Wait, what the fuck just happened? Where's the last shot? Did the cable just cut out? [rewind the DVR and play again] Nope. . . If I listen closely I hear the collective frustrated screams of ten million Sopranos fans, and above it all, the maniacal laughter David Chase.
If nothing else, I have to give Chase credit for succeding in giving us the least satisfying conclusion of any series in the history of TV (that includes any and all series cancelled midseason following the first of a two-part cliffhanger). Last week, Chase set up the Butch Cassidy/Scarface ending that many of the more low-brow fans of the show seemed to want, with full-scale mob war in effect and Tony laying himself to bed with an M-16 at his side. . . But Tony didn't go out in a blaze of glory. He didn't shoot anybody, and he didn't get shot. He got up the next morning and went back to business as usual. I was glad that, for the final episode, Tony reminded us how much of a badass he is by simply making some calls and showing that he's smarter and more resourceful than any of his enemies. The post-9/11 allegory here is almost too obvious for me to even mention it, but given the repeated references to Afghanistan and the military, I guess I have to. In last month's Rolling Stone Rob Sheffield pointed out that, "Tony Soprano began as a play on the Clinton era’s peace and prosperity, tapping into the nation’s dread of what was hiding under the surface, the fear that the bad guys might be coming back for revenge." This might explain why the last few seasons have been so sporadic their airing and so muddled in their plotting, but also why, despite the lack of coherence, I still love the show. The situations felt just like any other episode, which is to say, wholely believable and relatable.
It is worth pointing out that several long-running plotlines were actually resolved in these last two episodes, whether it seemed like it or not. It turns out that the story of The Sopranos is actually the story of Tony Soprano in therapy. We started the series with the hope that Tony would redeem himself through psychotherapy, and ended it with the cynical conclusion that Tony is an irredeemable sociopath. It was good to see, in the final episode, Tony forced to quit therapy and deal with life on his own terms. And, speaking of cynical conclusions, the kids seemed to finally grow up (in a sense). AJ finally stopped all his whining, but only after Tony gave him an cool, easy job and a BMW. And Meadow took the path of least resistance, finally giving up her high moral stance (or at least finding a different, less problematic high moral stance) and cashing in as a criminal defense lawyer. And Carmella is dynamic as ever (which is to say, not at all).
The Sopranos has always been a show about not giving easy answers and providing awkward solutions to awkward problems. Just like the idling SUV running over Phil Leotardo's bullet-pierced head, the series has always been more dark comic than tragic, which is where it diverges from any major film about the mafia. There is no grand story of the great rise to power and meteoric decline of the story's antihero. Just as The Godfather set out to prove that the mafia is just like any other capitalist enterprise in America, The Sopranos set out to prove that the life of a mafioso is just like the life of any other suburban schlub, set in North Jersey, the most pedestrian of all American landscapes. So I, for one, was happy to see the series end in a way that was both ambiguous and mundane (with a dash of tongue-in-cheek sentimentality thrown in for good measure). I was a little annoyed that David Chase taunted us with so many false build-ups and no action, but I was glad that there was no epic finale. I was glad to see Uncle Junior slowly rotting away in the mental hospital. I was glad to see Paulie still crassly hitting on girls a third his age at Bobby's wake. I was glad to see Tony bypass the Tony Bennett songs on the jukebox and settle on Journey. And I was glad to see Meadow finally park that fucking car.
