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David Chase and his little jokes. The final episode as Rorschach test. I thought it was just Meadow. 
Of course he did.
You should see what comes out of Pat's closet at night . . .
Why don't you understand that those dark guys are coming for us all?!?!
Yes, of course he did. And so did probably 30% of the audience.
I figured we'd get no big explosive ending when Tony picked the song. This has always been my favorite part of that lyric and what jumped into my head as soon as the music started:
Workin' hard to get my fill
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin' anything to roll the dice
Just one more time
Some will win
Some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on
My only complaint with Chase's ending is that it cut to black just a couple seconds too soon. "Don't stop" was the wrong place to cut it.
Well, my mind created that the ending was lame bullshit. The end!
Hey! This isn't fair! I was gonna watch an episode of "The Sopranos" one of these days, and now it's off the air.
Y'know, not every opera buff has the free time or the Tivo to catch every aria.
I actually thought my cable company had been hacked (they deserve it). Dropped HBO today anyway...waiting for Deadwood.
That isn't surprising. He's a well known xenophobe/racist. No Surprise. However, the media has painted the young black man as criminal for some time now. I have to admit that it has affected me as well at times -- to my regret/embarrassment (but in my defense, I live in a city with a gang problem. The gangs are mostly, if not exclusively, made up of young black males -- at least according to the arrests).
o/t. the motion to hold abu alberto accountable just went down in flames.
the rethugs threatened a filibuster i guess. and the vote to end cloture was like 53-37/38-1. the one voting present. one of the 37/8 was joe the puke lieberman.
i wonder who the 8 or so senators not voting. (not counting tim johnson as one who should have voted.)
The ending I had been expecting had Tony taking out Phil, coming out on the absolute top of his "profession," and finding himself more alienated and isolated than ever as he accepts his pyrrhic victory. (Yes, that's very Godfather 2, but so be it.) And that, basically, is how I read this ending. The tension-building dramatic devices signify to me the thing that now defines his life more than any other: unrelenting, all but suffocating, paranoia. Behind every stranger, behind every misstep of his kids, every minute of every day, lies the very real likelihood of catastrophe and/or death. It's what defines him. Whether he's actually dead doesn't matter; either way, death has consumed him.
Michael should know, some of these guys live on into genteel retirement and a ripe old age. Ever been to Hollywood (Florida, id est)? Great racetrack (Gulfstream) and a terrific Italian Deli. What could be better?
I've looked everywhere and I can't for the life of my find out whether Paris Hilton watched the finale of The Sopranos or not...
Tony Lives!
There is nothing more nerd-ifying then being the only nimrod in class who hasn't seen the movie everyone is talking about.
I must admit, I have never seen the Sopranos. I almost rented a few copies, but in the end, I was too damn lazy to do that. So here I sit, while the hand-wringing rises to Paris Hilton like status,.
Maybe Chris Hitchens can give us a screed on how disgusted he is with all of us over Hilton's horrific treatment at the hands of the law, the media and people who believe obeying the law is usually a good thing.
*yawn*
Haven't any wingnuts come up with a theory as to why the last episode of the Sopranos means we should bomb Iran yet?
Myself, I don't think it's over...
The series probably isn't returning, but I see the door open for a Sopranos movie at some point in the future. For some reason, I don't think David Chase is quite ready to walk away yet.
She's mad as a hatter. Don't you people understand anything?
"The Sopranos" is about mobsters? Not opera singers?
And I thought culture was on the rebound.
There's no way David Chase meant the blackness at the end to signify Tony's death.
Sorry, but that's too neat an ending for a guy who's most famous for leaving strands of the story dangling (see Barrens, Pine) and for saying repeatedly how much he hates wrapping things up too neatly.
Nope. He ended it by bringing things full circle, leaving Tony (and everyone else) wondering if the end will come from the indictments hanging over him or the possible hitmen surrounding him. Plus, with the final meeting with Uncle Junior, he's seen that the power he has is fleeting no matter what.
It's a sense of dread that goes on and on and on and on....
It was immediately clear to me that not only Tony but the whole family were snuffed. All of a sudden the whole premise of the series no longer exists. Black.
There's no way David Chase meant the blackness at the end to signify Tony's death.
No, there's yes way: the flashback/ repetition, in the penultimate episode, of Bobby's remark to Tony that you don't even hear the shot that kills you. But I still think your reading is entirely plausible; that's what I meant by saying that Chase leads us to ask whether we've been duped into the "Tony gets it" reading by the narrative devices that precede it. And for the record, it's entirely plausible that there are ghosts in The Turn of the Screw, too, though I personally think that the governess is out of her bird, and that her out-of-her-birdness has everything to do with her anxieties about class.
So I'm perfectly OK with the "it goes on and on" ending -- I just don't subscribe to it myself.
And I'm quite sure that Chase threw in those two dark guys precisely to reel in the Buchananite racists among his viewers.
The whole family was snuffed, EXCEPT for Meadow The Innocent and the family's eventual redeemer.
She sees them all die.
She goes on to become a Federal Prosecutor and singlehandedly wipes out organized crime.
Unless she gets whacked before that.
Details.
s'pretty obvious to me - don't know why no one else gets it.
p.s. No way is there a movie. It's over.
p.s.s. No one's really mentioned the significance of the silence behind the final credits. It ain't there because Tony's not there to hear it.
as they say, its always darkest just before it goes completely black.
No no no... Tony didn't get whacked.
We got whacked. The audience.
Bobby may have said "you never see it coming", but last week, he sure did see it.
But we didn't. And we were looking for it, too.
The only tension in that scene came from our inflated expectations, because it was really kind of mundane. And it was awesome; not only were we all at the edge of seats with our hearts pounding, but when everything went back, we all assumed our cable glitched at just the wrong time. Then we all yelled "Fuck" at the same time. I'm still laughing.
My favorite bit of foreshadowing: The ketchup bottle. Annnn-tic-i-paaa-aaa-tion! lol
I'm going with the choked to death on an onion-ring theory. works for me.
*
Is Tony's tragedy that he is too small to be tragic? Cause in tragedy, people die in the end, or more importantly the audience sees people die in the end. And they die for something. But what is it Tony lived for, and what in his dying would make it all seem worthy?
This all just seemed a bit of a narrative/suspense game to me and reflects badly on the entire span of the show.
It will be a while until the final season makes it here; I will probably see it on DVD first. Though I have yet to see it, I like this ending. Too often in fiction the bad guy gets it in the end. In reality we know this is often not the case. Fantasy and fiction are escapism for many, but my favorite fiction is plausible and reflects reality. The Sopranos series had this element. Everything and everyone is believable. Plus any fiction or story that allows for prolific use of mobster nicknames is always a bonus. 
Furio, even though he did not have a nickname, was my favorite character, followed closely by Sal "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero.
We were angry at first because we thought the cable had cut out on us. But then we realized that was the actual ending, had a laugh, and an apprecative nod.
Mario has it right. They all got what they deserved. Meadow was spared + Carmine did it. The guy in the men's room - a nod to the Godfather - was the spotter. The boys at the juke box pulled the triggers. Just another whack job like so many others in the series. We didn't need to see it.
There wasn't one person Tony ended up OK with. Every goodbye was dysfunctional - I could name a dozen. He had no more bridges to burn. Sort of like Seinfeld's last episode, Tony was exposed in the end. That was the moral reconciliation, Jersey style, he got whacked along with his last 2 loyalists, Carm and AJ.
Pauli + Patsy will smoothly transition to the NY crew. Meadow will decide to be a pediatrician again.
Well, maybe Chase wasn't only reeling in the Buchananite racists--the two black guys who walked into the diner reminded me of the two black guys who shot up Tony's OJ way back in season one, or the two black guys who got the contract on Johnny Sac ("We was here when you was scoring smack, and we still here when it's wop-whackin' time in Brooklyn).
That's the thing--the show has taught us so well how to watch it that we could all legitimately believe that the lead character was going to be gunned down in front of his family. And we can all plausibly believe that's what happened in those twenty black seconds Sunday night.
I don't believe that. I think Tony's doom is to always have to watch those doors open up. Go back and look at the penultimate episode and see how many times Tony walks through doors you (and he) can't see the other side of: at least half a dozen times during a fifty-minute program. Now he's on the other side of those doors--forever. Every time he hears the creak, the bell, he looks up in panic. It goes on and on.
sorry Heather...but
"We've never seen things from Tony's perspective, so why would we start now?"
Ummm..the OPENING CREDIT SEQUENCE, week after week for 7 years, when we see the Tony's drive along the NJ Turnpike THROUGH HIS EYES, seeing what he sees? (Kudos to whatever blogger it was last week who observed that "Tony drives us into his world"--great comment by I-don't-recall-whom).
I'm sure HH is bright, but, damn, she missed that one.
Number One Rule of Elementary Film School: show us a character's point of view shot to make us empathise.
And Meadow "innocent"? Fer fuck's sake. She helped get Vito killed, and matches Carmela for delusional denial.
Actually, I thought the future career paths of the Soprano kids was among Chase's more brilliant touches. AJ will drop the pretenses and end up making porn with Little Carmine. And Meadow will marry into the (F)amily and become a sleazy lawyer like Mink, making big bucks for getting deals and plea bargains and "technicality" dismissals for criminal sociopaths.
In the final sequence, the point of view of the camera kept oscillating between Tony's and an omniscent observer. Tony was looking into the camera at us, the audience, when we got clipped. As Tony told Bobby: when you get hit you never see it coming, everything goes black. If you want, Tony clipped the audience.
No actual physical evidence that Tony was killed. No body. No eyewitnesses. No verifiable conclusive first hand intelligence. Just theories and fictional scenarios. There is only one logical conclusion. The Russian did it. We must bomb Caracus.
*
It wasn't Tony that was clipped. It was the viewer. Why do you think the screen went black, the music ended, and the credits rolled?
Perfect ending.
I was hoping to see Bob Newhart wake up in bed, startled, then turn to his wife and tell her he had a hankering for cappicole. But no, instead I get a closeup of Maria Schneider's landscaping. Or maybe I dreamed it.
+++
This seems as good a place as any to post my thoughts on the Sopranos final episode -- the excellent Michael Berube throwing out a comment on a Digby thread.
As yet another overly-educated literary critic blogger, I would quibble with "focalization" here. After all, the key shots in this montage were something that Tony couldn't see -- the shots of Meadow parking. Not in his head at all, but absolutely critical to the construction of the scene.
In fact, this scene kept us uncomfortably on the threshold of diegetic and non-diegetic: *between* focalization and montage; between the image as image and as referent; between music in the scene (picking the Journey song on the jukebox) and outside the scene (its volume surges and diminishes, is threaded into the dialogue even as the scene threads together shots inside and outside the diner).
These aspects of the scene of course help motivate the final shot, which freezes the viewer at the threshold of representation more starkly and permanently: between the ultimate, violent consummation of the story (the blankness equals the end of the story as murder) and its ultimate negation (the discourse simply stops short, entering into a blankness absolutely disconnected from the story).
One thing I would point out is that this end is *not* entirely unprecedented within the Sopranos. Another episode, arguably the most important meditation on the relationship of narrative and violence in the series, ends in a similarly silent way: "Employee of the Month". This is the episode where Melfi is brutally assaulted and struggles, across the arc of the hour, about whether or not to tell Tony Soprano, inevitably triggering a brutal revenge on the rapist who she has since identified (but who goes unpunished on a technicality). The episode brilliantly plays on the audience's own desire for a cathartic act of violence, and ends by abruptly conflating Melfi's "no" (when asked by a concerned Tony whether anything is wrong, after she breaks down in the therapy) with a cut to the silently running credits.
I think this is the only other time that the credits run in silence, and, like the final episode, it revolves around putting the audience at the threshold of the representation of violence, and, in this case, explicitly equating a rejection of violence with a puncturing of the stable discourse itself.
Many of the other great scenes in the final episode play on questions of representation and violence as well: the gruesome and simultaneously funny execution of Phil Leotardo, experienced as only a slight bump by the (wierdly doubled) infants who would normally be the trigger for our *own* moral/sympathetic/sentimental identification (think about Tony wanting to help out "poor babies" in this episode and the previous one -- and also the close-up of the wheel going over the head, and the close-up later of Meadow's wheel trying to parallel park); the hilarious but also eerily *non-violent* explosion of AJ's SUV (which we see *being* witnessed by AJ and his girlfriend -- right after a parallel scene of audience/character frustration, this time sexual rather than violent); even the cat randomly/arbitrarily staring at the picture of the dead Christopher.
Now, for a comment of equal importance..."How 'bout those Cubs?"
If he wanted things to go blank, a more formal looking black(as opposed to the oh no, the cable went on the fritz at a crucial moment blank look), followed more quickly by the credits, would have kept me from scrambling for the remote thinking something was technically wrong. To me, that reduced the emotional impact of the concept, which in and of itself didn't bother me.
I have a DVR unit, and often start watching shows a few minutes late, and occasionally when the hour turns over, which it had just done, that exact same thing happens, the screen goes blank and I have to turn the cable box back on, so that was my first reaction.
Spurred on by the plaudits for his black screen ending of The Sopranos, David Chase announced plans for a full hour program, to be titled, "The Show."
"The Show will be a full hour of black screen," explained Chase. "We were hoping for a Fall premier," Chase went on, "But we're having creative differences over the exact shade of black to use."
Chase fans were quick to praise "The Show." Many expressed the opinion that only an established auteur would have the artistic courage to allow the audience to imagine every minute of every episode of the show instead of just the ending.
Fellini is right:
No no no... Tony didn't get whacked.
We got whacked. The audience.
Bobby may have said "you never see it coming", but last week, he sure did see it.
But we didn't. And we were looking for it, too.
Brilliant.
Here's a question for the "Tony got whacked" crowd:
Who did it? And I don't mean which of the suspicious looking guys at the diner pulled the trigger. I mean, which of Tony's associates would choose to make such a bold move at that point in time? Phil's dead, with the tacit support of the NY crew. In fact, the NY crew turned on Phil precisely because they wanted all the internecine fighting to stop. So that rules out New York.
I've heard it suggested that Little Carmine had it done, but that's equally odd. He went out of his way to broker the peace deal, and he's got a semi-legit movie career taking off. All he ever wanted was to retire in peace. Any lack of strong leadership would lead to more people looking to him to take the helm, which he repeatedly has said he doesn't want. Having Tony suddenly out of the picture complicates his own life greatly. He'd gain nothing from it.
There's nobody on Tony's own crew who'd have the stones to pull it off, and even if they did, why would they? Paulie's probably ratting to the Feds, and if Tony goes, he'd lose whatever sweetheart plea deal he'd worked out. Patsy Parisi wouldn't want him gone until after his kid's wedding cemented him into a real position of power. Who's left? Vinnie from Doogie Howser?
So that leaves who? And why? The Arabs? The Russian in the Pine Barrens, who'd been hiding out in the bathroom at Holstens for four years, waiting, plotting? Some random stick-up guy? Seriously, what sort of "Tony got whacked" scenario are you actually imagining?
Whether he gets whacked is the main point, but not the most important one (I strongly disagree that he died. I needed a little bit more evidence, like even something more than a blank look on his eyes on the last shot).
The main point is the metaphor about what Tony and the family learned. Tony has made progress, of sorts, to "focus on the good times." In short, he has risen to the level of a typical vacuous fat American, except on our better days. This is the mantra of tribalists like ourselves who are comfortable after winning the big game. No one watched the 2005 World Series, but I did, being from Chicago and a life long White Sox fan. "Don't Stop Believin'" was the adopted theme song. And "believe" is the motto of just about any underdog team over the years (previously by the Boston Red Sox, and last seen on the exciting Golden State Warriors). Chase is nothing but in touch with current pop culture, and also the best in our past culture. Tony has vanquished all of his opponents, and finally tied all of his family closely to him. The family which has ultimately sacrificed their better impulses to become a little happier serving their family/tribe. The title of the episode is "Made In America" right? Why couldn't the sopranos just a be a metaphor for how Chase views the state of the American family---one whose only cry of injustice that week/year/decade was---not over the wiretap/Iraq/Romney gaffe--but when they let out a collective scream when they all thought their cable went out!
that's my humble two cents.
Doesn't anybody understand??? The freakin camera got snuffed.
Actually the onion rings give it away - Tony has a massive coronary and ends up face down in typical greasy spoon food.
Something I want to throw out there-was I the only one who noticed Paulie giving Tony some significant, "sense of doom" glances in nearly every scene they shared in the final episode?
It looked like Paulie was experiencing some kind of inner conflict-feelings of guilt?
Was this supposed to tell us that he was wearing a wire, or that some type of Macheviellian betrayal was taking place?
It seemed to come out of left field-did I miss something this season?
Or was it just Chase throwing out yet another red herring?
Anyone? Bueller?
3 exclusive alternate endings:
http://krupsjustsayin.blogspot.c...te-
endings.html
When fiction ends without explicit resolution, my husband frequently asks me (as he did Sunday night), "What do you think happened ..." this time, "to Tony?"
I always answer, "Nothing, this is FICTION, honey. There is no there there after the final curtain."
I think Chase just chose NOT to pick one fate and to end with the ambiguity he so often displayed during the exquisitely long run of his story.
How French of him.
If Chase has gone French on us, that may explain the anger. Quite a few of those who are angry at the lack of an traditional ending to the saga of the Sopranos are probably one and the same with neo-con leaning Republicans and right wingers. We know them as the folk who once in power actually apply the dictums of Post-Modernism (or Structuralism or WHATEVER ), to policy by arguing that they create reality in places like Iraq by faith and force of will. As I suspected, they will exploit a rudimentary grasp of the concept to justify brainlessness, but because they haven't a clue as to what it really is or means, they are oblivious to its presence when faced by it.
In the interests of accuracy, M. Berube is actually one of the 101 most dangerous academics. You must have forgotten Professor Lucky or Doctor Freckles.
I agree with factlike - who did it to Tony? There is no 'there' there.
Nobody from the 'Tony got whacked' crowd wants to answer that one. Makes you all as bad as those Republicans who won't (goes on and on and on and on about typical Republican lies and mandacities)...
siasl writes:
I agree with factlike - who did it to Tony?
And how did the killer know Tony would be at the diner?
(Answer: It's not really plausible that anyone would know that. Carm decided they'd have dinner at the diner that afternoon, and we didn't see Carm, AJ or Meadow tell anyone that. Tony could have been tailed to the diner, but assuming he didn't spot the tail, the killer would either have killed Tony before Tony went into the diner or after he left. Tony's anxiety/paranoia about the other diners is just that.)
It's kind of amazing to me that intelligent people think the ending was supposed represent Tony getting whacked. (I do grant that intelligent people think this.)
I thought Chase's intent was crystal clear: Absolutely anything could have happened when the series stopped. (It didn't end; it just stopped.) Sure, Tony could have gotten whacked - there were plenty of people who hated him. But he also could have lived until he was a senile old man who couldn't remember the people he'd shot.
People talk about the ambiguous ending, but it was only ambiguous in the sense that the key characters didn't have some nice tidy resolution. What Chase wanted to accomplish with the finale was obvious (I thought).
The Russian in the Pine Barrens, who'd been hiding out in the bathroom at Holstens for four years, waiting, plotting? - factlike | 06.12.07 - 10:53 am
The Russian was working as a dishwasher at Holstens. Saw Tony in the booth, walked out and beaned him with a cast iron frypan. End of story.
*
Yes, it was meant to be ambiguous but then Chase says "it's all there".
Well OK - Carmine whacked him out of honor. He had set up the meeting with the crew of the NY gang - a real slap in the face to Phil and only possible since Phil was in hiding.
Remember Tony criticizing Carmine for not commenting during the meeting. Carmine was already getting fed up and then after the deal Tony whacks Phil! Talk about being out of control.
Carmine had no choice. All that philosophy he gave Tony in Florida was BS. In the clutch he was always there in the background and ready to take over when the time was right. Carmine was always the peacemaker and after Phil was whacked there was a debt to be paid. Peace only comes after the debts have been paid.
As far as Pauli, he lived through the 70's wars and knew how bad things could get but he was in no position to exploit a world without Tony. He didn't have the fight in him anyway - he had the prostate you know....and no real desire to confront Tony.
As far as the restaurant being some sort of secret place, Tony went to the funeral. He was hanging at Satriale's and the Bing. He was back on the street. Chase was signaling that his guard was down. Maybe on purpose.
Meadow knew what was happening - you can see it in her face. How did she know? Obviously her boyfriend.
It's all there but who knows? Remember the fed photos from the cleaver party and the explanations of who was who? Who was the guy in the restaurant? I'll bet we have seen him before. Chase knows we have DVR's and I believe him that it *is* all there.
After watching the final episodes and reading many, many blog threads, it occurs to me:
What was the major theme running through The Sopranos from the very first season? The balance between "work" and "outside work". The first season, as I remember it, was hooked around the 'gimmick' of a superficially typical upper-middle class suburban life, puncuated by bursts of mob violence, only slightly moved towards realism from Scorcese/Coppola (but with similar directorial cues accompanying these events) that stand in for the actual work required to maintain that life. Tony Soprano's work life is no different from most mid-to-upper level corporate flunkies (and others who can afford HBO), except that Tony actually has an avenue for catharsis through his work, whereas the rest of us (taking a very broad definition of the aforementioned "corporate flunkies") are forced to repress these urges until an (inevitably) limited release outside of company time, almost inevitably with less-than-ideal implications for our personal lives. If Tony's feeling pent-up hostility, he can turn to a goomah, abuse his 'employees', or have someone who's troubling him whacked (or just kill them with his bare hands in their own kitchens - whatever).
This season, at least after the gunshot-induced coma, features Tony trying to lead his work life the way he would prefer his personal life to function - he sees the question of Vito's sexuality (and Phil Leotardo's reaction) as a matter of live-and-let-live - rather than a matter of street credibility and inter-familly relations, which is how the majority of the other characters (apart from Tony and Vito's immediate families) react to the news. Likewise, he takes a very non-bottom-line approach to bargaining with Phil right up until the final few episodes, where it has become obvious that Phil is taking Tony for all he's worth (25%?). The point, as I take it, has been that he had finally begun putting questions of concience over calculated business decisions - after all, he killed his own cousin in a previous season only after he realized that it would be very bad for business to let him live - and in the second half of this season showed evidence of a relapse, or conflicting behaviour (i.e. his murder of Christopher followed by the ensuing drug bing to salve his concience - "I get it!!!!") between the two decreasingly separate aspects of his life.
In this view, the final question to the viewer posed by the ending is - work or 'real life (or family for those that have one)'?. This is the same question posed from the beginning of the show, and run throughout the series. Tony tries as hard as he can - going to therapy is only the original, although highly successful, conceit - to be the kind of guy he 'ought to be', given his income, where he live and what he drives, but his work not only provides for his & his family's lifestyle, it ultimately damages, if not destroys it. The damage is plain to see. The destruction is ultimately up to the viewer. Work or family?
Either way, one of them takes the rest of your life.
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