The Sopranos Finale

Would a show about a surety company be as intense as the Sopranos?

Howard Stern: "That's what it must be like to live as a Mafia boss... in what other way could David Chase have built up the tension for the final scene better and shown what he's tried to show in the entire series."  I think I agree.  On my first impression - after getting over the whole "Did my DVR shut off too soon?" thing and turning off the cable by accident as a response and panicking and then going back to watch the ending again and seeing the credits come up, I was pretty damn pissed and disappointed.  That was just an incredibly well-shot end scene, ratcheting up the tension in truly wonderful fashion with the whole Meadow Soprano parking troubles and Tony's head popping up as each person entered the restaurant, finally ending with (and I'm quoting Simmons here) "the person he loves most of all (Meadow) about to come in" but Tony is still tense and afraid that the visitor will try to kill him.  That's how he lives his life and that's how his "life goes on" whether we as the viewer felt cheated or not.  Upon further examination, I think it was actually quite a good ending.  Of course, I thought that about Seinfeld too - that they stayed true to the characters right until the end (unlike Buffy, where all the characters' personalities had changed 100% by the end of the series).  I thought this final half-season of The Sopranos was one of the best ever and the last couple weeks wrapped up the show in excellent fashion.  Read on for my interpretation of how so many of the story lines did come together at the end.

An Ending for All...

 

So the chick that Agent Harris was in bed with was his Brooklyn source that kept feeding him info that he fed to Tony.  She wasn't happy that he was helping out Tony, and his wife wasn't happy about him never being home (which he probably blamed on work), which is why he was so distraught this season.  That story arc got explained and ended when Phil got killed and Harris exclaimed "we're going to win!"  So I think that worked.

 

Meadow is on her way to becoming a mob defense lawyer, rather than a doctor, disappointing her mother, but becoming more like her mother and giving in to her life as a mobster's daughter (including marrying someone in the Family) after 7 seasons of her pseudo-rebellion against their "lifestyle".

 

AJ is as fucked up as ever, but I think with the whole movie / club career that Tony and Carm finally gave in and are setting him up with will help him to become part of the "mob life" as well, if only to save his life (from depression, suicide, or the Army).  Tony never wanted AJ to follow him into the Business (or at least never thought he could handle the job), but now is resigned to think that it's the best (and only possible) life for him.  The ridiculousness of AJ's career choices just in that one episode (fighting in Afghanistan, Donald Trump's helicopter pilot, CIA agent) shows that the kid will never get a stable life on his own, and Tony needed to set him up with Little Carmine and get into the Business - if only tangentially at first.  The Beemer and the blonde are just the perfect ending for entry into that life.

 

As for Carmela, same old/same old.  She was more concerned about the odors in her safehouse than the safety of her family, so worried that her lifestyle was going to change because Tony's shit finally hit the fan.  That's why she took him back a couple seasons ago - so she wouldn't lose her lifestyle and that garish house that she loves.  That's why she puts up with everything (his cheating, Adrianna's mysterious disappearance, Christopher and Bobby's death).  She's too selfish to leave it behind.  And Carm as it turns out is almost as despicable in that regard as her husband.  This was the main storyline for her character for many of the seasons, but it was just reinforced in this episode with her comment about the smell at the safehouse.  Carmela is a Soprano through and through.

 

And Janice of course has long been shown to be despicable, but her disregard for Bobby's children - going to Uncle Junior for money for herself - and her half-serious jokes about needing another man just hammer home the idea that she was only with Bobby for power in the Family - and money.  His death hurt her more for that than anything else.  And Tony trying to arrange that Bobby's kids get money directly - in lieu of Janice, just shows that there's at least someone that Tony is less despicable than.

 

Paulie - well, Paulie is a self-centered low-level thug and he always will be.  Freaked out about the cat.  Mad at it for staring at Christopher's picture ("saw a rat in the wall").  Unwilling to risk his neck to make more money by taking over Carlo's crew.  Bringing up his discarded mother's death at Bobby's funeral.  Same old Paulie.  Which is more realistic than any ending for him could have been.  While Meadow and AJ have grown through the series (and in both cases, regressed by the end) and Carmela toyed with leaving the life and standing up for herself, both Paulie and Janice were the same as they were at the start of the series.  Despicable, self-centered human beings - incredibly entertaining to watch, but nonetheless, their endings were absolutely true to their characters.  Nothing dramatic, but maybe it didn't have to be.  They just went on.

 

Those that didn't go on... well, the list is very long.  Christopher had his demons the whole series and died because of them (drunk/stoned driving and his failure to Tony).  Bobby was one of the "good guys" among the crew, but he was also a murderer (for the first time in the first episode of the season) and got caught in the crossfire of the war with NY.  Phil - his war with NJ was unnecessary and foolish, and it led to his death (the one dramatic scene of the finale), so his storyline got closed as well.  And his death of course let business go on as usual, which is actually very realistic.  Butchie and Little Carmine and the others all realize that it makes a lot more sense to just get along and split up the riches than to all have to die over each others' egos.  Johnny Sack realized that too, but he died before he could change things.  Uncle Junior isn't dead - but might as well be - and I'm sure there's some deeper meaning into his "That's nice" comment after Tony told him he and his father once ran northern NJ... we're all mortal, we'll all get old, and these things that Tony and Phil are fighting over don't really mean that much in the long run.  The only one who really got shorted in having a series-long storyline wrap up for them was Sil, but then we never really learned much about his character all along.

 

Which brings us to Tony... my opinion, the tension ratcheted up brilliantly in the final scene in the restaurant (and with Meadow's parallel parking misadventures outside) perhaps brings the viewers some understanding of Tony's life... every single day.  He is constantly in danger of being whacked (by anyone at the restaurant - either the shifty guy at the counter, or anyone walking in) and this day was no different.  The tension brought up in that scene just drives that home.  He survived - for now - but barely, and has to expect death at any turn.  There's also the matter of Carlo flipping and the scene with his lawyer showing that he's far from out of danger with the FBI, and any of those guys in the restaurant may have been there to arrest him.  Long story short, that fear and dread we as viewers all felt in that final scene - Tony lives with that all the time... which (I think) David Chase is showing us to better explain the series story arc of Tony the character.  He seemed redeemable as a person the whole time (due to the therapy sessions and his love for his family), but as has been shown all season (with Christopher's death, the final Melfi scenes and the probability that her friend's diagnosis of him as nothing more than a sociopath using her, his inability to make things better for AJ, his callousness with respect to even Sil's shooting), Tony's a selfish, often heartless, stone-cold killer, who is fucked in the head and more like his mother than he ever wants to admit.  In the end, he was smart enough (or lucky enough) to survive the series, but his life is no better now, he still constantly must live in fear of death or incarceration, and he must remain vigilant and paranoid - with everyone around him - in order to continue surviving.  It's a pretty sad and horrible existence, and the series ends with us knowing that he tried, and failed, to change his lifestyle, but much like Carm (or Paulie or Janice), he didn't change at all.  He just survived.  And whatever we as viewers want to "believe" from now on, the ending left it open for our interpretation.  Disappointing?  Yes.  A letdown after all that tension?  Yes.  But realistic and true to the series?  Absolutely.  If you were as tense about being killed or incarcerated all your life as you felt in that last scene, would you be a ruthless, selfish killer like Tony?  I'm guessing the answer is Yes, and that is why the final scene - upon deep reflection - kind of worked for me.  Was it wonderful television?  Perhaps not.  But it still worked.

Comments

[SidSeizure]

A couple of points. First, I think Simmons is dead on when he says that even if you like the artistic value of the ending, the execution of the fade to black clearly could have been better. Half of the country thought their cable boxes went out. Might have been a good idea, but it should have been done in a way that didn't leave millions of jaws on the floor wondering "wtf?". As for interpretations of the final scene, I think Chase intentionally left lots of little clues and symbols intended as misdirection, so that we'd all spend months analyzing the final episode/scene trying to figure out what it really meant. If you read many of the online forums the theories running out there today are numerous and far out there. I've seen quotations from Shakespaere, Dante, theories of dream sequences, Tony's death, etc. And they all have some clue from the episode to back up these theories. People are analyzing the lyrics to the song on the jukebox, and the titles of the other songs he passed over. Apparently the FBI guy's line "We're gonna win" is a direct quote from a real FBI guy involved in the Columbo crime-family wars of the '80s. I'm sure people who know the real history of THAT understand the true significance of that line. I read one guy suggest that the way they all ate the onion rings in the last scene was exactly the way Catholics eat the wafer when taking communion. Bottom line, I think Chase wanted us all coming up with these wild theories, without any definitive answer to satisfy us. Maybe Tony's really dead (he didn't see it coming, everything just faded to black), maybe life does just go on with Tony constantly in fear, maybe it was all a dream sequence Tony has while asleep on the bed at the end of the penultimate episode. Bottom line, I think Chase wanted all this speculation with no clear answer.

[Bill]

Check out this article from the Star-Ledger that interviews David Chase -- he explains a lot here and I think the Theory #1 that the article writer attempts is exactly what I was trying to say (although perhaps not as elegantly).

http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/sepinwall/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1181623651270570.xml&coll=1

[Bill]

The link is too long on the above post... so click on my name below here to get to the Star-Ledger interview. It's very informative.

[Zack]

Personally, I loved the last episode, and just don't understand how someone can watch the Sopranos over the years and then want/expect something conclusive at the end. This wasn't a "whack-a-week" mobster drama; the whole show was about this great, ever-expanding space that grows between people, and the Mob-tribal dynamic that fights that. I think the whole episode was about that inescapable distance, and it's something that's finally caught up with Tony after 7 years. His best friend is gone, and every member of his family is moving on with their own things--AJ is on his (insanely funny) idealist tangent; Meadow is starting a new life; Carmela is busy with the remodel. Even Dr. Melfi is out of the picture.

I think the most poignant part of the whole episode (and maybe, the entire show) was Tony's visit with Uncle Junior. It just shows the continuance of this idea. Just as his Uncle and father, Tony will fade away, eventually to forget and be forgotten. I think Chase, who grew up around these kind of people in Jersey, is saying that there's nothing left to say--that the lives of these people just flicker out in their lack of meaning.

It's very possible that the sudden black at the end simply means that the diner blew up (which I was almost certain was going to happen, Meadow being the sole survivor), or that, in true Godfather fashion, the sketchy man at the counter went to the bathroom to retrieve a pisto; the silence at the end credits (the first time in the series without music, right?) could even lead to this, going back to when Bobby and Tony talked in the first season of the sudden quiet of death. But, I think that Chase meant more here, that the tale just ends because the characters succomb to the blackness of their lives. 7 years and they are all left fairly unchanged.

I don't believe that the end was a McGuffin meant to get the audience talking, or even a set up for the much-hyped-yet-hardly-probable Sopranos film. I think that Chase is done with Tony Soprano; it all depends on his future in other projects. But, for the sake of this brillant ending, I hope this is the last of the Sopranos.

[homeowners association]

That story arc got explained and ended when Phil got killed and Harris exclaimed "we're going to win!" So I think that worked.

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