"The Sopranos" Goes Out Singing

(reposted from the now-defunct poweredbyshows.com) [Note: Spoilers about the final Sopranos episode, as well as ones on the endings of the films Limbo, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Scarface. (But really, who doesn't know the ending of Scarface?)]

Everybody’s talking about it. You’re talking about it. Your mother is talking about it.

The Sopranos finale. The most hotly debated finale in years. Despite the show being on a premium cable channel, discussions surrounding the controversial ending rival that of the “it’s all a Patrick Duffy” dream from Dallas or Seinfeld’s final whimper. Everybody has an opinion about it, and this writer is no exception. Spoilers from Sunday’s finale as well as the final sequences of movies from the last decade follow.

For those not in the know, The Sopranos ended its eight-year six-season Shakespearean opus with a low-key episode that traded not in death and violence, but in quiet moments, family bonding and an artistic final choice that has nearly everybody up in arms. Phil Leotardo, who spent most of the recent half-season killing off nearly all of Tony’s Jersey crew, finally gets his comeuppance in a sudden a sickening end. During the final moments, Tony meets with his family at a local diner, each of them arriving separately. As he awaits them, he is fully aware of the strangers coming in and occupying the restaurant, keeping his eyes open for any assassination attempts. The head guy of the New York family may have been eliminated scenes earlier, but we know as viewers that Tony will never be safe. When Meadow finally comes through the door, Tony looks up. The show cuts to black for around six seconds, and credits roll. Was Tony shot? Was his family massacred? Did he go on living? Who knows?

I would consider this an ending befitting of the tragic tale of a mob boss who must live with the horrific decisions he must make day-in and day-out. Many others, however, consider it a cop-out akin to show creator David Chase giving them the middle finger, and boy are they pissed. They wanted closure. They wanted storylines wrapped up. And they’ve been coming up with theories--reading clues as if to say that the “cut to black” indicated “lights out” for Tony, hence a death--that will never be confirmed by Chase, who is currently avoided all the hoopla by relaxing with his wife in Paris.

These people, though, who wanted this big bloodbath at the end, were watching the wrong damn show.

For starters, I think there’s absolutely no way of knowing what happened at the end, and that’s the absolute point. He will have to live in constant fear for the rest of his life, or he was killed, but Chase is sly enough not to give us any kind of tangible answer. He first led us to believe that Tony would be his old school self and choose Tony Bennett on the jukebox at the diner (the last song we see him look at before he puts in his quarter and hits the combination of buttons), giving this old school gangster his final song. But instead he picks Journey. “Don’t Stop Believing.” And as the show ends, we’re left with the chorus “Don’t Stop...” and don’t even get the full line. That’s a moment of great writing lost on many of the viewers.

As for the black-out, it reminded me of this John Sayles film called Limbo. David Strathairn and his family get stranded in the Alaskan wilderness, trying to survive, and also pursued by people who want to kill them. During the film’s final moments, they see and hear a plane in the distance. Is it rescue, or is it the villain, finally coming to murder the family?

We don’t know. The screen goes black before we know for sure. End credits.

That’s the same thing here. Limbo. Tony is in a kind of limbo, much like the end of Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, where Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) gets away with every murder in the entire film, and to ensure this must murder his lover. As the film closes, Tom is in tears at the monster he has become. He’s free, but his soul is not. Minghella has called the film an examination of living your life in purgatory.

I can’t accept the “light’s out” argument, simply because there is no evidence to support this any more than Tony living.

Secondly, I also think that if you really wanted an ending with our hero--note that, our HERO--to simply go down in a hail of gunfire a la Scarface after finally finding some semblance of sanity with his family and himself, then you need to take a good, long and very hard look at what you thought this show was for six seasons. Never has it been Scarface. The show makes some very difficult decisions, much like its brilliant HBO companion The Wire, and giving him some kind of glory death would betray the themes viewers have all known since 1999.

I feel as if the people calling for some kind of finite ending, with just the simple explanation of a bloody showdown, are watching for the wrong reasons. Or, at least, what I consider the wrong reasons. They watch for the violence, for the deaths, for the inner mob workings. But that’s not The Sopranos. It’s only peripherally about the mob and the guns and the sex. The Sopranos is first and foremost about a troubled man balancing the two families in his life, trying to squeeze by doing the only thing he knows how to do. Why viewers would want to see this character, who rivals some of the great troubled heroes in literature, simply die.

The ending was tense, haunting, maybe terrifying and maybe hopeful. What it’s not is one instance of violence that could potentially negate everything we’ve seen on the show. Tony’s life is his burden, and to relieve him of this burden is a cop-out. Not this ending. This was no cop-out. This was perfect.