(Spoilers are an inevitable part of life. And of this post.)
I loathe the mob-drama genre. But I make two exceptions: Miller’s Crossing and The Sopranos.
The smart opinions about The Sopranos’ final episode are split — some people hated it, some thought it “perfect.” At least one blogger has already posted on both sides, first con, then pro.
Not to mention the debate about that final cut to five seconds of black (you can rewatch the last scene on YouTube); did Tony get killed without ever knowing it? ((“You probably don’t even hear it when it happens, right?,” as Bobby asked Tony hopefully. As it turned out, the answer to Bobby’s question, at least as pertains to Bobby, was that you not only hear it, you see it as well, in agonizing slowmo.)) The entire last scene was filmed and edited to give the audience the expectation that something horribly violent was about to happen, and my first thought was that Tony had been neatly shot through the head — instant death for the mob boss, horror for his watching family (exactly what happened to Phil Leotardo earlier in the episode).
But it wasn’t that ending, which everyone was expecting and wanting and probably would have found disappointing. It was an anti-ending; the Sopranos aren’t whacked. Life just goes on. Tony isn’t in hell, but he is in New Jersey. And at some level he and Carmilla are expecting the end every time a stranger walks through a door. As Berger says “It seems to me that, in the end, Tony is condemned to live perpetually in the kind of suspense that the restaurant scene developed so well.”
Tony doesn’t get whacked just then; but he gets whacked eventually. Or he doesn’t, and winds up dying miserable and hated by his relatives, like his mother and his uncle. But until he dies, he won’t grow, and he won’t change, because in The Sopranos people don’t change; they just become more refined and horrible versions of what they always were. Tony is what he always was, a sociopath who loves his wife and kids and doesn’t really feel a thing for anyone else.
* * *
The thing that most puzzles me: That creepy cat. Mikey suggests that it’s Christopher reincarnated, which would be pathetic; Christopher comes back and not only is he not pissed at Tony, he’s still a complete narcissist.
The two funniest moments: Janice declaring that she’s nothing like her own mother, and following that up by asking if anyone’s ever grateful to her for that? (Lord, those poor children.)
And Meadow saying that she was inspired to be a civil rights activist because of all the times she watched the FBI drag her father away.
Thanks for the trackback! We should link to each other.
Anti-ending is the word. What would Robert McKee say about this ending? Just kidding.
because in The Sopranos people don’t change; they just become more refined and horrible versions of what they always were.
Vito changed. Unless being an out homosexual is “refined and horrible” ;)
I think the bravest thing that the Sopranos team did was having Tony try to change – and even to have “life-changing” experiences – but end up falling back into his old pattern. That’s what happens in real life a lot of the time, but rarely in fiction.
Um, Robert, I seem to recall he wanted to go back in his closet. Or am I thinking of a different character?
I figured the cat just wanted to fuck with Pauli for its own amusement.
Um, Robert, I seem to recall he wanted to go back in his closet. Or am I thinking of a different character?
He had a freakout when the studly cook was nice to him, but he got ahold of himself later. As far as I recall he decided he couldn’t go back into the closet and wanted Tony to set him up at a satellite location somewhere where he could still earn for the outfit but not be in the faces of the other members.
Wikipedia has what I recalled from the episode Cold Stones:
You’re right, he did want to come back in. My bad.
OK, never mind. Nobody ever changes. ;)
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I thought it would be a play off of Paulie’s superstitiousness, false foreshadowing.
But don’t ask me, I’m only halfway through Season 6. I just read ahead.
I thought the cat was Adrianna – still bullied by the mobsters (except, notably, for Tony, who has genuine affection for the cat, just like he did for Adrianna), and still inexplicably infatuated with Christopher.
You know what, Amp? I’ve never watched the Sopranos.
Just thought I’d slip that in there ;)