The Sopranos

[Galt]

Writers ending shows/movies with ambiguous endings annoy me. It's such a hippy copout.

Take a stand. Pick an ending. Resolve something. It's like they are afraid to piss anyone off or aren't creative to come up with anything interesting so they just decide not to end it at all so that everyone can create their own ending.

If I want to write my own ending, I'll stare at a blank piece of paper.

[TheGMANN]

Agreed

Any show that can take a fucking YEAR + between seasons to write and come up with some sort of creative idea should have a definitive ending.


Bullshit cop out in my opinion

[Keyser Soze]

i thought it was perfect and totally unexpected. i would have been disappointed if he went with the tidy ending. i'm left wanting more now and my imagination is free to roam.

if anything, the major beef i had with the episode, and what i've always had with the show, was that too much time is spent on things like AJ's floating through life.

[Galt]

I hate the show and I'm glad it's over. It's sucked for the last few seasons.

Though I can't wait for the Wire to start again. Finally watching seasons 1 and 2 on BET have given me so much more depth about the characters.

I really couldn't appreciate how much of a fuckup Prezbo was or how slimy Carver and Herc were until watching those two seasons.

And I want to be gay with Mr. Omar.

[Keyser Soze]

The Wire is great, I can't wait for the new season to begin.

I'm watching the ending again now on HBO West. I wouldn't be surprised if they used the jukebox as a theme for alternate endings in the DVD.

"Where Will You Run To?" - Tony gets whacked in the diner, the family has to go on without him.

etc....

another good take on the hbo soprano's board....

> The wonderful thing about The Sopranos is that it
> never followed the formulaic route of American TV. It
> always dealt with its characters and their situations
> and the milieus in which they moved with realism.
> There were some things people guessed, and there were
> some things they did not guess. Some issues were
> resolved, whereas others were not. Rather like life
> that way.
>
> American audiences are often coddled by films and
> television. There is this belief that every question
> bears a satisfactory answer, and for every conflict
> there is provided a solution. It's a spurious bill of
> goods we Americans have been spoonfed for centuries.
>
> Mr. Chase chose to usurp those notions with his show,
> choosing instead to present three-dimensional
> characters in his story rather than tired
> stereotypes, and also to usurp the idea that
> everything has a solution.
>
> With most shows and finales, all storylines and
> conflicts are tied up with a nice neat little bow. In
> life, this rarely happens. And many people have
> become so used to being spoiled in this way - in
> believing the lie in lieu of accepting certain
> inevitable truths - that they feel neglected or
> cheated when a formulaic element of satisfaction is
> denied them.
>
> The episode, aptly enough, was called: Made in
> America. Throughout the episode there were certain
> allusions made to the American Dream and how it is
> just that: a dream. Not reality. An unctuous bill of
> goods used to distract from the truth of what it
> means to live on this planet.
>
> Were this a show that wanted to lie, then every
> question would have been answered, denying the
> audience the chance of thought and discernment.
>
> I am satisfied that Mr. Chase and Co. did not cater
> to cliche and instead had enough respect for the
> characters and by extension the audience to not offer
> some bogus episode laden with regurgitative tripe.
> Life is not always what we want it to be. That's a
> certain truth.
>
> That said, the show began in quite an illuminative
> light: A close shot of Tony's head on a pillow
> accompanied by funereal organ music. Rather like a
> wake. Also, throughout the episode, there were many
> close and medium close shots, which only enhanced a
> feeling of tension and claustrophobia. I've never
> watched a show during which I felt persistently
> caught on tenterhooks.
>
> The final scene was well nigh unbearable and scored
> perfectly with Journey's Don't Stop Believin. Quite
> right and proper. It was a stunning ending that
> encapsulated much of what the final episode was
> about. It dealt with the conflicts in a manner that
> was not so much about a fictive fabric as it was a
> metaphor for what life is often like and what the
> term Made in America really means.
>
> Those who buy into the fallacy of such things were no
> doubt furious. Those who do not perhaps understand
> that life does not always accrue the answers and
> realizations we've been coddled into thinking we not
> only want, but deserve.
>
> I am saddened by the fact that The Sopranos has
> ended, but I admire the way in which the creators
> ended it. It is a good thing to question those things
> in which one truly believes, for therein lies a
> knowledge to be gleaned.
>
> The last episode was not, I think, merely an hour in
> which conflicts were addressed, but one from which
> the audience may examine their own conflicted
> feelings.
>
>
>
>
> What is of interest now is whether or not Mr. Chase
> and Co. will make a feature film.

[GonzoStyle]

fuckin bullshit, if I wanna come up with my own ending, i'll write a fuckin script, as paulie would say "fuck this". Less time on pointless fuckin scenes which constitutes 50% of the show for the last 3 seasons and more fuckin storylines that actually go somewhere and mean something. Fuckin johnny cakes for half a season and a season of AJ and al queada.

[GonzoStyle]

I read so many theories on IMDB and yeah some of them are nice and so forth but the whole thing about people trying to defend Chase is annoying, its not fuckin "artistic", its simply covering his own ass. As Galt mentioned it saves chase on the front of not dissapointing anyone by having a definite ending, also it saves him critically by not chancing an ending that may be completely panned by everyone and saves him the stress, etc etc. It's lamer than seeing 2 lines on a canvas sell for 20 million bucks and pass for "Art" so people can be all like "YOU DONT GET IT MAN!!!" when they dont fuckin get it either but wanna act like they're so fuckin enlightened and smarter than the world who doesnt get it. It's not fuckin artistic, chase tried all these years with the fuckin dream sequences that were annoying but unlike sorkin, he cant pull off the pompus shit well. It's also not like a 2 hour movie thats set up to be all artsy and can have an open ending, etc. Its a fuckin 7 season show with close to 90 episodes, around 80 hours of material, it deserves fuckin closure after all these fuckin years, not this bullshit.

yeah some of the scenes were nice, theres a lot of great moments in every sopranos episode, but 3, 5 or even 10 good minutes, you still gotta deal with 40 minutes of fuckin bullshit. Yeah the scene with Tony & Uncle Jun was wonderful, one of the best moments this season or any other, the build up of tension in the diner was fuckin fantastic, I agree with hedcold, you felt what it was like to be in tonys shoes, fuckin great but then.... nothing.

Im also tired of the whole "oh you people are spoiled and non-intellectuals who need everything wrapped up and handed to you". Thats not the case, chase gives us the storylines, chase makes us sit through the development of them and sit through 3 times as many that are worthless/pointless for a small payoff hopefully and then when the all important third act comes in, he fuckin takes the easy way... "artistic" my ass. Shakespeare could pull off "Artistic" but he actually wrapped up his books at the end, guess he's not artistic like David Chase, stupid shakespeare.

[TheGMANN]

YEAH.....stupid Shakespear!

[HedCold]

while i admit this sounds cheesy, perhaps it wasn't supposed to have a tidy ending? what you were just were part of was how every many years of the sopranos lives.

now, like the lyrics in the journey song that everyone is going to dissect 100000000 ways and keyser will post each one, "its goes on and on and on."

and even if tony did die, another tony would have popped up, and he would be living the same life

of course, i'm not as invested in this show and the characters like some of you are, so whatever. it is kind of a cop out. but i remember reading these sopranos posts that i think gonzo said chase knew how we was going to end it from the start. he probably didn't know how many years hbo would make him drag it out when it first started. kind of like how Lost is getting, even though the last whatever episodes of this season were really good.

[Galt]

Yes, life's story lines are rarely tied up in little bows. But you know what? Life is boring, that why people watch TV. If I wanted to look at life, I'd stare out the window or voyeurdorm.

And life also lasts 90 years, not 85 hours.

A TV show isn't life, it's fiction. Fiction has different rules. One of those rules is to cut down the extraneous shit and only show the relevant parts of those characters life in order to RESOLVE THE INTENDED STORY LINES.

[Gooch]

i thought it was a great ending.

the rest of you are heathens.

that is all.

[Gooch]

First off, I loved the final episode. In an age where TV hits the common denominator and dumbs down to say things...I appreciated the deft hand Chase himself used for the finale.

When the show ended I had a flashback in high school when I read The Lady and The Tiger by Francis Stockton. The short story left the reader in a logical quandry to which door the main character would choose. As a teenager, I got annoyed by it. It wasn't till years later when I truly respected the story and idea...where dots aren't connected for us, when things are left to our own devices.

TV has always tended to forcefeed us opinions, ideas, entertainment, outrage, etc. But here, we are left to our own devices of what to choose. Is it the Lady or the Tiger? Some hate that type of leaving it in our court, shouting for the entertainment and writers to give us our ending...but we all know that life isn't like that...and to me, David Chase really laid a nice ending down...even if some are outraged. I think he did something special and unique and I think people will appreciate it more over time.

Paulie Walnuts having the cat stare at him after his scene with Tony. Clearly a foreshadowing of his own doom...by Tony's hand one day? (like Chris) or because he was talking to the feds, thinking about himself

Carmela, once again sated by vicariously living her life thru her daughter, hearing that a lawyer would be lucrative.

AJ once again sated by being given something instead of following his own path.

Janice, once again going for the money...never really changing.

Junior...no longer really Junior anymore.

Despite that some made an observation elsewhere that Tony's conversation with Bobby B earlier this season..statements were made that if your time was up, you wouldn't expect it..and everything would just go black. Kind of like last night sudden ending.

However, I took the ending as he would just plug along with his family...doing what he always does. Despite impending indictments. Despite everything. And that Chase played with expectation and nervousness to a character we've followed for years, alluding to a sense of danger that really hit a nerve while he sat there with his family. Tugging that sense of...oh god no...not now..not in front of his family. That moment, seemed to me, avoided, and that Tony and family would just meander along.

[GonzoStyle]

yeah, you don't get it maaaaaan!!!

[Gooch]

the big rumor is:
all three men at that restaurant were there to kill Tony....

The guy at the bar is credited as Nikki Leotardo. The same actor played him in the first part of season 6 during a brief sit down concerning the future of Vito. That wasn't that long ago. Apparently, he is the nephew of Phil. Phil's brother Nikki Senior was killed in 1976 in a car accident.

So the point would have been that life continues and we may never know the end of the Sopranos. But if you pay attention to the history, you will find that all the answers lie in the characters in the restaurant. The trucker was the brother of the guy who was robbed by Christopher in Season 2. Remember the DVD players? The trucker had to identify the body. The boy scouts were in the train store and the black guys at the end were the ones who tried to kill Tony and only clipped him in the ear (was that season 2 or 3?).

There were three people in the restaurant who had reason to kill Tony and then it just ends. This was Chase's way of proving that he will not escape his past.

[TheGMANN]

YEAH.....stupid Shakespear!

[drusilla]

the big rumor is:
all three men at that restaurant were there to kill Tony....

The guy at the bar is credited as Nikki Leotardo. The same actor played him in the first part of season 6 during a brief sit down concerning the future of Vito. That wasn't that long ago. Apparently, he is the nephew of Phil. Phil's brother Nikki Senior was killed in 1976 in a car accident.

So the point would have been that life continues and we may never know the end of the Sopranos. But if you pay attention to the history, you will find that all the answers lie in the characters in the restaurant. The trucker was the brother of the guy who was robbed by Christopher in Season 2. Remember the DVD players? The trucker had to identify the body. The boy scouts were in the train store and the black guys at the end were the ones who tried to kill Tony and only clipped him in the ear (was that season 2 or 3?).

There were three people in the restaurant who had reason to kill Tony and then it just ends. This was Chase's way of proving that he will not escape his past.

i just got this in an email:


He was killed....

in fact, the ending was genius if you've paid attention to the show or are just a fan of well developed well thought out plots that all tie together and have the memory of a champ to remember it all

the ending was simple, he got killed, but let me tell yall why and explain in detail... There was 3 people in the room total who had a reason to kill tony.....

the two black guys, they were paid before to kill tony but he was only shot in the ear, this was in one of the earlier seasons,

also in the earlier seasons, the trucker who was sitting at the bar stool, who the camera kept focusing in on, is Nikki leotardo, Phil Leotardos nephew, he was in one of the early season episodes where Phil and Tony have a sit down....

heres where the genius comes in....

When tonys walking in the diner,you see the camera focus on him, then it switches to his perspective, and you see him looking @ the booth hes gonna sit at...

then the camera switches back to tonys face, then it once again switches to his perspective, and it shows him looking @ the door and looking @ the people come in..... Everytime the door opens the Chimes sound....... Carmela walks in, Chimes, AJ walks in Chimes, this when Meadows parallel parking, still trying to get inside the restaurant....

at this point the camera switches back to the trucker who goes in the bathroom......

Then it goes to a scene where meadow finally parks and starts running in the diner....

the doors about to open, Tony looks up....

and No Chimes......................

No Music............

Everything just goes black...............

In one of the early episodes of the sopranos, tonys talking with bobby about what it must feel like to die..

Bobby says "at the end, you probably dont hear anything, everything just goes black"


part of that was revisited in the second to last episode during the last seconds of it, when tonys about to go to sleep and he flashes back to the memory of him and bobby on the boat... "You probably dont hear anything everything just goes black"


so in the end, the Journey song was playing, the chimes on the door sounded but when meadow came in, the guy in the trucker hat came out and killed tony...

its the reason you aint hear, or see shit when he died.... it was from his perspective.... and everything went black, then the credits rolled.

[drusilla]

I'm glad we have the internet so that we can figure out our favorite television shows. This is exactly how David Chase would have wanted it.

eh, i still think that life just went on. like any other regular day for them with shit to worry about & shit to do. didn't really see a need for tony to get killed since the beef with ny was squashed. i really don't see anything being wrong with the finale other than how boring it was. as was most of the last two seasons.

i did like what a caller to r&f said though, (dunno if it was said here too, really didn't feel like reading this thread word for word) that the ending was david chase killing off the viewers.

[Keyser Soze]

the big rumor is:
all three men at that restaurant were there to kill Tony....

The guy at the bar is credited as Nikki Leotardo. The same actor played him in the first part of season 6 during a brief sit down concerning the future of Vito. That wasn't that long ago. Apparently, he is the nephew of Phil. Phil's brother Nikki Senior was killed in 1976 in a car accident.

So the point would have been that life continues and we may never know the end of the Sopranos. But if you pay attention to the history, you will find that all the answers lie in the characters in the restaurant. The trucker was the brother of the guy who was robbed by Christopher in Season 2. Remember the DVD players? The trucker had to identify the body. The boy scouts were in the train store and the black guys at the end were the ones who tried to kill Tony and only clipped him in the ear (was that season 2 or 3?).

There were three people in the restaurant who had reason to kill Tony and then it just ends. This was Chase's way of proving that he will not escape his past.

one of the black guys was killed already.

a very telling piece of foreshadowing is tony eating an orange earlier in the episode.

in the godfather, the orange is a symbol of impending doom. the oranges falling out of the cart before vito corleone is shot. vito dies with an orange in his mouth....theres plenty more :

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.jgeoff.com/godfather/oranges.html">http://www.jgeoff.com/godfather/oranges.html</a><!-- m -->

also, the man at the counter is wearing a members only jacket, in the episode uncle june shoots tony, the name of the episode is, you guessed it "members only"

[Galt]

the big rumor is:
all three men at that restaurant were there to kill Tony....

The guy at the bar is credited as Nikki Leotardo. The same actor played him in the first part of season 6 during a brief sit down concerning the future of Vito. That wasn't that long ago. Apparently, he is the nephew of Phil. Phil's brother Nikki Senior was killed in 1976 in a car accident.

So the point would have been that life continues and we may never know the end of the Sopranos. But if you pay attention to the history, you will find that all the answers lie in the characters in the restaurant. The trucker was the brother of the guy who was robbed by Christopher in Season 2. Remember the DVD players? The trucker had to identify the body. The boy scouts were in the train store and the black guys at the end were the ones who tried to kill Tony and only clipped him in the ear (was that season 2 or 3?).

There were three people in the restaurant who had reason to kill Tony and then it just ends. This was Chase's way of proving that he will not escape his past.

I call bullshit on all of this. This reeks of one of those mass emails on Snopes that everyone gets, seems like it makes sense, it's verifyable.

I say it's bollocks.

[Keyser Soze]

it was the viral email du jour.