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Subject: Sopranos - Season 6, Part 2
Posted by: Rendle
- [1835226] Sun, Apr 15, 2007, 22:51
Wow, great episode. Very Progressive. They've built up the New York vs New Jersey angle as far as they can and now it's going to explode.
Judging by the previews for next week, it looks like Paulie might have some trouble making it to the finale. Over the weekend someone told me about the Vegas odds for the characters making it. He said Phil was 6-1, Tony 5-1, and Christopher was 4-1. |
| 1 | beastiemiked
ID: 3101646
Mon, May 14, 2007, 19:51
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Hope no one took Chris at 4-1. Definitely a shocking way to go with 3 episodes left. Not too many original gangsters left, Tony, Paulie, Sil, and Bobby seem to be the only ones that have been there since season 1. My guess is at least 2 of them are gone by the end. Also, wouldn't be surprised if AJ bit it as well.
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| 2 | Rendle
Donor
ID: 014815714
Mon, May 14, 2007, 20:35
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That episode was flat out depressing. Chrissy was definitely my favorite character. They really showed us why no one should be rooting for Tony. I really don't know where they're heading with these last 3 episodes: Tony dying? AJ entering the mob completely? NY vs NJ war? One of the weirdest things they keep referencing is the situation with the middle east guys. Could there be a terrorist attack in NY or NJ?
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| 3 | Rendle
Donor
ID: 014815714
Mon, Jun 04, 2007, 01:09
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Absolutely brutal.
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| 4 | Boxman
ID: 571114225
Sun, Jun 10, 2007, 19:31
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Any predictions for tonights finale?
I think Tony lives and Phil dies. I'd really like to see AJ step up to the plate, but I don't think that'll happen.
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| 5 | JeffG
Leader
ID: 01584348
Mon, Jun 11, 2007, 09:53
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Spoiler alert below for those who have not watched he finale yet...
Re [4] - Other than resolution with the Brooklyn/Jersey battle, whoever predicted "giving Tony a scene with all of the surving characters to do a 'goodbye tv series' scene, and finally end up sitting at a diner with his family while the audience waits for 'something big' to happen that never does", got it right.
I guess the producers and writers wanted to leave things open to trying to have the actors do a movie or another season perhaps down the road after they realize they are too type-cast to do anything else (ala Star Trek).
I'm bitter. I wanted more closure to the tv series than what I got. Then again, I probably would have been bitter had the series went in a specific direction and ended it with Tony flipping, Tony goes to jail, or surprise character X from left field kills Tony, and so on.
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| 6 | Species
Dude
ID: 07724916
Mon, Jun 11, 2007, 11:20
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You should have seen the looks on our faces last night when the screen went black. I wondered if my satellite had gone out.
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| 7 | JeffG
Leader
ID: 01584348
Mon, Jun 11, 2007, 13:09
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Here is my rank of the top 5 'Series Finales'.
5. Quantom Leap - You kind of get closure even though Sam re-leaps.
4. Seinfeld. Total 'out of left field' ending going to jail, but hilarious final episode.
3. Odd Couple. Felix remarries
2. MASH. Everyone says goodbye and moves on.
1. Newhart. Woke up from dream into old Bob Newhart Show. Total surpise.
Bottom 5 Worst finales.
5. Six Feet Under - Everyone dies through the years, they show how everyone dies.
4. All in the Family - Wrote off Edith's character (cancer), Archie opens bar.
3. Cheers - "Sorry we are closed".
2. St Elsewhere - In a snowglobe of some autistic kid
1. Sopranos - I do not know, my satelite went out.
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| 8 | Razor
ID: 5952069
Mon, Jun 11, 2007, 13:57
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Seinfeld's last episode was highly disappointing to me. Pretty funny, but mostly silly.
Last night's Sopranos was incredibly tense from start to finish. I liked that life goes on in the Soprano household. The show started as a peak into the life of a mobster, and I'm pleased that they did not feel the need to end it with some neat and tidy resolution. The show ended with a trial looming, an assassination attempt possibly still in the works and several characters still in flux (AJ, Sylvio, Janice).
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| 9 | Great One
Sustainer
ID: 053272014
Mon, Jun 11, 2007, 14:15
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What was the deal with there being a discussion with Bobby previously where they discussed what it was like to be shot - and he just said everything just went black etc.
Was this a way to intimate that Tony was shot perhaps? If they were gonna do that (without showing the actual kill) they should have had someone walk up behind him (with obvious intent) and then it went black.
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| 10 | Great One
Sustainer
ID: 053272014
Mon, Jun 11, 2007, 14:16
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June 10, 2007 10:28
Sopranos Watch: Don't Stop
Posted by James Poniewozik | Comments (210) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This
So let's cut to the (David) chase. I thought the ending was beautiful. Judging from the comments already pouring into the Television Without Pity forums (and my neighbors screaming curses into their Brooklyn backyards at 10:01 last night), you didn't. Consider this a public service. You can't walk up to David Chase and tell him what a self-indulgent, pretentious jerk you think he is, so you can post here and do it to me. You're welcome.
But hear me out first.
I'm sure we'll talk about the other 59 minutes of the finale (which to me were fine but not stellar) at some point. But the ultimate moment was, as they say about democracy, the worst possible choice except for all the other choices that could have been made. People have debated for months how the series would end, but anything other than some form of a life-goes-on ending would have been counter to the history and the spirit of the show.
This is life and The Sopranos' view of it: no dramatic final poppings, no big finishes and curtain calls, no operatic closing arias, no mind-bending twists (like the ever-popular "Meadow takes over the family business"), no karmic justice, just ignominy, never-ending dread and onion rings. Life slouches on, a rough beast never getting to Bethlehem. If we had gotten any kind of more conventionally satisfying closure--an epilogue, Tony getting locked up, the Russian coming back and whacking everyone--we would have loved it initially and regretted it later.
If you take that as a given, the challenge was to devise an ending that stayed true to that spirit but still managed to surprise, engage and stir discussion in the audience without tying on an uncharacteristic bow. The sudden cut-out focused you on that last glimpse of James Gandolfini's expressive face, idly indulging in a deep-fried treat, looking ever slightly up to catch a glimpse of his only daughter. The Journey song cut in mid-exhilarating rush. The silent rectangle of nothing that, I admit, suckered me in and had me on my feet hoping that my backup DVR was still working upstairs.
In other words, Chase (who wrote and directed the finale) ended Tony's story pretty much exactly the way he was expected to and needed to, and yet he had me literally on my feet, engaged, a little pissed, laughing at my surprise and immediately playing the last scene over and over, figuratively in my head and literally on my TiVo. TV critics probably like that sort of thing more than non-professional viewers. If an ending works better the more you think about it, that's another way of saying that it worked on "an intellectual level," which is not the level people generally want to watch TV on. (Though I actually though the piecemeal reuniting of the family, echoing the first-season finale, was moving and full of heart). I've already heard the complaint that Six Feet Under's finale (which gave closure for every character by fast-forwarding and showing their deaths) was right in all the ways that this one was wrong. But Six Feet Under was a show that was, literally, about the fact that everything ends. The Sopranos is a show about the fact that nothing does--until you die, you just repeat the same patterns over and over.
Was it a tease, a cheat? Sure. In a way. Chase played the last scene following family members into the restaurant, lingering on various vaguely menacing diners around them, telegraphing all the usual signs of menace... then it started cutting to random diners, showing that the next threat to Tony could come from anywhere. Or nowhere. He could be capped two minutes after the camera cut. He could go to jail. Or he could just live on until he dies, adding an extra coat of saturated fat to the inside of his arteries every now and then, surrounded by his disappointed wife and disappointing children.
Of course, that's if you read the ending that way. There's a credible argument to be made that Tony actually dies in the final moment--that a bullet (probably from the nervous diner who got up to go to the can) had just entered his brain and ended him.
Did David Chase kill Tony off? I doubt it. But whether or not he did, he did something that to my knowledge no TV finale has: he killed the viewer off. You and I, watching Tony and sharing his universe one instant, our consciousness of him snuffed out entirely the next. Ended. Whacked. They say you never hear it coming.
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| 11 | Species
Dude
ID: 07724916
Mon, Jun 11, 2007, 14:28
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"The silent rectangle of nothing that, I admit, suckered me in and had me on my feet hoping that my backup DVR was still working upstairs. "
lol....that's exactly what I said to the wife. "Are you recording this too?!?" We rewound that moment a few times before shrugging our shoulders in disbelief.
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| 12 | walk
ID: 259313119
Mon, Jun 11, 2007, 18:18
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Agreed with Great One, #10. Loved the show, series and especially the open-ending. "Oh, te music never ends, it goes on and on and on and on...Don't stop believin'."
- walk
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| 13 | Wilmer McLean
ID: 205521623
Sun, Jun 17, 2007, 01:28
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A good observation of the final Sopranos episode by Bob Harris.
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