The final Sopranos post, I swear

Two really good recaps of the season and final episode.

Note that it's on Salon, which has a draconian cookie policy. I disallow cookies, but greenlight sites I trust. That doesn't work on Salon. You have to leave cookies fully enabled to navigate their site. Hotmail is the same way.

It's really annoying to have to go into the settings and allow cookies, click the link to the next page(s) of the article, then go back into the settings and turn cookies off again and clear them out... then do it all again the next time you come by to read something... which is why I don't go to those sites unless it's something really really important like Heather Havrilesky writing about the The Sopranos (she's also the author of a mostly defunct advice blog that's really good).

I don't understand why Salon is invested in me allowing cookies permanently. If I'm willing to allow the domain salon.com to set cookies on my computer, that should satisfy them. But that's ok, there are lots of other sites out there to read. I don't need to patronize a site written by dicks.



I'll just say as my parting comment(s) on the lame ending, the only reason I care so much is because the series was so good. If I didn't expect more out of a show that has always exceeded my expectations, I wouldn't care about the ending. David Chase picked a hell of a time to go all artsy fartsy is all I'm sayin'. We've been given spectacular shows for 6 seasons, and then this. Only one person I know likes it.


Supposedly the actor who plays the federal agent said that the original ending had the guy at the bar approach Tony at the table before cutting to black. So Tony dies, as I suspected all along (and was my fill in the blank for the non-ending). I think he clearly died as it ended anyway, what with his and Bobby's conversation on the lake, which was flashed back to in the second to last episode (where Bobby said death would be an immediate cut to black).

I wouldn't be upset if that was consensus, but it's not. Everyone has their own idea of what happened. Why leave it ambiguous? And why build up all that tension in the last scene to then have absolutely nothing happen? We were deliberately fucked with and that's just not The Sopranos.

Pass the onion rings? That's what we get for being loyal fans for 8 years? Eff that. Either Chase was lazy, doesn't care about his fans, or is setting up the movie. I think he was lazy, but who knows.

Despite my disappointment at the major let down of an ending, the show is a big net positive. I still love the show and would recommend it to anyone. Start from the beginning and go all the way through. It's too bad you know the ending now, but just keep in mind that the point of a journey is not to arrive.