In the movie Being There the retarded gardiner, Chance, was treated as a genius for his sphinx zen cryptic nonsense. People projected into his utterances whatever they liked. And since it was always a reflection of their own ego it was always brilliant.

David Chase did precisely the same thing to you.

If Lost ended like this there would be a nationwide wave of suicides.

Followed by a nationwide wave of people saying "See, I warned you".

(Journey sucks!)

I'm not sure why anyone would expect - after years of that show being filled with ambiguity, anxiety, and the possibility of Really Bad Things lurking just around the corner - a tidy ending that answers all of the open-ended questions. (The Russian returns! With Adrianna! They met in the woods and are now an item!) The show's plot has never resolved itself into a neat little package. Part of the reason the show is so addictive is the (empty) promise of answers next episode, next season. Look at Lost - the show is getting boring now that they're resolving more mysteries than they're creating.

I think Chase did Sopranos viewers a favor by providing an ending that validated everyone's and no one's theories about the show, feelings about Tony and his family, and sympathies towards the lifestyles they depicted. If he'd have ended it by letting Tony off the hook or killing him, he would have been passing judgement one way or the other. This way, Tony retains his complexity - and we retain the complexity of our feelings toward him - forever.

What, another Sopranos recap? You're still reeling? C'mon! Looks like Chase is a wiseguy, after all!

Instead, we were supposed to get that Tony was killed? So then, why didn't we get it? I noticed that the music ended on the word "Stop," I knew it wasn't a technical malfunction, but I still didn't have any clue what had happened.

Yeah, you were supposed to get that. It was perfect. After all of those years, the body count piling up, Chase still managed to surprise most of his audience. I think it's funny that so many people watched this show, thrilled to the nihilism and the violence and the desolation, and when Tony got popped, they were caught as off-guard as he was, and got mad that they were bumped off, that somebody got the drop on them, that it wasn't done in a way they expected it to be done. Darn those professional hitmen!

It's too perfect. You get to live, Tony died. So, live and learn, right? In the waning months of the Bush presidency, it's kinda ideal, since the Bushies pulled a major hit on this country, and most didn't see that coming, either.

Fans of the "Highlander" fantasy universe despised the second movie so much, they collectively decided to ignore it. Through two more movies, a television series (and it's short lived sequel), fans, directors, and screenwriter's blithely overlooked an entire movie's existance and any cock-a-mamie theories about the origination of the Immortals or just why, "in the end, there can be only one."

I think we need to do the same thing with the last scene of the Sopranos.

If Tony dies, it could have been portrayed more artistically- like dimming the sound and fading to white, like they used to do to illustrate his fainting spells, or his revelation in the john after puking up his peyote in Las Vegas.

If Tony lives, you could have stopped the movie while he was in the backyard (sans ducks).

Either way, he could have at least finished the scene.

I think Chase wussed out. He couldn't quite bring himself to choose an ending, so, he succumbed to the pressure and bailed on making a choice entirely.

I could have handled ambiguity, had it been portrayed a little more deftly, in a way that makes sense in some sort of narrative structure that didn't resemble ripping the last page from a 350-page mystery novel, or pulling wings off flies to watch them hop until they starve to death. I might have even forgiven David CHase for making me listen to "Journey."

But this final scene of the final episode of the Sopranos contributes nothing to the story. It's only purpose is to irritate those of us who are so pathetic, we actually care about a TV show.

I deal with painful realities every day. The fantasy violence in the Sopranos' world on Sunday nights was a brief, but welcome escape, a chance to examine hatred and greed intellectually, in the guise of fiction, without having to deal with real-world consequences.

I really loved this show... but this ending does feel like a bad joke.

Maybe Chase feels no need to apologize... but maybe he's the one who needs a wake up call. There is a lot of ugliness in the world. And I don't need a guy who makes his living making television shows to remind me how shallow I am. I don't think I needed it to come from the mouth of A.J. Soprano, a character so clueless he thinks they speak Arabic in Afghanistan.

I say, as fans, we exise that pointless final scene from the canon until David Chase comes back and finishes the job.

He shot three+ endings? Great- pick one. Otherwise, as far as I am concerned, the series ends back at the house until we get a better explanation.

It was stunning to read the completely conventional aspirations most people had for the closing of this series. The widespread demand for a traditional, literal ending combined with the notion that somehow the author owes the audience what they each and individually think they want seems to be nothing more than the acting out of well-trained consumers. Feel free to complain, but the fact remains that any of the literal "endings" proposed by the audience were all drab, obvious and gaggingly predictable -- after all, they were nothing but "predictions" later supported by fabricated "turn me on dead man" levels of evidence.

But beyond that idiot reflex of guessing what's going to happen instead of paying attention to what does happen -- and while we're on the subject, somebody tell me what the cultural obsession that fills magazine and web pages, broadcast time and human heads with sheer speculation about the outcome of elections, sporting events or how TV series will close is good for ? -- any such literal ending would have the great and terrible power of defining all that went before, thereby horribly narrowing the scope of the drama and the art, and shrinking it all down to disposable sound-bite scale. Which, seemingly, is all most folks expected all along.