June 16, 2007

The Sopranos Last Episode
Either you saw it or you have heard about it. The creator of The Sopranos, David Chase, seemed to leave a lot of viewers questioning what happened.

Usually, TLG talks about real-life political issues. However, it's been almost a week since the last episode, and people are still distracted.

Most people were upset or at least unsettled with the last episode. Tony Soprano and his immediate family were to meet up at a local restaurant. Tony arrives first, then his wife and next his son. They are seated with Tony facing the front door. His daughter, Meadow, was having trouble parallel parking outside the restaurant.

As the last scene unfolds, tension builds as suspicious characters are entering the restaurant here and there. Tony has selected a song from their table's old-style remote juke box. The song playing is Journey's Don't Stop Believing. Meadow finally parks.

Tony looks up from his table toward the front door where we expect to see Meadow walking into the restaurant. What happens is the screen goes to black and the song cuts off abruptly at the same time with the lyrics, "Don't stop." The empty screen and silence is there for about ten seconds making you think that the cable went out of service. Then the credits roll silently.

Chase, spending some time in France, has been hounded about the episode. He recently agreed to an interview. He doesn't see the ending as open to interpretation and neither does TLG. Chase said, "Anybody who wants to watch it, it's all there."

Some argue that Tony got whacked. After all, in a previous episode he had a conversation with his brother law, Bobby, about death. Bobby said, "At the end, you probably don't hear anything, everything just goes black." They flashed back to that conversation in the last episode.

This leads some to believe that Tony got whacked. They always said you never see it coming. However, Tony did see what was coming in the door. It was we, the audience, that didn't see it coming. We got whacked, not Tony. It was us who saw it go black and didn't hear anything. We were all watching for something to happen. We saw nothing. Just like Tony's New York rival, Phil, never saw it coming. No matter which character got whacked, the screen never before went to black and we were not always watching the world through Tony's eyes.

Now, can we get back to the more important stuff?

TLG

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