Monday, June 11, 2007
And So It F’ing Ends
*** Spoiler Alert ***
I will now be discussing the series finale of The Sopranos. Avert your eyes if you don’t care to know the ending. Though if you’ve managed to escape all the coverage thus far, how in the hell did you manage to find my blog?
The Sopranos has gone out with a whimper, or so everyone keeps telling me. In fact, most of the people I’ve heard from hated the final episode. Yet I loved it. And the only reason is that David Chase managed to make you feel the EXACT same way Tony feels every minute of his life.
As a little background, there was a hit out on Tony, but it was more or less called off. And so Tony thought he was in the clear. In the final scene, Tony’s at a restaurant and he orders some food. Eventually, Carmela comes in and sits down. Then AJ comes in, followed by a scary-looking dude. Since there are only a few minutes left, you know something’s going to happen. Meanwhile, Meadow’s outside, trying to parallel park her car.
And with every passing second, you wonder when it’s going to happen. Is Tony going to get whacked? Are Carm and AJ going to get it too? Does Meadow survive just because she can’t parallel park? Then you see the door open and Tony looks up and BAM! The scene abruptly ends and makes you wonder if the TV just broke. Then the credits roll.
The complaints I heard were that nothing happened and that the ending didn’t resolve anything. So what? Is your life resolved? No, it just keeps going on. But what’s great about this episode is how, for 4 minutes, you thought Tony was going to die. You worried about his family. Are they safe? Will they be collateral damage? Every person that walked into the restaurant had to be analyzed as a potential killer. Not even a simple dinner alone with the family was relaxing. This man, who worked very hard to make himself one of the biggest crime bosses in the area couldn’t even go out to dinner with his family. And all because he was such a big crime boss.
It showed that Tony is a monster. He has killed and betrayed. He has made himself rich and powerful, but it has come at a price. He’ll never know when the other shoe will drop. He could be dead any second. Or arrested and sent to jail for the rest of his life. He has no way of knowing if his family will be safe and taken care of if he dies. Mobsters don’t have pension plans (well, unless you count the one from his “waste management” job).
In a way, though, that feeling of unease is what everyone should feel. None of us knows that we’re safe. People die every day. It could be any of us. We hope our families are safe and will be okay without us, but we never know. The best we can do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best. And that’s what the final scene did. It prepared us for the worst, and then it ended. And now we can hope for the best. It’s up to you to decide whether it’s best for an evil crime boss to get whacked or if it’s better for him to go on lying, stealing and killing.
I will now be discussing the series finale of The Sopranos. Avert your eyes if you don’t care to know the ending. Though if you’ve managed to escape all the coverage thus far, how in the hell did you manage to find my blog?
The Sopranos has gone out with a whimper, or so everyone keeps telling me. In fact, most of the people I’ve heard from hated the final episode. Yet I loved it. And the only reason is that David Chase managed to make you feel the EXACT same way Tony feels every minute of his life.
As a little background, there was a hit out on Tony, but it was more or less called off. And so Tony thought he was in the clear. In the final scene, Tony’s at a restaurant and he orders some food. Eventually, Carmela comes in and sits down. Then AJ comes in, followed by a scary-looking dude. Since there are only a few minutes left, you know something’s going to happen. Meanwhile, Meadow’s outside, trying to parallel park her car.
And with every passing second, you wonder when it’s going to happen. Is Tony going to get whacked? Are Carm and AJ going to get it too? Does Meadow survive just because she can’t parallel park? Then you see the door open and Tony looks up and BAM! The scene abruptly ends and makes you wonder if the TV just broke. Then the credits roll.
The complaints I heard were that nothing happened and that the ending didn’t resolve anything. So what? Is your life resolved? No, it just keeps going on. But what’s great about this episode is how, for 4 minutes, you thought Tony was going to die. You worried about his family. Are they safe? Will they be collateral damage? Every person that walked into the restaurant had to be analyzed as a potential killer. Not even a simple dinner alone with the family was relaxing. This man, who worked very hard to make himself one of the biggest crime bosses in the area couldn’t even go out to dinner with his family. And all because he was such a big crime boss.
It showed that Tony is a monster. He has killed and betrayed. He has made himself rich and powerful, but it has come at a price. He’ll never know when the other shoe will drop. He could be dead any second. Or arrested and sent to jail for the rest of his life. He has no way of knowing if his family will be safe and taken care of if he dies. Mobsters don’t have pension plans (well, unless you count the one from his “waste management” job).
In a way, though, that feeling of unease is what everyone should feel. None of us knows that we’re safe. People die every day. It could be any of us. We hope our families are safe and will be okay without us, but we never know. The best we can do is prepare for the worst and hope for the best. And that’s what the final scene did. It prepared us for the worst, and then it ended. And now we can hope for the best. It’s up to you to decide whether it’s best for an evil crime boss to get whacked or if it’s better for him to go on lying, stealing and killing.
