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10 June 2007
*SPOILERIFIC* What did you think of the Sopranos?→[More:] I'm going to be in the minority, I'm sure, but I liked it. The thought that millions of people jumped up suddenly scared that their cable went out. Ha!
See, my problem is that my goddamned cable HAD been going in and out all afternoon/evening, and decided to flake out big-time around five minutes short of the end of the episode. So I still don't know exactly how things ended (*kicking Comcast REALLY FUCKING HARD).
Personally, I don't demand a big ending where all the lose ends are tied up. OTOH, a whole lot of folks seem seriously unhappy with this ending, and the way in which it strenuously refuses to resolve *anything.* But I'll just have to rewatch and see how the episode actually played out, I guess. (*kicking Comcast again, 'cause they SUCK*)
Husband and I had to rewind it a few times. We didn't know what the hell happened. We just got done watching a minute ago.
I had the covers over my head for half the show. The suspense was killing me. 15 minutes till the end and someone knocked on our front door pretty hard. I was already on the edge and the knocking sent me over. We were both like, who the hell is that at 10:30 at night? I ran into the bedroom, like somebody was coming to whack me or something! It was a cop. We forgot to close our garage and he was reminding us to close it.
Holy shit. I can't believe nobody got popped except for Phil. The FBI guy hooked Tony up. What a lucky bastard.
My sister is absolutely convinced that Tony got whacked at the end. Since it kept shifting to his point of view, somebody came up behind him and shot him in the head, hence the black screen and silence.
I LOVED it. Loved it. Of course, I like it when writers and directors screw with their audience and MAN there are some pissed off people out there. From what I can tell anyway. The HBO boards server is barely functioning under the weight of thousands of pissed off fans logging in at once to tell David Chase to go fuck himself.
I interpreted the ending as Tony (if not the whole family) getting whacked. The scenes inside the diner were from Tony's perspective so when the screen went black...so did Anthony Soprano. Or, exactly what it must be bunnies said. :)
I don't see it that way. Although, it's a good theory. I'll have to think about it more. I thought the individual episode was good enough. I'm not so sure about the ending. What was the thing with AJ and his car catching on fire? And Meadow, thinking of her father as an innocent man. Is she an idiot? I guess the ending is the Soprano family will go on. Tony will be indicted and sent to prison. That's the ending I see.
I should also say that I liked the rest of the episode as well. It was tense but funny and fast-paced. Phil catching a bullet and then getting his head squished like a grape; Tony's visit with Uncle Jr. (when Tony realized that Jr. was basically gone); Tony going on about his mother to AJ's shrink, so desperate for his therapy fix; Pauly's Virgin Mary sighting and his hatred for the Chris-worhipping cat. Tight and funny but with quite a bit of tension. And picking Don't Stop Believing for the song at the end? Pretty inspired. At first the song was cheesy and I was worried that they were going to go sappy for the end but as the tension mounted that song sounded creepier and creepier. I could have done without AJ's storyline (for the entire show) but overall a good way to end I think. Of course, I think it should have ended after the first two or three seasons to begin with.
And the ending is definitely open to interpretation. Maybe we were supposed to find the random guys in the diner threatening because Tony is so paranoid.
The other thing that I thought was cool was that they reiterated Tony's love for animals (the cat) and children (wanting Meadow to take care of the babies) which, if I remember correctly, count against the notion that he's a sociopath. He's just a guy whose living the life he inherited, with a mis-calibrated moral compass.
But, I'm a bit tipsy. OK, a lot tipsy. Wine is good. I'll have to think more on this and check in tomorrow.
David Chase knows how to build tension, I'll give him that. And I agree that it takes balls to end a series like the Sopranos like that.
My interpretation is that you're supposed to interpret it for yourself; he set up the pieces for seveal ways of viewing it, but ultimately you can only really decide for yourself what happened in the diner.
David Chase to audience: "Fuck you! You fell in love with this family despite Tony being a murderous sociopath. You're a moral hypocrite--just like Carmela. And you want me to resolve it for you by killing off Tony? Sorry, you don't get off that easy."
The really killer scene was when FBI Agent Harris learns about Phil Leotardo getting killed and exclaims "We're gonna win!" or something like that. The audience is the FBI agent, imo.
My dad's (loudish) response was, "OH...OKAY" like it explained everything to him PERFECTLY.
I only watched the last few minutes (I've seen episodes but never been a regular viewer) and my response was to start laughing. I thought it was pretty good how they had the music in synch with how it ended. DON'T STOP...
heh. that's exactly what was running through my mind last night.
you know, my first reaction was "david chase can gargle my balls" (yeah, guess who saw knocked up this weekend?), but after thinking about it for a few minutes afterward, i think i liked the ending. no catharsis, no bloodbath (unless you count phil leotardo's head getting smooshed), no judgements passed. life goes on (maybe). business as usual (maybe).
the best thing about the ending? they stopped playing journey. (i was really hoping that tony would pick "i gotta be me" by tony bennett, but then i realized that's what the old guard - silvio, paulie, even phil - would have done. this ain't yr father's "thing", after all. the dynamic changed forever.)
plus, this leaves it open for a sopranos movie, dunnit?
I'm really glad now that we weren't watching this series... I got my partner into The Prisoner a few years ago, and we went through the whole series (I've been a fan since I was a teenager), and he almost KILLED me when the last episode ended. Not a fan of ambiguous endings, he. (And that was after just 17 episodes, not six years!)
I'm so glad that it was the first Sopranos episode I ever watched. I'm glad that it was stupid, and that, having seen the much-anticipated finale, I'll never have to watch the rest.
Then again, I don't have much sympathy for the Mob, and I don't like being told they're striving for a normal existence. They're not, and if they were, I'd still want to send them to jail or to the grave. In 100 years we'll have shows like this about MS-13.
Maybe now I can talk about opera without people correcting my pronunciation.
I disliked the episode because it encapsulated things I disliked about the entire last season. Spending too much time on things I didn't care about (A.J., Gay Vito). The scenes with Junior were unnecessary because we already knew Junior was vegged out from the last shot of one of the recent episodes. (Like how we didn't need Godfather III because everything we needed to know was in the last shot of Godfather II.) They spent way too much time on A.J. over the last couple of episodes. We already knew he was a fuckup.
Did Tony see himself when he walked into the diner? Was it symbolism or a screwup? Who cares?
Having now finally seen it all the way through -- I loved it. I loved the complete ambiguity of the ending (did T. get whacked? did they just have a peaceful evening eating onion rings? will Tony go to jail?). It's a Schrodinger's Box ending, which of course explains the cat. (*g*)
You know what I liked about the Gay Vito storyline, kirkaracha? The fact that these murders saw homosexuality as such a great sin. You know why? Because it was something they never personally had to deal with. I thought it exemplified their situational ethics pretty well.
I loved, loved, loved the FBI agent yelling, "We're gonna win this thing!" The line between the good guys and bad guys is so blurry.
I haven't watched since the first season (the last time I owned a TV), but I'm really digging the ending based on what I've read about it. Perhaps I'd feel differently if I'd seen it, but the ambiguity sounds quite rich and evocative.
If you're among those who feel that using the Journey song "Don't Stop Believing" was adding injury to insult, remember, producer David Chase could have done worse. He could have used "Don't Stop Til You've Had Enough" or "Don't Stop Me Now" or "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)". Although that last one would have resulted in every Hillary Clinton supporter in Hollywood putting out a hit on Mr. Chase... A quick Google search found so many songs with "Don't Stop" in the title, I think we should be thankful for the one he chose...
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