When it first came out I missed most of the first series so purposefully avoided the rest with the intention of catching all of it at some point in the future.
And now I have.
Overall? very, very good. I thoroughly enjoyed it
I think it suffered from that typical US affliction of stringing it out for too long. It could have been half as long and accomplished just as much.
The ensemble cast was very good. I didn’t buy Vito as a gay man but what the heck do I know?
Though I did enjoy it, I did find it soul-destroying at the same time. As I mentioned in the earlier thread, there wasn’t a sympathetic character to be found. All of them were compromised to some extent. Hiding behind religious hypocrisy and quasi-religious fraternities. The sheer casual brutality was quite wearing after a while.
And the ending?
Well I was expecting main characters to die and sure enough they did (as they had been all throughout the series) But the actual end was jarring and ambiguous.
Were I watching it at the time of release I would have been concerned that a further series was left open.
As time has passed we can be sure that it isn’t and the ending can be seen for what it is. A nod to the fact that the life is not going to change.
Interludes of good times mixed in with the ongoing possibility of a bullet at any moment.
I was a little bothered by the ending at first watching but after pondering for a few days I think it was a good choice. Honestly, I don’t want to know exactly how it ends, it probably doesn’t “end” at all. Whether immediately or in the future, there will still be brutality, murder, betrayal, family strife and small triumphs. same old, same old. Any “neat” ending would be a cop-out.
That ending left some of us watching its original broadcast to wonder if our DVRs or cable had gone out at the worst possible moment. David Chase apparently didn’t even want the end credits to roll- just 45 seconds or so of black silence. The Wiki article for the episode has some interesting comments from him.
I’ve never bought into the “not a sympathetic character to be found” thing. Not just with this show, but I hear it with lots of others as well. Seinfeld, Desperate Housewives, It’s Always Sunny etc…My normal comeback is that if you hate it so much, why watch it every week. I understand that’s not what you’re saying here, but I just hear it so often. WRT to the Sopranos, you have to think of it from a slightly different angle. Instead of thinking of the characters as bad guys, think of Tony and his crew as the good bad guys and the other families the bad bad guys. You have to think of the Soprano crew as the protagonists otherwise you’re going to hate the show.
WRT to the ending IIRC, Chase said everything you need to know about what really happened is all there, you just have to look for it. Personally, I think Tony lived, I don’t think anything happened. Life just continued on. It always bothered me though that Tony picked a Journey song. You’ll recall that almost any time Tony had his choice of music, he chose Doo-wop.
What I often found a bit annoying about the Sopranos is that every season introduced a ton of new characters without it being perfectly clear where they came from, who they were, etc., which often had me guessing about what exactly was going on.
I never had a problem with the ending. I thought the idea was to suggest the uncertainty that Tony would have to live with; not knowing when an attempt would be made on his life.
Oh I definitely rooted for Tony and his crew over the others, I just root sightly more strongly for the rest of the human race. I felt they pretty much all deserved their troubles and their miseries but yet was saddened when certain characters got their come-uppance.
But that’s OK, I know that was the intention of the writers. How much can they get you to care about an objectively horrific bunch of people? As it happens, quite a bit, and that is testament to the quality of the show.
Yes, maybe this is a natural result of such a long run but that bugged me slightly too. Is it supposed to reflect the in-out-in-out nature of the families and prison?
And what was Fabio all about? and the Neopolitan lady-boss? That always felt like unfinished business to me.
But again, these are minor quibbles. I don’t think you can run for that long without some loose ends and unresolved story-lines.
What I liked about the last series was how the morality and ethics of Tony’s life were shown to be so bankrupt. No one likes him. They may fear him, or even at a streach respect him, but no one thinks he’s a nice guy and likes him for who he is.
Part of the on going trick they played on you with the whole series was that, from time to time, you were lulled into a bregrudging amiration for Tony and them he would do something so morally shocking it was distroyed. I think that was what a lot of the last season was about, Tony’s total lack of morality.
Agreed, how do you show the viewer that he never gets “clipped”? (see…I’ve picked up the lingo) it would have to be a soap-opera, running in perpetuity. Or show them that he definitely does and remove all argument.
In hindsight, neither of those are appealing so I’ll go with the judgement of the writer.
That always made it hard for me as well. Especially when I would be watching the show with die hard fans. People who, upon hearing the person’s name could recall the person’s back story and knew exactly why they were there from a side conversation 6 episodes earlier or because the person was in a few scenes 3 seasons ago.
The huge cast and complicated, intertwining, long running, multiple story lines are the same reasons why I always had such a hard time with the Godfather Trilogy.
With the Sopranos I either waited for someone to explain a new character to me or hoped that the context would bring me up to speed.
They pretty much did that with all of Tony’s crew. You’d forget what kind of people they were, then bam. One moment that stands out for me was when Sylvio killed Adrianna. He was this sort of low key, almost comic figure. A loyal bulldog, seemingly non-threatening and avuncular. Then we see him dragging Adrianna (a character who basically was sympathetic) out of the truck, calling her a “fucking cunt,” and ruthlessly killing her with no remorse or feeling. We see what he really is in that moment - a psychopathic thug. I think a lot of the show was about how easy it could be to forget that about these kinds of people on a daily basis.
I think it is the best television series I’ve seen. I think one of my favorite episodes was when Tony took his daughter, Meadow, on the tour of colleges and by chance ran across a mob “rat” that had gone into witness protection.
And after stalking each other (the rat having recognized Tony as well and knowing Tony would come after him) killed him. All while juggling the college tours and Meadow.
That was a HUGE turning point as well. IIRC at that point Meadow already suspected Tony of being in the mob but finally asked him flat out when he came back with blood on his hands…huh, “blood on his hands” I’ll bet that was on purpose, like a visual pun, I mean, it was his own, but still clever.
My theory of the ending, after thinking about it off and on for several years, is that Tony had a heart attack. The series started with Tony having panic attacks, and it would make sense to wrap it with the anxiety and stress finally becoming too much for him. The clues about Tony nearing his death would still be valid, but the death didn’t have to come from a gunshot.
When I first saw it, I thought there might be some ambiguity about the scene. But after reading various analyses, and especially Chase’s own comment that “It’s all there,” and Bobby’s “You never hear it when it happens,” I don’t think there’s any other interpretation possible but that Tony gets popped by the guy in the Members Only jacket.
David Chase apparently didn’t even want the end credits to roll- just 45 seconds or so of black silence. The