If Chase hadn't gotten all butthurt that "it didn't matter if Tony Soprano lived or died" for all those years, then I would assume Tony got killed and therefore consider it one of the best endings ever.

But his ridiculous and repeated response to those questions convinces me that he was afraid to make an actual ending at the time. That he was afraid that killing off Tony would piss off the fans. So he tried to make it "ambiguous" to please both sides. And then tried to sell his "ambiguous" non-ending as some sort "brave" of masterpiece art. Screw that. It would have been brave to show him get killed off, not to do what Chase actually did.

So for me, the ending knocked the show way down my list.

Breaking Bad is still #1.

At first I hated the ending. Then I read either the article posted above or another one that lays out the diner scene beautifully and the foreshadowing leading up to it. Such as the discussion about dying and the in the final scene the screen going black with the diner bell still ringing.

20ag07 said:

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Here's the Final Season thread

https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/854678/1#discussion

And a shorter one after Chase finally talked.


https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/993356/replies/13230801#13230801

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Thanks. I didn't get to watch during the original run, so that was interesting to scroll some of the discussion as it was playing out.

Also, listening to the Sammy the Bull podcast enlightened me into how the mob actually works. And that took a lot of shine off of Sopranos.

Like the whole cross family wars BS. The entire purpose of a commission, Cosa Nostra, and all of that was to keep that sort of thing from happening. If you have a beef with somebody in another family, you can't just go kill him. Because then his family would kill members of your family, and it would turn into a Mexican cartel situation. Instead, they had a set of strict rules on what was hit worthy. If you had a beef with somebody in another family, you had to go up your chain and prove that the other guy broke one of those rules. And if your superiors decided that the other person was sentenced to die, then HIS family would do the hit. Not you. They would have a close friend shoot him in the back of the head so that he wouldn't see it coming, it wouldn't hurt, and whatnot. If the commission didn't agree with you, then you drop it.

And the whole point of being "made" was to maintain security. If you are a made man, then you do not assume anybody else is a made man unless somebody you KNOW is made introduces you to them as "a friend of ours". The point was to keep police/FBI from entering the network. You don't say anything incriminating to anybody who you do not KNOW is made. If Al Capone himself walks up to you and says "hello", you assume he is FBI until somebody you know is made introduces you to him as a friend. And made guys are not even supposed to acknowledge the concept of being made (though associates knew). You sure as hell wouldn't have a non-made associate like Christopher complaining to Tony about when they are going to open the books so he could get made.

I think they could make a series about ACTUAL mobster stories (now that many of them are known), and it would be a compelling show. Not of the Capone era, but of the 70s and 80s.

John Gotti is an example of a guy that didn't care what the commission thought. He went to war against Castellano his own Boss. This ultimately lead up to Gotti planning the first unsanctioned hit on a Mob Boss since 1957. This lead to Gotti becoming the Boss and he got the support of several important figures of his generation in the Lucchese, Colombo and Bonanno families.

ac04 said:

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it absolutely holds up, i have seen it 8 or 9 times and it gets better every time. the best TV show ever made.

RE: the OP, i loved the ending even though it is pretty depressing. going to black was the guy in the member's only jacket coming out of the bathroom and turning tony's lights out. not only did the family have to witness that, but they are most likely in for a rough ride financially. carmela is repeatedly told she'll "be taken care of" but you got to see a preview of how that was actually going to go when tony was in the hospital fighting for his life after junior shot him.

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Agree with ac. Best show ever made. Gets better each time we watch it.

BurnetAggie99 said:

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John Gotti is an example of a guy that didn't care what the commission thought. He went to war against Castellano his own Boss. This ultimately lead up to Gotti planning the first unsanctioned hit on a Mob Boss since 1957. This lead to Gotti becoming the Boss and he got the support of several important figures of his generation in the Lucchese, Colombo and Bonanno families.

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Correct, but the hit that blew up Frank DeCicco was meant for Gotti. So that was the commission trying to punish Gotti and bring the mob back under Cosa Nostra. So it's not like it was a common thing for things like that to happen.

And like you said, the Castellano hit was a inner-family. It wasn't cross family. Lot's of mob movie/shows (including Godfather and Sopranos) have cross family wars. I don't pretend to be the nation-wide mob expert, but I think that thing rarely if ever happened in the American (Italian based) mob.

At what point did Chase change his stance regarding the ending - before or after James died in Rome? I know HBO did a prequel (Many Saints of Newark), but did Chase conveniently leave an opening?

I guess the ending is up for everyone's interpretation.

I took it that Journey singing, …"life goes on and on" was a message that Tony's life was as normal to him as ours is to us, no big deal, this series is just a show about how we roll.

Please pass the ketchup…

ac04 said:

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DannyDuberstein said:

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The mob got dismantled decades ago because they all basically stopped following the "rules". Just became run-of-the-mill drug dealers, thieves, and shakedown guys that fought with each other, got infiltrated, and ratted each other out.

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exactly. approximately two minutes into the pilot, tony tells melfi:

Quote:

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That morning of the day I got sick? I'd been thinking: it's good to be in something from the ground floor, and I came too late for that, I know. But lately I've been getting a feeling that I came at the end. The best is over.

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one of the main themes of the entire show is demonstrating how and why the mafia fell apart. chase spoon feeds it to you right off the top. this is not a story about the cosa nostra's glory days where everyone had a code and there was honor among them. its the opposite of that.

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Well, in real life, the mafia fell apart turned into a mere extortion machine. They don't really do hits anymore. Chase made them go Mexican cartel-lite where they keep killing each other.

CheeseSndwch said:

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What's with all this mob talk? It's a show about Italian Americans and everyone immediately assumes they're mobbed up. It's a stereotype. And it's offensive. And TexAgs is the last place I'd want to perpetuate it. There is no Mafia.

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Well done

DannyDuberstein said:

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The mob got dismantled decades ago because they all basically stopped following the "rules". Just became run-of-the-mill drug dealers, thieves, and shakedown guys that fought with each other, got infiltrated, and ratted each other out.

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They stopped following the rules cause of the new rico laws finally put into place that basically dominoed to the top of the mob hierarchy if someone down the hierarchy got busted for something even small.

Orlando Ayala Cant Read said:

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aTmAg said:

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If Chase hadn't gotten all butthurt that "it didn't matter if Tony Soprano lived or died" for all those years, then I would assume Tony got killed and therefore consider it one of the best endings ever.

But his ridiculous and repeated response to those questions convinces me that he was afraid to make an actual ending at the time. That he was afraid that killing off Tony would piss off the fans. So he tried to make it "ambiguous" to please both sides. And then tried to sell his "ambiguous" non-ending as some sort "brave" of masterpiece art. Screw that. It would have been brave to show him get killed off, not to do what Chase actually did.

So for me, the ending knocked the show way down my list.

Breaking Bad is still #1.

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I love the Sopranos but I don't think any ending it coulda done woulda taken it past BB. BB is absolutely the greatest show of all time as far as I'm concerned.

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Come to think of it, I agree. I can't think of a way Sopranos could have ended that could have made it surpass BB. But I'm not a writer. Maybe some writer could have thought of something better than me which would have blown me away.

Yet BB was a lighting in a bottle that I'm not sure any other show could ever match.

We finally watched it about 6 months ago and thought it held up very well and enjoyed it.

- Chase in 2004 intended for Tony to get whacked in a couple similar scenarios and didn't deviate from that. Foreshadowing was obvious in the Bobby convos.

- He wanted the audience to understand it was bad to "identify" with or "root for" Tony, although that only sort of happened on the whole. The last half of the season had a deliberately sinister feel, more so than other times.

- Many Saints is a good film

- AJ and Meadow were the weakest parts of the show. Not good actors.

drmwvr said:

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I've never seen an episode of the sopranos and neither has my wife. Not sure why but always resisted it for some reason when it was airing on HBO even though we had young kids and plenty of time to watch (not with them of course). I love gangster movies such as The Godfather, Goodfellas, Scarface etc.

Strange I know.

I liken it to the bottle of Pappy that I was given as a gift and haven't opened yet as the hype may exceed reality.

How does the Sopranos hold up, is it timeless and I should pop the cork asap….or not?

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Timeless

Agree. BB is tops in my book also.

I had seen the series in its entirety about ten or so years ago and loved it. Even the ending. My girlfriend has been watching this show over the last couple months and we watched "The Blue Comet" (which I'd put up there as the best penultimate episode ever) along with the finale this weekend. When it cut to black she let out a loud "WTF" and started messing with the remote, so I guess the finale still has the same effect on people as it did when it originally aired.

I like it when shows end and tie up what needs tying up, but leave some details vague for viewers to fill in for themselves. Two shows that did this beautifully are "Breaking Bad" (at least before the sequels) and "The Americans".

I think "The Sopranos" was trying for the vague ending just a little too hard. I felt it didn't give the show any sense of closure, certainly not like what you saw with Walter White bleeding out while admiring the lab setup he created.

I also think they were trying to leave the door open for a follow-on at some point, which we now know ain't gonna happen.

Zombie Jon Snow said:

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drmwvr said:

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I've never seen an episode of the sopranos and neither has my wife. Not sure why but always resisted it for some reason when it was airing on HBO even though we had young kids and plenty of time to watch (not with them of course). I love gangster movies such as The Godfather, Goodfellas, Scarface etc.

Strange I know.

I liken it to the bottle of Pappy that I was given as a gift and haven't opened yet as the hype may exceed reality.

How does the Sopranos hold up, is it timeless and I should pop the cork asap….or not?

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Definitely timeless and if anything now it holds up better because now it is like a period piece from the early 00s. Like Godfather was made in the 70s and set in the 1945-55 so 25 years or so before through a 10 year span. This was made from 99-07 so we are like 25 years later now. The cell phone and computer stuff in it is like nostalgic now. And the cars, dress, etc. all feel like another time period.

The themes come through and the period is a character in itself.

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Supposedly there were plans for a Godfather Part IV, even after the abomination that was Part III. I believe the plan was for Andy Garcia's character to move to Central America and basically become Pablo Escobar. He would even go out in a similar manner.

However "The Sopranos" came along and completely upended the definition of a Mafia drama, so there was no way it could get made.