The Sopranos Series Finale

In my previous piece on The Sopranos, I made the point that it was one of the most ambitious shows on television, and that the sixth and final season was coming to a conclusion with a blistering ferocity. Happily, the series finale lives up to all the expectations that one could have for the show. The ambiguity and unconventional delivery that were the hallmark of the series found new heights in the finale, where the long-standing themes of the show were resolved and yet nothing ended at all.

Spot polls are showing immediate reaction is split nearly 60/40 with people hating or loving the finale. The people who are disappointed have missed the point. The show was never about bloody shootouts, or the gruesome closure of Phil Leotardo’s death. It isn’t about plot threads that have to be perfectly resolved; it’s more about the ongoing moments in the lives of these characters. Paulie’s revelation of seeing the virgin Mary inside the Bada Bing strip club is a perfect example of this. It’s symbolism and a punch line all at the same time. The lingering close-ups on Paulie Walnuts face don’t erase a lingering suspicion that he’s also turned against Tony, but a definitive answer to that question would just rob the show of its hypnotic power.

In the opening of the episode, Tony tries to barter his FBI contact for information about the location of Phil Leotardo. The agent is virtually a mirror of Tony. Pudgy, balding, angry at his home life, having an affair, and sitting in frozen parking lots at midnight, just like Tony. The good guys are just like the bad guys in North Jersey.

Throughout, the visual detail is as rich in this episode as in any episode from the series. Tony appears almost entirely in black. He appears in the shadows, wearing black and white shirts, wearing black leather jackets against a bright white brick wall. Blackness might be consuming him, or maybe the light is on the verge of overwhelming him. He spends the bulk of the episode in sepia-tinted shadows, in the shadows of history, perhaps? Red is the only prominent color, in Janice’s scarf, the Chinatown lamps, the paint on Tony’s incognito can, the gas station accents, a stuck ketchup bottle, the tablecloths at Satriales, Carmela’s jacket in the diner. Just like in Goodfellas, it’s a warning color, an alarm of impending death.

The remainder of the episode is mostly concerned with Tony’s family, and resolving matters with his son A.J. He’s still a screw-up, and he enters therapy just like his dad, and there’s evidence that young A.J. has picked up some of Tony’s sociopathic tricks. He closes out the episode not far off from where he began, a young, slick New Jersey operator just like his dad. At the other end of the spectrum, Uncle Junior is incoherent in a state-run mental facility. Tony tries to remind him that he once ran north New Jersey, and the fleeting “oh, that must be nice” shows Tony how little the power and the struggle ultimately amounts to. The son is the beginning, Tony is over the middle, and Uncle Junior is the end of the cycle.

The music that suffuses the episode is just as pointed. Bob Dylan’s “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”. Simon & Garfunkel show up as ringtone with “Cecilia”, with the “You’re breaking my heart, I’m begging you please to come home” lyrical implications. “You Keep Me Hanging On” while Phil Leotardo gets gunned down is bleakly ironic. The Noisettes “Scratch Your Name Into The Fabric Of This World.”

The final scene, which was instantly, classically divisive, is driven home with another loaded music choice. Tony waits in a booth in a diner, idly exploring the jukebox. He plays Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” while his family gathers, one by one. He keeps looking over his shoulder as random, vaguely menacing extras enter. First Carmela arrives. There’s mundane talk. A.J. enters, with more mundane talk.

Outside, Meadow has problems parking her car. Inside, pedestrians enter. It’s innocuous, but the rhythm of the editing and the increasing tempo of the music suggest impending danger. This is it, isn’t it? Tony’s supposed to go out in a hail of bullets? In the penultimate episode, the scene where Bobby Bacala is gunned down in a toy train store was filmed much in the same way. Quick cuts, images that are both innocuous and fraught with peril. It’s the same in the diner. Meadow’s increasingly frustrated attempts to park. Tony’s head swiveling. Pedestrians entering. They could be hired guns. They could just be regular Jersey mooks. Bullets could start flying at any second.

The moment Meadow enters the diner, Tony looks up, and on the lyrics “Don’t stop”, the show abruptly cuts to black. Flash back to the season premiere, where Bobby Bacala tells Tony that you probably never see the ending coming, it just all goes black. So did Tony get gunned down? Or does Meadow hug Tony, sit down, and dinner goes on as planned?

The point of The Sopranos has never been to answer those questions. The point is that ambiguity. Grand climaxes are comparatively easy, but closing out your thematic concerns without a hail of bullets and letting your characters live on, much as the first time audiences saw them, is a narrative trick of the highest order. The three generations of Soprano men etch out a circle of life. The good guys aren’t much different than the bad guys. And even in a world of stark black and white, Tony Soprano exists in a perfect state of ambiguity.

Bravo, David Chase.