{"id":3452,"date":"2007-06-11T09:55:11","date_gmt":"2007-06-11T17:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/06\/11\/sopranos-dont-stop\/"},"modified":"2007-06-11T09:55:11","modified_gmt":"2007-06-11T17:14:59","slug":"sopranos-dont-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=3452","title":{"rendered":"Sopranos — "Don't Stop""},"content":{"rendered":"

(Spoilers <\/strong>are an inevitable part of life. And of this post.)<\/p>\n

sopranos_satriales.jpg<\/p>\n

I loathe the mob-drama genre. But I make two exceptions: Miller’s Crossing <\/em>and The Sopranos<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The smart opinions about The Sopranos’<\/em> final episode are split — some people hated it<\/a>, some thought it “perfect<\/a>.” At least one blogger has already posted on both sides, first con<\/a>, then pro<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not to mention the debate about that final cut to five seconds of black (you can rewatch the last scene on YouTube<\/a>); did Tony get killed without ever knowing it? ((“You probably don\u2019t 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).<\/p>\n

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<\/a> “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.”<\/p>\n

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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The thing that most puzzles me: That creepy cat. Mikey<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-popular-and-unpopular-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}