Sopranos End In Rare And True Fashion
Posted at 8:22 am on Monday, June 11, 2007, in Populist Culture, and tagged sopranos, tv.
In the end, the Sopranos stayed true to form. The life of a mob boss is stressful. You always have to look-up to see who enters a room, even a diner, and wonder if there is an FBI agent a table away, or a hit sanctioned on you from New York, with a man returning from the bathroom assigned to the job.
I’ll quote my prediction from last Friday (just for show)… “Wouldn’t it be awful if David Chase decided to leave us empty … and the screen goes black, the end?” I may not have had the particulars right, but I nailed the spirit right on the head.
One slight disappointment, in my opinion, was the absence of music to close-out the final roll of the credits. Music has been central to the series, and maybe the weight of choosing the perfect song led David Chase to his decision to end it with silence. (Dare I suggest The Band’s The Weight as fitting?)
Additional notes and observations…
- A killer sit-down with the New York crew to end the war. (We haven’t seen a sit-down in quite some time.) “Would anyone like some water?” Killer scene.
- The final scene with Uncle Junior and Tony in the state ward should result in an Emmy for Dominic Chianese, Johnny Ola.
- Who didn’t think that Meadow struggling to parallel park would have her coming into the diner to see her family all gunned down?
- AJ’s Benz: “It gets 23 highway, that’s not too bad.” Classic.
- Paulie Walnuts finally becomes a capo. At the beginning of this season, hell, at the beginning of every season, wasn’t this guy the most likely to get whacked?
- An FBI agent trading favors with the mob boss of New Jersey had to have been the most unexpected and delightful development in this final season. That, and Phil Leotardo’s head getting run over by an errant SUV.
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June 11th, 2007 at 10:25 am
I think David Chase’s use of music at the end of “The Sopranos” finale was apt: he used Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” and stopped the song (and the visuals) after “Don’t stop….” I think Chase wanted us to continue with our own versions of the show in our imaginations after the program ended. Sometimes silence is more effective than anything else, no matter how appropriate.
June 11th, 2007 at 10:35 am
I admit I kind of missed this point. I have been so used to the final song of the episode carrying through the credits, and I missed that a bit. (I was kind of hoping that another song would start-up once the credits began to roll, when the awe faded, but it didn’t.)