The Last Few Minutes Of the Final Episode Of The Sopranos

Sorry for the length, but I wanted to get this out there while it still could be considered timely.

Tony didn't sing, but perhaps he did hum along to Don't Stop Believin'. David Chase, as many have noted, must be cackling over the response to his series-ender. I hope his sense of satisfaction-and condescension-towards the admirers of his show caused by his almost deconstructionist final episode proves worth it to him in the long run. Like the last Seinfeld, it was a show about nothing. But Chase still managed to bait many of us into spending extra time on the nothing, in an attempt to extract some meaning from it. I certainly did, though here I'm only concentrating on the last few minutes.

It is interesting and sad that random folks on the Internet have come up with better interpretations and theoretical show elements than the creator himself. There is a letter making the rounds that, I believe incorrectly, says that all of the folks in the diner are minor characters who have been directly or indirectly affected by the Sopranos, another Family, or their affiliates. Now that would have made for an interesting set piece. The letter, for example, says that the guy in the Members Only jacket is credited as one of the Leotardos. But he is not. He is only "Man in Members Only jacket". The other people in the diner are similarly credited. I don't have a way to check to see if the same actors were credited the same way in earlier episodes, but if so, I wouldn't mind standing corrected, as that would make things interesting.

Another interpretation is that the show cutting to black represents the moment when Tony is murdered. While compelling, I think this too is false. The two black guys look menacing at first, but then both of them open their jackets to reveal no guns underneath. On second glance they also look relaxed, and turn their attentions to the pie case. All of the other killings on the show, at least that I can remember, are direct assaults from the front or back, the killer walking directly to his target and shooting him or them, as the case may be. And if those two particular guys moved toward Tony, he would notice it. He's shown a heightened sensitivity (read racially-motivated dislike) of African American people. The only other candidate for a Tony-killer, unless someone came in through the kitchen, is the guy sitting alone in the USA hat. But he does not appear to move from his booth. And while the last shot is of Tony, it is not from his perspective, which would make more sense if "going to black" represented his death. There is also no motion in the background at all, so the killer must've come from directly ahead, or at an angle off-camera. This could very well be Chase dicking with us yet again, but in this case I don't think so. And the music chosen to "foreshadow" Tony's murder does contain lyrics which, loosely interpreted, could support the idea that Tony will be murdered, but the song is a mixed bag. While it is true that one of the lyrics to Believin' supporting this interpretation is "some will win, some will lose, some are born to sing the blues", another lyric is "oh the movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on." As a side note I'd like to say here that, for a show so good at using good or great music, it saddens me that the very last song on the show is this Journey anthem. It certainly isn't the worst song in the world, but one would hope for better. But it is banal and inane, and that's likely why Chase chose it. But back to the use of the song: given the other noted elements, I think the latter lyric is more to the point. We don't get to see the movie anymore, but it goes forever on, unchanged, into the future.

There are also those who say that Chase pays homage to The Godfather in the final few minutes. One way is by having the aforementioned Members Only guy walk into the restroom. However, in The Godfather, Michael Corleone goes into the bathroom in order to retrieve a gun taped behind a toilet tank, since he was patted-down before the sitdown with his targets. The guy in the jacket is operating under no such restrictions. He has merely to walk up to Tony and blow his brains out. Similarly, people have brought up the eating of the onion rings as an obvious metaphor for taking communion, which then brings up another parallel with The Godfather. I think there's a good case for this, given that Tony, Camella, and A.J. all place them into their mouths intact, which seems unlikely. Carmella at least, I think, would take a bite. But if it is a metaphor, it is problematic if related to The Godfather because, when the Corleones are taking communion, their will is being done, so to speak, elsewhere. But we know of nothing happening for Tony, or at his orders, when this communion is taken. My take is that it is a communion metaphor, but symbolizing Tony and his family's commitment to self-delusion, or at least to the absence of self-awareness. Tony has finished therapy, and its primary consequence is as Melfi initially feared, and then accepted too late: that he is now a more well-adjusted sociopath and less conflicted criminal. A.J. is back in the fold after a brief battle with his tiny conscience, and Carmella re-joined the fold when rejecting the strict admonition of the wise psychiatrist, and then cemented it when she named her price to resume being Tony's wife. I don't know why Meadow was not involved, save that then number three is laden with portent, but four is just four, and therefore doesn't fit in with the Catholic thing.

So the last sequence of the show were all just shots of random, unconnected events. Meadow's parallel-parking troubles didn't mean anything. She just had trouble parking. The people in the diner were just people in a diner. Chase did this, I think, so that he could watch as the show's fans parsed the nothing of the finale for some meaning to impart to it. Just showing these random events against a musical backdrop ratcheted the tension way up as we all waited for the big Something to happen. But it didn't, and that's the point. The trajectory of the lives of the Sopranos will go on as it always has. Whether Tony is indicted or goes to prison won't change his family. He and his family will remain un-self-aware, and learn nothing which will challenge their vague notions of morality. The rules of La Cosa Nostra and the received notions of their times with regard to "proper" conduct will be the only things which guide them. And if these rules come into conflict, who knows which will win? Tony, at root, for all his talk of rules and action which must be taken, is a narcissist and relativist who can rationalize anything to his own satisfaction. So it's clear that, with nothing that can really alter their ways of thinking, the Soprano family will go on, pretty much unchanged.

But knowing this about the Sopranos is a separate issue from sustaining drama. Even if Chase had just a long, lingering shot of Tony and his family in the diner to get the point across that nothing would change, that would have been a more satisfying end to the series. But he chose to play artsy games with us, and treat us with contempt. It's his right do do that, I suppose, though one would think he'd be a little more grateful to the millions of us who made his show a huge hit. He didn't, though, and his smartassery is our loss. For the record, yes, Mr. Chase, I understand that these mafia guys are not, in the final analysis, that interesting. Believe me, I and lots of other people get that they are shallow and banal, and that they have nothing interesting to say. But they are fascinating in the sense that we in the general public do not get to behave in the ways that Mob guys do, nor do we think we have license to. But they do, and have actually codifed the ways in which they do not have to conform to basic tenets of conventional morality. It is also fascinating to see how they live by these rules, and resolve conflicts within the rule system, not all of which are settled violently. Therefore, I don't think we deserve your contempt in sticking us with a finale which resolves everything in an unsatisfying way, and nothing in a satisfying one. The moral of the story is not the story.