11 Aug 09 Another Look at <i>The Sopranos</i> Finale

The finale to HBO's The Sopranos generated a raging controversy. Since the series was hailed by critics and its many fans, the finale was eagerly anticipated. Viewers know the characters like members of their own family--not necessarily a compliment in this case--and waited anxiously to see what would become of them. Most of all, they wanted to know the fate of Tony Soprano, the fictional New Jersey mob boss with the complex personality.

Now that the dust has settled, we can sit back and wonder what it all meant. The show's creator, David Chase, wrote and directed the final episode himself. As viewers discovered, the idea he had for the final moments of the show did not fit very neatly with audience expectations. Indeed, after an hour-long build-up, we saw Tony Soprano sitting in a restaurant with his wife and son, as suspicious characters behaved ominously around them. Were these unknown figures about to kill Tony in an act of mob retaliation? Were they about to kill the whole Soprano family in a final, climactic orgy of violence? Who knows? Just as Tony looked up, staring into the camera, the screen abruptly went black. There was nothing more.

And so it ended. The series that had so finely drawn characters, that had commented as richly on mundane suburban life as it had on organized crime, simply stopped, as if in mid-sentence. No tidying up the plot, no trip down memory lane, no slow fade. There was only black. Now, avid fans of the show are demanding answers. What does it mean? What really happened?

Maddening as it may be, writer Chase did not present us with a clear-cut explanation of what we were supposed to imagine came next. He he had the opportunity, but that's not really the path he chose. Instead, it seems to me that there is more than one way to interpret what we saw.

Obviously, no one can say what "really" happened. Reality check--this is a fictional story; nothing really happened. It's true that within its fictional terms, Chase may want us to think that in the last moment of the show, Tony died. Earlier scripts give some clues that this is a legitimate reading of the black screen--a fictional life has been snuffed out. What appears on screen has enough ambiguity to support more than one interpretation, however.

Don't be fooled. David Chase is a smart writer. He could have been clearer if he wanted to be sure that the story meant the same thing to everyone who would see it. He did not really do that, though, and I think this was an intentional decision on his part.

Like other admirers of the show, of course, I would have been interested to see what Chase would have done next with the story (if only to answer my own curiosity about the marvelous character Sil, so entertainingly portrayed by Steve Van Zandt), but I'm not losing any sleep over the fact that he decided to take a different approach. In fact, I'm pretty sure that what Chase concocted for the final moments of The Sopranos is much more satisfying than the other scenarios we find debated in the media and the blogosphere. Yes, the more I think about it, the more I think the cut-to-black was a good move, ambiguities and all.

David Chase has probably enjoyed the frenzy of theorizing about what he was trying to say. Whatever else the finale did, it turned the tables on us in one way. It made us realize that what we are watching is a contrivance, an artifice. In short, after lulling us into accepting the reality of The Sopranos fictional world, the writer eventually shocked us back to the real world. Recall what happened when the screen went to black: Many viewers thought something had gone wrong with their cable or satellite system. We were with Tony and family in a New Jersey restaurant one second, and a second later we were back in our own living rooms, cursing our cable and satellite providers. Or, as they used to say at the end of the cult television classic, The Outer Limits, control of our televisions had been returned to us. Perhaps we think this tactic was too harsh, but what better way is there to force us to think about what we had just seen?

I'm not going to worry too much about what would have happened to the characters. And so the last thing I'll remember about the finale won't be Tony looking at the camera. Instead, I'll remember the superb actor James Gandolfini looking at us, as if saying, "That's it. Show's over." And then I'll remember that the plug was pulled--not necessarily on Tony, but on us. The end came, but we didn't see it coming at quite that moment.

From a broader perspective, I don't think the ending matters much, anyway. In terms of the plot, anything could have happened, but that would only be the coda to a much larger composition. So rather than focus on what Mr. Chase did not show us in his grand finale, I'll think about what he did show us over last decade. It was a fascinating ride, with plenty to see and plenty to consider.

In the end, it may not be not be the end that is important.

© 2007 Bread and Circus magazine

About the Author

G. Arnold co-edits Bread and Circus magazine, an online journal of perspectives on modern life and culture.