The Bitter End

So, perhaps you've heard by now about the "Sopranos" series finale. If not--and if yer planning to watch it on DVD or something and wish to remain as unspoiled as Ryan Becker (who hasn't seen ANY of the "Sopranos" episodes due to his parents' repressive child-rearing strategies)--well, then, skip to another Iraq rant below.

In two words, it sucked. You can add "balls" to that if you want to hear it in three words. It's hard, in fact, not to see the finale as a pretty big fuck you to the fans from series creator David Chase. See, when you've got seven or eight seasons to work with, we expect the overall trajectory of the series to involve a beginning, a middle, and an end. Storytelling 101, David Chase!

We've been reminded a couple of times during the series that there's only two ways things could end for Tony: get whacked or go to prison. So, in the last few minutes of the show, we have the whole Sopranos family gathering for dinner in some diner...and slowly the diner begins to fill up with other folks. There's nothing overtly sinister about any of these folks, but because the camera chooses to point them out...well, the mind wanders and conjures up killers and/or F.B.I. guys ready to take our anti-hero town. Meanwhile, "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey is playing on the juke box, and the picture suddenly cuts out on one of those "don't stops" after giving us one final shut of James Gandolfini's pretty mug.

You know your ending sucked when it wuz so anticlimactic that people thought their cable went out. But this has largely been the Chase method for the last two seasons: all come on, but no coming. Perhaps that wuz his private little joke, in fact, with all the references to Yeats' (pronounced "Yeets" by Tony's dumbass son) "Second Coming." There wuz no "rough beast" born at the end of the "Sopranos," and if you wanna get T.S. on Chase's ass, there wuz neither a "bang" or a "whimper." There wuz, in fact, no ending at all. As Journey saith, "it goes on and on and on and on," leaving the audience to imagine death, jail, or just a fun night with the fam at a diner. And I know some asshole from Academia is gonna call that postmodern cool when I attend my next pop culture conference, but I just think it sucks. Balls.