So the Tonys were on last night. BLAH BLAH BORING WHO CARES.
The real story, obviously, is the demise of the greatest show in the history of television, a show so flawlessly done, so ambitious in its scope and incisive in its writing that it elevated the way America interacted with the medium of TV. The Sopranos ended its run last night with what I would consider to be an artistic masterstroke, a refusal to cowtow to traditional expectations. Simply put, even after all these years, David Chase still isn't ready to sell out.
That's my take on it anyway. The majority of people (read: assholes) seem to have had a slightly different reaction, and are calling for the next American Revolution. James Gandolfini may get burned at the stake because they didn't get what they imagined a tied-up-in-a-pretty-bow ending looked like. Whatever. These are the same voices we've heard bitching about everything that's go on over the last two seasons of calm and stasis. Bottled-up tensions played close to the vest? That's heaven on Earth for me, but people might have different priorities, I guess. They want the guns. They want the explosions. They want the death. (Though Phil Leotardo's death on last night's episode was classic Sopranos gruesome hilarity.)
I'm of the mindset- really decidedly so, actually- that viewers got their death. I really don't see a scenario in which what we saw in that last cut to black wasn't Tony's death. (Though as Roommate points out, "If he didn't die then, he'll just keep looking over his shoulder until he does die.") The first shot of the episode was Tony in bed, looking eerily like he was laid out in a funeral home. And in the final scene in the diner- Home of the best onion rings in New Jersey, by the way- every time the door opened, we got Tony's POV as the person entered. (We got it for Carmela, AJ, that biker woman, and that sinister guy who I think did Tony in.) So Meadow finally parks, we hear the chimes, and- Black. Because that's what Tony sees.
And I also just want to submit David Chase for some sort of Nobel Prize, because in one cut to black he gives you the hidden thesis of the whole show: While Tony's spent close to ten years wracked with guilt and issues and paranoia and dreams and obsessions and lust and nonsense... Bam. Cut to black. That's it. It just stops. The real thesis, which is pretty ballsy for a show that tackled such a panoply of subjects, is that nothing it's ever depicted matters. Carmela and Tony have had their stream of religious crises, but in the end, it just cuts to black. No pearly gates, no saints in faggy outfits.
Even Journey stops playing.
xoxo KEVIN.
