Well, in about five minutes I'm going to be tired of people complaining bout the ending. It was brilliant. Like a Coltrane sax solo, the series could have gone on forever and never become boring, but at some point, you have to take the horn out of your mouth - and in so doing, perfect your piece. In this case, I'm still applauding, and don't feel the slightest bit "messed with."

Things did not continue "as usual." The world of the Sopranos went through any number of climactic changes in the last episode. The mob has basically crumbled, to the delight of agent Harris, and much as it has in reality: it's a much smaller organization scraping by on the few remaining rackets. And whether it's Little Italy or Afghanistan, thery just don't have the stomach for the warfare that ultimately sustains the winners of their profession.

And by the end, instead of being played off by Dylan, Bocelli, or the Stones near the kitchen door of Vesuvio, the Sopranos are popping onion rings and watching the front door in a cheap diner while Journey plays. It's about as well-drawn a closing frame as you could ask for.

Paulie redeems himself (as I predicted!), and is rewarded, signing a max extension at the end of his career, assuring he'll retire with the franchise. Tony's rage and depression may not be "cured", but clearly are no longer in control of his life - in the face of threats, loss, a pending RICO indictment, and desertion by close friends, he is stoic, almost noble, and he is also effective.

The story may not have been an arc, more of a circle, the image of which has been lately pounded into our heads. One of the opening lines of the series pilot is, "Lately, I'm getting the feeling that I came in at the end."

Like a Coltrane solo, I could go on forever but won't. I just think the ending will satisfy if you really let it sink in.

(Pete Townshend's reaction to the popular and critical acclaim for 'Tommy')

The first thing I thought of when the screen went dark was Duchamp's "Fountain": the finale could be viewed either as a brilliant, subversive gesture or as a cruel, flippant joke--or both.

The first thing my wife thought of when the screen went dark: "Did my idiot husband forget to pay the cable bill?"

In one sense, I'm amused by Chase's decision to end the story as such, though we had already concluded at about a quarter to 10 that we weren't going to get an epilogue.

Heather, you really nailed it re: Journey. I can hear Chase laughing from a thousand miles away at the thought of the critics dissecting the masterful verse of Steve Perry.

I'd be less annoyed if not for the fact that Chase has invited us for the past 8 years to over-analyze this series with his pretentious dream sequences and endless symbols and allusions. I suppose the virtue here is that he never seemed to lose control of his vision. Chase certainly couldn't have predicted or expected the show's evolution into a ubiquitous cultural phenomenon. He certainly never intended--as has been debated here for the past several weeks--for his lead character to become a romantic anti-hero. I'm inclined to think that the unsatisfying denouement was, more than anything else, a statement of artistic independence and creative control--i.e., "I will risk ruining the last hour of my masterpiece just to prove to you that it's mine--my vision, my characters, my story, my decision." Is this a gesture of self-destructive narcissism or unprecedented brilliance? Don't most great artistic achievements stand on the same razor's edge?

P.S.--I thought Paulie's worrisome facial expressions and initial refusal to take over the Cifarretto crew were meant to be read as evidence that he was talking to the Feds. And that thing in Meadow's car is called a gear selector--the clutch is under the hood. Just sayin'.

Thanks for writing these pieces and for all of your writing over the course of the series. You have always had smart things to say that have enhanced the viewing experience.

My brother and I were watching the Sopranos in seperate rooms, last night, and when the screen went dark, I thought maybe my old television had died. I actually turned the television off and on, and then I realized that the credits were rolling. We were both shocked. "What the fuck was that shit!" we yelled in unison.

See, I've never been a big Sopranos fan. I suppose it's because when I actually got HBO, it was the season where Melfi got raped and that woman got beaten to death by her boyfriend (can't rememeber who) and I just couldn't take it; Anything having to do with the beating or raping, male or female, is just hard for me to stomache.

This season, however, I started watching it, and after my howls of, Chase you're a dirty bastard, I started to realize how brilliant it actually was. That scene was one of the scariest I've ever seen; most horror movies try and fail to get you scared like I was during the interminable Journey song. I kept thinking, is someone gonna die? Every shot was filled with potential assasins( I especially loved the shot of the black guys...I thought maybe the New York mafia had decided to outsource like Tony's crew), or, possibly a group of undercover agents strategically placed in the diner who would arrest him. It was awesome. And then to have it end abruptly like that: I thought I was going to be sick. Which was pretty sick.

At first I was at a bit of a loss when the screen went blank, but I'd pretty much gotten used to the idea that nothing major was going to happen at about the halfway mark. Chase wouldn't throw in an earthshaking event like Tony getting whacked without showing the aftermath; that would be letting us off way too easily. When Tony didn't die at the very beginning of the episode, I figured he was safe, at least for that hour.

So I wasn't terribly disappointed. And after some rumination, I think I really like this ending. I loved the rising tension. I loved that the family of sociopaths and enablers is sharing a diner with groups including a boyscout troop (I laughed when I saw them!). Good and evil really do dine together.

Whether or not Tony died at the fade to black (which is an interesting interpretation that I quite like but don't really feel I need to decide on for myself one way or the other), the point, I think, was for us to be left in that uncomfortable, ambiguous, tense place where the comforts of family life mingle with unexpressed fears and justifiable paranoias. It's a pretty good metaphor for the state of our country right now. I think the inclusion of the suspected terrorist threat and A.J.'s unsophisticated and self-serving obsession with the issue indicates that this metaphor may be intentional. And I see in myself parallels to A.J.'s moral semi-quandaries over the issue. After all, for all my ideals, here I am sitting around, metaphorically eating onion rings, colluding with a culture of killing, waiting for the hammer to fall.

This ending gave me so much more to chew on than the Six Feet Under finale. The writers of Six Feet Under seemed to think they needed to show us some semi-meaningful conclusion and closure for every single major character. We had to find out if Claire wound up with that lawyer guy. We had to see how every single one of them died. What a boring take on death, all wrapped up and presented to us as the omniscient viewers who get to hang around for the final word. But in life we don't get to do that. We don't get to hang around to see what happens next; ultimately, at some point, we're all going to experience that fade (or in this case jolt) into black. And until then we will live with never knowing when and how it will happen, trying as best we can to move through life accepting our inevitable moral compromises and averting our thoughts from the creeping sense that death awaits us.