The Sopranos - Ending
Nov. 15th, 2021 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerIt's been a little over a week since I finished watching The Sopranos. For a show I watched so avidly— finishing 86 episodes in just under 7 weeks— you'd think I wouldn't have let writing about the series finale lag so long. Well, I have. And frankly it's because... I've forgotten about it. Yes, the ending was so disappointing it made me largely stop caring about the whole series. 😮
The last two episodes feature a series of gangster movie style shootings. Negotiations have broken down between hard-nosed Phil Leotardo, new head of the Lupertazzi crime family, and Tony. Phil orders his captains to murder Tony and his closest subordinates. Phil intends to "do business with whatever's left" of Tony's gang. Meanwhile, Tony's gang whacks one of its own they suspect of passing information to the Lupertazzis. A borderline-crooked FBI agent tips off Tony about Phil's orders. Tony and his crew flee to a safe house, but not before Lupertazzi assassins kill captain Bobby and grievously wound consigliere Silvio. Later, the FBI agent passes Tony a clue as to Phil's general whereabouts, which his crew uses to track down and murder Phil.
The last scene of the series comes some time after the shootouts. Tony has negotiated peace with the Lupertazzi family. Members of his own family are getting their lives in order. Meadow's going to law school with a prestigious law firm job lined up afterward thanks to her family name, and AJ gets a lucrative job as an assistant producer on a movie being bankrolled by Lupertazzi associate "Little Carmine" Lupertazzi. In the final scene Tony is meeting the now-busy members of his family— his biological family— at a favorite local diner. Tony's there first; the others come in one at a time. As Tony waits the camera focuses in on different strangers in the diner, implying that Tony is sizing them up as potential threats and telegraphing that any one of them might emerge as an assassin.
Then the show cuts to black.
The series just ends.
My first reaction was, "WTF? Did our network connection just die?" As I read about fan reactions to this episode I found that that was a common reaction across the board. For me, at least, I considered that possibility because I literally had an equipment failure black out the last 4 minutes of the finale of The Shield, a several-season TV series I enjoyed watching years ago.
With The Sopranos this wasn't an equipment failure. It was showrunner David Chase's infuriating cliffhanger ending. ...Infuriating because it didn't even do anything. It just stopped. It's not even a cliffhanger; it's just a cop-out.
The last two episodes feature a series of gangster movie style shootings. Negotiations have broken down between hard-nosed Phil Leotardo, new head of the Lupertazzi crime family, and Tony. Phil orders his captains to murder Tony and his closest subordinates. Phil intends to "do business with whatever's left" of Tony's gang. Meanwhile, Tony's gang whacks one of its own they suspect of passing information to the Lupertazzis. A borderline-crooked FBI agent tips off Tony about Phil's orders. Tony and his crew flee to a safe house, but not before Lupertazzi assassins kill captain Bobby and grievously wound consigliere Silvio. Later, the FBI agent passes Tony a clue as to Phil's general whereabouts, which his crew uses to track down and murder Phil.
The last scene of the series comes some time after the shootouts. Tony has negotiated peace with the Lupertazzi family. Members of his own family are getting their lives in order. Meadow's going to law school with a prestigious law firm job lined up afterward thanks to her family name, and AJ gets a lucrative job as an assistant producer on a movie being bankrolled by Lupertazzi associate "Little Carmine" Lupertazzi. In the final scene Tony is meeting the now-busy members of his family— his biological family— at a favorite local diner. Tony's there first; the others come in one at a time. As Tony waits the camera focuses in on different strangers in the diner, implying that Tony is sizing them up as potential threats and telegraphing that any one of them might emerge as an assassin.
Then the show cuts to black.
The series just ends.
My first reaction was, "WTF? Did our network connection just die?" As I read about fan reactions to this episode I found that that was a common reaction across the board. For me, at least, I considered that possibility because I literally had an equipment failure black out the last 4 minutes of the finale of The Shield, a several-season TV series I enjoyed watching years ago.
With The Sopranos this wasn't an equipment failure. It was showrunner David Chase's infuriating cliffhanger ending. ...Infuriating because it didn't even do anything. It just stopped. It's not even a cliffhanger; it's just a cop-out.
