TheStoicPaisano

So...who was the retired guy mediating the Carmine/Butch/Tony meeting? Someone who'd been mentioned before?

And why the fuck did we have to see Chase's ass-ugly daughter again? Goshdarn nepotism.

GreenVulture

I'll agree that she's not a looker, but I think the point of bringing her back was to point out how screwed up Meadow is. Hunter did more partying than studying, and paid the price. But she wised up and got her academic career back on track, studying to become a doctor.

Meadow was also going to become a doctor, but what does she do instead? Pursues law after seeing the various "injustices" that Tony went through with the FBI. Rather than doing something worthwhile with that law degree--like when she was interning at the office for low-income clients in Season 5 (or 4?)--she instead becomes part of a law firm that handles white-collar criminals and probably mobsters; apparently those are the type of poor, put-upon people that Meadow will be defending from the evil powers that be. And this is after all the ranting she did about what immigrants and the poor go through in the court system in Season 5.

If you watch the episode again, look at the scene where Tony and Meadow are having dinner. When she tells him why she is becoming a lawyer, look at Gandolfini's reaction--it's the perfect mixture of horror, shock and "Oh shit..." as he realizes he's directly responsible for causing his only daughter to become a person who defends people like him, when he has been trying all this time to push his children away from any kind of Mafia/criminal connection.

Bill Needle

Watching the whole story again is one thing the finale certainly does not make me want to bother doing.

Tony looks up at the sound of the bell because he is expecting is wife, son, and finally daughter to be arriving to meet him for dinner.

It is Meadow that comes through the door, unless someone is using teleportation or time travel skills unknown to this world to cut in front of her.

None of the characters in the diner (outside of his family) had any previous relation to Tony (or the show) whatsoever.

The fake suspense build of cutting to innocuous characters certainly meant nothing to Tony, and only left me feeling manipulated and ultimately cheated. Yeah, just what I wanted after seven (or six-point whatever) seasons of the Sopranos was to wonder in the final climactic moment what the hell happened to my cable signal/DVR recording, and be completely taken out of the moment.

Oh Mr. Chase, you are such a genius. If only the plebes could understand. Brah-vo.

uncle charlie

not sure if this was mentioned yet but the song under journey is chase telling the audience to decide how they want it to end.
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scarredgod

first of all, i never thought the show was great but i have seen every episode and did enjoy watching it but i thought the final scene of the series was perfect and im very satisfied with it.

i love the finale to 6 feet under and that seems to be the one mentioned most by the people who hated this ending but come on, do you REALLY need to know EXACTLY what happens to each and every character spelled out for you in such a straight forward way. it worked for 6 feet under but sorry, i dont want that for every series finale forever.

as for people complaining about the "art" of the sopranos like it only appeared in the last 30 seconds of the series, where have you been? sopranos has always been artistic, there are tons of foreshadowing, symbolism, clues, surrealism thru the whole series, sheesh Christophers death was foretold like 4 seasons ago. its a shame some people are so dense that they thought it was "just a mob story", you totally missed the boat. no wonder you hated this finale, but now you have something to bitch about at the water cooler tomorrow.

i dont think sopranos will ever be back, it doesnt need to be back. basically the complainers really just want those 5 seconds of blackness filled in to see if he lived or died, boohoohoo, no bow for you.

im sorry for the people who wasted their time watching the full run of the sopranos only to be pissed off at the finale and now washing their hands of it. but i feel more sorry for the writers and actors for wasting their time making this show for you, you didnt deserve it. dont worry though, there will always be easier and dumber shows for you to watch.

thats all.

JTH182

I know everyone's discussing the final scene, and I still don't know what to make of it, but...


All I have to say is I LOVED the thought of Phil's head getting popped like a zit under the car tire! I was cheering at that scene

Giantrobo

I bought the 1st 4 or 5 seasons then wised up and rented the rest of the boxsets at Blockbuster.

SBrooks1

JTH182

hahahahaaha!! I wish that gif had sound too

Josh-da-man

You have to give Chase credit for ending the show like it's been running for the past few years, setting something up and then never paying it off.

It seems sort of strange that, after everything that went down in the past couple of episodes, Tony would suddenly be looking of his shoulder all of the time. Hasn't that been his job description for the past thirty years? That Sword of Damocles, that someone's going to put a gun to his head and finish him off, shouldn't be something new to him.

Watched the episode at a friend's house (I cancelled HBO after "Carnivale" got screwed over); he's a much more hardcore Sopranos fan than I am, and he was pretty pissed off. But my first instinct was that the end symbolised Tony's death with the abrupt cut to black and the silence over the credits -- though we all (me, my g/f, my friend, and his wife) thought the signal had been lost until the first credit came up.

But after the absolute brilliance that was "Blue Comet," I did feel a bit let down by the ambiguity of this episode. I liked the cat (of course), and Phil's murder was pretty awesome, but much of this just felt like anticlimax. In the event that Tony wasn't whacked at the diner, it was just a "life goes on" ending and, well, that's hardly a stroke of genius.

"The Lady or the Tiger" is an interesting comparison. But "The Lady or the Tiger" was a short story, and doesn't take anywhere near eighty-six hours to read. So viewer outrage is understandable. I suppose a comparison could also be made to a Thomas Pynchon novel -- which I won't name, but those who have read it know which one I mean -- where the book ends, literally seconds before the protagonist is about to solve the mystery. But in that case, I think the statement Pynchon was trying to make was that that particular story was about the journey, and not about the final answer. Though I don't believe The Sopranos was the same kind of story as that novel and, as such, deserved more payoff than was given.

It will be interesting to see how Sopranos DVD sets get put up on eBay in the coming weeks.

JTH182

So still no screenshots of AJ's girlfriend?

Capo2002

LoL, the reaction of those black kids is classic. What a great way to take phil out.

coli

At first I was like WTF????????? But I watched it a couple of more times, and I now think it is brilliant!

Think about it, if Tony flips, everyone complains cause he wouldn't do that. If Tony has a trial, it is anti-climatic. If Tony is shot, everyone sees it coming.

TONY WAS SHOT AND KILLED!!!!! That is why the screen goes black, he never saw it coming, and that is life in the mob, remember what Ray Liotta said in Goodfellas, "If it weren't the cops, I never would have heard them."

Chase was able to kill his main character without showing, and that is a good thing. Would any of us here be happy to always have that image of Tony with his face down lying in blood, we love this guy, but he got his and deserved it.

Come on guys, what are going to think of everytime that Journey song comes on!

Michael Ballack

So was that chick that AJ saw at the mental institution and later went out with the same girl he was dating a few seasons ago with a richer family than the Sopranos?

Also, I'm not sure if the woman that Agent Harris was with was wearing panties, or if that was a bush. I found it funny how disgusted she was with him. I got the feeling she wasn't just pissed that he was on the phone with Tony, but that he wasn't the greatest performer if you know what I mean.

funstan

To all you haters out there, have you ever been so glued to the screen watching someone parallel park?

raven56706

hardercore

Just finished this, and I really quite liked it. The ending had real impact for me. Maybe I didn't share the same frustration as some who have followed each and every episode, but aside from the editing, which would have tightened up the episode by about 10 minutes, this was a good way to end a show in a way that most people probably didn't have the balls to do before.

I agree with the cut-to-black signifying Tony's death. So abrupt that he probably didn't hear it coming.

I'll be going back and watching the series from the start for sure.

raven56706

thats what we are supposed to believe or not.... thats the problem with the ending.... its a story being played out and we shouldnt have to think of the ending on our own...

wendersfan

I liked the episode and I liked the concept of the ending. The execution was poor, however. Instead of knowing what happened (or didn't happen) many people, myself included, thought something went wrong with their DVRs or cable reception. This spoiled the effect Chase was after.

Red Dog

What the fuck was that crap?!

Shannon Nutt

Chase is the anti-Peter Jackson...instead of 10 friggin' endings, he gives us zero.

Seriously though...it took 15 pages here for someone to finally mention the circular significance of those onion rings. The near-final shots are AJ, Carm and Tony each eating a complete ring - almost like a communion wafer. I see this as Chase saying "these characters have now come full circle...that's it, that's all I have to say about them."

And let's not forget the lyrics to "Don't Stop Believin'"

"The movie never ends, It goes on and on and on and on..."

Yes, Tony will always be looking over his shoulder, but there's no pat conclusion for these characters...their lives go on (yes, even Tony's...Chase killing him would frankly be more of a cop-out, since Tony needs to suffer for his deeds), we just won't be able to see them any more.

I did notice a pair of bad ADR dialogue loops last night in long shots, where the words didn't match Tony's lip movements...one occuring during Tony's warehouse sitdown (a line about Bobby) and another in the restaurant (a line about Meadow)...so one wonders what the original dialogue was and why Chase changed it.

Chew

Exactly what I was thinking.

Red Dog

That's the way I saw it which is why I think last week's would have made a much better finale.

Charlie Goose

The ending wasn't ambiguous for some faux artistic bullshit or because Chase wanted a copout "let the audience decide". It was for one reason and one reason only, to leave a cliffhanger in case somone wanted to throw money at him and the cast for a movie. Fans have been watching for nine years, 80+ episodes, ridiculously long layoffs, and this is how we are repaid. Snobs can stick their noses in the air and condescend how we just didn't "get" the non-ending, but the truth is we have been betrayed.

The next time a long-running show is going off the air, there will be articles written about the best & worst finales in TV history. This will undoubtedly show up on the latter list, right below the autistic kid with a snowglobe.

veloce

Good one! Just as funny as the first time!