...

- Meadow was unable to parallel park. Might it indicate that she has few parallels with her family?

- At the diner they (Tony, Carmella, AJ) all ate their onion rings the exact same way. A strong visual indicator that they're all really just the same?

- Did the cat represent Tony's "9 lives" -- the idea that he will continue to "go on, and on, and ooooooon (tm - Journey)" living just as he does now?

I haven't watched the Sopranos since season 2; haven't had time, more than anything else. But I've kept tabs on it via online writeups.

Didn't see the finale, either, but when I read the description here the first thing I thought was that Tony probably had a massive heart attack right after the end. Let's face it; all that rich food is deadly, particularly on a man carrying as much belly-fat as Tony.

His high-stress lifestyle is just the icing on the cake.

Pick up your guitar and sing a song to your kids after dinner (that you ate together). Go help a neighbor mend a fence.

rlwesty, where do you live? The Little House on the Prairie?

Picture this:

Two people see the same auto accident, but from opposite sides of the street. One sees the action move left to right; the other, right to left. Backgrounds are different, as are light and shadows. No wonder no two witnesses see the same event the same way!

But Havrilesky and I...and everyone else...saw the last Soprano's from the same vantage point-- in front of a TV. So how is it that she alone saw some double meaning in nearly every scene? Or am I the only one who missed what Havrilesky said SHE saw!

I've seen every Soprano's episode, live or taped, from the beginning. It's a story about life in the Mafia as viewed and experienced by one member American family and all their relatives and associates. It's been funny, macabre, grisly, explicit, real. If there's anything Tony Soprano & Co ISN't it's sophisticated and clever. But Havrilesky would make it so by 'seeing' more in the last episode than was there. In other words, she didn't report on the last episode. She interpreted it...and clearly her interpretation is her's alone!

If there were a hundred such 'reports' there'd be a hundred different points of view, i.e., how the interpreters each saw the episode with their own eyes while looking thru a prism of their own unique psychoanalytical wishes and hopes. We see what we want to see most often...and especially if we have time to sift thru what we saw for chunks of what we personally believe was missing.

Havrilesky told her own story, possibly because she is a frustrated screenwriter, and possibly because she wanted to prove just how unreliable a witness can be.

I saw Tony fading into history eating onion rings. That's typical and completely unsophisticated...and that's been the real point of the Soprano's from the beginning. There...but for association with the Mafia...are you and I

Reading these articles on the unanticipated ending of the Sopranos reminds me of the vast effort religious scholars expend to make sense of the Bible, when, in fact, it is full of contradictions. Where logic and meaning fail us, we become mechanics of contorting the contradictory and the vapid into a desperate call of sense and meaning, when there is none.

After reading the hundreds of predictions on how this series would end, there was the general consensus, that the vast majority of viewers wanted some form of closure. They wanted meaning, they wanted justice, they wanted irony, they wanted something, and David Chase gave them nothing.

To quote meaningful critique of the superficiality of the American TV viewer using the words of AJ, suggesting that his words are the words of conscience, is fatuous. He, like his sister are shown to be morons, time and again. That she is inspired to take the moral and legal high road because of the way Italian-Americans are treated is key to understanding the utter emptiness and absurdity of the Series in general.

David Chase played his audience perfectly. We can either hate him for failing to provide us with the closure and moral certitude than many of us believe we deserve after investing almost eight years slavishly on this Series or we applaud his artistic arrogance for playing us as fools all long. Everytime we sought something uplifting and meaningful, we could count on him to deliver neither.

In either case, we are played.

Nothing in this show had meaning. From Tony's momentous "I get it" in the Nevada desert, to the cat peering and purring at the picture of Christopher. Tony's therapy - meaningless. Tony's love of nature - meaningless. Carmela's crappy spec house - meaningless. The whole mafia thing, whether it be in Brooklyn or N. Jersey - meaningless. AJ's absurd self-centered personality contortions - meaningless.

Melfi was the ridiculous character of conscience and she, finally, had the good sense to throw Tony out of her office. Looking back on it, we, the viewers, should have done the same and ended the Series on its penultimate episode.

Just like Tony supported a lavish life style by stealing, David Chase has created his own fortune, by playing his HBO audience with a show that, ultimately, is about red herrings.

We sought meaning, which shows that, at best, we are naive. David Chase, the newly crowned God of high TV art, has shown us fools that we were looking for meaning and substance in all the wrong places. Life is violent, vulgar, meaningless, and we are all idiots to place our faith in a mere TV show. I guess many of us wanted a "story" and Chase gave us the randomicity of life. Oh well...

In gratitude to this vast, naive, audience, maybe David Chase can give the money he made on this Series to something like Amnesty International or the ACLU ---oops, that would be an act of meaning.