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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

The Sopranos - Season Six (US and Canada only) (Spoilers!)

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Keith, like a scientist

03:07 / 11.06.07

and actually, Patrick, it was a better series finale than the actual finale, cause

what. the. fuck. was. that?

It was quite a mess, and left me with a distinct feeling of tony coming out on top, which just doesn't sit right for me. I don't know what to say, but I've never been more let down by a series finale than this one, mostly because this last season has been tremendous.

03:13 / 11.06.07

So far I'm half and half. Half is that I thought it was going to be a "life goes on" kind of ending. On the other hand... what the fuck? I'll mull it over and when I wake up, we'll see. Right now, I'm mad.

00:26 / 12.06.07

You can take a look at my review for a mad long discussion of why I think the episode is a fitting conclusion to the series. In looking at the ep, and its perceived lack of closure, I think we need to look at two things, the episode as a whole and the cut to black on the final scene.

The whole point of the episode was a return to normalcy. Chase's point seems to be that the epic sweep of the past few episodes isn't normal, it's a relic of a time when the mob meant something else. Phil was a guy who believed in something higher, but for the rest of them, it's just a business, and that's why Phil's got to go, he's endangering the earning.

So, the episode is something of a let down after the big events of last week, but it also fits because the show isn't The Godfather. It's more interested in everyday life, and the final scene is deliberately staged to be as quintessentially American as possible. They're at a diner instead of Artie's, surrounded by normal American folk.

Now, I could see your issue with Tony having a happy ending. Watching that scene, I was marvelling, everything's worked out for him, but the tension building staging undermines that. In that scene, we're put in Tony's head, where every random passerby is a potential threat, every opening of the door could bring death. But, that's the way things are, and as AJ says, we have to focus on the good things. Their whole world is built on a lie, but it's ok as long as you don't stop believing.

Now, the cut is quite jarring, but I think it's designed not as some kind of cliffhanger ending, rather the exact opposite. To me, the cut says life goes on even though we're not there. Having a fade out on a family tableau would imply that this story is done, that these lives are done. But, it's not, our window into the world is closed abruptly, without an easy out. Tony and his family are still out there, with the same problems and issues, but it's not ours to see anymore.

Keith, like a scientist

01:39 / 12.06.07

I really just don't buy the "you're in Tony's head" thing about the scene, though. Or rather, I don't think it's very brilliant. The show has time and time again showed us this very point in more direct ways. To spend the final scene of this show on a "life goes on for the Sopranos, are they EVER TRULY SAFE??! CATS ARE ATTACKING YOUR CHILDREN WHEN YOU AREN'T WATCHING!!" bit of ambiguous writing is a let down for me on the quality side.

I just watched the final scene again and I'm still left with a feeling of anger at Chase for this choice. I've watched the show from the beginning, and while I have never been a rabid fan, I've admired it's choices and it's writing and it's direction quite a bit. I don't feel like Chase is making a point that is worth making and worthwhile. I'm sure this is my own sense of morality and value system coming into things, but Tony deserves to get more than he gets at the end of a show like this. The "tension" in that scene isn't enough for me. I don't feel like it's brilliant to pay homage to The Godfather and use that scene to maliciously toy with your loyal audience, and likewise to leave the ending open-ended for people who have put up with a show that airs 13 hours every other year for the last decade.

This is certainly not to say that I wanted a large mob blowout or I wanted Tony dead. I honestly wanted the show to end with Tony being brought to justice finally and watching the loss of his way of life. Perhaps anything less than this was going to meet with my disapproval.

It brooks discussion, so I guess that's good, but I expected something better from a show that has gone from good to brilliant over it's years.

02:17 / 12.06.07

I'm still half and half about it. After spending the day going over the critic's reviews and other people's reviews and my own thoughts and other people's etc etc etc, I'm still fucking half and half. The finale didn't pack the emotional punch of Six Feet Under at all. In fact, the end of The Sopranos is as cold and detached as any other episode. A little humour, a little social commentary, a little bit of foreshadowing and a little bit of callbacks to previous episodes. See, this is where I'm mad at myself. The episode is nothing spectacular... just another day for the Sopranos, and that's the point. I get it. It's just - where's Nate running behind Claire's car, fading away from sight in the sideview mirror? That's a fucking perfect perfect image.

I keep going back to the diner scene. I think this scene will leave us discussing it forever. The funny thing is, I'm kind of going through a Journey phase right now... as horrendous as that sounds. The combo of the music and the... dread really did it for me. I fucking love the final scene.

05:33 / 12.06.07

Every fan and avid viewer of the show had some idea of how it should have ended, every person who'd watched it from the start had speculated or read or followed some discussion of what could possibly happen. Chase just seemed to realise that he couldn't end it one way without not ending it another way. The ending gave the idea that any of the endings could have happened after the cut to black - Tony could die, AJ could take over the business, Tony could be brought down by the feds, witness protection, and so on and so on.

21:30 / 12.06.07

I really just don't buy the "you're in Tony's head" thing about the scene, though. Or rather, I don't think it's very brilliant. The show has time and time again showed us this very point in more direct ways.

Key word you used is "showed." We've watched Tony's travails, reacted to them, but the construction of the final scene erases the line between voyeur and subject. We feel tense throughout the scene: even Meadow's efforts to park the car and cross the street are suffused with a sense of irrational dread. That's what T's life is ALWAYS like. He can never relax, never attain a moment's peace. This effect is, IMO, very different than just watching plot unfold. The cut to black is the final jolt, at least for us.

Also, I do not think Tony got a happy ending at all. That last scene suggests otherwise. He'll get it in the end.

03:59 / 13.06.07

What AJ says in the last scene pretty much sums up how I see Tony at the end of the series, you've got to focus on the good times. Yeah, anyone could be out to kill him, yes most of his crew is dead, but he's got his family and they're doing pretty well. So, it's not really a happy ending, it's more just that things go on the way they did.

I think it's curious the way people seem to be coming up with anything they can to imply that Tony actually died in the last scene. It's like they have such a need for closure that they need to bring in something that wasn't there? Isn't life goes on a satisfying ending?

23:29 / 13.06.07

Well, I watched that from the unique position of not realising it was the series finale. I found it the most tense end to any of the episodes, and ultimately quite a fitting end. I don't tend to read reviews or write them, so maybe I'm going over the same as everyone else.

Since Phil was killed, I didn't think there was any way that things could just end there. Then AJ seemed to suddenly get back on track (again), things were going well for everyone. That scene with Tony raking towards the end, I thought... this is the calm before the storm. Whether the eventual storm is legal (probably most suspicious was Pauli's behaviour...), or violent (I too thought the final scene was very heavily portentous) is left to the imagination in such a way as to also leave open the possibility that nothing in fact changes, and the daily rituals go on. Perfect.

23:36 / 13.06.07

Sorry for double-posting, just wanted to add -

I think any definitive resolution for Tony - death, prison, escape, turning on the family - would have amounted to a moral at the end of the story. Throughout the series I think they have managed to portray without judging, and it would have felt wrong to have an ending that attempted to cast all that went before in terms of a clichéd "baddies get what's coming to them", "crime doesn't pay", "no honour amongst thieves", or even "honour amongst thieves"...

10:20 / 14.06.07

I can see how people could be dissatisfied but I think it was a fitting, thoughtful and affecting ending, even if it didn't offer closure. And that's the thing isn't it, the lack of closure, specifically, I think, the lack of Tony getting what's coming to him. Like Keith I was blown out of water by the amount of effort the creators put into making Tony loathable this series* - it often made the show quite excruiating to watch, and was bloody brave from a creative standpoint - but the chance to see Tony stripped down to the horrible character that he is understandably brought with it an audience desire to see him get his just deserts - it's what you'd expect from any normal show, especially a show that ostensibly fits into the crime genre.

But that's the other thing, the Soprano's isn't like most shows. It doesn't pander to audience expectation, it doesn't (much) follow trad narrative drives, and closure, as a consequece, has never been what it's about. Closure - answers, the predictable, pat cause and effect of most narrative fiction - is what other shows do. The Soprano's could never supply a full stop without betraying its core values. And, and I think this is crucial, it had to be difficult, and challenging, it had to make you uncomfortable, because, hey, when it comes down to it the Sopranos is deeply uncomfortable stuff.

Of course none of that is to say that there might not have been other possible creative solutions to ending the show, but it weren't never gonna be anything like SFU.

*I would urge people not to think of all that stuff to do with sociopathy as a definitive statement about Tony's psyche. Like AJ's depression the show plays with and challenges the concept, refusing to accept that such labelling ever completely accounts for someone's behaviour or sums up the totality of their being

11:52 / 14.06.07

Boboss, I agree with practically everything you've just said. I'm also rather pleased that you're satisfied with the ending, considering you were looking for an end two seasons ago.

I think the sociopathy thing was a red herring. Simply an excuse for Melfi. We can't take characters' at face value in The Sopranos. I don't just mean Tony, I mean everybody. They all have motives and fears and desires that doesn't manifest itself in pure speech. Just like real people. Everybody in The Sopranos is an unreliable narrator.

12:04 / 14.06.07

Very correct indeed!

12:33 / 14.06.07

Actually, thinking about it, I don't think the sociopath thing is a red herring, I think it's a stomach punch.

Up until this series many of us, including me, were probably thinking of Tony as basically a good guy: a man who loves his family, his friends, who doesn't really hate the gays and isn't really racist - a man who strays, sure, a man who does bad things, but a man that's a product of a nasty upbringing and a nasty social milieu so when he behaves badly it's understandable.

This series, not so much.

Coming at the end of a season where Tony's vile behaviour was laid bare, the suggestion of sociopathy was meant to force us into seeing the man from another perspective. As I said above, sociopath doesn't sum him up in his entirity, but the plausibility of the description shocks us into re-examing our views on the character and as a result produces a more complex, considerably less comfortable picture. And, yeah, it also allowed Melfi a get out clause, and locked her status as an unreliable narrator, and added complexity to how we see AJ's condition (suddenly the mantra "I'm depressed" takes on a different hue), and probably a bunch of other stuff.

12:56 / 14.06.07

Completely agree. There have been moments of self destructiveness and bullying in the past, but they always seemed to come at moments of stress or just slip-ups in Tony's path as he tried to be 'a decent guy' (his own mantra to justify his actions). This season has seen him more loathsome and nasty than usual. I think Johnny Sax represented something good in Tony, and with him going, he lost that - in fact everything decent was killed off in this series around him, Bobby, who was an honourable and simple but good guy, Sil, who was a voice of reason and so on. AJ's whining about being depressed was a fantastic mirror to hold up to Tony, in the end his reaction to AJ was probably similar to how we were feeling about Tony - it's just an exscuse for some of your actions...

13:10 / 14.06.07

I wasn't saying that Tony has gotten worse, rather that the last season thoroughly disabused us of the notion that he's essentially a good guy. It remains a very real possibility that that description has never been suitable, and that's what the sociopath stuff dragged to light.

08:41 / 15.06.07

Then I don't agree with you...or I agree with something...or I think you are right kind of...or...I should just watch the episode, shouldn't I (stupid broken hard drive...)

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:58 / 15.06.07

Up until this series many of us, including me, were probably thinking of Tony as basically a good guy: a man who loves his family, his friends, who doesn't really hate the gays and isn't really racist - a man who strays, sure, a man who does bad things, but a man that's a product of a nasty upbringing and a nasty social milieu so when he behaves badly it's understandable.

This series, not so much.

Uh, would this be the "many of us" who didn't watch season 3?

09:16 / 15.06.07

Sorry, I was overtstating things somewhat, but I think the final season went to great pains to remove any vestiges of doubt from our minds.

Amongst my Sopranos watching friends the idea that Tony is somehow lovable, even, on some level, admirable has taken a long time to die, and they're a fairly smart, critical bunch. I don't think it's anything like a stretch to suggest that many other viewers probably responded in the same way.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:29 / 15.06.07

Yikes. I haven't encountered that idea very often.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:43 / 15.06.07

I mean, forget morality, Tony Soprano been shown consistently to be not very bright (quite apart from his education) or competent much of the time. I guess he's admirable in the sense that he has money, and that he's still attractive to the ladies despite or maybe because of his boorish ways and fuller figure, but other than that...

09:54 / 15.06.07

I think less admirable than lovable, but what admiration there is I think (or was) stems from one or two sources: his money, influence and power, and/or the perception that he's basically a good guy (or the best a guy could be expected to be) in a horrid world.

Neither of these are truthful representations of the reality - the character is clearly pretty incompetent, stupid, not well liked, and in many ways very unpleasant - but I think they're the traps that people fall into for one reason or another.

09:55 / 15.06.07

I think it's more of a tapping into a sense of anger at the establishment, and the stress of modern life and how he isn't affraid to be a man, a Gary Cooper, at nature a good man, a man who spent a semester at college, a man who has overcome all those odds... He was a force of nature.

I think earlier series have run on an idea that two things have pushed Tony to be what he is, his family and external forces that are worse than him. For a large part he was presented as someone more thoughtful and hopeful than his family, someone who didn't want to be a Soprano, or pass on those damned genes. He always almost made it, but something pulled him back in - and he often had moments of honour - his reaction to Ralphie a good example I guess.

But he became more and more base as the series ran, animalistic and brutal - the so called awakening after Junior shot him just seemed like another line after a while - all those people thinking he had changed or was more open got killed off. Ultimately he wasn't a force of nature, an honourable man - he was a bully, and he reveled in the family disease, he couldn't survive unless they were all around him.

09:55 / 15.06.07

"People" being viewers

10:10 / 15.06.07

Benny, the thing is about the sociopathy diagnosis is that it potentially undermines, or significantly complexifies that entire reading. That's a large part of the point of it, surely: that perhaps (just perhaps) Tony has simply been a selfish, sentimental, self justifying, monsterous fucking arsehole all along.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:20 / 15.06.07

How is Tony's reaction to Ralphie a moment of honour, as opposed to showing: how little he values human life other than when it affects his organisation's finances; that he like all his crew is a misogynist; that he is so out of touch with his emotions that he represses and sublimates guilt and anger to the point where he appears to care more about a horse than a human being; and that he has a terrifying temper and ultimately a murderous capacity for violence?

10:25 / 15.06.07

It's interesting, after all was said and done, Tony Soprano is, without a doubt, the most scary fictional gangster I can think of.

10:32 / 15.06.07

boboss - I get the sociopath as a distraction. The show goes to great lengths to label everyone up in short hand, and then show that none of that is/might be/should be considered true - most charactes throw around comments that stick as labels, and some of them use them to their advantage, or to justify their actions - Melfi justifies dropping Tony because of the Sociopath label.

Ralphie and honour - Tony attacks him as a reaction to the murder of a stripper, Ralphie sees her as just a thing, "she was just a whore, Tony!" where as Tony, seemingly human for a moment, sees her as a young girl, delicate etc. It's another slight of hand, a use of something to justify his actions - he doesn't like Ralphie, thinks he's a loud mouth, but needs a way to get at him, even when Sil and co are telling him that what he did was wrong, from a business point of few, you get the sense that they are tricked into thinking that Tony cares.

He is a bully of a man, to a frightening degree.

10:45 / 15.06.07

Actually, sorry, I think I'm distracting myself, and getting my point in a twist.

I don't respect Tony the character, but I have loved the depth of the portrayal - and there are moments of brilliance from all the cast. I've mentioned it before, but a defining moment of his character is when he gets a reaction out of Janice after her anger management sessions, he can't get out, no one else does. He's a bully.

His sense of honour and dignity and intellegence is simply his idea, his sense, and how these things collide with those around him.

10:58 / 15.06.07

I just don't think the sociopath as merely a label thing is very, ummm... interesting, that's not to say I don't think it has no worth in that the show does work to challenge these things - as in life, no-one is straightforwardly anything - but there is still the possibility that it is a worthwhile way of thinking about Tony - that it has utility. I mean, it makes sense to describe AJ as depressed, I think, but as is clearly demonstrated in the show, an individual's relationship to their depression - to the very concept of depression - is very complicated. The same could and should be said for sociopathy, but that doesn't mean that the possibility (and I pretty sure the creators intend us to seriously consider it a possibility) that Tony is a sociopath doesn't have serious implications for how we think about the character (and AJ as a character).

You see I think there's something much more interesting than you've allowed for going on here. I think the possibility that Tony is a sociopath works to deconstruct everything that we've seen, it throws everything into question is some very real and important ways, in much the same way that AJ transparently using his depression as a method self justification does the concept of depression.

For my money, the possibility of Tony as sociopath is the sledgehammer deconstructive device in a series that has, in large part, been one long deconstructive venture.

There's a hell of a lot of stuff fizzing in my head regarding this subject at the moment - lots more than I've put down here - so forgive me if I'm not making much sense. I'm really struggling to find the words.

11:31 / 15.06.07

Note that I keep using the word "possibility". I am very clear that the show remains ambigous on this point. Far more ambiguous than it does about AJ's depression, at any rate

23:55 / 17.06.07

I think there was a deliberate effort to distance us from Tony in 'Chasing It,' the one dud of this season. His gambling problem and nasty treatment of Hesch all seemed motivated by a desire to make us see who this guy is. The later episodes were interesting because Tony continued to do awful stuff, but I found myself with him. Even after he killed Christopher, who's always been my favorite character, I found myself kind of agreeing with Tony's reasoning. The show put us so intensely in his mental subjectivity in that episode that we can't help but view the real grief as a performance.

And, after that we get his real emotional outpouring when AJ tries to kill himself, which pulls back the tough guy facade until he's just crying trying to comfort AJ. I think the problem with Melfi's sociopath paper, at least re: Tony, is that I don't see Tony's emotional reaction to children or animals as a performance, and I don't think what he says in therapy is a lie. He's working out his very real personal issues with her, in the same way that any other patients do.

However, I think it does make him into a better criminal in a lot of respects. And, there's where Melfi's ethics come in. If she helps make him into a more efficient criminal, and a happier person, is that a good thing? After all, she can never really address the root of the problem, Tony's work. That's the huge issue that everyone in the show glosses over when discussing their problems.

13:35 / 21.06.07

Finally saw it - I really liked it. The ending was abrubt, but I liked the carry over of the bell on the door.

I loved the shot of the NY guy wandering out of little italy and into chinatown - looked beautiful, and summed up how times are a changing...

more later, maybe

13:00 / 09.11.07

So, having finally seen it last night, and chewed over it for several hours, I think I love that ending (despite generally hating Journey).

You've got a show that's fundamentally about psychology, and it ends by serving us up with a Rorschach blot-- the last scene contains plenty of clues to make persuasive (but not airtight) cases both for Tony being killed immediately after the cut and for him to go on with a more or less happy ending. The viewer's free to choose whichever interpretation they see fit, and then here's the cool part: it's a natural step from there to start thinking about why it is you feel like he had to die (or live) and what that says about how you were interacting with the show.

It's interesting to me that, from what I've seen, Chase's public statements since the airing of the final have pretty much only served to defend the ambiguity.

13:18 / 09.11.07

I seem to remember Chase basically taking the piss at the folks who wanted or who see as him dying in that cut.

"There WAS a war going on that week, and attempted terror attacks in London," says Chase. "But these people were talking about onion rings."

Chase says the New Jersey mob boss "had been people's alter ego. They had gleefully watched him rob, kill, pillage, lie and cheat. They had cheered him on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. They wanted 'justice'... The pathetic thing - to me - was how much they wanted HIS blood, after cheering him on for eight years."

Regardless, I still like to imagine the possibility of Tony's death. That tiny ambiguous moment of ever present anxiety and uncertainty is what made it good for me. Had he just lived and we just left off as we came in, well... I can imagine that already with this ending so...

Still, little things like "man in members only jacket" (and the episode titles), the building up with the Godfather bathroom motif, Tony peeling an orange, the three o' clock thing and all these other little things just makes me think he's taking the piss. "There are no esoteric clues in there. No `Da Vinci Code,'".

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