[girltrouble]

um.. i kinda liked the ending too. *shrugs* if there had been a blood bath there would have been closure, and that seems a bit too neat for the show. and as a friend put it, sopranos was always fantastic because of the way it made the mundane strange. and the end-- the last 5 or so minutes was exactly that-- mundane, but so suspenseful-- i thought it was hilarous. it defied expectations, and gave you nothing that you demand (i.e. tidy little finish that clears up all the loose ends).

in a filmic sense, putting that long black bit at the end was telling us to write our own story, after all, there were enough threads in the final sequence-- the guy at the counter. the kids at the juke box, etc.--- there was plenty to weave our own ending. or, if we chose to go further back in the episode, it could mean indictment. it could even indicate death. but it felt like...well it felt like you had more stories to tell, but just didn't want to. and as much as i like what the "ending" means, it still feels a bit cheap.

it felt like other infamous series finales-- the most notorious of which was st. elsewhere's autistic child, but without the cleverness. or 6ft under's epic epitath. but i have to say all and all, this compared to 6 feet under, it seemed like the sopranos ending would have fit that show better and vice versa. 6ft was constantly, consistantly NOT giving answers, and unlike shows like lost, it never felt contrived or forced. it just felt, sad, unfortunate, but understandable. it fit in with it's themes. and that's one of the things that made 6ft so great-- it's not as if it was any less morbid, it's sense of humor less dark, it's body count any less. it was it's combonation of randomness and fatalism, that made it work. it loved to leave ends frayed, things unresolved. charecters disappeared, got killed in 6ft, and the charecters were as bewildered as we were. when nate was asked what happened to his wife--he broke down, angry and crying, and were just as frustrated.

the sopranos, on the other hand, loved spelling it out for us in gory detail. if a charecter was gay, we followed that charecter, even far from jersey until that charecter was.... resolved. we watched chareters bloody deaths choreographed to music. and knew EXACTLY why they needed whacking. but with six feet, death, life, love were all just... mysterious. perpexing. but it's conclusion worked all the better because it gave you exactly what you wanted-- (seeing how everyone lived/died) but STILL left you unsatisfied. as happy as you were right after watching it's finale, there was this horrible aftertaste. this awful longing: after all, it was all the little things beween birth and death, the odd little twists, those frustrating mysteries that made those charecters breathe, and knowing when clare died, who she married, etc,-- felt like there were all these episodes out there we'd never get to see, and that makes my heart ache to this day.

as i said, i adore non-endings-- if-- if it's consistant with the show, but because it's not, much as i enjoyed it, still feels like cheating. maybe it's because of hbo's annoying season stretching, but here it feels like there is one more episode that will be released on a dvd box set.

[mandolyn]

fuck you, david chase. i thought it was evil incarnate when you made us wait a year and a half between seasons. (and dark, dead, BORING seasons - compared to previous years - to boot.) but THIS is the cherry on the top. you cheated us, you dishonored the characters. lame asshole. i'm not even sure i care now if there is a movie.

total.crap.ending. the asstwat writers from lost could've done better.

i think i would've rathered tony wake up in some regular old ho-hum suburban split-ranch, realizing he's truly kevin finnerty.

[stargazer]

i knew tony would live. but, i was shocked that phil got whacked. i kinda like the way it ended. even with all of the tragedy they have endured, i liked that it showed how all of the characters returned to normal and did not learn one thing in their lives. i wonder if they will still make a movie.

[candycane_girl]

Wow. I don't even know what to say about the last episode. Definitely not as much blood as I expected. And as for the very end of it, I actually thought my television had stopped working for a second. I just don't know what to say!

[girltrouble]

meh. i don't think ms falco or chrisopher imperioli will have trouble finding work-- they were already working charecter actors and still find work away from the show. personally i still think if christopher as spider from goodfellas, and edie as the sister from trust as much as the sopranos... but the rest of them...hmmm not good.

good episode though. i had butterflies the entire time. tonite is gonna be great!

[chachaheels]

Bloodbath assured!

I am going to miss this show.

Everyone in it is going to miss this show, too. Not many good projects out there in TV land (or movie land, for that matter).
I can't imagine what everyone will have to do to top The Sopranos.

How are we ever going to see Gandolfini playing anyone else--and not think of Tony Soprano--again?
or Michael Imperioli? Drea di Matteo's already had a hard time "being" other characters.
And who will let David Chase make TV like this (at his own pace, with no time restrictions, with the actors and writers and directors he choses to work with only...?) again?

[nickclick]

if tony flipped, that would be a good twist. but anti-climatic. i want more bloodbath!

for your (almost) post-sopranos needs

[mermaidgirl13]

I thinking that if Sil dies and Paulie gets shot too, then Tony might flip and turn government witness. That would be a pretty big twist.

I know he's always talking about how gutless people who flip are, but if Paulie, Sil, Christopher, Bobby and who knows who else are dead, he won't have a crew left to protect anyway, so why not?

[kari]

HOLY SHIT!

What an episode. No wasting time now, it seems. I was very sad about Bobby. Nickclick, wonderful observations about Bobby, Jr & the trains. I hadn't thought of that.

I have no idea what's going to happen next week.

I too hope Silvio doesn't die.

Wowzers.

[nickclick]

i liked the allusion the trains made to last season when bobby was too busy with his train set to help uncle junior, which made tony visit him and then junior shot him. and then yesterday, tony was just yelling to janice the scene before about bobby wanting to help junior financially. good twist. but yeah, i felt bad about bobby. and i hope silvio doesn't die.

i loved when dr.melfi dumped him! she was ruthless.

so what's gonna happen next week????????? this ny/nj war has been building all season, so it was kinda predictable. there's gotta be some twist ending.

[sidecar]

As soon as I saw the name of the train was Blue Comet (the title of the episode) I knew it was in motion. I could barely watch or breathe. Oh my God. I knew the end would be rough ... but oh boy.

[candycane_girl]

I can't stand watching it all censored and stuff. I can't believe there are only two episodes left! I kept expecting them to stretch it out to 12 episodes.

[nickclick]

A&E had a marathon yesterday, do you all see that? it's still pretty good despite the creative replacement of swear words.

[candycane_girl]

I completely forgot about memorial day. Also, I saw the explanation for it on the hbo website. It annoyed me that the TMN website didn't actually explain anything. I can't believe that there are only two episodes left!

[chachaheels]

It will air next Sunday, CandyCaneGirl--episodes have never been run on long weekends during the season, and it's Memorial Day weekend in the US this weekend.

We're down to the final 2 episodes.

(I hate that. It's gonna be as hard to take as when Six Feet Under finished, I'm sure).

[candycane_girl]

Okay, so I was looking forward to watching The Sopranos on TMN tonight but I looked at the schedule and there's some movie instead! Does anyone in Canada know when the next episode will air?

[candycane_girl]

I'm finally venturing in here because I am caught up on all of The Sopranos episodes. I just started watching it in February when A&E started airing it but I wasn't satisfied with the censored episodes so I watched a bunch on the net, then I rented some and I've caught the rest thanks to my cable's video on demand feature.

Not really sure what to say except that I am in love with this show. I feel like everytime things start to settle and calm down, BANG! there's another plot twist! And they never make it anything insanely far fetched it's always something plausible. I just love it.

[mermaidgirl13]

I think we are going to handed a major plot twist. Maybe it's coming this week and will then be given the final episode to run its course, or it may come in the final episode as a last-minute sixth-sense kind of shocker.

I've gotten hints here and there that someone really important has been ratting to the feds this whole time and it is going to be revealed. But that will probably be one of, or part of, other surprises.

[nickclick]

i'd love to see meadow as the successor. she's smart and educated, a much different leader than her father or any of those other doofuses would be; it would throw them for a loop. and it would throw off the direction they seem to have been leading us this whole season... AJ as the tough guy, primed to be next in line. now we know that ain't gonna happen.

this whole episode showed phil, too, waging war, but being to cowardly to actually confront tony, by sending coco to harass meadow, but especially by talking to him through his house! and tony did react with violence, but he did not kill coco, so maybe he's still got his wits enough to know what that would bring up.

again, the show's setting up ny/nj war, but phil seems too weak and tony is too savvy to let it happen, and anyway, that would be too predictable an ending.

[chachaheels]

The thing about the malapropisms: David Chase is one well-read, well-versed writer who is definitely up on semiotics. If he's playing with well known sayings so that they end up being altered in any way by his characters, he's absolutely wringing all kinds of meaning out of every day language--and adding all kinds of meaning to every character, and every part of the dialogue. I think of it as yet another way he makes us a little bit more complicit--and (uncomfortably) sympathetic with the characters and their activities. I'm so glad the malapropisms didn't die with Christopher.

As for Meadow being the lawyer, instead of the doctor--lawyer is what would be expected of the next capo--whether the person who assumes that role is male and self-evident or female, weilding power behind the mask of her father/uncle/brother (as we've already seen transpire in Livia, Janice, and that Sicilian woman running the Sicilian mob in Italy).

And, as another connection back to the Godfather, the "Tom" character, played by Robert Duvall in the Godfather, is the "consiglieri" or counsellor to the Genovese/Corleone family--he's the son who became a lawyer in order to prepare for that role. The Tom character is the person whose knowledge counts the most in all aspects of strategy, in the Godfather, that is. Meadow's legal training would make her the obvious contender as successor.

The sad thing is, Meadow's got the smarts to become a lawyer and, if guided properly, to become quite a power in the family. At the moment, though, in telling her father about Coco's sexual assault, she's unwittingly sealed her own fate; she isn't aware of the "larger picture", nor is she aware (as we should be) that the cowardly Phil very likely instigated the assault against her, JUST so she would tell her father about it. Tony's irrational anger makes him vulnerable to begin with--he acts on it, without thinking, and in this case, he raged against Coco but didn't manage to kill him. That's a fatal mistake, for both Meadow and for himself. All Phil needs to destroy Tony is to goad him by aiming for what he now knows for certain is his achilles' heel--Meadow!--and Tony will predictably act on his violent, unthinking anger without thinking about the consequences. The result will be (as Phil hoped) an all out war that Tony will be too destroyed to win.

I could be wrong, and I hope I am--seeing Tony contend with AJ's suicide attempt was just gut-wrenching. The "target the children" possibility seems like such a logical thing to occur, and it's really hard to predict things on this show...so none of this might happen.