Jun 13 2007
More Sopranos
Yeah, Sopranos is going to hijack the blog for a few days. If you haven’t read my post below, click here to read it first.
So I have watched the finale 6 times now, the final scene probably 10. So much more to talk about. My first entry was focused on the big stuff that we all are discussing, but now I am ready to think about some of the other elements of the episode. And those things also add more meaning to the big things, so…
First of all, to the people that are pissed off and are saying Chase sucks and he couldn’t think of an ending, or that he was lazy, or he’s a hack, or hates his fans…. Once your shock subsides from the loss of this monumental series, you’ll calm down and come back to reality. If any of those things were true, we wouldn’t have the 85 prior episodes that have been some of the most amazing hours of our lives. I cannot fathom re-evaluating my opinions backwards just because I didn’t connect with the ending (as so many people seem to be doing). Nothing about this show has been conventional – why would one expect the final moment to be any different?
The song that this show ends on each week is as much a part of that episode as any other scene. There’s always a point we’re meant to be left with. In this case, the final song was not chosen omnipotently but by Tony himself. This has great importance. All (top-notch) scoring aside, the lyrics represent where we find Tony. The exact same place we always tend to sooner or later. What we see as tense and ambiguous is merely the state Tony lives in even when things are calm.
Essentially Tony has started clean in his universe. Not to say all is well – that’s part of the message here too. But the world goes on, affected marginally at most. People rarely change who they are at their core.
And, in the world he can’t escape, there are rarely heroic endings. Proven time and time again in this very episode. We can be fairly certain that someday Tony will get murdered. Or go to jail. Or flip. Or flee. Or go down in a sinking Stugots (that’s his boat if you don’t know).
People are far too hung up on closure. Although if you need that in your television, we received plenty of it in the first 55 minutes. Sil, Janice, Junior, Paulie, Phil… And I didn’t want Tony shot, I didn’t want him going to jail, I didn’t want him on the run. This is all missing the message of the show from day one. People – including families and Families – regardless of their role in society, if they work hard, do what they do well, and find some luck on the way, they tend to survive.
Side Note – Watch the Henry Rollins Show on IFC. Nothing to do with the Sopranos except being innovative television and Rollins is droppin’ science as raw as ever.
I couldn’t agree with you more on the ending. I was more than okay with the way that the series closed out and am so glad that they didn’t go for any sort of real finality with Tony. As we did not come into the story of Tony Soprano from the beginning so to do we not go out at the end.
Having watched from the beginning and investing so much time, thought and energy into the series I figured that it wasn’t David Chases MO to go for a Hollywood tie-up-all-the-loose-ends finale; but you never know until it’s over. Anything could have happened but, just as in reality, life goes on – no matter what happens along the way.
As we leave the Sopranos listening to an All-American band in an All-American cafe (eating onion rings no less!) we are left with the reminder that this show was simply Chase’s critique of the American family — the patriarch just happened to have an interesting job.
By the by, I’m not sure if you know how dirty “sinking Stugots” is, but it got a chuckle out of me.