Fate of Tony Soprano

[Colibri]

@HMS_Irruncible

As I saw it, the ending was just an admission of defeat by the showrunners who had no good way to resolve the character arcs.

…

So if we’re given a choice where Tony neither lives nor dies, we just get a scene that hints at how the rest of his life is likely to be. Tony will live his life looking over one shoulder, seeing himself as a success as long as he keeps his family well. Of course there will be a hit someday when Tony is happy and at the top of his game. He’ll never see the consequences of what he’s done; only his family will witness that. The scene seems to imply that Carmela and A.J. will get whacked as witnesses, and Meadow (the only innocent one) will witness the bloody aftermath.

I don’t think of that as an “admission of defeat.” I think it was a brilliant way to handle the issues at the heart of the show. Personally, I feel it was probably the greatest final episode of any series. A lot of people hated it because it didn’t give them emotional resolution, but I have to respect Chase for doing it that way.

There’s an interesting contrast with Breaking Bad. While I loved the show, I felt that at the end Vince Gilligan pandered to the audience by giving Walter White a far better end than he deserved. The point of the show was showing how Walter utterly destroyed his life through egotism and arrogance. But then Gilligan allowed him to “win” in several important ways.

Spoilers below so scroll down if by some chance you haven’t seen it but intend to.

-First and most crucially, Walter succeeds in passing some of his blood-soaked fortune on to Walt Jr. through the Schwartzes. Since his ostensible aim in becoming a drug kingpin was to provide for his family, he accomplished his aim. (Yes I know he confesses he really did it for his own ego, but this is still a victory.)

-He protects Skyler and his family by killing Lydia, and tells her the location of Hank’s grave so she can get a good plea deal. Although he has lost the love of his family, he does protect them from the worst consequences of his acts.

-He kills the neo-Nazis in retribution for killing Hank, and rescues Jesse. At the end, Walt dies with a smile on his face.

Now, if you really wanted to send the message “crime doesn’t pay,” the neo-Nazis and Lydia would have slaughtered Walt’s family in front of him, and would have used the money they stole from him to establish a crime empire across the Southwest. But the audience wouldn’t have found such a nihilistic ending emotionally satisfactory.

Chase’s ending isn’t emotionally satisfying, but IMO it’s an excellent one from an artistic and philosophical point of view. Gilligan’s ending was a crowd-pleaser, but didn’t follow through to the bitter end on the theme of the show.

[Colibri]

@Bijou_Drains

Why did he say F*** you guys? Seems like he said that because he knew he said something he did not want to say.

He was joking, which is obvious from the fact they all laughed afterward. He’s been asked this question interminably and he knew it would be treated as a “Gotcha!” He made it clear subsequently he was talking about a different ending that was later changed.

[Velocity]

Still think it’s one of the most masterful endings of all time. I just think the ending credits should have rolled a bit sooner. Maybe 8-9 seconds after the cut to black.

[lobotomyboy63]

(Some NSFW images in videos)

Out of curiosity I went to youtube and found this.

At 5:30 or so he mentions the "Members Only" jacket. 1) Remember Gene, who'd hanged himself because he couldn't leave and move to Florida? He went to kill a guy in a fast food place and when he was shot him, Gene was wearing a Members Only jacket. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE_DErmhdYs 2) The guy who shot Silvio? Wearing a Members Only jacket. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pic3f9R-xLc 3) The guy coming in just ahead of AJ at 3:07, who went to use the restroom? Yep.

To me, whether Tony got whacked that particular night is irrelevant. If so, someone would step up and fill the void. If not, he’d keep looking over his shoulder.

My personal verdict: he was killed. YMMV.

[Dewey_Finn]

Damn. I used to own a Members Only jacket. Just think; I could have been a hitman for the mob.

[lobotomyboy63]

@Dewey_Finn

Damn. I used to own a Members Only jacket. Just think; I could have been a hitman for the mob.

Any red engineering tunics?

[Grrr]

Why was Member Only ever a thing anyway? They seem so basic to my eyes. Even in the eighties. lol

[lobotomyboy63]

@Grrr

Why was Member Only ever a thing anyway? They seem so basic to my eyes. Even in the eighties. lol

Epaulettes? Hard to say. I looked it up, not expecting to find much.

Members of La Cosa Nostra were known for wearing this type of jacket in the 1980s and 1990s.[6]

Members Only (fashion brand)

Wow, I never knew that about Cosa Nostra. Seriously? Wow. I just figured they were wearing them because the wardrobe department wanted to show that the scene took place sometime in the 1980s…I thought they were “over” by the 1990s.

[Bijou_Drains]

Or maybe Members only gave them a bunch of jackets for free

[HMS_Irruncible]

@Colibri

I don’t think of that as an “admission of defeat.” I think it was a brilliant way to handle the issues at the heart of the show. Personally, I feel it was probably the greatest final episode of any series. A lot of people hated it because it didn’t give them emotional resolution, but I have to respect Chase for doing it that way.

Maybe “defeat” isn’t exactly the right word. I just imagine Gilligan finally at the end, deciding whether Tony and his family live or die, and realizing that neither would be a fitting end to the series. He realized the Soprano family would never experience a sense of relief or resolution, so he contrived a way to put the viewer through that same discomfort. I thought it was very well done.

[Bijou_Drains]

To explain the ending Chase said when he saw the first Planet of the Apes movie the first time he thought at first “Oh, they have a statue of liberty too” I think he meant that people did not understand the ending.

[lobotomyboy63]

The Wikipedia article says

The brand is often used as a source of comedy and an example of outdated fashion. In the film Shallow Hal, Mauricio (Jason Alexander) is insulted by Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow), who points out his Members Only jacket and says, “I guess you must be the last member.”

Shallow Hal: 2001, Sopranos ended: 2007; by that point, the brand would be buried even deeper in the closets of the wiseguys. So much for being inconspicuous.

The source cited by wikipedia for the link to Cosa Nostra says:

Members Only never regained the cachet it enjoyed in the 1980s, beginning to pop up as an ironic accessory in popular culture. When Tony Soprano was maybe or maybe not whacked in the series finale of The Sopranos, it was a man in a Members Only jacket who likely did him in. (The ambiguous end was contrary to the brand’s slogan: Fans thought nothing happened.)

A Brief History of Members Only Jackets

And **Grrr! **IDK how old you are but back in about 1980 there was a huuuuge deal about Luke and Laura on General Hospital. “Members Only” was a modest succes. Then they got Luke (i.e. actor Anthony Geary) to do ads.

Members Only signed Geary in 1982. In television commercials, he suggested that, “When you put it on … something happens.”

That “something” was a jump to $100 million in sales by 1984.

Tony Geary for Members Only Jackets

[Colibri]

Chase has also been asked about what happened to the Russian in Pine Barrens, and he says he doesn’t know. He says there are lots of stories IRL we never find out the end to or what really happened.

I like to think the Russian survived, hooked up with Tony’s Russian girlfriend Irina, and he’s the one in the Members Only jacket that whacks him.

[Bijou_Drains]

When the Russian guy got away there was a quick shot from a camera pointing down at the ground. Looked like it was implying the Russian was up in a tree. Don’t recall Chris and Paulie looking up to find him.

[Sam_Stone]

I thought the ending was brilliant, and that Tony was whacked. Having the abrupt blackness (not ‘fade to black’, but just instant black), and then not explaining it leaves us feeling just as many of the mob’s victims’ families feel. One second everything is normal, then the next a person is dead, and all their experience stops. There’s no resolution, no clean story to wrap up. The music just stops, and everyone who has questions to ask the victim will never get to ask them.

The lack of closure is part of the deal, for the audience as for families of murder victims.

[Colibri]

@Bijou_Drains

When the Russian guy got away there was a quick shot from a camera pointing down at the ground. Looked like it was implying the Russian was up in a tree. Don’t recall Chris and Paulie looking up to find him.

The writer Terrence Winter has said:

That’s the question I get asked more than any other. It drives people crazy: “Where’s the Russian? What happened to the Russian?” We could say, “Well, he got out and there’s a big mob war with the Russians,” or “He crawled off and died.” But we wanted to keep it ambiguous. You know, not everything gets answered in life.[1]

Chase has said various things about what happened to the Russian:

They shot a guy. Who knows where he went? Who cares about some Russian? This is what Hollywood has done to America. Do you have to have closure on every little thing? Isn’t there any mystery in the world? It’s a murky world out there. It’s a murky life these guys lead. And by the way, I do know where the Russian is. But I’ll never say because so many people got so pissy about it.[1]

OK, this is what happened. Some Boy Scouts found the Russian, who had the telephone number to his boss, Slava, in his pocket. They called Slava, who took him to the hospital where he had brain surgery. Then Slava sent him back to Russia.[2]

You mean the Russian? People came to me…He never went up a tree…He collapsed and he was found by some boy scouts. And they got in touch with his…somehow he was carrying a piece of I.D., which led them back to his boss. Slava the Russian guy. He was put in a hospital, and, ummm…you know, like he was completely, is, massive brain trauma. And he was sent back to Russia.[3]

Of course, if he survived and were found, we would expect there would be a big mob war between Slava and the Sopranos. Maybe there was and we don’t see it. Maybe Tony negotiated to have a settlement paid by Paulie and Christopher. But I think the boy scout story was told by Chase just to get people off his back. As Tony Sirico and Michael Imperioli said:

“That episode was like a little one-act play,” Mr. Imperioli said. “Like a different version of Waiting for Godot.” Ever since, viewers have been waiting for the mobster to return, ready for revenge. But he has never reappeared. “This show was never what people expected,” Mr. Imperioli said.

Mr. Sirico said a tease had been in the works. “We had a scene this season when Chris and I are talking in the bar about whatever happened to that Russian guy. And in the script we were supposed to go outside and there he was standing on the corner. But when we went to shoot it, they took it out. I think David didn’t like it. He wanted the audience just to suffer.”

[Gray_Ghost]

@lobotomyboy63

…I thought they were “over” by the 1990s.

So was the American Italian Mafia, which the members in The Sopranos bitch about at length. Wasn’t Tony complaining a lot about how ‘Our Thing’ was becoming a thing of the past? I thought he complained to Dr. Melfi about how he envied people like his father and earlier, because they were able to get in on the ground floor of something much bigger than themselves?

Given that, it makes sense as a statement that a leader of an increasingly ill-fitting, out of fashion group, is killed by someone wearing an ill–fitting jacket that used to be fashionable.

I’m probably making too much out of it.

[zbuzz]

@The_Chao_Goes_Mu

I wondered if perhaps Tony was already dead by the time that scene unfolded and he was just having an end-of-life flash of the people he loved the most.

Then what were Carmela and AJ doing there?

[McDeath_the_Mad]

Why is this in the news all of a sudden? I read “The Sopranos Sessions” last spring and it has the transcript of the interview with Chase? I thought I even remembered reading about the “revelation” on some news sites Entertainment section (CNN? Canoe.ca?)

Talk about old news…

MtM

[Jackknifed_Juggernaut]

I think the “fade to black’ could also be a reference to a Tony panic attack. The scene was brilliant in creating a setting of anxiety for the audience, perhaps akin to what Tony normally feels before a panic attack. The black screen is basically us finally experiencing the same thing that plagued Tony his whole life. So I agree that it was meant to ambiguous. Also, it is irrelevant what Chase says. What is actually shown in the show is the only thing that counts.