St. Eligius Hospital turns out to be an autistic child's fanciful daydream; a suicidal J.R. Ewing fires a revolver, possibly at himself, possibly at the beady-eyed demon in the bedroom mirror; the Seinfeld gang gets put on trial for their supposed lack of humanity. Television history is rife with final episodes of landmark, long-running series that have left loyal fans feeling dazed, confused and royally pissed-off. Judging by the published reports, it would seem that Sunday night's series finale of The Sopranos has now joined those infamous ranks. But it doesn't deserve to, and I would argue that all those out there in TV land who have spent the last 48 hours cursing the name of series creator David Chase never really understood or appreciated what made The Sopranos so great in the first place.
In Las Vegas, where I spent the weekend leading up to and including the Sopranos finale, even those individuals who didn't have money riding on the outcome could scarcely keep themselves from speculating about it. Would Tony graduate to that great pork store in the sky, the way his loyal lieutenant (and brother-in-law) Bobby Baccalieri had just the week prior? Would he live, only to lose another loved one — this time maybe a blood relative — to the family business? One friend of mine, the legendary movie producer and sales agent Jeff Dowd (in town for the annual Cinevegas film festival), said he was sure that Carmela Soprano, finally having had her fill of Tony's shenanigans, would herself take up arms. But then again, Dowd added, he had it on good authority that Chase had filmed multiple endings to the episode just to throw potential spoilers off the scent. So, really, anything could happen.
Anything, I suppose, except for nothing at all. Indeed, even the best Vegas odds makers hadn't given a moment's thought to the possibility that, after eight years and 86 hours of ground-breaking television, The Sopranos might sign off forever with one of the greatest fragmentary non-endings since Franz Kafka's The Castle trailed off in mid-sentence. In that moment, in the Palms hotel suite where I was watching the episode with Dowd and a dozen or so other industry types, the disappointment was pea-soup thick, and by the next morning the newspapers were filled with acid-tongued anecdotes about Sopranos viewing parties from coast to coast at which those in attendance, puzzled by Chase's abrupt cut to black in the middle of the episode's final scene, held their collective breath at what they felt certain was a momentary interruption in their cable service.
The Los Angeles Times reported that at one high-ticket gathering in Hollywood, Florida, where fans had paid hundreds of dollars to watch the finale in the company of select cast and crew members, a woman stood up and shouted "What the hell was that anyway?" — a scene doubtless repeated in living rooms across America. Meanwhile, even some professional critics were busy holding Chase's feet to the fire, accusing him at best of having copped out or, at worst, of having played some sadistic joke on his legions of worshipful viewers. In another Los Angeles Times article, this one headlined "Sopranos: What was that all about?", the critic Mary McNamara opined that "Ending a series with the social weight of The Sopranos is not an enviable task, but end it must, and not with the sophomoric gesture of a blank screen."
For the moment, I'll reserve comment on the sophomoric gestures of some published arts criticism and just say that what I personally find most surprising isn't how The Sopranos ended, but that anyone — least of all the show's supposed die-hard fans — would have expected anything different. Here is a series that, since its inception, has always taken the road less traveled, that managed to invoke a lifetime of mob-movie clichés while simultaneously transcending them. It was a meta-mob-movie in which the characters learned how to be gangsters from watching White Heat and GoodFellas and the Godfather trilogy, and in which family matters were forever intruding upon Family matters. Within the seemingly restrictive boundaries of an exhausted dramatic genre (Was it even possible to care about the petty tribulations of old-fashioned gangsters in the midst of the Enron era?), Chase managed to weave a great American epic about the burden of power, the indignity of old age, the terror of children that they will grow up to become their parents, and, of course, the inability of modern medicine to cure all that ails us (especially existential crises). And yet, people expected Chase to end things...how exactly? With the funeral of Tony Soprano? With Carmela and the kids joining the Federal Witness Protection program? With Artie Bucco deciding to sell the Vesuvio and the whole cast gathering together to sing "Auld Lang Syne"?
No matter what Chase did, of course, it was never going to be to everyone's liking. What he did do, however, strikes me as one of the boldest strokes in a series that was never short on radical gestures. Contrary to the abrupt plug-pulling that some have accused it of being, the final scene of the final Sopranos was in fact a carefully plotted and ingeniously executed distillation of Chase's three greatest themes: work, death and blood ties. Nothing hasty or unplanned about it. We are, as at the end of so many episodes, gathered for a Sopranos family dinner — not at home or at the Vusivio, but this time at Holsten's, a real ice-cream parlor and diner located in the Brookdale section of North Jersey. Tony, the first to arrive, sits down in a booth and, after contemplating several selections (including "I Gotta Be Me" and "In a Lonely Place") punches up some classic Journey on the jukebox. One by one, Carmela, AJ and Meadow arrive, while Chase reminds us, with each nervous ring of the door chime and each menacing cutaway to the mysterious stranger eyeing Tony from the counter that, for this family, the specters of execution or imprisonment forever loom like the sword of Damocles. Then, just as Steve Perry prepares to once more tell us to not stop believing, Chase does exactly that — he stops, effectively leaving it up to each individual viewer to decide whether the lives of some of the most memorable characters in the history of American fiction end over a plate of onion rings or go on and on and on and on.
You can call that a cop-out if you so desire, but to my mind the failing of the final Sopranos isn't Chase's — it's the audience's. Reading those Monday-morning reports of disgruntled viewers assailing cable operators with reports of service outages, I was reminded of something the director David Lynch said to me last fall when we were discussing his most recent (and most widely misunderstood) film, Inland Empire. "Some people really like to know what everything is," he said of viewers ruffled by his own penchant for loose ends and elliptical narratives. "I don't know how they go through life, because life has so many things that are abstract, but they do, and they just like to know — they've got that kind of mind, or being." The comparison is apt, I think, because outside of Lynch, Chase is one of the few contemporary American filmmakers to have actively embraced surrealism and abstract expressionism as part of his aesthetic, and the 21-episode farewell season of The Sopranos could well be considered his Inland Empire, from Tony's comatose Kevin Finity dream to those final seconds of silence and black.
What the reaction to The Sopranos finale rather dishearteningly proves is that many in the show's audience really were watching every week to see who might get whacked next instead of, you know, how David Chase would further push the aesthetic envelope of dramatic television storytelling. It also says something larger (and even more disheartening) about a culture that has been conditioned — perhaps in schools that fail to meet the minimum standards we should demand for our children's education, perhaps by the small-mindedness and lack of ambition in most movies, novels, plays, etc. — to believe that proper stories have distinct beginnings, middles and ends and that anything which departs from this formula is, for lack of a better word, wrong. It says something about an audience that prefers a passive form of spectatorship to an active one, that wishes to sit back and be told exactly how to think and feel at every given moment — an attitude, I would argue, too often carried forth from the cinema or the TV room into the voting booth. And it says something about people who long for closure in things — like human relationships — that are by their very nature forever in flux. As David Chase applied the final strokes to his masterful canvas, it became clear that he had created a Jackson Pollack in a world that prefers Norman Rockwells.
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There are 10 comments posted for this article.
I'm leaving a post because after reading your diatribe, I figured nobody else would bother. Yeah we are all a bunch of morons for wanting chase to make a (real) choice to wrap up a fantastic show and character. It must be hard to be so brilliant, in this literal, schlocky Rockwell world! What an ass-hat
p.s. you will never finish (or publish) your screenplay so give it up
Posted on June 12, 2007 2:06 PM by rj
I think you're half-right.
My thoughts:
Made in America, the name of the final episode, is a common phrase used in many contexts. We often search for it when buying something. It's a phrase which has come to mean genuineness, durability, authenticity. In addition, to be 'made' connotes the ritual one goes through to be initiated as a true gangster. Put together the phrase offers a sort of ironic twist to the concept of being made. What was once thought of as achieving true identity and purpose has in a sense been a fraud– all the ritual, all the pride and supposed comradery, all superficial. The process of being made is a fraud, it is not the genuine process of becoming. Notice what Phil says about the NJ crew, 'they don't even make people right, they don't even prick the finger.' Notice what the NJ crew says about Johnny Sack and the NY crew, 'he created a sort of insecurity' (referring to Phil). After the death of his brother, and his near death experience, Phil made it his calling to reaffirm his 'made' gangster identity. But in the end it led nowhere. Did anyone else catch the brand of vehicle which ran over Phil's skull. It was a Ford. 100% Made in America. In a sense, this symbolizes the true process of being made overpowering the fraudulent 'made' one. So, if we recognize the symbolic judgment passed on the fraudulent 'made' identity, than where is the real process? In the final episode, who is Made in America? — This is where it gets a little fun.
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Posted on June 12, 2007 6:06 PM by Brian Monroe
Couldn't agree more, Scott. But the problem is, when the above sentiments are expressed to someone, they usually get defensive and talk about how you're attacking them because they don't "get it." It's not really about that, but it is about understanding and respecting the fact that Chase stayed true to his artistic vision for the TV show, a vision that dared to take the aesthetics of (non Hollywood) film and apply them to the standard TV drama. And had people really been paying attention, not just to the show but to the "I'm not interested in doing the 'crime doesn't pay' ending you're hoping for" hints that Chase had been giving in interviews up to now, then they would have understood what he did. And the thing that really makes me laugh is the sense of passive-aggressive entitlement that some viewers had about the finale. If I had a nickel for every time during the last 3 days that I've heard some variation on, "I'm not saying he had to whack Tony, but he owed us an ending and couldn't make up his mind, so that's just a cop-out," I'd be a rich man by now. I mean, these are the same people who bitch and moan about Lost "not giving us any answers and/or advancing the plot." It's crazy.
Posted on June 13, 2007 10:06 AM by Shawn
The use of Meadow's parallel parking (?!) to ratchet up the tension was very clever. What happens to Tony when it cuts to black... it's so obvious, I can't believe the uproar that it's too "ambiguous".
Posted on June 13, 2007 1:06 PM by David H
I have said everything you've written so eloquently with increasing exasperation in the last 72 hours to all the people who thought one of TV's most subversive shows was going to have a conventional ending. I spent all of Monday glued to my computer reading diatribes and occasionally posting on message boards before I realized the disgruntled fans didn't want to understand what they had seen. Some people have reversed their initial disappointment after having a few days to ruminate (or marinate as Little Carmine might say) on the episode. But what I really found appalling is how many supposedly educated people still believe that an artist is essentially the servant of the audience, and if the audience rejects his work, then the artist is a failure. To no avail, I tried to point out to people that this is above all an innovative show, and that innovations are rarely met with standing ovations. In fact, they usually provoke the exact opposite reaction. I remember years ago hearing the famous account of the world premiere of Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" and the riot it caused and lamenting how nice it would be to live in a world where art still had the power to make people apoplectic. It's nice to know things haven't changed so very much from Paris, 29 May 1913.
Posted on June 13, 2007 10:06 PM by Brandon Wilson
David Chase spent years humanizing Tony Soprano. Occasionally he reminded us he was a killer, but still human in his motivations. An every day guy, with every day problems, who's "job" just happens to be head of a Mafia family. The point is, it's ''everyday" it doesn't stop, it just goes on. Whether we're watching or not...
Posted on June 14, 2007 12:06 PM by Erin
"As David Chase applied the final strokes to his masterful canvas, it became clear that he had created a Jackson Pollack in a world that prefers Norman Rockwells."
David Chase is a great American modern artist. I believe the naysayers are mistaken, they were given closure. Not only closure but also a choice. Close it as you see it. The great interactive finale.
If it was a reference to the seasons first episode foreshadowing conversation with Bobby, "You wouldn't even know it had happened; everything would just go black," well…fine.
Or maybe, life goes on. We know Tony will be indicted. But, despite his evil leanings, he has his honor. Witness protection, not for him.
Seems more likely he would go to trial and the smart people he keeps around him will find a legal loophole. Ultimately, even the boss grows old and demented, like Junior or Livia. That is, if he doesn't get whacked by some stupid, ego-maniac made guy.
Life goes on. You get whacked or you grow old and feeble.
"It's all a big nothing. What makes you think you're so special?" - Livid Soprano
Posted on June 15, 2007 6:06 PM by leiia
"It's all a big nothing. What makes you think you're so special?" Good quotation. Personally, I think it's significant, especially considering how AJ repeated those words in one of the final episodes. Remember what else Tony's mom says in that rant? About how in the end, you die alone, in "your own arms." Like Junior. That's the life Tony fears, right? Why Uncle Jun is so repulsive to him. Tony has been struggling to get out from under his mother's oppressive shadow for so long. It would be fitting, I think, if he were to prove her wrong, and die in the presence of his family. The whole season, all 21 episodes, has been an arc, which began with Tony's near-death experience, and I think it culminates in the end of Tony. The Member's Only jacket paralleled with the title of the season's first episode, the Godfather references throughout the series pointing to the fact that Tony eats an orange and the Member's Only guy heads to the bathroom, Bobby's comment about death, the boyscouts present at Bobby's killing and at the diner, a white SUV, same as Phil's, passing Meadow in the street, the communion-like eating of whole onion rings, the cat, all of those things are factored into MY perception of the ending, that what we see in those last few minutes is Tony, having failed at his "second chance" after his coma, is going to pay the ultimate price.
Others argue otherwise. I've heard theories that the Sopranos are turning rat, that they're fleeing, that the man in the USA hat is a Fed, all valid and supportable theories to varying degrees; that's what's great. The idea that Chase shot multiple endings is funny because he gives us multiple endings with this one ending. We get to write infinite endings. One could be that "some will win, some will lose, some were born to sing the blues." Another ending is that there is no ending, that it goes "on and on and on and on." Ending or no ending, it's up to you, but that in and of itself is an ending, and, to my mind, a masterful one.
Posted on June 17, 2007 6:06 PM by Matt Ferrara
Angels with Dirty Faces, and all the mob movies with their endings - say something about their era; for me today we are 'the dead-end kids/ bowery boys ' kind of - the way Cagney goes out in his last scene wasn't just for those the end kids but more for the kids watching that movie in 1938/ Today we are the audience - we make our ending & we choose where we go from here after so many great mob movies - on the waterfront; godfather - these are reflections of who we are & given the chance would we make the sacrifice to do something good for others - It is up to tony what he does next more important than what happens to him. Seems more about whether Tony can become a positive influence his kids can admire much as we must make our own decisions & legacy for the kids today & tomorrow...
Posted on June 17, 2007 11:06 PM by Paul Heiman
Luckily my life is too rich and full to leave time for watching the Sopranos, but a
friend of mine with a high IQ says that the final blank screen is Tony's consciousness
going dead because he's just been shot. Surely you've heard this theory by now.
I think it renders all the outrage over the non-ending (good job America, save your wrath for the important stuff) moot.
Posted on June 18, 2007 2:06 PM by Paul Lacques