With Emmy nominations out, there’s apparently some buzz that the inconclusive ending to the series might hurt its chances.
Personally…I thought the ending was brilliant.
First of all, anyone who thought that David Chase was going to provide *any* sort of conclusive or definitive ending to “Sopranos” just wasn’t paying attention. Chase not only delights in flying in the face of fan expectations, but apparently still treasures the fact that fans are STILL annoyed about the Russian mobster who escaped into the snow-covered forest, never to be seen again. I didn’t think for a moment that Chase would tie everything off because LIFE doesn’t tie everything off.
In the movie “Man on the Moon,” Andy Kaufman (Jim Carrey) asks a wise man what the secret of comedy is. The wise man replies, “Silence.”
Later Kaufman is shown delightedly coming up with the notion of bøøbÿ-ŧráppìņg his special so that, at about the mid-point, the picture would start rolling. His concept was that all across America, people watching the special would go to their TVs and start trying to fix the horizontal hold, and even banging on their sets in frustration. He thought that it would be funny.
Chase applied that sort of thinking to his finale.
I’m sitting there watching the conclusion in a hotel room (I was in LA at the time.) The tension is building, shot by shot. Everything seems innocuous, and so you just KNOW that SOMETHING is going to happen. Tony’s daughter is struggling to park the car; will her inability to parallel park mean that she winds up surviving a massacre? A spooky looking guy keeps glancing Tony’s way. He heads into the bathroom. Is he going in there for a gun? Tony seems oblivious, or is he? Tension build, tension build, almost to the breaking point…
Screen goes black.
I jump to my feet, and I’m shouting, “Son of a bìŧçh!” I’m convinced the cable’s gone out. I’m positive that everyone else is watching this and seeing the ending and my stupid cable has chosen that moment to go on the fritz. For ten of the longest seconds of my life I’m going out of my mind…and then the credits start to roll. It takes me a moment to register what I’ve just seen: I didn’t miss anything. That WAS the end.
Nothing that David Chase could have put in there–NOTHING–could have equaled, in terms of pure emotion, the mind-rending agitation I felt in those long seconds of silence. SIlence, which is apparently the secret to drama as well as comedy. Yelling at the TV, cursing my fate to miss the final moments due to technological ineptitude. Feeling that same frustration that viewers of the Kaufman special would have felt, but heightened. Just as “The Sopranos” was a deeply personal story for Chase, so was the ending a personal experience for every viewer, because everyone experienced their own level of frustration and angst by not knowing for long seconds what the hëll was happening.
And, of course, it’s destined to be unique. Short of riffing it in parody, no one can ever do something like that again. It’s “the Sopraonos ending.”
As I said…brilliant.
PAD
• 
Absolutely brilliant. Look at it – it’s almost August and we’re STILL talking about that last episode. Was ANYONE still talking about the last episode of Everybody Loves Raymond by August? Nope, didn’t think so.
There is only one other jump to black that I can think of that made me scream as much as I did for the Sopranos – and that would be the jump to black at the end Best of Both Worlds, Part I:
“Mr. Worf – Fire!” and then black. AAARRRGGGHHH
The difference, of course, is that with BOBW you knew you’d have some kind of resolution when the new season started. No such luck with The Sopranos, and that’s what raises it to a whole other level.
David Crane made a point, throughout the entire run of “the Sopranos” to defy stereotypes and convention. For decades, there was an allure to how organized crime was depicted, that there was something almost “romantic” to the lives they lead. That’s why, two decades ago, when the FBI bugged a swearing in ceremony of a newly “made” man, how ridiculous it all sounded. You bet that David Crane was not going to provide a “traditional” mob ending. He had created lives for these characters and was not going to do anything more than simply stop the audience from watching these lives. If there were to be a movie, it’d pick up however much time had passed, and the audience would see things like Tony dealing with lumbago and AJ becoming a documentary film-maker and Meadow caught up in being a new mother and a partner and a law firm and Sil still at a nursing home, and on it would go. Indeed, the ending was the flourish of a creator who, right down the the music and the final shot, knew how the creation would end. Bravo!
David Crane made a point, throughout the entire run of “the Sopranos” to defy stereotypes and convention. For decades, there was an allure to how organized crime was depicted, that there was something almost “romantic” to the lives they lead. That’s why, two decades ago, when the FBI bugged a swearing in ceremony of a newly “made” man, how ridiculous it all sounded. You bet that David Crane was not going to provide a “traditional” mob ending. He had created lives for these characters and was not going to do anything more than simply stop the audience from watching these lives. If there were to be a movie, it’d pick up however much time had passed, and the audience would see things like Tony dealing with lumbago and AJ becoming a documentary film-maker and Meadow caught up in being a new mother and a partner and a law firm and Sil still at a nursing home, and on it would go. Indeed, the ending was the flourish of a creator who, right down the the music and the final shot, knew how the creation would end. Bravo!
The problem is that as an artist, you’re trying to be creative and you’re trying to serve the needs of your characters and material, but no pretenses towards Serving the Muse lets you off the hook from Job One: the work you create has to have a certain basic structural integrity. Is a house designed to be photographed and written about by critics and historians, or is it designed to be lived in? Frank Lloyd Wright gets ten points out of ten for vision and style, but he left behind a long and consistent pattern of buildings with roofs that let in water like an open window, heating systems that blew in nothing but cold air, kitchens that were nowhere near the dining room.
Similarly, a Final Episode has a job to do along with the Art business. It does have to button the series in some fashion, even if it doesn’t wrap up the storylines.
Think of the brilliant way that “Everybody Loves Raymond” ended. By the end, the characters are really no different than they were at that the end of the first show of the season, but it serves as a summary of everything the whole series was about.
Lots of folks loved the Sopranos finale. Lots of folks felt like they’d been had. I tend to side with the second group.
You hate to see something brilliant blunted because an artist put all of his energies into the Freestyle part of the competition and ignored the Compulsories. Kaufman’s final scorecard was as a mediocre comedian. For every brilliant bit, for every wonderful characterization, there were two more in which nothing made any sense whatsoever until someone explained to you why it was so bloody Brilliant.
“Why’s he wrestling women all of a sudden?” I wondered. “I used to look forward to his stuff…but now, no matter where he turns up, he just behaves like a total ******e. Has he given up on comedy?”
Then someone patiently explained to me that Wrestler Guy was a new character, that he admired the theater of professional wrestling, that it was a post-modern take on the classic “heavy” of the Southern circuit, that…
Ah.
All right, then.
How interesting.
Not funny, but I was sure that it’d make an interesting chapter in his biography. I imagined that I’d check in on Kaufman in a couple of years, when he’d gotten this out of his system.
I’ve just finished watching “Sullivan’s Travels” via Netflix. What a perfect reminder: when a creator sets out with the goal of being a Bloody Genius, it rarely works out well for anybody involved…
Not to undermine what you’re saying here, PAD, but that wasn’t exactly a “wise man” that Kaufman consulted. That was the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself, former guru to the Beatles and such.
At least it was him according to various Kaufman biographies that I’ve read.
It does have to button the series in some fashion, even if it doesn’t wrap up the storylines.
But it did wrap up the storylines. That’s the thing. Take out the last scene at Holsten’s, and the finale provided more closure than any previous Sopranos finale. The war with New York ends, Paulie gets a bump, we get a glimpse of what the future holds for AJ, Meadow, Janice, nearly all the surviving characters. There’s a loose end dangling here and there (namely, whether Carlo turned rat and what that means for Tony’s RICO prosecution), but nothing egregious.
So that just leaves the last scene, which was exactly like the last scene of every previous finale (Tony’s family enjoying a nice meal) and yet nothing like any previous last scene, directed and edited to give you this constant sense of dread, to put you inside Tony’s head for a few minutes and see the world how he sees it: a place where everyone he sees, everyone who walks in a door, looks at him, whatever, could be coming to kill him. The door opens one last time, and…
…nothing. We don’t know, because Tony doesn’t know. Because Tony will never know who and what’s coming for him. That’s his fate, and that’s ours.
So that just leaves the last scene, which was exactly like the last scene of every previous finale (Tony’s family enjoying a nice meal) and yet nothing like any previous last scene, directed and edited to give you this constant sense of dread, to put you inside Tony’s head for a few minutes and see the world how he sees it: a place where everyone he sees, everyone who walks in a door, looks at him, whatever, could be coming to kill him. The door opens one last time, and…
…nothing. We don’t know, because Tony doesn’t know. Because Tony will never know who and what’s coming for him. That’s his fate, and that’s ours.
That’s probably one of the best explanations of the ending that I’ve read.
The thing that disappointed me about the ending was that Paulie survived. Bobby got killed. Christopher got killed. Phil got killed. Sil was seriously injured; possibly in a coma, but Paulie the most reprehensible, vile, disgusting character in the series is fine.
There’s no justice.
Folks, apologies for the double post; don’t know why it happened…
PAD Wrote:
“I didn’t think for a moment that Chase would tie everything off because LIFE doesn’t tie everything off.”
I don’t watch TV for real life. I live real life all the time. I watch TV for a good story, and good stories have good endings.
As Alan noted above, the series DID have a good ending.
“Not to undermine what you’re saying here, PAD, but that wasn’t exactly a “wise man” that Kaufman consulted. That was the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi himself, former guru to the Beatles and such.”
Yeah, I know, but I wasn’t sure how to spell it and didn’t want to butcher the name, so I settled for Wise Man. Certainly seems a fair description.
PAD
Could’ve just called him Sexy Sadie- worked for John Lennon…
First off, I have to admit I never watched the show, but after the finale you just could not escape hearing about it on every news network once each hour, it seemed.
I know my opinion isn’t the popular opinion, but I think the show should have tied up some loose ends, or giving a definite ending. I think television series should be the same as reading a book or watching a movie, I don’t want to get to the end of either (particularly after several years) just to be left hanging on the fate of the characters I have been reading/watching for so long.
Stargate: SG-1 ended with unanswered questions as well, but pretty much all fans know that those questions will be answered in a DVD movie to come out soon (although I’m irked that Sci-Fi is making us PAY for the actual series finale :-/ ).
In short, I, at least, watch TV (or read books) as an temporary escape from real life, and having unanswered questions after so long (assuming I watched the show, that is ^_^) would have just left me unsatisfied. (again, no offense to anyone who enjoyed the finale 🙂
Then someone patiently explained to me that Wrestler Guy was a new character, that he admired the theater of professional wrestling, that it was a post-modern take on the classic “heavy” of the Southern circuit, that…
Ah.
All right, then.
How interesting.
Not funny,
Different strokes and all…I thought it was hysterical and it was largely what got me into professional wrestling as a form of entertainment. Check out a short documentary called ANDY KAUFMAN: I’M FROM HOLLYWOOD. Funny stuff. But it’s all subjective, of course.
Alan–as george said above, that’s one of the best interpretations I’ve read so far.
I thought the ending woked on several levels. On the one hand, you could say that it avoided sinking into the Godfather I, II, and III cliche of the big final shootout (though you gotta love Moe Green getting it in the eye–I once went out on Halloween in my simplest costume ever, me wrapped in a towel with a pair of glasses on, one lens busted, my eye covered in bloody latex. At least 197 people came up to shake my hand, saying “Moe Green!” My best friend went as a urinal, a paper mache costume he’s labored hours on and got no reaction whatsoever, other than, as we discovered later, being actually pìššëd on. Good times, good times…where was I?)
Anyhoo, why would he go for cliche now and have everyone bìŧçh about it–you know the critics almost had their reviews pre-written for just that eventuality.
Secondly…you could make a very good argument that, in fact, we DID get the death on Tony. Wasn’t there a line in an earlier episode about never seeing it coming? One moment you’re alive, another you’re gone. The screen going black was Tony taking one in the brain stem.
Anyway, it’s amusing thinking about the tens of millions of people all freaking out at once, a mass confluence of actions not seen since 27 million people lunged for their tivos seconds after Justin Timberlake ripped Janet jackson’s dress.
I didn’t see the Sopranos finale, but I’ve read a lot about it. I was a fan of the Sopranos series too (just don’t have HBO. I watch it on DVD some).
From what I’ve heard, I would have been extremely fustrated with the Sopranos finale. Just to have the screen go black in the middle of a scene…UGH!
Its like with the Angel series finale. I know they didn’t have a lot of notice there, but I think they could have done a heck of a lot better. If it was just meant as a season finale, it still would have sucked. I know I have the unpopular opinion of this online (a lot of people seem to like the Angel finale), but I hated how the finale just STOPPED. Angels all like, ” I’m going to take down the bad guy.” and suddenly THATS IT!
Another example, Halo 2. You get to the end of the game and it just STOPS. No cliffhanger, it just STOPS. That sucked.
I totally agree with the poster who said good series finales are like book ends to the series. I mean come on…would you want to get to the end of a book and in the middle of scene the book just ends?! Like Harry Potter is fighting Voldemort and then Harry starts to cast the final spell on Voldemort and then…..the words THE END. Thats it. Thats the ending of the book! You never know if Harry defeats Voldemort, you never know if one or both of them dies, or anything else! People would be looking for J.K. Rowlings head! (as an aside: I think she’ll have alot people upset too if she kills off Harry)
To me “endings” like that are frustating. When I see a series finale or read a book, I want an actual ENDING. No cliffhanger endings (ugh. hate those), no just stopping (like Angel or the Sopranos ending), an actual ending is great, thank you very much.
People talk about real life. That there are no easy outs in real life. That there are no quick fixes or ultimate endings. I can accept the first two in my TV. I don’t easy outs or quick fixes. I do, however, want an ultimate ending! Ok, maybe I’d settle for a plan o’l ending, with a couple of doors left open in case the creator wants to revisit the world again, but I do want an ENDING.
Btw, I think the Sopranos ending is an easy out for David Chase & co. A lot of people say its ‘brillant’ but to me the harder thing for Chase & co to do would have been to find an ENDING for the show. Instead their like, ‘Oh I know! Instead of ending the show like everybody expects, lets NOT end the show! Let’s just stop in the middle of this scene…’
Ugh.
I though Chase & co. were better then that.
To me, the best ending to Sopranos would be this: Everybody thinks that Tony’s going to die or get caught, so we do the opposite. Tony gets away with it. He wins.
Happens all the time in real life! The bad guys don’t always lose.
DF2506
” In fact, they lose more on television then they do in real life……..”
There was a very final ending to the Sopranos, and I’m surprised no one here has mentioned it. There was a line on the show, first mentioned in the first episode, and later mentioned at the end of the second to last episode. It goes something like “they say you never see it coming, everything just goes black.” Now, the question is, who did everything go black for? The answer is you, the viewer. David Chase in his brilliance wacked the viewer to end the series. It doesn’t get any more brilliant than that.
“Pearls Before Swine” has a great turn on the Sopranos ending this week (“Your TV went black? Then you missed the scene where—”).
I liked the Angel ending. It wasn’t about ‘let’s get the bad guy’ as much as having to fight the bad guy whether you get him or not, which I like as a message.
Andy Kaufman was NEVER funny except in Taxi. Comic genius my butt.
-Posted by: critter42 at July 19, 2007 10:20 AM
–There is only one other jump to black that I can think of that made me scream as much as I did for the Sopranos – and that would be the jump to black at the end Best of Both Worlds, Part I:
“Mr. Worf – Fire!” and then black. AAARRRGGGHHH
me:
I don’t know — the fade to black on Angel gave me a similar feeling — and, like Sopranos, you knew you’d probably never get the ending;.
Unless, of course, the Angel or Buffy Comic had something to say.
-Posted by: critter42 at July 19, 2007 10:20 AM
–There is only one other jump to black that I can think of that made me scream as much as I did for the Sopranos – and that would be the jump to black at the end Best of Both Worlds, Part I:
“Mr. Worf – Fire!” and then black. AAARRRGGGHHH
me:
I don’t know — the fade to black on Angel gave me a similar feeling — and, like Sopranos, you knew you’d probably never get the ending;.
Unless, of course, the Angel or Buffy Comic had something to say.
-Posted by: critter42 at July 19, 2007 10:20 AM
–There is only one other jump to black that I can think of that made me scream as much as I did for the Sopranos – and that would be the jump to black at the end Best of Both Worlds, Part I:
“Mr. Worf – Fire!” and then black. AAARRRGGGHHH
me:
I don’t know — the fade to black on Angel gave me a similar feeling — and, like Sopranos, you knew you’d probably never get the ending;.
Unless, of course, the Angel or Buffy Comic had something to say.
-Posted by: critter42 at July 19, 2007 10:20 AM
–There is only one other jump to black that I can think of that made me scream as much as I did for the Sopranos – and that would be the jump to black at the end Best of Both Worlds, Part I:
“Mr. Worf – Fire!” and then black. AAARRRGGGHHH
me:
I don’t know — the fade to black on Angel gave me a similar feeling — and, like Sopranos, you knew you’d probably never get the ending;.
Unless, of course, the Angel or Buffy Comic had something to say.
Meh. “Brilliant”? Maybe.
“Incredibly unsatisfying”? Definitely.
“The Sopranos” finale (IMHO) goes on the same list as the “Star Trek: Voyager”, “The X-Files”, “Rosanne” and “Seinfeld” finales. Shows that I liked while they were on, but will never bother with reruns or DVD’s or future movies again because of the finale (For the record, “Voyager” is my least favorite Trek, but even bad Trek is better than most of the crap on TV today).
IMHO, the ending is the most important part of any story being told. I firmly believe that a story can have an excellent begining and middle, but if the ending sucks, then the whole thing sucks retroactively.
All of the shows I mentioned fit into that catagory (Again, IMHO). They all made me feel as if the time that I invested in watching them was wasted time that I wish I could get back.
Turtletrekker
One of the most unsatisfying endings in my opinion, was the ending of St. Elsewhere. For the younger people here, this was an ensemble medical drama in the 1980’s. It has lots of likable characters played by new stars like Denzel Washington, Howie Mandell, David Morse, William Daniels and Mark Harmon. One of the doctors had a young son who was autistic. On the last episode we are shown snow globe that the boy has and in the globe is the hospital. Apparently all of the stories and characters were figments of an autistic boy’s imagination. That may have been a real different ending but it left me cold and I don’t think the series has ever had any reruns in syndication.
One of the most unsatisfying endings in my opinion, was the ending of St. Elsewhere. For the younger people here, this was an ensemble medical drama in the 1980’s. It has lots of likable characters played by new stars like Denzel Washington, Howie Mandell, David Morse, William Daniels and Mark Harmon. One of the doctors had a young son who was autistic. On the last episode we are shown snow globe that the boy has and in the globe is the hospital. Apparently all of the stories and characters were figments of an autistic boy’s imagination. That may have been a real different ending but it left me cold and I don’t think the series has ever had any reruns in syndication.
I never saw the episode, but it was spoiled for me at least 3 times the next day, and, of course, 239 times online that week.
After much contemplation (he-he-heh), I agree that any big, explosive ending would not have been right. More resolutions would have been mundane, as there was not enough air time left for the series to tie up enough of the loose ends to satisfy everyone.
The ending works because there always were evil people in decent society, there will always be evil people in decent society. Life goes on. When one thing dies, it is replaced with something else. A mobster dies, another is born or made to take his place. Life goes on and on and on and on…
It’s the circle of life. What goes around, comes around. Like an onion ring. Take this. Eat of it and get eternal life.
George, St. Elsewhere did go to reruns for a few years, but I haven’t seen any in at least 6-7-8 years, probably more.
PAD,
I think one of the problems that occur with people who are fans of an artform is that we tend to think WAY too much about the artist and not enough about the art. Why should we care about David Chase’s artistic sensiblities or how he wants to put his stamp on it – it’s not about him, it’s about the show. We shouldn’t be saying ‘wow, how clever is that Chase’ we should have been saying ‘how great was that ending!’. I don’t think most people thought that. I’ve always felt that great art was about coming up with something that noboby else could imagine (if they could, then they’d do it themselves) and yet is totally satisfying when seen (heard, read…). I know you understand this, I’ve never seen you tack something on that’s totally wrong for the story but gives it that special ‘Peter David edge’. That’s not art, it’s ego. I wasn’t satisfied with the ending, to praise it on ‘artistic vision’ would do a disservice to the show.
You’re right that life goes on, but stories end. If you ask about the birth of my son, I’m not gonna start with my high school prom and end with ‘and then I replied to PAD’ unless it adds to the story. He’s alive and well and has done alot since birth, but that’s stuff is another story with it’s own beginning and end.
Also, and I know this is just my opinion, but I don’t feel that “Soprano’s” has really even been that good the last couple of seasons to still be receiving all of these Emmy’s. It’s not even the best show on HBO – that’s “The Wire”.
Count me in with those who wrote “sure, real life’s can be like that, but if I wanted real life, why am I watching TV?”
And I’m not sure that counts as the most annoying ending. Over twenty years ago,THE MEDUSA TOUCH movie’s ending had some people literally standing up in the theatre, howling in indignation at the movie ending there. At least at the showing I was at.
Or the fifth season of the otherwise rock solid B5 where they spent all that time setting up the Telepath War, only to have it conclude off screen, thus robbing viewers of their chance to see Bester get his richly deserved comupance. Grrrr. Maybe they’ll address this in the Lost Tales Of …? Here’s hoping.
I totally agree with the poster who said good series finales are like book ends to the series. I mean come on…would you want to get to the end of a book and in the middle of scene the book just ends?! Like Harry Potter is fighting Voldemort and then Harry starts to cast the final spell on Voldemort and then…..the words THE END. Thats it. Thats the ending of the book! You never know if Harry defeats Voldemort, you never know if one or both of them dies, or anything else! People would be looking for J.K. Rowlings head! (as an aside: I think she’ll have alot people upset too if she kills off Harry)
Funny you should mention that. The very same thing happened at the end of Florence Engel Randall’s novel THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS. The characters figured out what was going on, had an idea of how they might fix it, and headed off into the woods to…THE END
It’s written in a way that you pretty much know what’s going to happen but it was painfully abrupt. Like the author just got bored and said, “If I simply tell you what the characters need to do to end the story I don’t actually need to write the ending, do I?”
Otherwise, a fantastic book.
The conventional understanding of sociopathy is that while the sociopath makes everyone around him suffer, the sociopath benefits personally from his sociopathy. That’s why sociopathy isn’t considered a mental disorder.
Artie Bucco hits his bottom, and cleans up his act by renewing his devotion to cooking. From the very beginning, Chase seemed to portray the privilege of organized crime as something sheltering the characters from hitting a bottom as Artie did. It saturates the entire series: who’s going to correct Tony when he mispronounces “Machiavelli?” Therefore, Chase presented the last season settling once-and-for-all that these sociopaths’ dysfunction never carries them to bottom — the only thing that stops them is the death that stops all of us.
That’s also a succinct summary of Kierkegaard’s point of uncertainty being omnipresent in joy and in despair. Tony’s dominance never gives him certainty, so his repulsive behavior was for nothing. The lesson of dominance never leading to certainty would have serve the US well in avoiding the trouble of an arbitrary Iraq invasion.
My favorite interpretation of MADE IN AMERICA was the Last Supper comparison, made by Bob Harris. He talks about the composition of the scene and foreshadowing and plenty of good stuff. You can read it here:
http://www.bobharris.com/content/view/1406/1/
By the way, the “Everything goes black” theory is wrong. No one says that. Kind of like how people remember “Play it again, Sam” from CASABLANCA, even though that quote is never said in the film.
And I’m not sure that counts as the most annoying ending. Over twenty years ago,THE MEDUSA TOUCH movie’s ending had some people literally standing up in the theatre, howling in indignation at the movie ending there. At least at the showing I was at.
Are you sure they weren’t howling at the fact that they’d wasted 2 hours of their life watching THE MEDUSA TOUCH? That sort of realization can lead to any manner of teeth gnashing and shirt rending. (Although the one well done scene in the movie, the airliner crash into the building, certainly has an added frisson of horror now.)
The conventional understanding of sociopathy is that while the sociopath makes everyone around him suffer, the sociopath benefits personally from his sociopathy. That’s why sociopathy isn’t considered a mental disorder.
That’s an interesting statement but I’m not sure it’s accurate. Isn’t sociopathy–or Antisocial Personality Disorder, as I think it’s properly called now–still considered a genuine mental illness? It’s in the DSm, last I checked.
Also, does benefitting from one’s disorder automatically make it not a disorder? Madness can be useful in certain circumstances but it doesn’t make one less mad.
Bill – Overall I certainly liked the film. It was playing opposite THE FURY and I went to see it the same evening literally right after MEDUSA and I honestly felt the latter was far better. It pulled me in in a way few films ever have and the end, though frustrating in some ways, did do a very good job of setting up a “*sigh of relief* Things have been going VERY badly, but it’s over now and we … uh-oh … no it’s not, in fact it just got a LOT worse. Now what do we do?” situation.
Wow. It seemed incredibly obvious what happened at the end. Tony died.
First was the prelude of ‘you never see it coming’ repeated from an earlier show.
Next was the order of the final shots.
Doorbell rings, Tony’s face, then Tony’s point of view.
Sequence was repeated several times, then as it goes to black at the end, it’s right as it would be Tony’s pov.
Oranges. Anyone who’s watched the Godfather series (and if you haven’t, why are you watching the Sopranos?) knows that oranges symbolize death for main characters. The diner has orange as a primary color throughout the scene.
And much, much more.
Chase has so many expectations going against him that ANY ending except the one he ultimately chose would have labeled him as unimaginative. Big shootout at the end; living in witness protection; buried in a cornfield; Carmela or Tony waking up and we find out the whole season was a dream….done, done and done.
This ending gave us EVERYTHING we wanted – got us talking about it, hitting the TV, wondering if cable went out and those that hated or were already poised to complain about the Sopranos ANYWAY… the ammunition they needed.
Best ending ever.
Also, I respectfully disagree with those that post:
I don’t watch TV for real life. I live real life all the time. I watch TV for a good story, and good stories have good endings.
Hey, I like a good closure from a series: Six Feet Under, off hand, would be my best example of one.
But honestly? I say “Nuts” to that (ref: Jericho finale)in this case! One watches or reads fiction to see a truth about life.
Happy endings, good stories or good endings (besides the fact that we’re on the subject of a mafia genre series) are a matter of personal preference and perspective.
Starwolf–far be it fror me to traqsh anyone’s love of any movie. MEDUSA looks like THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS next to some of the stuff I watch!
It seemed like a bit of a lost opportunity. Why is Richard Burton only able to make disasters happen? Did he ever try to use his powers for good? What happened?
THE FURY is just a mess, although John Cassavetes certainly does blow up real good.
The terms sociopathy and anti-social personality disorder aren’t interchangeable. Sociopathy isn’t a part of clinical canon.
Tony Soprano seems to be a good example of someone who is a sociopath who doesn’t suffer from anti-social personality disorder. He went to therapy to adapt and hone his sociopathy to stay out of jail — perhaps not unlike that Lone Wolf & Cub story where Ogami conditioned himself to kill that innocent Buddhist priest without existentially “cutting himself.” The challenge of the sociopath seems to be in navigating his own angst, where the challenge to the anti-social personality seems to be in navigating reality.
Or consider the gay Vito storyline. He finds happiness with the gay fireman, but he’s too soft to put in the conventional eight hour workday. He leaves because he accepts his dysfunction, where the anti-social personality is perhaps helpless to his condition, if he accepts he has a condition at all.
Look at it this way: Tony’s paranoia at the series end is rooted in knowing he got away with something abnormal, where the anti-social personality perhaps has no such knowledge and therefore is more likely to be caught.
The terms sociopathy and anti-social personality disorder aren’t interchangeable. Sociopathy isn’t a part of clinical canon.
I’m having trouble finding sources to support that. Wiki and others say that The official stance of the American Psychiatric Association as presented in the DSM-IV-TR is that psychopathy and sociopathy are obsolete synonyms for antisocial personality disorder (APD). The World Health Organization takes a similar stance in its ICD-10 by referring to psychopathy, sociopathy, antisocial personality, asocial personality, and amoral personality as synonyms for dissocial personality disorder.
some believe that psycopathy and sociopathy are interchangeable, others think that psychopaths are more often born that way while sociopaths are more likely the result of environmental factors. Some seem to be claiming that a sociopath is just a psychopath who gets caught or something.
But regardless, nothing I’ve found indicates that a sociopath–as defined by the professionals–is not afflicted with a disorder. Now if you are using the word in a more casual way than that I guess it could mean anything.
As for Tony Soprano not suffering from his disorder…if by that you mean that he has benefitted from it, that is certainly true. But who would trade their lives for his? He is incapable of living a normal life. He can never experience the kind of life most of us take for granted, being normal. He destroys the people around him. None of us can imagine having to destroy friends and family for survival; for Tony this is an almost inevitable part of life. The fact that he is too far gone to know how much his socipathy has cost him doesn’t mean that it hasn’t.
I had read a editorial on the Harry Potter ending. His idea of the perfect ending was Harry sitting at the Hog’s Head with Ron and Hermoine with Ginny outside trying to paralled park with magic and still being unsuccessful. Then the last 16 pages are blank.
Where did you read that?
PAD
Well if the APA says psychopathy and sociopathy are obsolete synonyms for APD then, by definition of the word obsolete, they haven’t contradicted what I’ve said.
Also, WHO saying sociopathy and antisocial personality disorder are synonyms for dissocial personality disorder doesn’t necessarily mean there’s an established, formally-accepted clinical definition of sociopathy, while I believe there is one for antisocial personality disorder. As far as there is a distinction, their interchangeable use is literally not justified.
It’s like the usage of the word “subconscious” — it’s informally used to refer to what Freud called the unconscious, but there seems to be no formal establishment of the former term. While there seems to be no justification for use of the word “subconcious,” as it’s only used to refer to the unconscious, there seems to be non-disordered modes of behavior that justify the use of the word sociopathy as I’ve used the word here.
The uncertainty and paranoia Tony demonstrated does not seem to qualify as a disorder. Evil is not a disorder. Evil does not mean dysfunctional.
Chase highlighted Tony’s paranoia in the last scene to demonstrate all of his herculean efforts accomplished nothing certain. He wins and wins and wins, yet accomplishes nothing. He is a symbol for the US as the last imperial superpower.
I, too, swore loudly when the screen went black…and then realized what had happened. David Chase has steadfastly refused to explain or elaborate on the ending of The Sopranos and about the only chance we have of ever getting any answers is if all parties involved decide to do a movie in a few years. Frankly, I’m not holding my breath.
Ultimately, I can live with that ending to the series.
On the subject of series finales, did anyone else watch the last episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip a few weeks ago? I got the feeling, watching the show, that that episode would have been very different if the show’s cancellation hadn’t been all but certain at the time they were filming it (as in, Matt and Harriet don’t try to make a go of it, Tom’s brother doesn’t get rescued, and Jordan doesn’t miraculously recover from her severe post-natal complications). Anyone else get the same feeling?
Yeah, I thought that David Kelley just wrapped everything up and put a big bow on it because these characters weren’t going to be seen again. I liked the show but the last episode was nothing like the rest of the season. Too bad.
Paul1963, yes, I watched the ending of Studio 60. I agree that things probably wouldn’t have wrapped up so nicely if the show hadn’t been canceled. Jordan having adoption papers ready for Danny to sign seemed especially convenient.
But you know what? There’s no way I would have watched those last few episodes if I didn’t know that it was going to be over soon. I would have given up halfway through the second K&R episode. They took 2 episodes of material and stretched it out to make the last 4. The characters had the same arguments over and over again. They weren’t even arguing, since they usually agreed with each other on the big issues. They were just disagreeing about little things and then making long, pompous speeches. Even when I agreed with those speeches, I still hating listening to them.
Mainly, I don’t want to hear Matt and Harriet talk to or about each other ever again. They didn’t get along and it was a horrible relationship. Their friends should have been telling them that instead of saying how wonderful they were together.
It was a good show in some ways, but I’m glad it’s cancelled.
I gave up on the show a while ago, but I did tune in for the last 5 episodes. I think the ending left everything wide open. Based on the ending and the information given, you can rightfully believe Tony got whacked or you can believe he lived happily ever after in Mafialand. I think they pretty much told us, “The choice is yours.”
The true artist owes the audience NOTHING. His loyalty is to the work alone,to follow his vision and figure out how to best convey that vision. To demand a traditional ending to a show as unique as The Sopranos is to not understand what made the show so great in the first place.
First. I found Andy Kaufman mildly funny the first time i saw him
After that whenever i saw him all that came to mind was “The Royal Nonesuch, or, The King’s Camelopard”.
I never saw any of The Sopranos – didn’t have cable, wasn’t watching much teevee, didn’t have the energy to hunt it up on DVD.
Last night, i was wrking on making a couple of DVDs for Kate to take to her office, and i watched Not Fade Away, the final episode of Angel.
“Okay guys – let’s go see how many we can take with us.” and a black screen.
I suspect that there were complaints along the lines of “But we don’t know how it ends!”
It doesn’t matter what happens next – we’ve seen the story that Joss Whedon set out to tell. What happens next, in essence, is just accounting.
I remember arguing with someone in the original SF & Mystery Bookshop here in Atlanta about the end of Heinlein’s Starship Trooper – he insisted that Heinlein had blown it, that the story wasn’t complete. I tried to bringhi to see that ST wasn’t the story of the wat – it was the story of Johnny Rico growing up and accepting a man’s duties (whether you agree that those ought be a man’s duties…)
Sergio Leone ends the second film of his “Once Upon a Time” trilogy – Duck You Sucker (also known as A Fistful of Dynamite), finally available in as complete an edition as we’re ever going
It’s a wise creator who realises that he’s reached the end of the story at a point where “But hwat happens next?” is a legitimate question. to get – on the line “But What about me?”
(Corrected version of my previous post, which had a bad edit.)
First. I found Andy Kaufman mildly funny the first time i saw him.
After that whenever i saw him all that came to mind was “The Royal Nonesuch, or, The King’s Camelopard”.
I never saw any of The Sopranos – didn’t have cable, wasn’t watching much teevee, didn’t have the energy to hunt it up on DVD.
Last night, i was wrking on making a couple of DVDs for Kate to take to her office, and i watched Not Fade Away, the final episode of Angel.
“Okay guys – let’s go see how many we can take with us.” and a black screen.
I suspect that there were complaints along the lines of “But we don’t know how it ends!”
It doesn’t matter what happens next – we’ve seen the story that Joss Whedon set out to tell. What happens next, in essence, is just accounting.
I remember arguing with someone in the original SF & Mystery Bookshop here in Atlanta about the end of Heinlein’s Starship Trooper – he insisted that Heinlein had blown it, that the story wasn’t complete. I tried to bringhi to see that ST wasn’t the story of the wat – it was the story of Johnny Rico growing up and accepting a man’s duties (whether you agree that those ought be a man’s duties…)
Sergio Leone ends the second film of his “Once Upon a Time” trilogy – Duck You Sucker (also known as A Fistful of Dynamite), finally available in as complete an edition as we’re ever going to get – on the line “But What about me?”
It’s a wise creator who realises that he’s reached the end of the story at a point where “But hwat happens next?” is a legitimate question.
Trek Barnes said that Tony got whacked. His reasoning is that the point of view was Tony’s.
As counterargument, I submit that he didn’t get whacked, he just had another fainting spell—just as he did when the series started.