WARNING: Spoilers aplenty from episodes past may lie ahead.

Well, it’s Saturday night, less than 24 hours before THE SOPRANOS goes down that proverbial last mile, and I find myself ruminating a lot on the matter, as Paulie Walnuts might put it, watching the clock and somehow feeling strangely like I’m the convict who’s staring at the abyss. No doubt, the early onset of Post Sopranos Stress Syndrome.

I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised. After all, as the downtime between each new thirteen-episode season tended to increase over the years, I would invariably begin to find myself filled with pure anticipation as each season’s official start date was finally announced by HBO (usually after numerous delays), and those atmospheric and provocative Annie Leibovitz promo posters began popping up all over New York City on buses and phone booths. Yet no sooner would the new season commence, then I’d find myself immediately conflicted; looking forward to each new installment with great excitement, while simultaneously feeling a peculiar sense of loss as each episode unfurled, all-too-aware of the fact that we were just a little bit closer to the conclusion of another season.

This time though it’s different. Not only are we only being given just nine episodes with which to satiate our collective appetite, in place of the traditional thirteen, but we’ve also known from the very start that these are the final nine, and there won’t be anymore to come. Ever. For several weeks now, I’ve had the remnants of an applicable quote running through my head. Unfortunately, I am neither able to recall the specific quote, nor the specific person who first uttered it. In fact, I can’t even remember the context in which it was originally made. Nonetheless, some person of note, upon learning of the passing of a major (popular?) artist (my original/false recollection was that it was Lester Bangs commenting on the death of Elvis) commented that this sad news was tantamount to being told that there’d never be chocolate ice cream (or some other fundamental confectionary concoction) in the world again. (Note: As I sit here now, attempting to put a few of these thoughts into words, what song should my computer’s iTunes’ shuffle program offer up for my listening pleasure -- out of the 19,185 tracks that are downloaded onto my hard drive -- but Little Steven’s “Forever.” Coincidence?)

I’ve long ago given up on prognosticating on the ultimate fate of each character, and if history has taught us one thing (as Michael Corleone might say in preface to hatching one of his nefarious schemes), it’s that David Chase and company are the absolute masters of deception and misdirection. Each week’s little teaser, heralding the following week’s episode, is a small masterpiece of misinformation, as every little snippet of picture or line of dialog that we’re allowed to glimpse during the promo’s brief duration somehow seems to take on an entirely different meaning than we ultimately discover it genuinely has, when viewed within the context of the actual episode. More importantly, however, is the level of intelligence and creativity that the show has consistently displayed and maintained from the very start. As in all great fiction, dramatic events occur as the natural, often-spontaneous, and all-too believable consequence of the impulses and decisions of some very volatile and unpredictable characters (with a little added assistance thrown in by Fate), not because of (melo)dramatic convention. What I believe makes any effort at a meaningful prediction of the show’s ultimate conclusion particularly fruitless is the fact that, despite our having spent 6+ seasons in the company of The Soprano family and, consequently, its creators (and so we might think we’ve garnered some insight into their minds and weltanschauung), we’ve only accompanied them along the journey and have never traveled with them all the way to the end of the line.

Up until this point, I’ve always believed that The Sopranos has always really been, when you come right down to it, nothing but a very dark comedy. Almost every season we’re teased with a growing crisis that festers over the course of several episodes and seems to be headed towards a massive conflagration, only to have matters defused by a thoroughly unanticipated turn of events, leaving Tony still seated upon his throne, ruling over his kingdom of misery, corruption and lies. Last season’s finale/Christmas episode seemed like a truly perfect moment achieved by the Soprano family. Too perfect, and perhaps it was really just a momentary reprieve or that infamous calm before a (karmic) storm.

This season more-or-less picked up right where last season left off and things were not just good, but practically idyllic for Tony and his loved ones. And then a great wind blew through the world (remember the chimes), the genie was let out of the (alcohol) bottle and we were given a front row seat and allowed to witness the very moment when both the roulette and karmic wheels seemed to stop turning in the Soprano family’s favor. So where this all will lead us tomorrow night, who knows? (Okay, I realize that I kind of promised not to make any predictions, and most of my previous ones have been wrong, but I’m starting to have a sense that, feeling utterly isolated – especially in the wake of his abandonment by Dr. Melfi, and with, I suspect, more betrayals to come -- and sensing his completely untenable position, tough, old school Tony will commit the ultimate sin, and go off to Arizona, or wherever it was, to sell lawn furniture, after singing to the FBI.)

With the series concluding tomorrow, I’d originally intended this post as a starting point for a thoughtful discussion on the incredibly complex, contradictory, heroic, and “abhorrent” character of Tony Soprano (in my opinion, one of the most brilliantly-drawn and fascinating characters/protagonists/anti-heroes in all of film or literature), and perhaps for us to share some thoughts or insights into what exactly it is that has caused us to be so drawn to him and to be so emotionally caught up in his life and fate. Unfortunately, it’s gotten pretty late, and my preface wound up being a bit more long-winded than I anticipated. (Sorry.)

Anyone else want to start the ball rolling on this, please feel free. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to weigh-in myself tomorrow

Never watched an episode.

Me neither. I am surprised!

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After immediately seeing the ending, I thought, "This is going to lead to the biggest argument over an ending of a series since The Prisoner."

Myself, I hope they leave it as is and never do a movie or another series. I'm fine with the ending as it is. It's been a fun seven years and now it's time to move on.

Although I know that I may be in the minority there, however!

BTW, did I see Donna Pescow there?

I thought my cable went out!

I thought it was a perfect ending. Tony will have to be paranoid and watch over his shoulder the rest of his life until someone finally does whack him. There will never be a good ending for Tony and the ending showed it.

Yes!

Was that Steve Perry there at the end as well (the "hitman" in the gray Members Only jacket)?

I loved the ending as well, but everyone else I watched immediately screamed, "Is that it?"

Fans got so mad they apparently crashed HBO's site. I thought it was a great finale, personally, although I admit I screamed Nooooooo when it cut to black. But to my mind it was an optimistic ending, basically stating that we can never know what's ahead, so best to focus on the good times. Though Christopher reincarnated as a cat threw me for a loop!

Wow. That's like the virtual equivalent of the audience that rioted at the premier of Bunuel's L'age D'or.

My first reaction was to say aloud, "You son of a bitch."

But after a second viewing, I am aglow with admiration for the way Chase handled it. It's not what I expected, or what I might have wanted, but it has the ring of truth -- Meadow's parking difficulty sold it, brilliantly -- and the brassier ring of audacity. If the scene had gone on longer, it could have gone two ways: it could have been an anticlimatic downer or so traumatic it would have kept the series going. I felt my blood pressure heightened both times watching it, and I'm delighted by all the controversy it's stimulating. I visited the HBO discussion boards and they're hilarious -- it's like Chase and company have left a big portion of America angrily spanking the butt end of their catsup bottles. I loved one person's funny speculation that Tony actually wasn't hit, but suddenly succumbed to the cholesterol depth charge of the best onion rings in North Jersey.

RIP Tony Soprano: he didn't see it coming.

Somewhere out there, Andy Kaufman is having himself a good hard laugh. Someone has finally topped his "roll the picture" trick from his 80's ABC special.

Similar reaction on this end, Tim. After realizing that the old cable box was still working, I started laughing (hysterically/painfully..."Anyway You Want It" as Journey might've sang) at Chase's audacity.

Peter Bogdonavich was quoted in an interview this week that while he couldn't divulge anything about the ending, he knew someone in production who, after seeing a finished copy, couldn't sleep that night. Now, after a second viewing, I'm having the same problem. In many ways, this is as haunting an ending as Episode 29 of Twin Peaks.

As for the complaints and speculation? Aside from the focus on the psychological lives of these prototypical American family members, The Sopranos has ALWAYS went out of its way to debunk the mythology of the mob, and this episode was no different. Godfather references abounded (Tony eating an orange at the beach house, the supposed gunman going to the men's room, the potential murder of the Don's daughter after his archenemy was killed) but none of them necessarily paid off. Paulie remained loyal to the family, but (as evidenced by several telling shots of his pained resignation) at what cost? As established in Remember When, he remains without any true life connections outside of LCN. Tony "won" his fight with NY, but the point he made in earlier seasons came back to haunt him: there's really no way out of the life. In this episode alone, he saw several possible fates: a violently sudden death like Phil, a slow descent into oblivion like Junior, or destruction by indictment.

But even worse than those, and the ending I like to envision, is the slow cancerous rotting away of a man living the rest of his days in a state of constant paranoia, waiting for the potential deathblow (literally or figuratively...or in the case of the late Johnny Sac BOTH) to his existence. It's a chilling portrait of the private hell Tony Soprano has built for himself.

Incidentally, check out the final lyrics to Don't Stop Believin' one more time. They perfectly encapsulate a major theme that's been played up in Season 6 (most noticeably in The Ride, Chasing It, and Kennedy and Heidi.)

Strangers waiting, up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlight people, living just to find emotion
Hiding, somewhere in the night

Working hard to get my fill,
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin anything to roll the dice,
Just one more time
Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

Exactly how else are you supposed to bring closure to the show, short of some Grand Guignol set piece? Is that what most folks are pissed off about... that they didn't get that final shot of Tony Soprano face down in his onion rings, his family's faces spattered with blood?

TONY chose the song. Which (to me) suggests the possibility of wishful thinking on Tony's part. Especially because the song is so on the nose, I think its use may be ironic.

Agreed. He chooses the song based on its superficially optimistic lyrics. But like so many decisions on the show, there's a subconscious, often ironic resonance; in this case, the concept of paying anything to roll the dice one more time (referenced in the episodes I mentioned) and things going on and on (much like Season 2's use of Journey's Wheel in the Sky:

Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin
I dont know where Ill be tomorrow
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin

Ive been trying to make it home
Got to make it before too long
I cant take this very much longer
Im stranded in the sleet and rain
Dont think Im ever gonna make it home again
The mornin sun is risin
Its kissing the day

A lyric that, in many ways, describes a man on the run...forever. Just like Tony Soprano.

Exactly my read. He wasn't hit - and he wasn't not hit. I'm actually amazed at how many people read the ending as the prelude to Tony being shot right after the screen went black.

Although, if he were killed at the table, it would have tied in nicely with the "what happens when you get hit" discussion from earlier in the season.

LOL! Me, too!! Here's the spoiler buffer just in case
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Haven't seen such a non-ending since the final episode of TWIN PEAKS!!!

I can't believe David Hyde Pierce beat Raul Esparza. I mean...

Oh, wait, Tony, and not Tonys. :) We watched both, T after the T's.

I'm still in post-DEADWOOD stress syndrome, though, like Silvio, no one has officially pronounced it dead yet. At least Tony and his crew got a non-ending.

Not surprised at all, it was basically a redo of the way they ended the first season - uncertainty. Chase and gang, for better and for worse, have always gone out of their way to deliberately frustrate. At least Phil got whacked, the reaction shots of the bystanders when the car went over his head were comedy gold.

Perfect encapsulation of the last 6 seasons: waiting for something to happen, and then ... nothing happens.

I laughed out loud at that scene. Brilliant. If this last episode would have ended in a blood bath as probably most people expected/wanted, it would have been too little too late. I think the Sopranos lost it about 3 seasons ago. Although I'm not a fan of how it came to an end this was probably close to the only ending that would work at this point. The tension in that last scene was perfect. A final shot of seeing Tony's head squirting out blood would have left me with more of an empty feeling than the actual ending shown.

I thought Phil's end was priceless. A great, very satisfying, moment.

But the ending was B.S. Lamest finale since DEADWOOD. I never expected Tony to get whacked. Will never happen. Not to mention that the fans would eat them all alive, if it did.

But after many years and investing in getting to like these not so really nice characters, to pull such a weak ending is like telling the fans to go blow. I understand the positive spin some are taking from this, but to me it's just self indulgent and inconsiderate. This whole season has been just another day at the office, and the last episode played that way as well.

I'm not quitting HBO just for this. The cancellation of ROME and DEADWOOD and the fact that their HD channel crops the movies to 16x9 format, is overtly compressed and looks like crap is what's driving me away.

Man, where are guys like J. Michael Straczynski and Joss Whedon when you need them?

Are you receiving HBO HD over Cable or Satellite?

I didn't know they uniformly cropped everything to 1.78, that sucks, but the compression could be your provider. Lemme know - it could be a factor in which base service I end up going for - DirectTV, VOOM, etc.

You can read what David Chase claims will be his only post-Sopranos interview here in Tuesday's Star Ledger.

Never watched the show, but heard about the ambiguous ending.

Load o'crap.

We all know that when the Mafia wacks someone, you always see it coming and you know exactly what happened.

...Jimmy Hoffa, for example.

I'm receiving it over Brighthouse Cable. I really noticed the difference when I compared a 1080p copy of STAR WARS that was recorded from a German satellite broadcast to an HBO broadcast recently. The German recording was much better, with the HBO version looking like a somewhat upscaled DVD.

I've been trying to find a way to measure the bitrate on my cable box, but have yet to find an affordable method.


I've been leaning towards getting DISH, after I've relocated. The equipment is still around, and they have MONSTERS HD.

Yeah - I'm looking at DISH because of the VOOM channels as well.

I'm on Time Warner Cable at the moment, and the down-rezzing drives me nuts. They just squeeze the hell out of the original signal, and the result is this metronomic pulsing grain that's incredibly distracting. And anything with flashing lights (concerts) completely crashes into pixilation. Kills the whole point of having HD in the first place.

. . . very funny, Michael - I do wish Chase had simply utilized the Hollywood way out and submitted this last episode to a series of fan screenings, taken their critique to heart, and did some reshoots - just one closeup of Tony getting his brains splattered would have done it . . . it is bad enough when "European Art Film Auteurs" do this sort of ending - you know, it certainly would have been an improvement if the lovers in L'ECLISSE (1962) had just gotten together with a bit of romantic music and we were spared ten minutes of looking at empty streets, buildings, and newspapers - I certainly expect and demand better closure from American television than Mr. Chase gave us . . .

Yup! It's a sad day when US TV feels the need to lower itself to European Art Film standards!

Give me freedom fries or give me death.

I hear the onion rings are pretty good...

Funny, I didn't even (consciously) think about that when I posted.

I don't know what you guys are complaining about. When "Neon Genesis Evangelion" ended in Japan in 1996, the director, Hideaki Anno, took the last two episodes (#25 & 26) into total left turn territory, delivering the main character, Shinji, into introspective hell for both half-hours, making them the most avant-garde, abstract pieces of animation ever to run on commercial Japanese TV.

The fans were outraged and let Anno know. So, Anno came back first with one movie, DEATH AND REBIRTH, which rehashed the series in compiled form and closed with a half-hour preview of the next movie. That next movie, END OF EVANGELION, opened in theaters a few months later in 1997 and offered a more "conventional" ending, i.e. one that addressed unresolved narrative issues in this apocalyptic/post-apocalypse sci-fi saga about the invasion of Earth by "Angels," bizarre entities that can only be destroyed by "Evas," giant robotic combat machines that can only by operated by chosen children who are 14 years of age...

So, END OF EVANGELION closed the series with a big bang (quite literally), that tied up all the loose ends, I suppose. I don't think it actually quieted the controversy, but then the fans stopped bugging Anno and started arguing with each other about what it all meant. A debate that continues ten years later.

And then Anno came out with re-edited "director's cut" versions of the original final TV eps. These I still haven't seen.

I preferred the original series ending, because it made me feel better than the other ending(s) and offered an alternate universe rosy picture at the end. END OF EVA. is quite spectacular but I don't quite understand it, even after three or four viewings.

Despite the DEADWOOD debacle (if the TV movies go unmade maybe Milch can post a synopsis of a final season online) I can't blame HBO for pulling the plug on ROME. It was an extravagantly expensive undertaking, with results neither the channel nor the BBC, its production partner, found justifiable. At least it came to a full-stop conclusion.

But it's got some holes to fill. ENTOURAGE is a pleasant minor leaguer and I don't know why the low-rated CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, which came to a perfect almost-close, was picked up again except for continuity with an audience. I never took to BIG LOVE, never got far enough into THE WIRE to really get into it, and I'm just not into the whole concept of JOHN FROM CINCINNATI (fantasy-type concepts aren't the network's strong suit). The new comedy-dramas look iffy. Here's hoping.

Give THE WIRE a second chance.

Well, I've just seen the last episode and I'm still reeling. I've been collecting the DVD boxed sets and I've found them to be emminently rewatchable but I've always been mindful that a messed up ending might undermine that. Now I have the closure, I'm delighted with how it finished up and can be sure I'll be spinning those discs again. I'd concur with some of the comments above but I think it's a stronger ending than that of Twin Peaks. That show arguably bookended with an episode that felt out of kilter with the tail end of Series 2 whereas the last few SOPRANOS episodes systematically ratcheted up the tension and had my heart pounding.
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I didn't get the impression that this was "the hit" but I wouldn't have wanted to beTony Soprano going forward in that universe. Every time the door chimed, Tony was startled.

Victor

Jumping in late, after catching up with the last episode.....

I can totally understand the backlash people are giving this ending, but I loved it.
I was mad, but then I smiled.

I thought it was possibly the best ending possible. The whole diner scene was just masterful in its emotional weight and American iconography.
It does what any ending should do; regardless of the ups and downs throughout the seasons, it reminds me of how good the show has been and why it has been praised so highly as groundbreaking television.

This scene contains so much commentary on people's stereotypical expectations, not just of television programming, but the so-called 'criminal persona'.

After everything, Tony is a man who still prefers the Rock n'Roll of his youth to Tony Bennett, onion rings to Italian cuisine, and, perhaps most of all, his still intact nuclear family to a life of insular, self-defeating depression.

It was definitely the best use of Journey EVER!

Surprisingly quiet thread for such a controversial show/finale!

It's been a couple days since I watched the end and I still can't get it out of my head. I believe this will go down as one of the most memorable endings ever.
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I still can't believe the audacity, yet I don't believe there was any other way to do it. I don't believe the ending was designed to keep options open for any future stories. The latest power struggle was resolved somewhat but there will be more power struggles and more scams and more problems and we don't need to see any more. Enough to know he can never escape from the torment he feels, the paranoia he feels. And all this without the supposed "catharsis" of therapy. As far as I'm concerned the story begun in Season One has been brought to it's natural conclusion.

Victor

Tony's dead...that's what I said!

The breaking off of therapy by Dr. Melfi was the first real sign for me that Chase was making a substantive comment on Tony's lack of redemptive possibilities. So long as Tony was in therapy, it seemed that he was still at least somewhat aware of what he was and what he didn't what to be. This was now shot to hell.

I also acknowledge all the comments about being told that when death comes for you everthing goes blank, along with the guy in the Members Only jacket, because those are key elements at play both on the surface and underneath that final scene.

However, the single most important tip-off as to Tony's fate is his daughter attempting to park her car. The length of time Chase gives to the details of what she's doing signalled to me, more so than anything else, that doom was indeed impending. To think, if she'd had a little more difficulty, she might have missed what was about to happen to her father. But all of these family members, each of whom benefited from the from the end result of his criminal dealings, would also be present to see what ultimately comes of this life. The last thing Tony sees is his daughter as she comes bounding through the door, just as her father's world goes dark forever.

The central point of the scene was the family, including Tony, somehow believing the could go on with their "normal" lives after everything that happened to them, without some sacrifice on their parts to make a break with the past. None of them did. Dr. Melfi realized Tony was a b.s. artist through and through. So, none of them were spared seeing what the final fate of their husband and father was (mirrored by the murder of an enemy in front of his family that took place earlier in the show), except for the viewer. We should have seen it coming from day one.

Tony lives! (... if you call that living...)

Lenny, that is certainly one way to read the finale, but I think most of the arguments you make are spurious. The actual comment was not that "everything goes black", but that you probably never hear it coming.

I believe most people that think Tony got whacked are reacting to conditioning. That is, whenever a film or show ratchets up the tension, it invariably leads to a "payoff". And since the show does not provide one, viewers imagine it must have happened right after the cut to black.

But "The Sopranos" has never been about the big payoff. Instead, what Chase was trying to do was was create tension without catharsis as a means of illustrating what Tony's mindset is, all the time, and probably has been since episode one. (Remember the whole reason he went into therapy in the first place was because of his panic attacks, brought on by stress.) But only here, at the end, does Chase put us fully inside his head.

I, for one, thought it was effin' brilliant, and a perfect finale to the show.

Why are they spurious? Didn't Mr. Chase put all those details in there for a reason? Didn't he also say, in his only post-SOPRANOS interview, that while he doesn't expect to re-visit the show, if he did it could possibly be to explore a PAST storyline or thread. Why do you think that is?

Tony's still dead. That's what I said.

Sure he put them in there for a reason - just not the reasons you are giving. I mean, just because there are shots of the Members Only guy walking to the bathroom, does that mean he has a gun? It's all about the tension. Tony is thinking, "Is this the guy? Is this it?" But he's thinking that every time someone walks in.

Anyway, I don't want to get all flamy. I actually like that it is kind of ambiguous and can be interpreted in different ways. But I've checked out some of the other forums talking about this, and some of the posters are getting into real conspiracy-theory level stuff, about the hidden clues indicating that Tony was killed, or may already be dead, etc.

Edit: from EW: 'Sopranos' insiders debunk conspiracy theories