BF2S Forums Sopranos

HAHAHA, 8 years all for nothing.

People used to dog me for watching OZ and not the Soprano's.  At least OZ had a fucking ending, whats up now SOPRANO FAGS!?


The creators spat in your faces, LMAO.

So how 'bout an explanation for what happened?

From Yahoo:

The much-awaited conclusion of HBO's "The Sopranos" arrived Sunday night in a frenzy of audience speculation. Would New Jersey mob boss Soprano live or be killed? Would his family die before his eyes? Would he go to jail? Be forced to enter witness protection? Would Brooklyn boss Phil Leotardo, who had ordered a hit on Tony, prevail?

In the end, the only ending that mattered was the one masterminded by "Sopranos" creator David Chase. And playing against viewer expectations, as always, Chase refused to stage a mass extermination, put the characters through any changes, or provide his viewers with comfortable closure. Or catharsis. After all, he declined to pass moral judgment on Tony -- he reminded viewers all season what a thug Tony is, then gave him a pass.

But Chase was true to himself, and that's what made "The Sopranos" brilliant on Sunday night, and the 85 episodes that went before. The product of an artist with a bleak but illuminating vision, "The Sopranos" has always existed on its own terms. And it was seldom tidy.

The only neat development in the finale was that Leotardo was crushed. Otherwise it was perversely non-earthshaking -- just one last visit with the characters we have followed so devoutly since 1999.

Here was the funeral for Bobby Bacala, Tony's soldier and brother-in-law, who was shot dead on Leotardo's orders last week. Here was Tony (series star James Gandolfini) paying a hospital visit to his gravely injured consigliere, Silvio Dante, also targeted by Leotardo.

Tony's ne'er-do-well son A.J. (Robert Iler) continued to wail about the misery in the world, and voiced a fleeting urge to join the Army and go fight in Afghanistan (Tony persuaded him to get involved in filmmaking, instead). Daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) harped on her plans to be a lawyer.

Tony visits his senile Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) at the nursing home. "You and my dad, you two ran North Jersey," Tony prompts him.

"We did?" said Uncle Junior with no sign of recognition. "That's nice."

Despite suspicions to the contrary, neither Paulie Walnuts nor Patsy Parisi sold out Tony. And neither was whacked. Dr. Melfi, who kicked Tony out of therapy last week, made no last-minute appearance.

Sure, headaches lie ahead for Tony. The Feds are still after him. And Meadow's fiance, Patsy Jr., is a lawyer who may well be pursuing cases that intrude on Tony's business interests.

So what else is new?

The finale displayed the characters continuing, for better and worse, unaffected by the fact that the series is done. The implication was, they will go on as usual. We just won't be able to watch.

Of course, Leotardo (Frank Vincent) hit a dead end after Tony located him with the help of his favorite federal agent. The execution was a quick but classic "Sopranos" scene: Pulling up at a gas station with his wife, Leotardo made a grand show of telling his two young grandchildren in the back seat to "wave bye-bye" as he emerged from his SUV. The next moment he was on the pavement, shot in the head.

Then you heard the car roll over his head. Carunnnchh! Quick, clinical, even comical, this was the only violence during the hour.

Not that Chase (who wrote and directed this episode) didn't tease viewers with the threat of death in almost every scene.

This was never more true than in the final sequence. On the surface, it was nothing more momentous than Tony, his wife, Carmela (Edie Falco), Meadow and A.J. meeting for dinner at a cozy family restaurant.

When he arrived, Tony dropped a coin in the jukebox and played the classic Journey power ballad "Don't Stop Believing." Meanwhile, every moment seemed to foreshadow disaster: Suspicious-looking people coming in the door or seated at a table nearby. Meadow on the street having trouble parallel parking her car, the tires squealing against the curb. With every passing second, the audience was primed for tragedy. It was a scene both warm and fuzzy yet full of dread, setting every viewer's heart racing for no clear reason.

But nothing would happen. It was just a family gathering for dinner at a restaurant.

Then, with a jingle of the bell on the front door, Tony looked up, apparently seeing Meadow make her delayed entrance. Or could he have seen something awful -- something he certainly deserved -- about to come down?

Probably not. Almost certainly a false alarm. But we'll never know. With that, "The Sopranos" cut to black, leaving us enriched after eight years. And flustered. And fated to always wonder what happened next.

Best part: Phil tells his grandkids "Buh-Bye" and then BLAM! brains on the sidewalk. THen the SUV he just got out of with the kids in it, is lef tin drive when thier mom steps out to help Phil. The SUV rolls over Phil's head. NIce.

THen in the end; TOny sits at a diner, his wife comes, eats onion rings, here come his son who is spouting about Bush and Iraq the whole fucking show. TOny's daughter has trouble parking, like every woman. 2 guys enter the diner.....then another strange italian fellow. Finally the dumb daughter can paralell park. She comes in everyone turns around and the screen goes black. Credits roll.

The gayest fucking ending to any show ever. RUmor is they shot 5 different endings. I guess that makes it so you can mark the super duper platinum ultimate limited extended edition up to 299.99 rather than the usual 89.99. Fuck the Sopranos, fuck HBO, fuck David Chase. And fuck the Sopranos movie they are rumoring around.

And the new show after it, John From Cincinatti, fuck him too. And the creators of Deadwood who put it on.

i thought it was good. i think half the people naysaying it never understood the sopranos in the first place. how many people who are complaining have actually been watching since season 1?

darad0 wrote:

i thought it was good. i think half the people naysaying it never understood the sopranos in the first place. how many people who are complaining have actually been watching since season 1?

*raises hand

enlighten me on why it was so good great one.

stolen from somethingawful's forums:

Eripsa wrote:

Leaving the plot aside and just looking at craft, the final scene was put together extremely well. I can't imagine why anyone thinks it was a gimmick, and I can't believe Ishmael's disappointment or EPG's criticisms. That was by far the most intense scene of the series, and watching Meadow trying to park just drew it out to the point where it was almost unbearable. Journey was the right mix of bittersweet nostalgia and sappiness while still maintaining the show's sense of humor without being corny or trite, and it cut out right at the height of the tension (Don't stop...). The song is still ringing in my ears.

Leaving craft aside and looking at the characters, one of the big successes of the Sopranos is showing the audience just how much they are willing to empathize with a monstrous character like Tony. This is a standard theme in mafia movies, which is why the "mafioso goes to therapy" is a recurring plot device. This theme was handled extremely well throughout the Sopranos, but has never been as vivid as in that final scene, where the audience literally felt Tony's anxiety and entirely shared his perspective, if only for a few moments.

Its worth restating: for a few minutes in that diner, you shared an identical experience with an amoral, murderous, dysfunctional sociopath. You think you are a good person, or at least better than Tony Soprano, but put yourself in a tense situation and you find yourself thinking exactly like him. This kind of empathy-despite-moral-failings ties well into the show's general critique of contemporary American life.

I don't think anyone has responded to Ishmael's question: why this segment of the character's life, and not 10 years before or after?

I think this question misses the point of character arcs. Think of it geometrically: you don't need a very big segment of a circle to extrapolate its dimensions and predict its radius and circumference. We've seen Tony in enough situations to know how he is going to act in just about any circumstance. We can anticipate his actions; we know how he thinks. When was the last time Tony surprised any of us? Even the gambling episode a few weeks ago was perhaps out of left field plot-wise, but it certainly wasn't out of character. I'll say it again: we are left unsurprised by the actions of a sociopath.

So really it doesn't matter what series of events and subplots we were shown on the screen. What matters is that we got in to Tony's head. We stayed a while, we got comfortable, and eventually we couldn't even smell the foul poo poo we'd been sitting in all this time.

im not going to read all that shit you guys posted

Kmarion wrote:

I was disappointed at first. But now the more I think about it the more I see how brilliant it was. The suspense was incredible. Remember the show is there to entertain you and put you one the edge of your seat. There can be no denying that the loyal Soprano viewers got just that. Tony's only opponent got his head squashed under a Ford Expedition. If you werent able to put it together, that was the closure (as far as the violence). The show left a legacy of unpredictability while leaving the door open for further ventures (Movies etc..)

Confounding every expectation—but confirming its genius for unpredictability—'The Sopranos' cuts to black

I agree.  Although it could have has a tad bit more violence over all I actually like the finale.