Ruin The Sopranos

Cafe Society
1

You’re a young, upwardly-mobile demon. After much tail-kissing, you’ve finally been handed an assignment that could really launch your soul-tormenting career, and maybe even get the attention of big Sat Man himself. You’ve been given the opportunity to write the final episode of “The Sopranos” in such a way that it will go down in history as the most disappointing series finale of all time.

Summarize the script that you, that eeeeeevil and malicious demon, would submit to your middle management demonic bosses in hopes of gaining a promotion.

My submission:
The episode starts out normally. Tony walks around in his bathrobe scowling about something. Tony visits Melfi and complains about something. Tony yells at his underlings about something. In the middle of an angry tirade to his troops, the Feds raid the Bing.

The Feds interrogate Tony. They try to get him to cooperate. They tell him they know about the off-shore accounts. They tell him they know about the Russian in the Pine Barrens. They tell him they know he’s not really a mob boss …

Tony reacts angrily but the anger quickly turns to tears. He sobs like a little girl. The world around him starts shimmering and swirling. Faces blur together. He starts to have a panic attack. He blacks out.

He wakes up on the ground in back of a modest suburban home. He’s surrounded by familiar faces, but they seems different somehow. It turns out that Tony really does suffer from panic attacks - except he does so because his life is dull and boring as mild-mannered sanitation worker Kevin Finnerty. While hosting a simple little barbeque, he has realized how lame his life really is and fainted, only to dream a dream of power and wealth.

(Pains should be taken to arrange things visually so the audience knows this is, chronologically, the panic attack that occured in the first episode. Terrible, terrible CGI should be used to make younger, digital versions of characters say things they were never recorded saying so long ago. Except of course for Tony / Kevin, who is obviously far older than he should be but that’s just terrible icing on a horrible cake.)

Mr. Finnerty reocognizes his kids (named Field and “K. J.”), as well as his friends. His friends consist of his bowling buddies Sil and Sal (a.k.a., “Big Pansy”). They are wearing bowling shirts and shoes, of course. Also among his “friends” is the creepy older guy he works with named Paul something or other, who is flamboyantly gay and does nothing but flirt heavily with Tony / Kevin. (Kevin’s wife died years ago, but he passed out with a Caramello bar in his hand, which is where his dream wife’s name came from.)

The rest of the episode (about 2/3rds of it) consists of Kevin Finnerty going about his daily routine. He does not reminisce wistfully. He does not do anything exciting. There is no drama of any kind whatsoever, unless you find drama in sanitation work. In fact, everything after the “it was all a dream!” reveal should be filmed with the approximate amount of cinematographical skill as the average workplace back safety video.

There. I hope that’s horrible enough, but I think with effort more horrible ideas can be constructed. Can you do better?
P.S. No cheating - there has to be an episode. It has to be obviously an episode of “The Sopranos”, and not reruns of “Mama’s Family”. (While the big Sat Man has a certain love for “Mama’s Family”, he also values creativity.) Also, you can’t just replace the characters with dancing cartoon cats or something.

P.P.S. He hates being called “the Sat Man”, but I do it anyway.

2

The show becomes a trendy teen drama starring A.J. It’s called The N.J.

3

Tony leaves his wife, leaves the Mob, marries his shrink and adopts three kids from Darfur.

4

All-singing! All-dancing! And every female character has a baby!

5

Could he wake up next to Suzanne Pleshette and tell her about the even weirder dream he had?

6

In the final mundane episode, Tony is making his daily rounds like any other day, though he is plagued by dizzy spells and a steady ringing in his ears that won’t go away. Tony is concerned that this is the onset of another panic attack, but he is mistaken. The entire episode is him slipping off into death. The ringing in his ears is due to the fact that he has been taken off of life support under directive of a weeping Carmela and the final episode is simply what has been going on in his hallucinative mind as he slips off into the black.

Tony’s first panic attack in season one, episode one was actually a stroke, and he has been in a vegetative state since. Subsequent episodes were all byproducts of his comatose state. He has been in a coma for the entire six years.

The final scene is him sitting in Melfi’s office discussing his feelings of euphoria and the ringing in his ears. He is scared and exasperated. Melfi is watching him intently and sympathetically, but says nothing. She takes out a prescription pad and scribbles something on it, tears it off and slides it across the table to him. Tony picks up the prescription and reads it. He blinks, and then manages, “Oh, jeez,” just before the light goes out of his eyes and the ringing increases to a crescendo. The screen fades to black and then we hear a final forced heartbeat. Credits.

7

Good stuff, guys.

In my finale, not as fully developed as yours, Tony is killed in a shootout at the place where the Russians are hanging out. It turns out they were terrorists and Tony is deemed a hero. Posthumously, he’s awarded the Bickle Medal.

You didn’t know about the Bickle Medal? It’s part of the Patriot Act.

8

All Johnny Cakes, all the time!

9

Dude, I’m not reading another word, 'cause you had me at “The episode starts out normally.” Good stuff. Caramello! Field!

10

Take out the F word and all it’s derivations.

The show is reduced to two and a half minutes.

11

Dude! It’s been done.

12

As for a bad ending–hmmm–it turns out the Canadian youth that Bobby killed was Janice’s abandoned son Harpo, and she finds out and tries to kill Bobby the same way she killed Richie Aprile. Bobby kills her accidentally while trying to stop her. In his grief, he confronts and kills Tony, and then AJ kills him and gets caught because he’s a fucking moron.

In the final scene, we see the juxtaposition of Carm, Meadow, and the remaining gangsters standing over Tony’s grave in the rain as Fr. Intinola says the service, with Dr. Melfi and the Russian watching from a distance. Melfi sighs and declares through her tears that Tony was the only man she ever truly loved, while the Russian takes advantage of the funeral to kill Paulie and Christafuh with sniper fire, accidentally hitting Carmela as well. Surrounded by death and horror, Meadow raises her face to the camera and gives a remarkable impression of O-Ren Ishii after the massacre of her family in KILL BILL, Vol. I, as the sole survivor, Silvio, takes his place behind her as her new consigliere.

The words “The End” come up, and then a bloody question mark appears after them. :cool:

Doncha see how deep it is–Tony’s violence and making Bobby do evil stuff brought about the destruction of, like, everybody!! It’s so ironic and tragic and Greek and all that shit! And Meadow’s young and hot so there’s sequels, sequels, sequels afoot!