The Last Sopranos

I was an avid watcher of the Sopranos until the last season. The show peaked, unfortunately, with the death of Nancy Marchand as Tony's mother. The interplay between Tony and his fascinating mother was the intended center of the show and when the actress met her tragic end, the show was actually rudderless. But I still watched, gamely, for two more seasons but the experience was getting too uncomfortable to stand. Basically, after watching a few minutes, I felt dirty and disturbed. It's testimony to the quality of the storytelling, true, but I didn't need to subject myself to it.

David Chase, admitted many times that he began to hate Tony Soprano, and the people who in turn liked the character. So Chase began to ramp up the disgust and the violence - daring the audience to go through a sewer, in a way, to keep watching. I didn't know this explicitly, but I felt it, and I stopped watching for that reason.

All that said, I didn't get to see the last episode. But I read about it, including a detailed blow by blow on a few websites, so I felt I knew what happened and what Chase was doing. And my theory is that the blackout ending meant this: (a) it showed Chase's fundamental contempt of the audience that he began hating a few years earlier, (b) that Chase intended there to be a recognized stasis for Tony's character (see #a)

These guys from Slate had a great discussion about the show and this guy gets it. Also, someone pointed out a key line in the interview Chase gave to the Newark Star-Ledger the day after the finale (key part):

Some fans have already assumed that the ambiguous ending was Chase setting up the oft-rumored "Sopranos" movie, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.
"I don't think about (a movie) much," he says. "I never say never. An idea could pop into my head where I would go, 'Wow, that would make a great movie,' but I doubt it.

"I'm not being coy," he adds. "If something appeared that really made a good 'Sopranos' movie and you could invest in it and everybody else wanted to do it, I would do it. But I think we've kind of said it and done it."

Another problem: over the last season, Chase killed so many key characters. He's toyed with the idea of "going back to a day in 2006 that you didn't see, but then (Tony's children) would be older than they were then and you would know that Tony doesn't get killed. It's got problems." (Emphasis mine)

From this it seems most likely that Chase meant it to be ambiguous, that we are supposed to not know if he was killed or not but the possibility is there.

Backpost finished 2009-12-10.