One striking element of this season is the submission to institutions. A few weeks ago, Uncle Junior captitulated to the drugs and rules that his hospital had imposed, after tremendous resistance.

Last night ended with Tony offering no argument when told that he could not take the pizza to AJ in the locked unit. We are conditioned to believe that Tony will bully his way in, but he just left it, asked no questions, made no plea. In some ways it was the most stunning change in Tony's behavior in years.

At the end of "The Great Escape," they show a few lucky soldiers quietly getting away, after everybody else is dead or recaptured. And Steve McQueen gets caught, but still gets his baseball glove in The Cooler.

The Soprano end will be that way. Fiery, bloody deaths for most everyone, and a few lucky goombahs sneaking away, but no Steve McQueen.

reminded me of the set-up to Sonny's death in The Godfather. Sonny was making his way over to beat up his brother-in-law for attacking his sister when he was ambushed in a pre-arranged trap at the toll booth.

It wasn't spontaneous.

In the same way, those blatant, sexually-suggestive and deliberate insults to Meadow (while being accompanied by someone else in the 'business') were obviously intended to get back to Tony and provoke armegeddon. It was part of a plan.

While thinking it's of his own volition, Tony will decide to cross the river (Styx?) only to find himself trapped in New York. Alone. In the long shadow of both the dream and the tragedy it now represents.

Or Carm will kill him - after a long, dark night of trying to wash spots of imaginary blood from her tiny hands - convinced it's the only way to protect her extravagently vulnerable children from 'the life', ie. the curse, and make amends to God. Talk about a mercy killing...!

I think Tony is going to be killed and AJ will step up and become the new head of the NJ family. Thus the cycle continues.

Yeat's full poem indicates the direction of the series. Among several interpretations, an important on my be found in Chinue Achebe's "Things Fall Apart." Achebe's novel has striking paralles to Chase's series, where the central character, a tough man whose main goal was to protect his family, ultimately killed himself. Yeats' poem reads:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

My predicition is simple - an old-fashioned all-out mob war between Phil and Tony's crews. Phil strikes first, but Tony strikes last and winds up on top. Tony and Phil are equally brutal, but Tony is more intuitive - and lucky. It will be a costly victory....

My turn. It is time. I'm ready to let go of Tony and company. A number of my friends are as well. David Chase's interview in Vanity Fair summed it up..."these people don't travel, they don't read books, their lives are limited."

It does not matter if Tony will either end up dead, in jail, or as a stronger boss with more of the same- family life and family work having no boundaries- just like the modern American family. "Too stressed at work to use up your vacation time" read the headline this morning on Yahoo. Modern issues crash this party, homosexuality, FBI, drugs, alcohol, even Carmela had an almost affair and then an actual affair while separated but Tony does not know this.

James Gandolfini is a fine actor. I cover my eyes during the blood and gore scenes a la Coco but I watched fascinated with the blank half of Tony's face as he suffocates his "son" Christopher with his hands then I saw AJ the son with the bag over his head both drowning in liquid. For both scenes, I hit rewind on the DVR. I never understood all that water until now. Water a foreboding theme of each season. The pool, ocean and lake where family, business and the favored sons co-mingle.

No one can tell Tony that he is going to hell as Edie Falco can. Kudos to Little Steven. Now I know how Silvio ends up as the "cleaner" to the Adriana issue as he read "How to Clean Practically Anything" and wonder that Paulie may not have been able to kill Adriana but his mom's elderly neighbor was no problem. Sanitation and Cleaning is the family business rotten to the core. I can't wait to see what is in store for Silvio and Paulie. My only regret and rewrite would have been that Christopher's death was not painful enough, no, but wait, this show is about Tony and Christopher was merely a foil who kept narrowing his options right to the end.

I've been thinking too much about how the Sopranos have captivated me for the past decade. What did the Godfather have (post WWII America's pursuit of capitalism) and Goodfellas (cocaine) not have? Both have able dialogue with actors with perfect execution. I think it may have been the dynamic of characters. It was fun to watch Tony and Carmela as opposed to Michael and Kay Corleone. OK so maybe the abortion was the closest we got to dimensionality in Godfather II but the Godfather remains epic while the Sopranos gave the "life" to characters with limited dimensions. I remember when they only travel to see the Pope, look at colleges, drive to Florida and go on a Vegas binge. When the characters do read, it is more fun and fodder for the viewer than the characters. AJ reading? The reading material is more for viewer discussion and props.

The children are now becoming the parents. Carmela sobbing that AJ was such a happy boy. The viewer has been there for 8 or 9 years(?). Did AJ ever strike anyone as happy? Meadow crawling into the eggshell womblike safety that she will crowd out mother and her soon to be connected husband. Meadow will end up like her mom but with an Ivy League degree put to no use. Just like now, your BA is equivalent to a high school diploma. Is this where Tony and Carmlea started? AJ as an apathetic kid and Meadow settling for her limitations as an Italian-American female. "MED SCHOOL IS SO HARD," she whines in her new grown up voice. Imagine Meadow telling her husband to go to hell without high school sentiment and shrillness. Meadow is taking the easy way out and going to law school is the reflection to her mother whose options were as limited as Meadow's now are. "I would like Meadow Soprano to represent me in my divorce, defense or IRS audit."

The ambiguity slays me. Melfi's psychiatrist did cross the professional line about sociopathic character and talk therapy. I took it as a unprofessional commentary about Melfi's practice and patient during her own talk therapy session. Why are you smirking? she states rhetorically.

The only unambiguity in this show was the older psychiatrist with 30 screen seconds who said to Carmela "don't say nobody told you."

I'm looking forward to the last two episodes with glee.

I will miss the actors, Heather Havrilesky's Soprano episode wrap up and the Salon letters. At times, these have been more entertaining than the narrative.

For what the future may hold for each in their private hell, may only Adriana rest in peace.