Not a HUGEfan of the show, but I thought the ending was kind of cool.

I did not come up with this idea but it makes perfect sense. I read it on the HBO message board. This guy thinks that this is what David Chase intended. I agree.

Tony and Bobby were talking about what happens when you get wacked while at the boat house. There was another conversation with Silvio in one episode. Silvio and Bobby basically say you feel nothing and hear nothing. It just goes black.

But it wasn't Tony who died when it went black. The camera was on his face. Not from his booth with a perspective of him looking at Meadow walking in. So Chase wanted to say that the viewers got wacked. Tony and his family go on. Makes sense to me. We were feeling that anxiety and tension just like Tony was in that scene. In the end we got wacked. I like it even more now.

What? Do some of you guys hate it more now?

i just don't think the episode should have ended as some kind of cliff hanger, or leaves you hanging on your own imagination. This isn't a network show. It costed money to watch this show. For 8 years, there was all this build up. And what made the first 3 seasons tight, it all came unravelled in the seasons to follow...nothing but loose ends. And cheap resolutions, like the Adrianna thing. It was so easy to just kill off a character.

I wasn't expecting Tony to die in the last episode. In fact, the ending I saw was something like...things fall apart around him, AJ and Meadow go off on their own, and it's just Tony left with his house and his wife, and his own personal hell is just...living this way. Or something like that. I definitely knew Phil was going to get it. And then there'd be no more conflict.

It wasn't necessary for Chase to end it the way he did. It's the same way I felt about Larry David ending "Seinfeld". Instead of delivering for the audience, he took his perspectie and force fed us a bullshit episode that was a slap in the face (Paul, we don't need to go through this again ).

You owe it to your audience to deliver something in a finale. They've dedicated a lot of time to your show. There were a lot of other things that could have been done that would have made this episode genuinely interesting. Instead, people have to come up with theories and indulge in Chase's empty masterpiece that is "The Sopranos" forever. It was arrogant, like Larry David's last "Seinfeld" episode.

Difference is, "Seinfeld" was ending on a great final season; "The Sopranos" staggered to the finish line.

Just watched it again. I didn't like the finale last night and grumbled to my wife throughout, but, for what it's worth, it grew on me in our second viewing tonight.

Only smart people liked it when they first saw it. LOL.

ok, smart bear. I'm expecting something HUGE for your 4K.

When the screen went black, my first thought was, "Are you kidding? He's doing this?"

But, as I look back on the ending, I like the way it was structured and found it to be an interesting choice and probably better than my own expectations for what the episode would be.

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You know me like that.

And I'm still think your initial reaction. I didn't need a bloody all out war ending, but I'm sorry anybody can end a show that way. I'm not buying it. I guess I'd rather be dumb than have stupid ass boring endings and be a genius like Beardown.

just don't throw it away after the first bite

I'm surprised you found the ending boring. The compaint that I have heard most was that it was unsatisfying but not boring.

While I agree that initially I did find it unsatisfying as well. The fact that I have spent portions of the past few days considering the conclusion makes me feel as though I did get something from it.

It is, after all, entertainment and I find it entertaining to ponder what has happened there. The discussions in the final few episodes, and there were a few, regarding death and how it comes add to the intrigue of it, according to me. But, not for everybody, I understand.

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You know me like that.

Personally, I felt completely satisfied being manipulated by Chase through the entire run of the series.

He started out by getting me care about Tony, the kind of a person I would have never imagine empathizing with. He humanized a cold-blooded killer by giving him a crucial weakness or a flaw that an everyday person can identify with, depression. For years I watched this guy struggle to resolve the issues in his life through the means of therapy all the while forgetting to pass judgment on the heinous acts of his professional life. Chase build Tony up as basically a "good" guy with an odd career choice, and I swallowed it hook, line & sinker.

Than about 2 seasons back, Chase started to deconstruct the mythical Tony Soprano. He brought focus to the negative aspects of Tony's infidelity and gave Carmella a dimension we were not used to. He showed Tony's violent outbursts while dealing with AJ, and exposed him as a crappy father figure to Christopher. He blew up the loyalty angle as Tony methodically disposed of his lifelong "friends" whenever the business dealings went astray. He brought reality to his character, and I still refused to see that Tony was a lowlife. The fact that some people actually debated the killing of Christopher as a mercy killing was the ultimate paradox. It was the complete abandonment of all of Tony’s redeeming values, and some still refused to see it. That was the closest that Chase came to beating his audience over the head with a message that Tony is the bad guy.

To me the series started with the first visit to Dr. Melfi’s office and ended when Melfi saw the “true” Tony as the sociopath that had manipulated her for 8 years and fired him.
That’s the ride I enjoyed, and in the end it really matters little if Tony lives or dies.

I like the interpretation that we the audience are the ones getting whacked in the last episode. After all, Tony has no use for us anymore, and it would be consistent with his character.
That's why for me it's the perfect ending.

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“Mmmm. Move over, eggs. Bacon just got a new best friend - fudge.”

Agree with that. I think its the fact that soo many things were constantly teased through very sloooooow moving episodes in the past season (parts 1 & 2) and while the storytelling I thougt was good, I feel there were simply too many things potential plot lines Chase would constantly introduce to us with no resolution or anything on. I didn't need every loose end tied up, but I think this season was really sloppy. The acting in the end saved this season's ass in my opinion.

I think it only could have been perfect if they had one last aerial shot pulling up from the table where Tony had spelled out "GOODBYE" with onion ring crumbs.

Then, it would be a timeless TV classic.

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You know me like that.

Hey.
I was just wandering if any of you guys ever saw that little Godfather flick from a while back?
Doesn't it suck that you don't know what happens to Michael Corleone at the end?
I mean he becomes the boss and all, but you can't tell if he gets whacked, or goes into the witness protection. There is no closure with the door closing.
It's a good thing they made Godfather 2 & 3 otherwise the first one would have completely sucked.

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“Mmmm. Move over, eggs. Bacon just got a new best friend - fudge.”

Rob, if you've read my complaints its not so much about the end as it was the entire episode. The whole Tony killed or not isn't that big of a deal compared to all of this major shit Chase continued to introduce in many slow moving episodes this past season for no answers on anything besides Phil getting whacked. I just feel like anybody could write a last episode like that.

"I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there. No one was trying to be audacious, honest to God. We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people's minds or thinking, 'Wow, this'll (tick) them off.' People get the impression that you're trying to (mess) with them, and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them. Anybody who wants to watch it, it's all there.

I don't think about (a movie) much. I never say never. An idea could pop into my head where I would go, 'Wow, that would make a great movie,' but I doubt it. I'm not being coy.

If something appeared that really made a good 'Sopranos' movie and you could invest in it and everybody else wanted to do it, I would do it. But I think we've kind of said it and done it."

-David Chase
6/11/2007

get on it then...

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@audioidkid

Hey, I was just wondering what you think of this alternate ending for The Sopranos finale: Tony spends the whole episode taking a dump on Adrianna's rotting corpse, which emanates such a powerful odor that he's induced into an hour-long vomit fit while he's crapping. Now that would really be surprising, right? And it would certainly leave things unresolved....So it's gotta be the best ending ever, correct?!? I'm taking this script to Hollywood!!!

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Agreed.

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I want my money back.

-W_Z
6/12/2007

Ryan,
I wasn't posting as a response to any particular post.
I just don't understand people's obsession with "hollywood" endings.

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“Mmmm. Move over, eggs. Bacon just got a new best friend - fudge.”

Tall Midget wrote it for me. Just as good...maybe more suspenseful. Let me also quote the great David Chase who gave us this great show and then pooped on us in the end.



The man is still full of shit. To do all that bullshit he did and then go CUT, not fade, but CUT to black to close out a movie with CUT the audio as well is totally to fuck with a viewer who has invested in the, what, 95 episodes. Ever heard of the game bullshit? Chase said he laid down a king and the card was a duece.

Short of Tony dying - what closure would you require?

Or would his dying be the only possible way to end it which we were denied?

Bobby and Sil are basically dead. Tony went to Uncle Junior and realized that this whole thing may be pointless in the end. Phil got whacked and Tony brokered a deal with Phil's crew to ongoing operations. Paulie still pisses Tony off. They now have a crazy cat to deal with forever. Carlo turned and Tony is likely going to have real problems with the Feds going forward. AJ's nailing a 17 year old and Meadow is going to be a lawyer. And Tony's life goes on - or maybe he is suddenly killed - or, more likely, we are suddenly killed.

The end of our time with The Sopranos.

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You know me like that.

in the cardgame "asshole" the deuce is king...

i still liked it.

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@audioidkid

I figured that Rob (did you get that last pm I sent you?). But I was hoping you knew where I was coming from and to see what your thoughts were on that. No need for a Hollywood ending on my part either. However, I just felt like we were watching that scene in the Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader is looking at Luke and then looking at the Emperor back and forth, back and forth - trying to decide who to help and then David Chase grabbed the script and decided to.....CUT to black.

Ooohh...Did Vader choose Luke or the Emperor? Did the Death Dtar blow up? Did the Fuzzy Ewoks win in the end? We'll NEVER know! Man, thats so cool.

so wait....is AJ an Ewok then? who is Luke?

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@audioidkid

Midge,
You can do better than that.
At least use bigger words.

I fell in the same trap as many viewers, and tried to predict an ending that was far "cleaner" than what we got, but I'm not going to dismiss something simply because I guessed wrong.

I'm having a flashback to "castaway"

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“Mmmm. Move over, eggs. Bacon just got a new best friend - fudge.”

Well, if I could figure out what the heck you're saying I'm pretty sure I wouldn't agree. Was the show's ending perfect because it closed the narrative or refused formal closure? You seem to be saying both and neither.

Aside from this inconsistency, I can't say I agree with the narrative order you're imposing on the show retroactively. I wholeheartedly disagree with the "progression" you see in Tony's character. He was a conflicted figure from the beginning--his panic attacks were symptoms of his inability to psychologically accommodate his violent lifestyle--and remained so until the end. Thus your reading of The Sopranos as a kind of anti-Bildungsroman, or narrative of degeneration, doesn't seem convincing to me.

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