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The Sopranos Ends With a ...
If you still have your copy sitting unwatched on your Tivo, I'd suggest that you stop reading before you are spoiled. The show is done at last and apparently fans are freaking out over the bizarre ending. At my house, we thought at first that the DVR crashed until the credits appeared in silence. Personally I thought that a show known for such excess tried to take an artful bow: It didn't work for me, but I get it at least. Anyway, I had a number of Sopranos submissions this morning and figured I'd just post this comment to give people who were interested in discussing the end of the show a nice place to discuss before they cancel their HBO.
He's dead, Jim.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
It completely sucked. It left you with thinking "he either got shot.. or didn't get shot."
I guess their main objective was to leave question, but leave everyone realizing that he's got to spend the rest of his life in anxiety, wondering if he's going to get shot at any time.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
I never was an avid fan of the Sopranos. My roommate was seriously in love with it and I'd catch an episode with him. I've seen only a handful and they spread across a broad spectrum from an interesting first season episode full of mob action & scheming to a kid shitting in a shower and stepping on it. Ok, so maybe I'm oversimplifying the episodes that slowly build up family strife and psychological problems that must come with being in organized crime families.
... if they did, mobsters would have just killed each other off. But there are smart mobsters out there and what I took the ending to mean to me is that Tony is, after all, a smart mobster. He made it. Guys around him were dying left & right and his time had come but he struck a deal after holding out. I think they killed his brother or at least someone close to him but he was smart enough to write that casualty off. Not a lot of people could do that. Maybe this series chronicles the growth of an intelligent mobster? The old Tony might have made an offensive after that.
:)
Last night, it was very easy for me to accept the ending of the series finale. Because I wasn't addicted to the show. Logically, not all mob stories end in a Scarface-like explosion where everyone dies
I kept waiting for an assassin to pop out & kill Tony for the last half of the show. But, I didn't have a reason why that should have happened. Am I so trained by movies & books on endings that I can't accept one without a climax? My roommate new it was coming because he kept looking at his watch and saying stuff like "ok, shit better start happening because they've only got like 15 minutes." But you know, you're at the mercy of the writers and creaters of the show.
It was unorthodoxed for it to end that way. I'm reminded of the utter ripoff I felt when I saw the last episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion. But that was due to funding, I think this was the idea of the minds behind the show. Good for them. I like seeing deviations from normality when I don't have to suffer from it.
In the end, there were a lot of things that weren't wrapped up and I think that's the big problem a lot of fans are having to deal with. I think the reason so many fans are going to feel this is that the show started off as a badass mob series that attracted viewers of a certain nature who enjoy living a vicarious life of crime. Unfortunately, the ending just wasn't juicy enough to satiate that kind of appetite and I think that's why you'll hear so much about this. Personally, I liked it although I recognize that too many questions were left unanswered, too many futures were left uncertain & too many problems were left unresolved.
But, hey, that's life, isn't it?
My work here is dung.
and I canceled HBO.
Not just because the ending sucked but because there's nothing else I watch on those channels.
But that episode really sucked. I get it, "You won't know it's coming. Everything will just go black."
I don't care.
Besides I really wanted to see Meadow and AJ beheaded. There I said it. I can't take it back. It's out there.
This
That sense of tension and anxiety at the end is how Tony has to lead his life, every minute of every day. He doesn't know what's going to happen next, and now you know what that's like.
Back when Slashdot was just a "stuff that Taco thinks is cool" site. I miss those days.
It was pretty clear to me that he died. Remember the flashback in the previous episode, where Bobby says "You never even hear it when it happens, do you?" Implying everything just goes black - you're dead before you even hear the gun being fired. Well, that's exactly what happened. The last thing Tony say was Meadow walking in the door.
Earlier in the episode, he was eating an orange, which is a reference to the Godfather files that has been made before in the series. They signify death, don't they?
I thought it was an excellent episode. It would be so cliche if they just showed him getting his head blown off, or even ended with a black screen and gunshot. If you pay attention, you pretty much know what happened. But you have to think about it.
This space intentionally left blank.
I just clicked to reply, not to read
In which case you're absolutely at the right site.
This guy's the limit!
Sounds like they got the Seinfeld writers to come out of retirement to do the series finale episode.
Why did you post story X?
Slashdot is many things to many people. Some people think it's a Linux site. To others, it's a geek hangout. I've always worked very hard to make sure that Slashdot matches up with my interests and the interests of my authors. We think we're pretty typical Slashdot readers... but that does mean that occasionally one of us might post something that you think is inappropriate. You might be interested in my Omelette rant.
Personally, I have a pet peeve when people post comments saying things like "That's not News For Nerds!" and "That's not Stuff that Matters!" Slashdot has been running for almost 5 years, and over that time, I have always been the final decision maker on what ends up on the homepage. It turns out that a lot of people agree with me: Linux, Legos, Penguins, Sci (both real and fiction). If you've been reading Slashdot, you know what the subjects commonly are, but we might deviate occasionally. It's just more fun that way. Variety Is The Spice Of Life and all that, right? We've been running Slashdot for a long time, and if we occasionally want to post something that someone doesn't think is right for Slashdot, well, we're the ones who get to make the call. It's the mix of stories that makes Slashdot the fun place that it is.
Slashdot is meant to be a giant mixing bowl of stories. They focus primarily on the tech but there are some things that pop up other than tech or sci-fi stories that are worth notingWell, back to rejecting software patent applications.
You know, I came up with a rather nice ending about a year ago that involved Big Pussy coming back from the dead as zombie and using voodoo to take over Tony's crew, then going to war with Phil and then the rest of the Five Families. I even wrote a theme song (to the tune of the Three's Company theme song)...such a pity they didn't use it. Now that would've been a great setup for a spinoff. People like the mafia, they like zombie flicks...how could it fail?
HBO hates, hates, hates time-shifting and anything else that replicates their content without paying them tribute. It was not in their best interest to put on a great show that would be Tivoed and passed around the internet.
It has been stated many times that Chase filmed several endings. He did not do that to keep the actors and writers from knowing the ending.
He did that so that HBO could put the better, alternate endings onto highly marked up "collector's edition" DRM'ed DVDs for us to buy.
Here's my belated Sopranos prediction: Within a few short months, certainly in time for Christmas, the alternate endings will appear on DVD. This will be heavily advertised. The base price DVDs will be a piece of crap. Ysou'll have to buy the collector's edition to get the alternate endings plus other "exclusive" content. The DVD will use a "better" encryption than ever before, followed by the inevitable posting of the decryption key or keys by some geek on digg.
It's not personal, it's just business.
At first I was like: WTF?
But then I realized we were looking at every action around him as a source of danger... Expecting anything to happen. And for that short few minutes we knew what it was like to be Tony. Could be the FBI waiting to grab you, could be some hired killers edging their way toward your table and entire family, the whole damn place could explode, etc...
No nice tidy bow wrapped ending for us or Tony, just another rev of the same wheel.
I don't believe there is a correct interpretation of the ending, I think that's the whole point. Offer the viewer no solace, force them to think about what they have just watched, and let them decide on what that may be, regardless of what it is.
That's exactly what the series ended with. You can read into it all the "meaning" you like. The fact is, the writers, directors, producers, et. al., left it wide open. "How do we end it?" they all said to themselves. Then, HBO executives, said: "Just don't. Don't end it at all. Don't have Tony dead. Don't have him in jail. Don't have him run to his new FBI friend and make a deal. Don't resolve anything. Don't do anything that will lock us into or out of possible future revenue. Just cut to black." And the rest of them, in unison, standing their in muffled awe, breathed "Genius."
I'm on Season 6, Episode 7. Thank you Netflix. This season is great and I can't wait to see Season 7 - it is getting hard to dodge the spoilers.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
This probably reads like a troll, but I'm genuinely interested, because I so don't get it. Think of it as a personal failing on my part, and point out the cultural riches I'm missing out on. People have a fascination with badasses and few people have a better image of badassery than mobsters. All of us live life constrained by the rules and subservient to those with power. Mobsters take power and make their own rules. We see the danger they live in and see ourselves as too timid to embrace the prospect of self-destruction at any moment but our popular image of the mobster is that he lives and dies hard. Of course, since most of us also have no direct experience with these people, we fill in the blanks with our own romantic ideas of what goes down. I remember reading about one mobster who went with his mugs to go see a crime picture. He was very impressed with the fictional mob rites of loyalty and oath-taking. "Dis stuff is good," he said to one of his goombahs. "We need to be doin' dis."
Mobsters were simply the latest flavor of the generation. Before the mobster fascination we had cowboys and gunfighters. Before that we had romantic notions of pirate kings and exotic foreign lands. If you think the mobsters are bad, you don't even want to read about what hardcore pirates were like. The level of violence and brutality is sickening to see described in words on paper, I cannot even imagine what it looked like in person. And somehow, despite all that, we see pirates celebrated as shady but with hearts of gold.
But here's the funny part. What do you call a truly successful pirate or mobster? Your majesty. Seriously. Where do you think the ruling houses and nobles came from? Sure, ten generations down the line the House of Someguy is represented by some effete twit but I guarantee you the original Someguy was a badass you did not want to cross. And the best mobsters were the ones who figured out how to operate with the law on their side. Robber-baron was not a title of pressroom hyperbole. Where did Daddy Kennedy make his money? Rum-running. How did George W. Bush's grandpappy get rich? Doing business with the Nazis.
We don't see movies made about average joes living contented lives. We never read about the farmboy who stayed home, obeyed his fathers wishes and took over the farm. We read about his brother, the one who ran away to join the Navy, who decided to fight in some noble war in some far-flung land. We read about the man with the ambition to do something great, no matter how much blood was needed to grease the wheels. It is spectacle, it is horror, and it is a dreadful fascination, and newspapermen will continue to make money feeding that curiosity.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
It reminded me of that Beatles song, "She's So Heavy" on Abbey Road. They'd worked themselves into this song and didn't know how to end it. Eventually, the editor took a pair of scissors and cut it at a random spot. I wonder if there isn't some correlation. David Chase is a huge music fan. Anyway, it's not the ending many of wanted or expected, but I liked it. keytohwy
"DRM'ed DVDs" and ''DVD will use a "better" encryption than ever before''
huh?
If it's a plain ol' DVD, that will play back in any regular ol' DVD player, then there's no DRM. There's encryption, sure, but the CSS encryption was cracked completely. Done. They *could* encrypt the thing better, but then it won't play back on DVD players - it's no longer a DVD.
Now perhaps you actually meant it'll only be available on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, and by some magic way the HD-DVD version won't be 'cracked' almost instantly (as the keys have been found for HD-DVD perpetually).. or, knowing that HD-DVD's only protection is swiss cheese, only go with Blu-Ray and its additional protection layer.
Or maybe it is a DVD - but a data DVD, and you can only play it back on a special HBO set top box media center thingamajig?
Anyway.. if it comes out on DVD at all, it'll be ripped in no time.
===
Other than that, I fully agree with what you're saying - production companies are exploiting the Regular > Special Edition > Collector's Edition > Director's Cut > Director's Cut Collector's Edition > etc. thing up the wazoo. I wish it would stop - but it's a moneymaker, so I doubt it will. As you said - it's just business.. but it's pretty dirty business.
I don't mind the model in general - I don't mind paying extra for additional content if that's what I want to see. What I do mind is if you have e.g. a Special Edition which has bonus features A, B, C and a Collector's Edition which has bonus features B, C, D, and a Director's Cut which has features B, D, E and F You'd have to buy all three to get the full extras. That's just lame.
The last show kind of spoke to me in an odd way. I mean don't get me wrong, I loved the episode before with the huge blood bath, but that is a very rare occurrence in Sopranos. Sopranos is more about the drama, and that's what we get in the episode.
That being said the ending had me hooked because every couple seconds I was saying "oh god don't do it here" and I had a feeling it was his final scene. But I believe the ending was his death, as Bobby Baccala said in the first episode this season you don't even hear it. Why else cut the music and the screen? I think the show was over and so was his life.
But that will be a series ender people will talk about for years, and as such kudos to David Chase.
So, I think the point of this is, Slashdot is "News for nerds, stuff that matters [to CmdrTaco and friends]." If you don't like it, you're welcome to go and start your own news aggregation site. CmdrTaco and company have also conveniently provided the code you could use to run your site. Have at it. But, as long as you're coming here and reading the articles on this site, realize that maybe not everything discussed here is right up your alley.
I personally haven't watched a single episode of the Soprano's. But, I came in here to read the comments because enough people have talked about the show over the years, and the build up to the final episode, that I was interested in hearing how it ended (especially in light of CmdrTaco's description of it).
IANAL... But I play one on
OK, I may be in a minority here, but I'm ecstatic that this show is finally over. Glorified sex, glorified violence, and power. The typical bullshit of "holding a mirror up to society" is more of a lie with this show than most movies that similarly glorify street violence, etc. Worse, they lower society's standard of acceptable behaviour.
The last show I was this happy to see check out was Friends. Finally, another execrable piece of shite not wasting any more resources that could be used for a worthwhile purposes.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
In that case, I'm waiting for the "Mega-happy" ending and then the "Scooby-Doo" ending.
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
"I personally haven't watched a single episode of the Soprano's. But, I came in here to read the comments"
/.'s editors choosing stories...I remember reading an interview with Taco here about a year or two ago. He wrote something to the effect that this site started as what would today be called a blog site -- his blog site. So Taco or his editors can post whatever the heck they want. If you don't like it, don't read it.
Same here. There are a lot of angles you could take on this story as to why its posted here. I for one find it interesting to see how people react to a television show ending in such an unorthodox way. Television is so pre-packaged and easily digestible and it has affected our perception of reality. People want quick fixes, they want stuff to resolve, all within the space of one hour. Well, sometimes it doesn't work that way. I for one, not having watched the show, find the concept of this particular ending ingenious.
Plus, in accord with GP's point about
People who complain about this story is a bit like me grousing about another article about the end of BSG just because I don't particularly care for the show: Frankly, nobody gives a damn.
blah blah blah
It's amazing to me how many people really just didn't get it.
The ending left a lot open to speculation, but one thing that it didn't leave open (IMO) is Tony's fate.
Tony is dead - if you watch episode #78 "Soprano Home Movies," while Tony and Bobby are on the lake they are talking about what happens to people like them, and specifically about what it's like to get killed. Tony says something along the lines of "you don't hear the one that gets you," and Bobby asks "what do you tin happens when you die," to which Tony replies "nothing, everything just goes black."
Then, in last week's episode, "#85 The Blue Comet," Tony flashes back to this scene while he is lying in bed "everything just goes black."
Even David Chase said in an interview that the key to how it ends is in that first episode (Soprano Home Movies), and to make sure people would remember this he put Tony flashing back to that moment at the end of "#85 The Blue Comet."
On top of all of that there was so much death symbolism in the episode...I definitely had to watch it twice, but he definitely got clipped - and I think the finale was awesome.
In addition to the death symbolism and foreshadowing, the show made a lot of points about America - hence the title.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I would like to espouse the theory that Tony is not dead. I believe *the viewer* is dead. People may have had a point about Tony dying if the series were shot primarily in first person. But it's not. And besides, Tony tied up most of his loose ends during the episode. Who was left to whack him? (Not to mention that David Chase seems to have taken some pains to add the little-known song "I'm Alive" by Tommy James & The Shondells to the jukebox list, and the fact that the final song was called "Don't Stop Believing".)
No. *We* got shot by the suspicious Italian guy when he was coming out of the bathroom, or perhaps by the two African-American guys (just like Tony's close encounter in Season 1).
Clearly the end was meant to be somewhat ambiguous (to understate the point), but I truly believe that the intention was to kill US, not to kill Tony. Life goes on for the Soprano family, just like it has in every other episode. It does NOT go on for us. The viewer finally experiences what has happened to so many other characters on the show. We're dead before we even hear the shot.
Tony didn't get whacked. WE DID.
I find it hard to believe that anyone would complain about the ending. It's difficult to get more closure on a TV show than one's own death.
...a great disturbance in the Force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out, "The fuck?"
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Pauley: "Some guy's been watchin' every ting we been doing for years. I took care of it."
The point was to make the viewers feel, if only for a few moments, the way Tony Soprano feels every single moment of his life.
The absolute paranoia. The focus on every single little detail. The search for the smallest scrap of meaning in anything as if our lives depended on it because they do.
I watched it with a bunch of friends and every single one of us was on the edge of our seats, every single one of us was muttering something along the lines of "oh, no, here it comes," and every single one of us jumped when it went to black, just completely confused.
As endings go, Six Feet Under was *closure* and it was brilliant. The Sopranos wasn't closure, not by a long shot, but it left me with something just as satisfying - I got it. I finally understood, just for a minute, how Tony Soprano works and I felt sympathy for this monster.
That's pretty good in my book!
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.