The Sopranos: The Final Episodes

[IJ Reilly]

Which brings up a question for myself. Now that Sopranos is over, what is there to look forward to watching?

Reruns or DVDs of the Sopranos?

I need to watch the last episode again, that's for sure. So many elements were packed in. The FBI subplot -- what was that really about? And the cat, staring at Christopher's picture on the wall and making Paulie very nervous. That bit about Little Italy in New York, once being 40 square blocks, now just a couple. The guy walking down the street past Italian restaurants talking on the cell phone, suddenly finding himself surrounded by Asians. I thought it was so interesting that the series ended with food (a major theme throughout), but conspicuously not Italian food. Clues like that suggest the end of the Italian-American culture which sustained the mafia. It's going away, no matter what happens to Tony. All that looking over his shoulder in the final scene, that's a look at life from Tony's point of view -- survival by constant paranoia. Big messages, which you might miss if you were expecting a blood bath at the end.

 

[jayb2000]

I liked the last one, it was great to just stop.
It was like a window opened on their lives for 7 years (seasons) and then closed again.
It was just them living their lives, Tony always in jeopardy of a hit or the FBI, Meadow trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life, AJ being a whiny spoiled brat, Carm trying to keep them all together while ignoring the ethical issues of what Tony does, etc.

Sure it did not wrap things up in a pretty little package, but neither does life.

 

[kalisphoenix]

Junior: "That's nice."

That sums up everything you were saying, IJ Reilly. It's all over.

 

[Laslo Panaflex]

I loved the ending it was really suspenseful, my heart was pounding thinking that they were all going to be whacked, and my girlfriend was in tears throughout the entire ending sequence.

IJ Reilly, your analysis is right on, I also want to watch the whole episode again to see what I missed (although I did watch the ending over twice).

 

[IJ Reilly]

I liked the last one, it was great to just stop.
It was like a window opened on their lives for 7 years (seasons) and then closed again.
It was just them living their lives, Tony always in jeopardy of a hit or the FBI, Meadow trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life, AJ being a whiny spoiled brat, Carm trying to keep them all together while ignoring the ethical issues of what Tony does, etc.

Sure it did not wrap things up in a pretty little package, but neither does life.

Junior: "That's nice."

That sums up everything you were saying, IJ Reilly. It's all over.

Both excellent observations. The Sopranos' life didn't start when the series began so it doesn't end just because series ends. Our window into it closes, is all.

 

[e²Studios]

I thought this was a decent write up of the season finale

http://tv.yahoo.com/the-sopranos/show/218/news/urn:newsml:tv.ap.org:20070611:tv_sopranos__ER

I think people here have hit it spot on, thats it, life goes on, and we just won't be able to see it anymore That is of course unless Chase decides to make a movie, or spin the show off somehow.

Ed

 

[wyatt23]

I disagree. Sopranos is such a brilliant show it could go on another 10 years easily. Just like Simpsons and other great shows, even the bad epsiodes are great compared to anything else on TV.

Which brings up a question for myself. Now that Sopranos is over, what is there to look forward to watching?

John From Cinncinati!

 

[ham_man]

I disagree. Sopranos is such a brilliant show it could go on another 10 years easily. Just like Simpsons and other great shows, even the bad epsiodes are great compared to anything else on TV.

Which brings up a question for myself. Now that Sopranos is over, what is there to look forward to watching?

The Wire. In my opinion, it's the one show on television that is on par with, or in fact better than, the Sopranos...

 

[IJ Reilly]

I thought this was a decent write up of the season finale

Very good. He gets it.

 

[stillwater]

The Wire. In my opinion, it's the one show on television that is on par with, or in fact better than, the Sopranos...

I agree with you wholeheartedly.

 

[Lyle]

I've never even seen the show (not an HBO subscriber) but I thought this story from today's IMDb Movie & TV News was interesting.

Rocker Steve Perry refused to let The Sopranos creator David Chase use his classic song "Don't Stop Believin'" in the mob show's final scene until he knew the fate of the drama's leading characters. The ex-Journey frontman kept Chase waiting until three days before the long-awaited finale aired in America on Sunday. Perry is a huge Sopranos fan and feared his 1981 rock anthem would be remembered as the soundtrack to the death of James Gandolfini's character Tony Soprano - until Chase assured him that wouldn't be the case. Perry says, "The request came in a few weeks ago and it wasn't until Thursday that it got approval, because I was concerned. I was not excited about (the possibility of) the Soprano family being whacked to 'Don't Stop Believin''. Unless I know what happens - and I will swear to secrecy - I can't in good conscience feel good about its use." And Perry was so true to his word, he didn't even tell his family the song featured in the finale. He adds, "I didn't want to blow it. Even my wife didn't know. She looked at me and said, 'You knew that and you didn't tell me?'"

 

[IJ Reilly]

Nice addition, thanks.

BTW, we didn't become HBO subscribers until the last season. We bought the DVDs.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Ok, I've now seen the final scene on YouTube.

My intial take and I'm reaching here: the first moment Tony steps into the diner, he looks at the room... and the music playing is Little Feat's All That You Dream, clearly signalling to me that this is not real-world reality.

After a cut back to a close-up where he's still looking at the room, it cuts back to him sitting in the room but wearing different clothing. This is not a continuity error and is probably the most significant moment of the scene.

What this strongly reminds me of are the final moments in 2001: A Space Odyssey when Dave sees himself in various stages of his dying/metamorphosis stages where time is compressed while expanding, and yet, the stages of identity are revealed to oneself... which kind of ties into the Buddhist monk slapping him across the face in a dream in an earlier episode.

The various characters coming through the door and the various shots of people in the restaurant... these are not assassins, but almost a respooling of various characters that we see throughout the entire series. The scout troop is how perhaps he saw himself. The cooks, a reminder of his cousin... the guy with the hat, the rat that gave him the painting.

The man going to the bathroom is clearly a nod to The Godfather, but it's only because in the first season or two, the main characters were obsessed about those movies, so it's not like this man shot Tony, it's more that Tony realises in his dying moments that so much of his life was modelled on what he saw played out in various fictional and non-fictional TV programmes and films.

So, my impression is, is that the scene in the restaurant is like Tony's life passing through his eyes, his true relationships with his immediate family are metaphorically revealed for how they truly are before he dies and we, the viewers die with him...

He's either killed the minute he steps into the restaurant, or he dies earlier in the episode, or he dies at the end of the preceding episode. This supposed final scene is a coda, a dying dream, not the last real-life scene.

My take anyway... I reserve the right to be wrong, because nobody knows nuthin'.

 

[iBlue]

I'd like to think it was as deep as that but somehow I think they just tied up a few loose ends and just ENDED it. (damn you HBO!)

Now I want to watch that final scene again, it really was surreal.

It's difficult to end a series such as this.


The one show that had a phenomenal ending was Six Feet Under. That show was an absolute masterpiece.

 

[Blue Velvet]

It wasn't as deep as that... I've recently heard of some straightforward explanations for what happened in that final scene which make complete sense. Kinda.

 

[Silencio]

I don't think it was a whacking, either, though the seeds of doubt planted in that last scene were very intense, indeed. I just don't think the evidence given for the whacking theory is nearly strong enough, nor for the "dream" theory. Given all the room for interpretation, Tony should have picked the other Journey song on the jukebox: "Any Way You Want It"!

Going back to watch the pilot episode, I was struck by a few interesting parallels with the finale:

1. The pilot begins with a long, black screen or approximately 4-5 seconds between the end of the opening credits and the cut-in to Tony staring at the nude female statue in Dr. Melfi's waiting room. I don't recall any other Sopranos episode opening with such a lengthy pause, and that first scene was a neat foreshadowing of the conflicted relationships Tony would have with women throughout the series.

2. Junior get snippy with Tony over something, saying "After all that time I spent with you playing catch!" Refer to the last conversation Tony and Junior had in the final episode.

3. One (most likely coincidental) laugh came from Tony telling Dr. Melfi about a recurring dream he had where his belly button turned into a Phillip's head screw. Phil(lip's)... head... screw? Maybe I was already too much in a punning mood after turning the Journey lyric into "Working hard to get my Phil"...

4. When Christopher lures Email -- er, Emil (of all the funny malapropisms in the series, that one still ranks right up at the top) -- into the back of Satriale's to kill him, the distraction is several lines of coke... laid out on top of a blade of a cleaver.

5. Christopher is already talking about going to Hollywood and making a movie based on his life story. This displeases Tony to no end. Between that news and the murder of Emil that he didn't order, Tony gets so upset that he grabs Christopher by the shirt, lifts him off the ground, and mutters "I'll kill you!"

There were a few others I forgot. I did think it was interesting to see Artie and Charmaine Bucco doing well with the restaurant at the end, after having spurned getting involved with mob business.

Man, I'm gonna miss this show! I'm going to blast through reruns of The Wire to get caught up on that one, and I'll give John From Cincinnati its due consideration.

 

[IJ Reilly]

It's well worth watching the last episode a second or third time. It's actually a lot of laughs, once anticipation isn't the overwhelming emotional distraction. So many of the series' many themes return and are tied up in an existential, if not literal, way. Clearly Chase is messing with us some, and in a way, we deserved it. The Sopranos was not a conventional series. We never should have expected it to end in a conventional way. After a second viewing, I was even more convinced that he did the right thing, that he created an ending that will stand up along with the body of the series: dark, ambiguous, and funny in its own distinctive and peculiar way.

 

[Silencio]

Going back to the first season (either the first or second episode), another parallel came to mind: Tony was looking at a painting of an old barn and a dying tree in Dr. Melfi's lobby and made some comment about how depressing it was. Dr. Melfi tried to establish if Tony's interpretation of the painting was colored by his emotional state, and he sarcastically fired back about his disdain for that "Horshack" test.

Basically, I think the ending of the last Sopranos show is really a Horshack -- err, Rorschach test on the audience. Again, I have to point to the other Journey song on the jukebox.