It’s a fair rendition of the way they pronounced it, though.
I was trying not to laugh too hard during Tony’s last scene with Paulie. I kept thinking “Tony, you’re looking at the rest of your mob career listening to Paulie. No Sil, no Chris, no Bobby - just this guy and his needy, superstitious insanity. You sure you don’t want to flip?” An eternity with Paulie Walnuts. Shudder. 
I can think of as many arguments for Tony being alive as for him being dead. Someone on a previous page referred to Schroedinger’s Tony (maybe that’s why they introduced the cat).
Chase has been called, again and again, the master of misdirection. All through the series there have been omens that foreshadow… nothing (Tony takes Paulie on the boat and everyone, including Tony and Paulie it seems, expects Tony to return alone), characters introduced and given story arcs and episodes, only to disappear (Hunter returns, but no sign of Vinnie’s kid or the Russian).
The final scene was framed solely to create tension, the feeling that something had to happen: the diner setting, the Boy Scouts in the corner, the cameras following extras into and around the diner, close-ups of the family sitting around the table and talking about mundane topics, Meadow’s parallel parking problems and her dash across the street.
But the tension was all just manufactured. Looked at from any other angle than a scene in a mob drama, it was all just a mundane “made in America” tableau. At least two previous seasons ended like this, with the family in a restaurant bonding/talking/arguing/ over trivia.
Could Tony have died right at the end, with Steve Perry shouting “Don’t Stop…” at him?
Arguments in favor: foreshadowing (the orange, the cat, the opening scene shot to look like Tony was already in a coffin, the discussion with Bobby about whether you hear the final shot or if everything just goes black, the probable desire of those loyal to Phil for revenge).
Arguments against: At this point in the arc, we’re not really aware of anyone specifically gunning for Tony – though it has to be a possibility, it would be coming out of left field.
My conclusion: Tony is dead. and Tony is alive. and AJ is right: the world is going to hell, and and the only things that we can really get worked up over is whether or not Paris goes to jail and whether David Chase respects his viewers or not…
Except for the “We may win line . . .,” I’m wondering if Agent Harris was some kind of a mole from the mafia.
No evidence for this except government agents can’t be a party to murder.
Starting the hits was Phil’s idea and it was clearly shown what wackiness caused him to take those steps.
Did anyone catch the short conversation when Janice went to visit Junior, when she’s standing at the door to the lounge?
Female voices, one saying something like “It doesn’t hurt to be polite”.
It’s not important, but I’d like to know if it was Janice being pissy with the nurse, or Janice being pissy with Sophia (?), or one of them being pissy with Janice.
Janice will never get along with anyone. It’s easy to picture her standing at Customer Returns in Nordstrom’s, trying to return something she’s worn for two years.
Janice said, “It doesn’t cost anything to be polite,” and the nurse says something like, “Well, that goes both ways, ma’am.” I’m guessing Janice was bitchy, the nurse was bitchy back, and then Janice gets all on her high horse about politeness. How perfect was it that Junior called her Livia?
This is a reach and a half, but: Tony can’t be dead because they were eating onion rings and not meat. Meat always symbolized bad shit coming down.
Again, a huge stretch but…
I think the best argument against Tony being dead is that the last image we saw was of Tony, and he was clearly not dead.
Not meat? They’re made from the meat of an onion.
Gah! And I’m Italian-American too… I’ll have to turn in my card now.
I also want to mention that hit men in this show have been shown to be pretty conspicuous at times.
I reluctantly concede that Chase did do a good job of building up the tension here. But that tension, and all the other story elements, would have been exactly the same if the restaurant scene had cut directly to the music-less credits, without the ten seconds of black in between.
That’s what really gets me. From a storytelling perspective, the dead screen did absolutely nothing. It was there to mess with our heads and get 50 million people to think their cablebox was broken. No other reason.
Not.
That’s pretty much David Bianculli’s impression. He’s an NPR reviewer and gave his opinion today. If I’m interpreting him right, he thinks the finale was Chase’s “F*** you” to HBO and viewers who were clamoring for more Sopranos after season five.
If so, this is the first I’ve heard of it. Did Chase have to be coerced to do seasons 6A and 6B?
This is what I find compelling about the idea that someone died in that moment. The storytelling is interrupted, it is unresolved, and obviously so. The foreshadowing of death being like “nothing”, the abruptness of the cut to silent black, and the fact that it lingered before the credits means some intentional editorial intent. I haven’t watched long, but “just to fuck with them” doesn’t feel right.
I like the idea that this is the punishment that we get as an audience for allowing ourselves to get wrapped up in this morally murky world, for rooting for a criminal enterprise, for cheering for blood. We are made, and made men see danger everywhere, and made men risk having everything taken away, with no resolution, with no explanation.
So I choose to believe that the audience was whacked. It certainly got me all miffled.
miffled enough to double post.
what are you lookin’ at?
I just thought it was Junior being confused and that was the only dead Bobby he could think of. I didn’t really think of it as either a joke or something to “get”.
If that was the intent, Chase would be an idiot or an asshole. An asshole because he created them, and an idiot because they’re make-believe.
He may be both, I don’t know him as a person or an artist. This is basically my only sampling of his work.
He’s certainly done something unconventional here, and I choose to think that there was some method to it beyond idiocy. Storytellers take characters seriously. Why should that change because they are fictional? It would make for bad stories.
As I said, I ain’t watched long. People do seem to have a love-hate relationship with Chase.
Junior didn’t remember Bacala. He heard “Bobby” and thought of Bobby Kennedy, who was killed at the Ambassador Hotel. He and Tony both admired the Kennedys.
I agree with Troy: while Chase sometimes appeared to go out of his way to remind us that these guys were all horrible, I don’t think he was trying to scold people who enjoyed his work. If he didn’t like mob movies he never would have created the Sopranos, and if he thought it was that repugnant he wouldn’t have worked to put it on TV.
Again, I don’t mean that he wanted to scold or literally punish, creator to viewer. I mean that this was the ultimate reveal to the audience, the invitation into that world in a more than voyeuristic way.
I don’t know if I believe it was the intent, but it is an interesting idea.
Am I the only one here who thought this was a flawless ending? It was just like Six Feet Under. In fact, it was the better than Six Feet Under, because it was a lot more subtle, and a lot more real.
About five seconds after Tony put the song on, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. Everything after this became almost “too” real. Why were there suspicious guys? To Tony, everyone is suspicious. This wasn’t suspense and buildup for a blood bath. It was no longer giving set up to the next scene. It was no longer telling a story. It was simply showing Tony with his family, doing what they normally do. It doesn’t matter what happens next, because you were saying goodbye to the Sopranos forever. It was perfect closure.
So why not give some heavy handed drawn out montage like Six Feet Under? Because it didn’t need to be. It didn’t need to be dramatic. They were showing these people in their natural environment, doing normal things. These four characters became so incredibly real for those last two minutes, and that’s what made such a huge impact. I’m not afraid to admit that I had tears streaming down my face.
Uh, yeah, no shit. That is what I was saying. I didn’t think it was a joke or that there was anything tricky to “get”. Heard “Bobby” was dead and Bobby Kennedy was all he could think of. Why did you think you needed to explain this to me when I’d just gotten done saying it was obvious?