Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

I like how Tony thinks all that matters is family...wonder if he is thinking that while he is screwing everything that walks by in heels

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

As a viewer, I thought it was horrible.

As David Chase - I get it - the whole country is anticipating the ending, leave it like this on a cliff hanger so we can all make up our own ending. It goes black cause he dies, or goes into witness protection, or nothing happens, etc. etc. And, it made us go nuts after the suspense of the song and the restaurant scene!

But, in the end, I really thought the episode was bad - I thought last week was so much better!

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Posted by Kimberly

UGH! What a crappy ending.

But the more I think about it the more "it all goes black" makes sense.

Well Chase sure did one thing...left us all wondering what really happened.

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

wait...I read that people on the West Coast saw a slightly different ending!

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

I actually think it was a great way to end it. He wasn't looking for people to like it or not but more for people to talk about it.

And I think that def worked.

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

I woke up this AM still FURIOUS about the ending. but Chase is a smart I guess... look at how long this thread is - it's all over the news and radio. EVERYONE is talking about it

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

People would be talking about it NO MATTER HOW it ended...it was the end to a 10 year show.....most people are talking about it unfavorably though



I hate the draw your own conclusion ending....what am I a writer for the show? If so I want my bonus check in the mail ASAP

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

The last song says it all ..

Don't stop believing..

that cat was def adriana....
Everything is resolved.

Tony is going to be indicted.
Meadow is getting married and becoming a lawyer.
AJ is a shallow prick again.
Paulie is going to run things with Tony in jail.
Patsy is going to be consigliere
Butchy will run NY
When the FBI guy said "we won" it meant they got Tony.
Tony ended it with the most important thing in his life, his family.
Now he's going down.
( as per my friend)
I think that they leave it wide open to come back...

I think Chase out did himself ONCE AGAIN!

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

I wish I could see the endings they taped!

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Posted by Karen

Posted by MsG

From another board:

The more I think about it, the more I realize that this was a great ending. Remember when Tony and Bobby where on the boat and and he asks "what do you think happens when you die?" and he replies, "nothing, it just goes black"
Tony is dead. Great ending.

great connection, whoever made it!!

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Message edited 6/11/2007 9:03:38 AM.

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

LMAOOOOO i thought dh hit the remote and switched the chan. but then he said he didnt .. then i thought the tv went blank .. but when i called my dad and asked him how it ended .. he was already on the phone with cablevision trying to find out why his tv went dead lmaoooooooo.. and that is how we knew it ended loll

Message edited 6/11/2007 9:04:55 AM.

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

A guy on MSNBC said that he checked the credits and the guy at the counter (who went to the bathroom) was ID'ed as Nicky Leotardo (Phil's nephew) and then he said the brothers that walked in "tried to take a shot at Tony" a few years ago.... hmmm....

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

From Newsday"


'Sopranos' finale leaves more questions than answers

Don't ask me what it means. But "The Sopranos" ended Sunday night.

That's right. Just ended. Nothing more and, really, nothing less. A joke ending perhaps? No, make that "probably" -- creator David Chase's final dismissive wave of the hand to an audience that so often demanded (especially in recent seasons) meaning, resolution, violence and -- above all -- finality.

So much for all that.

After 86 episodes, the most lauded TV drama in history ended on a freeze frame, as Tony glanced expectantly at the door of a diner that his daughter, Meadow, had just entered. It was (of course) one of those scenes strung tight with drama, expectation and even symbolism -- the harrowing figure disappearing into a men's room, just as other harrowing figures entered the diner, summoning from 8 million or so memory banks a "Godfather" deja vu moment.

All those questions about whether Tony would live or die? The answers will now remain lost forever, swallowed in the space of just about 30 silent seconds before the final credits rolled. Now the debate rolls on.

In other words, maybe there will be a movie after all.

Chase's long meditation on the banality of evil always did have an artistic and commercial challenge, occasionally at odds. End the thing with Tony's death and you forever scrub the idea of a movie (which, seriously, will likely never happen anyway).

But end with Tony's death and you also undercut a primary theme of "The Sopranos," which is this -- that in a godless universe, sometimes crime does pay.

With last night's strange, elliptical ending, Chase and "The Sopranos" appeared to resolve that problem. There really was no ending, so Tony really lives or dies. It was the closest Chase ever got to audience participation: Choose the ending YOU prefer and then don't bug me anymore.

What else happened? A few things (for those who somehow missed it, cover your eyes right now): the overreaching and underthinking Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent), naturally, got whacked in a gruesome scene at a gas station (first a bullet in the head and then his head cracks like a walnut under the wheel of an 8,000 pound SUV.) A.J. (Robert Iler) pulls out of a brief flirtation with idealism, tainted though it may be, to pursue something in the movie biz. Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) is still off to law school.

In the two pivotal scenes, Butch DeConcini (Gregory Antonacci) -- Phil's capo -- flips by giving Tony a green light to finish his problem, and, with wind and snow swirling, Agent Dwight Harris (Matt Servitto) ponders and ultimately accedes to Tony's request for information on Phil's whereabouts. (When he later learns of Leotardo's whacking, he giggles like a schoolboy -- "We're gonna win this thing!")

Also: Carlo Gervasi (Arthur J. Nascarella) flips and begins to supply the Feds with information that'll put T away forever, assuming he walks out of the diner alive (again, your call).

Was the most anticipated finale of the TV season a disappointment? Yes, a profound one because even though Chase and company scorned the idea of tidy endings, his devoted fans certainly did not. After 86 episodes, we wanted something more. We wanted a conclusion. Instead, we got just another question mark.

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Although they left us all hanging and open to the possibility of a movie (i hope!)...I really like the ending.

I was on the edge of my seat the last 10 min. That whole scene in the restaurant...the build up...my heart was racing. I think Chase did an awesome job.

Besides, I didn't want to see Tony get whacked!

How about the way they killed Phil?!

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

I don't know what the heck happened but I don't think they are in the witness protection program b/c wouldn't that mean they have to leave town, and take up new identities? Why would they be going out to eat in a dinner if they were hiding out?
I don't know!
I think the best theory is the one with Tony being shot and that was what the whole abrupt ending was about. Everything suddenly went black, and silent. The cat was cracking me up...

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

this ending goes right up there with the
Pine Barens episode & our Missing Russian


and.... if the edning is a prelude to a movie - WHO will be in it? MOst of Tony crew is dead.... or was that all a dream

Message edited 6/11/2007 9:19:28 AM.

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Here's the Star Ledger today:

Don't stop believing
Monday, June 11, 2007
BY ALAN SEPINWALL
The Star-Ledger
Who knew that the music of Journey could be used so ironically?

At the end of an otherwise satisfying "Sopranos" series finale, creator David Chase threw one final curveball at his audience. In his first episode as both writer and director since the series pilot, Chase sent Tony to a family dinner at Holsten's ice cream parlor in Bloomfield. Many previous seasons had ended on a Soprano family tableau -- A.J. even quoted something Tony said at Vesuvio back in the season one finale -- but this one was edited to seem far more ominous.

As the sounds of Steve Perry wailing on "Don't Stop Believing" filled the soundtrack, Tony kept eyeing the door and the other patrons as first Carmela, then A.J. arrived, while we spent an interminable amount of time watching Meadow double park. The camera kept focusing on a shady-looking character at the bar with more than a passing resemblance to the late Eugene Pontecorvo (down to the Member's Only jacket) who was studying Tony, but then his advance on Tony turned out to be a trip to the men's room. Meadow finally parked, dashed towards Holsten's, the camera cut back to Tony in close-up looking at something, Perry sang the words "Don't stop," and...

... nothing. No hint of whether Tony was looking at Meadow or something else entirely (perhaps the feds coming to arrest him after Carlo Gervasi apparently flipped), no music of any kind, just a fast cut to black and then the closing credits playing out in complete silence.

Whether you were waiting for one of the more popular predicted endings -- Tony in Witness Protection, Tony killed by Phil's guys, Furio and/or the Russian coming back for revenge, what have you -- or just for an ending, period, chances are that cut-to-black had you pulling a William Shatner in "Wrath of Khan," pointing your face at the heavens and bellowing, "CHAAAAASE!!!!!!"

And yet the finale, both the first 55 minutes of it and that sadistic last scene, fit perfectly with everything Chase has done on this show before.

Did we get the violent fireworks of last week? Absolutely not, as the only deaths of the hour were Phil Leotardo (gunned down at a gas station, then, in a gruesome indignity, his skull crushed post-mortem by his rolling car), and A.J.'s SUV (which caught fire while idling near a pile of leaves). But that's been the pattern of every season: the major action goes in the penultimate episode, while the finale is saved for quiet reflection and the odd whacking or two.

So Tony and Butchie DeConcini negotiated a peace treaty -- with the tacit understanding that Tony's guys could eliminate the out-of-control Phil -- a third of the way through the episode, and the bulk of the hour focused on Tony's lower-case family.

Janice faced life without Bacala (and a lifetime of torment for Bobby's kids), and once again invoked the name and memory of Livia Soprano, going about in pity for herself. Janice and Tony each visited Junior in the run-down state facility he was banished to when his cash ran out, but Corrado didn't recognize them.

Meadow planned her wedding to Patrick Parisi and badly wounded Tony (without realizing it) by telling him that she decided to quit med school and become a lawyer because of her relationship to him.

And in the episode's centerpiece -- and the origin of its title, "Made in America" -- A.J. continued his political awakening, only to have Tony and Carmela seduce him back into the same comfortably numb existence he used to have.

When some of the guests at Bacala's wake started discussing "American Idol" and "Dreamgirls," A.J. harangued them for focusing on entertainment fluff.

"The world. Don't you see it?" he complained, then later said, "It's like America. This is still where people come to make it. It's a beautiful idea. And then what do they get? Bling and come-ons for (stuff) they don't need and can't afford?" He talked of enlisting in the Army, though he wavered on whether it was to make the world a better place or just to get a job as Donald Trump's personal chopper pilot.

Yet by episode's end, A.J. had abandoned his newfound morality in favor of a shiny BMW, a job as the "development executive" for Little Carmine's movie company and his parents' promise of his own nightclub to follow.

From the start, Chase has used "The Sopranos" as an indictment of modern American values and how, time after time, we all sacrifice principle in favor of self-interest. Maybe A.J. had achieved enlightenment or maybe not. But Tony and Carmela couldn't have their little boy risking his own life in the military (they wanted him to get the discipline without the risk), so they anesthetized him back into the materialistic lifestyle they understand so well. This is what America makes today, Chase seemed to be saying: permissive, selfish parents and kids who mimic them.

Back to that final scene. Without it, we have a completely reasonable finale, one that provides closure on enough plot threads (the war with New York ends, Paulie is promoted to the captaincy of the Family's lucrative construction business, A.J. finds new direction, etc.) that the few left open (notably whether Carlo flipped and what that means, legally, for Tony) don't particularly sting. It's the "life goes on" ending I'd been speculating on for months.

But then, but then, but then ... then Chase has to do what he loves to do more than any other man in show business: completely mess with his viewers' expectations (and their heads). I don't consider it a cliffhanger, something to set up a movie, as I doubt there will ever be a movie (and if there is, it'll be set in the past). He did it because he hates the conventions of TV series narrative in general, and putting a bow on things in particular.

That's why the Russian never came back, why the Melfi rape plotline was dismissed with a single word ("No"), why none of the FBI's previous rats ever amounted to anything, etc. He's convinced the audience doesn't need to be spoon-fed, to the point where he might go for a non-ending like this, something so jarring, so abrupt and so filled with misdirection (my guess is there was no danger at all, that Tony was simply watching Meadow's entrance) that it might come across like an insult to the audience who have stuck with the show through thick and thin.

Somehow, though, it feels like the perfect final note. Why wouldn't a show that's taken such pleasure in rewriting the rules of storytelling -- from making a sociopathic thug its hero on down -- go out in the least conventional way possible? It may be maddening, but it's what David Chase does.

Some other thoughts on "Made in America":

A theory proposed by a reader of the NJ.com Sopranos blog using the handle Lorbnash: the nine episodes of this season have represented the nine circles of Hell from Dante's "The Divine Comedy." The fourth circle, for instance, is for the greedy and the miserly; the fourth episode was Tony and Hesh's gambling showdown. The seventh circle is where the suicides go; A.J. took his dip in the family pool in episode seven. The ninth circle is for the traitors, and Butchie implicitly betrayed Phil. (For added fun, reader Joe Adler pointed out the similarities between the Eugene Delacroix painting "The Barque of Dante" and the Annie Leibovitz promotional image on the season five DVD set. Google them both if you want your mind blown.)

Lots of surrogates and callbacks throughout. Junior confuses Janice and Livia (and Janice and Nica). Tony uses A.J.'s shrink (a leggy, coolly professional woman in the Lorraine Bracco mode) as a Melfi stand-in. A.J. quotes Livia's "Always with the drama," and later Tony's line from the Season One finale. Paulie believes the cat from the safehouse has some supernatural connection to Christopher and also notes the bad history of the captains in charge of Jersey construction (though he left out Jimmy "The Rat" Altieri).

Another "Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?" moment: the tour bus drives through Little Italy while the guide explains how the thriving neighborhood is now essentially a single block of shops and cafes -- so tiny that, when Butchie gets too wrapped up in a phone call to Phil, he wanders out of Little Italy altogether.

Who knew Agent Harris had such a dark side? He's conducting an affair with his counterpart at the Brooklyn field office, and he's actively rooting for Tony to take out Phil.

Finally, thanks for all the questions, theories and compliments you've sent me over the years as I've written about this show. "The Sopranos" is over, but our coverage of it has a few days to go -- and my work as the Star-Ledger's TV critic has a lot longer than that. The "Sopranos" blog (blog.nj.com/alltv/) will feature at least two reader mailbags as the week moves along, as there's still much to discuss. This has been fun.

Alan Sepinwall may be reached at [email protected], or by writing him at 1 Star-Ledger Plaza, Newark, N.J. 07102-1200

Re: Sopranos ending (spoilers)

Bottom line is that this was one of their worst seasons (with the exception of last weeks episode) painfully slow but eveyone figured the show would go out with a bang (no pun intended ) Everyone is talking about it because it's one of the biggest letdowns in tv history, IMO