Letters to the Editor
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got the ending wrong
I like your analysis, but i think you misinterpreted the ending. It seemed to me that Tony's drugged, superstitious-gambler's revelation after winning big -- "he's dead" -- is euphoric. Even if he is in deep denial. As if his big curse has been lifted (remember, he's been flamboyantly losing these last few weeks) and getting Christopher out of his life is, as he says earlier in the dream with Melfi, a "relief." It is the eruption of the unconscious, what could only be said to Melfi in a dream, and coupled with the gambling subplot and Tony's magical thinking about it lately ...well, I thought it was bone-chilling, but definitely not in the way you say.
That reaction is monstrous, as Tony was monstrous throughout the episode -- cheap and soulless and disgusting. And it was in Vegas, so of course it was, metaphorically speaking, Tony's descent into the underworld. Added to that Tony's cliched peyote-induced sunrise-in-the-desert-with-a-hooker revelation, "I get it," the two statements serve to make Tony seem profoundly cold, clueless, spiritually dead. Despicable, perhaps, so we're neither so sorry nor so surprised to see what awful end awaits him.