And in the end

Did Tony decide to play with the feds?  (Did the fat Soprano sing?)

Did he get whacked?

Do you believe he will "just go on and on and on…"? 

Otherwise, …

Did Paulie turn?

Is AJ slouching into the Thing?

What’s with that spooky cat, anyway?

{democracy:12}

SPOILERS: DO NOT READ COMMENTS BELOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE EPISODES.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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29 Comments

  1. When that JOURNEY song that I absolutely detest (Well, are there any good Journey songs? Just sit back and wait for me to get flamed by their fans..) cued up, the show went from having jumped the shark straight into Davy Jones’ Locker. I think the show
    has been limping along for a while now anyway.

  2. Guy Power says:

    Hmmmmmmm….. I’ve never seen a single episode. Though, it does look more interesting than anything else on TV (well, except for the History Chanel, and News) — especially better than all the “reality TV” works of fiction.

  3. Chris Garton-Zavesky says:

    Never seen an episode. What’s all the fuss about?

  4. Brian Crane says:

    You should add a third option:

    I have never watched an episode. Tony who?

  5. Hmmmm….It doesn’t look like I’ll be arguing when exactly the show
    JTS with anyone here anytime soon, does it? LOL!

  6. After all that, NOTHING happened!

    I suppose I would have been disappointed if Tony had went over to the Feds, or got whacked, but still that ending left me confused and angry.

  7. zeppo says:

    I’m O.K. with the ending. Like everyone else, I would have liked to have the loose ends tied together, but the abrupt departure reminds us all that this is just television. The suspension of disbelief is getting harder and harder, but then again, the very fact that this is even on the WDTPRS site proves how all-encompassing entertainment has become.

  8. Cathy: Yah… don’t you love it when people who know nothing about the topic at hand leap in with comments? o{]:¬)

  9. some guy says:

    Didn’t get whacked. That guy did not come out of the men’s room with a gun because Michael Corleone did and Sopranos isn’t Godfather, but will certainly pay its respects to Godfather in its last moments.

    Paulie didn’t turn — nothing to gain, no good reason to do so.

    Journey song was excellent. Really set the free and easy scene and the sense of a new beginning. The tension with Meadow delayed by parallel parking and A.J. following that possible hitman was inentional, but entirely in our minds because we JUST KNEW that something had to happen — it couldn’t end peacefully, could it?

    The abrupt ending was David Chase telling all of us that he doesn’t owe us “closure.” Or, it was his statement that “Tony Soprano” is still out there in real life — real life doesn’t have the “television” endings so many seem to have expected from the Sopranos.

  10. Vincenzo says:

    Cathy of Alex wrote:
    “Hmmmm….It doesn’t look like I’ll be arguing when exactly the show
    JTS with anyone here anytime soon, does it? LOL!”

    http://i7.tinypic.com/4ub57gg.jpg

  11. Animadversor says:

    Well, I’ve not seen it, either—though Lord knows I’ve not been able to escape hearing about it—so I’ll not comment on it. But really, Mr. Power, the History Channel? I suppose the web site’s OK, but the cable channel is unspeakably shallow and vulgar.

  12. Ave Maria says:

    Never watched the show; never will!
    Gave up TV years ago for all intents and purposes.

  13. Vincenzo: LOL! You forgot the duckies.

    I never realized how much Steve Perry looks like Cher. Yuck.

  14. The episode I remember best was when Tony Soprano’s son was confirmed.My memory is fuzzy (it was at least a year ago,probably longer)but the boy was caught smoking dope in the kitchen by his sponsor (who was a mob hitman).The sponsor-hitman gives him a lecture on what is expected of him as aconfirmed catholic.Then the boy leaves to rejoin the others at the confirmation party leaving the sponsor-hitman alone in the kitchen.There is a pause where you can see he is considering his words of advice he gave to the boy and then he begins to cry-I mean he was really crying.Then the scene ends.

  15. Woody Jones says:

    I am not familiar with their work.

  16. Karen Russell says:

    Since I’ve never watched the show either, I can’t vote in your poll. Pout! :)

  17. Gregg the obscure says:

    This and the penultimate episode were the best in quite a while.

    New respect for Paulie, particularly his sage folk wisdom regarding felines.

    I’d say that T’s look of surprise came from seeing Agent Harris come in to arrest him. The info on Phil was a set-up to rid the streets of two ruthless mafia bosses. Of course in Chase’s post-modernism, we each have only our own truth rather than an objective truth. We can hope that this relativism will go the way of the mafia itself.

  18. RBrown says:

    I have seen about one third of all the shows, starting from the beginning. And of course, by now I’m familiar with the last moments of the last episode.

    The show ends as it begins–with Tony Soprano as a man alone. All his trusted buddies and relatives in business (sic) with him are either dead, dying, or considering switching loyalties. Even his shrink showed him the door.

    He is now an outsider, left with a wife, toward whom he has been chronically unfaithful, and children who are growing up and/or fouled up.

    He now must be suspicious of everyone, even some guy going into the bathroom (Members Only!).

  19. billsykes says:

    … the love you take is equal to the love you make. Do I win anything, Father?

  20. FranzJosf says:

    Joshua Trevino has interesting analysis over at National Review:

    http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MmNjZWJhMGJlOGI1MWNiZjFhYmE4ZGMzZGI0OTZkOGQ=

    Entitled, “Made in America: The conservative finale of The Sopranos,” Mr. Trivino concludes:

    “But when we turn off the television and look around us, we see that we have their like among us without the mobster parentage. Instead, they grow up in utterly ordinary homes in utterly ordinary neighborhoods. If daughter and son on television can emerge as recognizable inheritors of their father’s worst traits, then what does it say of us when we produce the same without that father? The inescapable conclusion is that the fall is intrinsic to us. If David Chase’s fictional world is Jeffersonian or Rousseauian, then his real world is Christian or conservative. Watching Tony Soprano cut to black is a sobering and tremendous reminder not only of why this show was great — but also of why it is a warning.”

    On the way to that conclusion, he has many interesting observations to make along the way.

  21. Le Renard says:

    The Diner is Hell.

    The order in which they entered the diner was the order in which they were killed.

    The part about the daughter Meadow attempting to parallel park but not quite being successful until after several efforts symbolized how it wasn’t until she committed several acts that made her qualifiy for Hell.

    Just a musing — that’s all.

  22. RBrown says:

    I think it’s almost always a mistake to try to find a moral message in art, not to mention political theory–Rousseau, Jefferson, Conservative . . . blah, blah, blah.

    The last 20 episodes (6th year) were written as the ending. The first of those 20 was called “Members Only”. In the last episode the final message, which was on someone’s jacket, read “Members Only”.

    I think the ending is summarized in a line from that first episode of the 6th year: “I don’t care how close you are, in the end your friends are gonna let you down. Family. They’re the only ones you can depend on.”

    Members Only.

  23. some guy says:

    “A mistake to try to find a moral message in art?”

    Wow. Methinks millenia of human thought disagree.

    Especially considering the impact that art has had in support of political causes — called ‘propaganda’ in those cases — and in transmission of histories and cultural messages, I do hope you reconsider. Treviño wasn’t making bold pronouncements and drawing in obscure quotes from smart, dead guys to bolster a grandiose point loosely based on a few selected moments in the show; he was taking what Chase gave and looking at it through the appropriate lens — that of the cultural and political milieu Chase’s art was nestled in. The rank-and-file television viewer certainly wouldn’t see what Treviño saw, but that’s more due to their own shallowness (and I include myself in this category) and desire for brute entertainment rather than Treviño’s desire to find a moral or political message.

    If you think otherwise, if you think Treviño was unnecessarily in-depth, please explain why he was mistaken in making his observations.

  24. Le Renard says:

    The last 20 episodes (6th year) were written as the ending. The first of those 20 was called “Members Only”. In the last episode the final message, which was on someone’s jacket, read “Members Only”.

    I think the ending is summarized in a line from that first episode of the 6th year: “I don’t care how close you are, in the end your friends are gonna let you down. Family. They’re the only ones you can depend on.”

    Members Only.

    RBrown,

    That sounds rather interesting!

    It’s in marked contrast to what the grandmother said in the earlier seasons where she said something to the effect that everything in life is meaningless and that in the end, you die alone.

  25. FranzJosf says:

    There is no moral message in A Tale of Two Cities? In fact there are many, just as there are here.

  26. RBrown says:

    “A mistake to try to find a moral message in art?”

    Wow. Methinks millenia of human thought disagree.

    Not really. But it’s a common error found in utilitarian societies (and Protestantism).

    Especially considering the impact that art has had in support of political causes—called ‘propaganda’ in those cases—and in transmission of histories and cultural messages, I do hope you reconsider. Treviño wasn’t making bold pronouncements and drawing in obscure quotes from smart, dead guys to bolster a grandiose point loosely based on a few selected moments in the show; he was taking what Chase gave and looking at it through the appropriate lens—that of the cultural and political milieu Chase’s art was nestled in. The rank-and-file television viewer certainly wouldn’t see what Treviño saw, but that’s more due to their own shallowness (and I include myself in this category) and desire for brute entertainment rather than Treviño’s desire to find a moral or political message.

    Art is primarily meant to be experienced, not analyzed according to various categories–moral, political, Christ figures (ech!), or (God help us) Jungian archetypes–as if it were a puzzle.

    Art does not deal with good and evil but rather with beauty and its contrary, ugliness (cf satire). Its effectiveness is not a function of any moral, political, or religious predisposition of the listener, observer, or reader. And so there are atheists and agnostics who love Gregorian chant and Chartres cathedral.

    For example, the inordinate affection for goods and their possession is a genuine moral topic. Molier’s The Miser (L’avare) doesn’t portray the protagonist as an immoral man but rather as a fool–by ridiculing him. When I saw the play some years ago, I laughed during the first half, but then in the second half the jokes got old–and he was just disgusting. My guess is this is the way Moliere wanted it.

    And so he makes his point by getting his audience to laugh at a greedy man, then by perhaps being disgusted by him. The same is true of various Dickens characters, including the cloying, obsequious Uriah Heep. These are not moral judgments, but rather artistic portrayals (based on observation) about human foibles.

    If you think otherwise, if you think Treviño was unnecessarily in-depth, please explain why he was mistaken in making his observations.

    It’s not that it is in depth, but rather that it is not.

    Do you think it’s just coincidence that Trevino. who is a political scientist, trotted out political categories?

    David Chase said that the show is about a family–a New Jersey Italian family. And there are a million funny stories about every family.

  27. RBrown says:

    It’s in marked contrast to what the grandmother said in the earlier seasons where she said something to the effect that everything in life is meaningless and that in the end, you die alone.

    It begins with Tony Soprano sitting alone, waiting to see the shrink who will work to free him from his mother’s psychological control. It ends with him with his family.

  28. RBrown says:

    Should be “sitting with his family”.

  29. thomas tucker says:

    I think the ending, with the sudden “pulling of the plug” so that we were all wondering if our cable had gone out, was sadistic and sophomoric on Chase’s part. And his continuing refusal to say what the intent of this ending was, or whether he is just leaving it to our imaginations, continues the same bad behavior.

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