I thought it was great. There was closure with most of the characters, but it still shows that Tony and his family will never feel completely safe. It's never going to be over for them.
What did you guys want? Would you have been happier if they'd killed Tony like everyone and their grandmother expected them to do?
Yeah, I was pretty pissed at first too, but you know, that ending was fitting for the show. The closing song was a great choice, first episode with no music during the credits that I can remember, AJ is still a ing idiot, and Tony is still obviously trying to reach out and talk to someone (the scene with AJ's psych)
Someone else pointed out the conversation with Bobby on the boat. How when it's time to go, you don't hear it coming.
“you’ll know when it happens because everything goes black and silent”
that's exactly what happened. tony got whacked.
It was a terrible ending. There was no closure. , we don't even know if Tony got killed or not. The dude that went to bathroom before the end was an assassin. It left everybody having to guess what was going to happen. Lame.
That's certainly possible, but we'll never know. Why did that dude go to the can?
Could be.
Or maybe the black/silence was for the death of the show.
Wrong. It left the door wide open for AJ's spin-off. He's obviously the most complex character in the show.
If Tony got whacked, why not show it? Why leave people hanging? If it's the last episode of the series why not have full closure.
Could have been better. I expected more from an episode that finished off one of the greatest shows on cable TV.
One thing I was disappointed with was the Rhiannon tease.
I needed closure on her boobs.
The niece?
AJ's girlfriend
why show it? it's more powerful when suggested. it's not chase's fault that people can't appreciate and gather meaning from an implied death.
I liked "Journey" in the end.
Kermit's right. Got to be.
In fact the more I think about it the more I love the ending.
Doesn't make sense. With Phil dead why kill Tony? Who would have killed him? That was not much of an implied death imo.
****SPOILERS****
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/...ap3806417.html
Associated Press
No Easy Ending for 'The Sopranos'
By FRAZIER MOORE 06.10.07, 11:10 PM ET
Tony Soprano carries on.
The much-awaited conclusion of HBO's "The Sopranos" arrived Sunday night in a frenzy of audience speculation. Would New Jersey mob boss Soprano live or be killed? Would his family die before his eyes? Would he go to jail? Be forced to enter witness protection? Would Brooklyn boss Phil Leo o, who had ordered a hit on Tony, prevail?
In the end, the only ending that mattered was the one masterminded by "Sopranos" creator David Chase. And playing against viewer expectations, as always, Chase refused to stage a mass extermination, put the characters through any major transformations, or provide his viewers with comfortable closure. Or catharsis. After all, he declined to pass moral judgment on Tony - he reminded viewers all season what a thug Tony is, then gave him a pass.
But Chase was true to himself, and that's what made "The Sopranos" brilliant on Sunday night, and the 85 episodes that went before. The product of an artist with a bleak but incisive vision, "The Sopranos" has always existed on its own terms. It was challenging and elegant, but seldom tidy.
The only neat development in the finale was that Leo o was crushed. Otherwise it was perversely non-earthshaking - just one last visit with the characters we have followed so devoutly since 1999.
Here was the funeral for Bobby Bacala, Tony's soldier and brother-in-law, who was shot dead on Leo o's orders last week. Here was Tony (series star James Gandolfini) paying a hospital visit to his gravely injured consigliere, Silvio Dante, also targeted by Leo o.
Tony's ne'er-do-well son A.J. (Robert Iler) continued to wail about the misery in the world, and voiced a fleeting urge to join the Army and go fight in Afghanistan (Tony persuaded him to get involved in filmmaking, instead). Daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) harped on her plans to be a lawyer.
Tony visits his senile Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) at the nursing home. "You and my dad, you two ran North Jersey," Tony prompts him.
"We did?" said Uncle Junior with no sign of recognition. "That's nice."
Despite su ions to the contrary, neither Paulie Walnuts nor Patsy Parisi sold out Tony. And neither was whacked. Dr. Melfi, who kicked Tony out of therapy last week, made no last-minute appearance.
Sure, headaches lie ahead for Tony. The Feds are still after him. And Meadow's fiance, Patsy Jr., is a lawyer who may well be pursuing cases that intrude on Tony's business interests.
So what else is new?
The finale displayed their lives continuing, for better and worse, unaffected by the fact that the series is done. The implication was, they will go on as usual. We just won't be able to watch.
Of course, Leo o (Frank Vincent) hit a dead end after Tony located him with the help of his favorite federal agent. The execution was a quick but classic "Sopranos" scene: Pulling up at a gas station with his wife, Leo o made a grand show of telling his two young grandchildren in the back seat to "wave bye-bye" as he emerged from his SUV. The next moment he was on the pavement, shot in the head.
Then you heard the car roll over his head. Carunnnchh! Quick, clinical, even comical, this was the only violence during the hour.
Not that Chase (who wrote and directed this episode) didn't tease viewers with the threat of death in almost every scene.
This was never more true than in the final sequence. On the surface, it was nothing more momentous than Tony, his wife, Carmela (Edie Falco), Meadow and A.J. meeting for dinner at a cozy family restaurant.
When he arrived, Tony dropped a coin in the jukebox and played the classic Journey power ballad "Don't Stop Believing." Meanwhile, every moment seemed to foreshadow disaster: Su ious-looking people coming in the door or sitting at a nearby table. Meadow on the street having trouble parallel parking her car. With every passing second, the audience was primed for tragedy. It was a scene both warm and fuzzy yet full of dread, setting every viewer's heart racing for no clear reason.
But nothing would happen. It was just a family gathering for dinner at a restaurant. Four people among many.
But then - with a jingle of the bell on the front door, Tony looked up, apparently seeing Meadow make her delayed entrance. Or could he have seen something awful - something her certainly deserved - about to come down?
Probably not. Almost certainly a false alarm. But we'll never know. With that, "The Sopranos" cut to black, leaving us enriched after eight years. And flustered. And fated to always wonder what happened next.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
But if Kermit is right, and that's the exact quote, how do you know the ending wasn't implying that for US it was over, after all we are the ones that saw black and silence.
I think if they really wanted to imply that Tony died they would have shown a first person view before they cut to black....
I'd be interested in knowing if that's the exact quote though...
could be right. i'd like to believe that with all the tension in the final scene, that quote rings true. whether it's death for tony or the show, it's still a pretty cool ending and not worthy of the condemnation it's recieving around the country.
If the quote is right I totally agree, it adds a lot of art to the show, because for example they could have just faded out to black, and we would have known life just goes on, but to cut to black for us, was an artistic way of saying that for us it's over.
I think if they were being artistic in Tonys death the cut to black would have been from first person.
But if the quote is wrong, and that was never said, the ending is a little flakey...
also, the hit could've been a repercussion for phil getting whacked in front of his family.
I still say it sucked. Very little action. The hit on Phil was great, but outside of that it was BOORING!
You know those plans were changed so last minute, I bet nobody even knew they'd be there...
Anybody who really believes that this was a great episode needs to open their eyes and get real. I've watched this show since the beginning and this was a monster disappointment. Last weeks episode was 20 times better than the finale. Still the best show of all-time, but this ending sucked ass.
I can't believe that they chickened out and chose to go with some artsy choose your own interpretation for an ending. I could think of a number of better endings than how they actually ended it. IMO, it just wreaks of them wanting to leave their options open for a movie, all about the money.
Well put.
There's 2 ways to think about the final scene. (Which I thought was GREAT)
1) Tony gets whacked. You just never see it coming. (Just like the Godfather, Michael goes to the bathroom, comes out shooting)
2) Tony doesnt' get whacked (Leaving room for a movie). If this is the case, the final scene is brilliant, because I was watching with a knot in my stomach to see what was going to happen. So, the viewer actually got to feel like what Tony must feel like 24/7.
Either way, I thought the last scene was very well done, and made up for the average first 50 minutes of the show.
Two words for this episode: Weak Sauce.
If you ever watched "Six Feet Under", the best episode of that entire series was the last episode. Never seen anything like it. Tonight's Sopranos wasn't even the best episode in the last few weeks.
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