Is anybody else still thinking about the end of The Sopranos?
While I do miss the fiendishly compelling characters and vicarious thrills, I am savoring the extra hour on Sunday nights that I don't need to spend in front of the TV machine.
And who is HBO kidding with John From Cincinnati?
Three episodes in, it still lacks either sufficient narrative momentum or appealing characters to hook me.
(The absence of a single empathetic character was also what killed, so to speak, Six Feet Under for me, and may explain why I found its finale -- which essentially killed off everyone in the cast -- so satisfying.)
Even the usually reliable Bruce Greenwood, who made a louse seem charming (as Dennis Wilson in Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys) and helped keep the preposterous Nowhere Man suspenseful and intriguing, is an unbearable prick, with no apparent redeeming qualities in this new HBO series.
If The Sopranos (and the lamented Rome) taught HBO anything, it should have been that sociopaths and tyrants -- that is, people who aren't very nice -- can be worth watching and even rooting for.
If John From Cincinnati has any such character, I've missed him or her.
And will probably continue to. Now that I've got that extra Sunday night hour.
The lack of a suitable replacement makes me miss that Mob thing of ours all the more.
Innovative and artistic as it was, I do feel that the finale's final moments were a cheat. A storyteller has an obligation to, if not provide a conclusive ending (and I'm not arguing to be spoon-fed everything necessary to gain closure on the story), at least convince the audience that he or she has committed to what the conclusion should be.
I'm not convinced by the Sopranos ending. It seems too much as though Chase wanted it both ways, to keep his options open as to Tony's fate, while assuring viewers a definitive conclusion was there if we were a perceptive and faithful enough audience to grasp it. I tend to agree with those who have complained that he clearly was building toward an ending -- per traditional storytelling -- and failed to deliver.
The April, 2007, issue of Vanity Fair had an extensive cover story about David Chase and his groundbreaking TV series, in which he envisioned The Sopranos as: "a comedy about a mobster with emotional problems rooted in his difficult relationship with his mother."
Elsewhere, Chase has (IIRC) alluded to the fact that the death of Nancy Marchand (who played Tony's mother, Livia), threw at least some of his plans for the series into confusion.
Given how deeply the Livia-Tony dynamic is ingrained in the series (and how sad was it that she was evoked in the end only by AJ's comment about all the "drama"), I can't help but believe her absence for most of the episodes might have undermined Chase's overarching plot. The theme certainly became diluted, if not outright lost, through the course of the past few seasons, I think both contrary to Chase's initial vision for the show and to its detriment.
That said, on reflection, the finale isn't overwhelmingly unsatisfactory for me.
I have wavered between agreeing with those who believe the cut-to-black was simply indicative of the end of our omniscient view of these characters' lives, and those who establish convincing evidence (from the shot emulating "The Last Supper" on) for a Tony-whack.
My fiercest objection to the "Made In America" episode, though, isn't that it ended with blackness and silence. It's what we heard just before the sensory deprivation ending.
The Journey song . . . why?
Admittedly, I have a personal, probably irrational grudge against that band and, to a lesser degree, that song in particular. Regardless, "Don't Stop Believin'" was an especially unfortunate, inappropriate note on which to end this epic.
There is nearly no interpretation of the final scene that the song can apply to, unless Tony was killed and the song was meant ironically. Even then, don't stop believin' . . . what, exactly? That he will continue to prevail? That the Sopranos' lives will go on as they have these past few years?
Think of how much of the final few episodes dealt with how much better things were back in The Day. Paulie spends most of his Florida trip annoying Tony with his stories of old exploits; Bobby is expressing nostalgic feelings for better, old times in "Blue Comet" just before he's killed.
Particularly given how integral music was to the series, why not a piece that at least reinforces this important motif? If they had to use an annoying earwig, why not something that suggests the epic sweep of history? A piece of music that not only tells a story (of sorts) itself, but whose title encompasses the idea of an introduction ("exordium") through to a conclusion (or "terminus," if you will)?
If David Chase had to end The Sopranos with a song destined to torment me, why couldn't it at least have been as undeniably dorky as Zager & Evans' "In The Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)"?
Oh well, if you're reading this, Mr. Chase, feel free to use the Z&E selection to wrap up your next series! -- JAG
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
My Thoughts Become Your Beliefs!
