Ayyy, waddya want from me, eh? I bin a fan uh da' Sopranos from day one my friend. Day one!
I've hung in there since the start; through the bad seasons, the great seasons, the insufferable hiatuses, and killer writing with poetic touches network television would never dare present- let alone understand. I have enjoyed this show SO much, mainly because of the character Paulie Walnuts; one of the greatest boobs that ever graced the tube. But throughout the years this show always frustrated me with it's frequently dropped story threads and unresolved characters. It always seemed like just when it started to get really good the show's boss, David Chase, abruptly went in a different direction with the show.
Listening to enraged callers on my favorite morning radio talk shows over the years, I know I'm not the only one who was frustrated by this but I may have been one of the more paient fans of the show. I appreciated the character development, the deeply talented actors, the directing, and the music well enough to always kind of feel paid-off in other ways.
But I was always fool enough to believe it was going somewhere.
*sigh*
Well, chock one up for consistency.
In the end, The Sopranos never failed to not disappoint.
I told a friend of mine a couple of weeks ago that with all of the theories people have about the upcoming ending and ideas about it's unfolding, there's no way they could satisfy everybody. But this ending satisfied no one.
I finally just watched the finale, after a whole week of avoiding the minefield of media spoilers- yes, even in Japan they have newspapers, CNN, and the friggin' internet- and when that last episode ended and the screen went dark, all I could think was how much that final scene showed actual contempt for the fans of the show.
It was a big "fangool" to all of us.
I could have taken any kind of 'real' ending really, Tony gets whacked (which is probably what happened really, but who knows for sure), Paulie turns to the feds, Tony turns to the feds, just SOMETHING.
But yeah, that weird cat could have been a harbinger of death, and the screen going abruptly black could have been in Tony's point of view, his life snuffed out by someone behind him. probably that starnge chap in the 'Member's Only' jacket who walked to the bathroom behind Tony as Meadow was approaching the diner. Remember the episode a couple of seasons ago when Tony got shot? That episode was called 'Member's Only'. A clue? Maybe, but who the hell knows?
That's reading in too much probably but it's all open for people to infer whatever the hell they want.
Perhaps Chase made the screen- and the life of the show as in picture, sound, etc.- go black to show that HE "whacked" the show. He ended it, he shot it in the head and ran over it's head with the SUV of his own creativity. In his mind I guess he always kept the Sopranos for himself, and in the end he did that too. He gave us an ending only he could enjoy.
All I can infer is that David Chase has some real anger issues and has really enjoyed fucking with us and frustrating us all the way to the bitter end.
Fangool.
Justin Thompson
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|Administrator |2007-06-19 21:02:36 tracine - Bada-bing.Not being a huge "Sopranos" fan, I don't really have a feeling one way or the other on how it ended. From what I've seen and read, it left a lot to be interpreted, and that isn't always a bad thing...but it would probably have driven me nuts if I was a fan. If you follow a show like that, you want some closure, and I don't think there was any. It's one of the hardest things in the television world, ending a show properly. There are only a handful that did it well...Mary Tyler Moor...
