When Tony was fishing in episode one this year with Bobby ,didn’t Bobby ask what death was like. Tony answered it just goes black.?
If, in some Sopranos writer’s mind somwhere, T is dead, I wonder if the killer was “Members Only,” sent by Phil, 'cause he thinks his guys “botched” it by not killing Tony first?
I hate you; I was gonna say that. :dubious:
And at one point it looks like a bus is coming ominously right at him, as if he’d wandered out into traffic, like, you know, those cell phone users Dopers pretty much unanimously hate.
My first thought was the first option you mention, and I thought it was a great way to leave the show (once I got over my initial WTF??? reaction)
Then I was reading various web stories about the show, and saw mention that all went black right after “Don’t stop” - I’d missed that.
But the suggestion in this thread that the blackout and silence was the end of Tony struck me as genius.*
Either way, I like the ending. And I continue to be bummed that I didn’t start watching this series until partway through the 3rd season. I don’t know if I would be able to watch it from the beginning with the same discovery as I would have had not knowing what comes later. Maybe in a few years when the memories fade…
*Hey, I’m easily entertained - cut me some slack.
Regarding Agent Harris giving up Phil to Tony, I heard a bit on the radio today (I believe it was George Anastasia, the Philadelphia Inquirer Mob reporter) that I had forgotten about. Harris’ “We’re going to win this thing!” line is a direct quote from an FBI agent charged with murder for giving info to one of his Mob contacts. Here is a Pittsburg Post-Gazette story:
I havn’t read this whole thread, so forgive me if I am repeating something.
T didn’t get whacked.
You got whacked.
Never saw it coming did you? You have dined with Tony and his family, and his Family, so often that you thought you would always be welcome. You thought you would always have a place at the table, and if someone gets whacked, you get a front row seat.
Well it has been said, when your time comes, you don’t hear it coming.
It’s just lights out.
So all of your prognosticating and analysis had you ciphering out who gets it in the end. Tony take a bullet? AJ get suicide right? Paulie taken down? Meadow by accident?
But after it is all over, it was you who got whacked. The Sopranos are still alive. You are dead to them.
You always felt you were part of the family didn’t you? And you always knew that being involved in the “life” had its risks. You knew when it ended it probabbly would be unexpected.
A bullet in the brain.
Lights out.
Music stops.
You didn’t even feel the one he put in your chest as you lay on the floor.
Or the sound of the gun falling to the floor beside you as your killer turned and walked calmly away.
This seems like a really hostile response to almost no provocation, I have to say. I’m glad someone pointed out the Bobby Kennedy reference because I missed it. There was a lot going on and I didn’t even register the meaning of “Ambassador Hotel” in that moment, and then forgot about it. So you may have “gotten” it, but I didn’t, not because I’m stupid, either. So cut the guy a break, OK? This thread has managed to stay quite civil despite some serious differences of interpretation. It’s be cool if it could stay that way.
Flashing on this.
:mad: :mad: :mad:
Brilliant. I think that is the point. As voyeurs, we were at the mercy of the creator (Chase). We’ve been getting off on murders, liking these reprehensible characters, and the biggest mobster of all took us out. We’ve been parasites for six seasons, and overstayed our welcome. Bam! We’re done.
Fucking brilliant, newcrasher. Chase never understood our allegiance to despicable morally bankrupt characters, so he pulls the plug. Life goes on for the Sopranos… we just won’t get to see it.
I rather think he must have.
I’d imagine so, too, considering this is the guy who created The Sopranos. (This is my only knowledge of Chase, as well.)
I agree… Marley23 made my point more eloquently. It’s similar to when people try to make you feel like a bad person because you cheer when Jack Bauer bites out some guy’s neck. Um… it’s pretend. Am I, sitting on my couch in 2007 America, supposed to get indignant about something that didn’t happen to someone who doesn’t exist? No, that’s silly. Thus, if that’s the point Chase was trying to make- to scold us for rooting fr these monsters- he is an idiot. I assume he’s not though, so I assume that wasn’t the point.
I didn’t mean it in a hostile way. I was confused because he seemed to be explaining something to me specifically after I specifically had said that I thought it was pretty obvious. It was a sort of wtf for me, but not in a nasty way. Maybe my use of “no shit” made it sound hostile, but I say no shit all the time in real life and don’t even think about it–you just have to take my word it wasn’t meant in a mean way–I realize there is no tone-of-voice recorder for message boards. Sorry if it came across in a hostile way. It was intended to come across in a confused way.
According to Chase: “No one was trying to be audacious, honest to god,” Chase said. “We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people’s minds, or thinking, ‘Wow, this’ll (tick) them off.’ People get the impression that you’re trying to (mess) with them and it’s not true. You’re trying to entertain them.”
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2007/06/sopranos_creator_we_did_what_w.html
Honestly, I think the idea that the cut to black was pretty good in retrospect. It does leave it ambiguous, sure. It could mean that Tony got whacked and that’s that: things go black and you never get to find out what or why. Or it could just be the end of the series with a moment of silence for the end of a great show. It’s not like this is the first thing to end with an empty black screen, geez.
I’m going to preface this by saying something that will porbably get me pitted. I never watched the show.
That’s right. I don’t have HBO. I’ve never seen the DVD’s. I think I saw 20 minutes of one episode in a hotel room a few years ago. That’s it.
So I don’t know about the foreshadowing, the subtle and not-subtle hints, the crosses and double-crosses.
On the other hand, I can only talk about what I saw in those last 30 seconds (that I’ve now seen over and over and over. Back, and to the left.) And what I saw suggests only two possibilities:
-
Tony didn’t die. No one died. The show reached a logical stopping point (everyone’s eating dinner, Meadow finally shows up) the end. Yeah, maybe the traditional ending would have been a fade to black followed immediately by the credits, but the result is the same – thanks for watching, and goodbye.
-
Tony didn’t die. Someone else did. "When your time comes, you don’t see it coming. It’s just lights out.) The camera is on Tony. Someone is watching Tony when, suddenly, it’s lights out.
It could be Carmella, it could be A.J., it could be someone else at the diner. But the bullet got them, not Tony.
I’ll leave it for those who Tivo’d the episode and can watch the camera perspectives frame by frame to figure out who had that exact point of reference to Tony when the bullet hit.
Or, perhaps it will all be cleared up in the movie.
Look at the ending here.
I respectfully disagree here. If we cut directly to the credits, with no black screen in between, then the show ends just where Tony is looking up to see Meadow walking into the restaurant. There’s no implication that the cut away means that Tony is dead. The delay plays into the idea that the black screen is part of the story, the part of the story after Tony dies.
Reasonable people can certainly argue about the length of the delay. Is 10 seconds too long? Would 3 seconds be long enough?
Ultimately the stories being passed along about cable/tivo panic are just a bit exaggerated. 10 seconds is barely enough time to grab the phone and begin to dial, much less begin to yell at the operator, even if you jumped up the second the screen went black. I admit that I had a moment of panic but my initial reaction was to wait to see what happens next.
Seeing Tony get shot? Finality, but boring. Fading out on the family dinner, everyone smiling? Boring. I thought this was brilliant…
P.S. It’s always interesting to see people react to a TV show the same way they react to the Zapruder film.
“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Home Box Office, Inc.”
Thanks (and sorry). I was able to see it earlier, and assumed it was still viewable.
I thnk the scene with the psychiatrists last week and Agent Harris this week may have been his tweaking us about rooting for Tony. Melfi’s psychiatrist constantly pulls his holier-than-thou schtick on her, and in the end he’s all about the juicy gossip, even if it means violating his code of professional conduct. And in the end, even Tony’s FBI shadow is cheering when Tony’s enemy gets whacked. That might have been a commentary on us, the audience, for doing the same thing.
Maybe the theory that it was us who got whacked is the correct one.
So, what is your favored interpretation, if any? If you’ve given it and I missed it, I apologize.
Only tangentially relevant, and I have no idea how credible this source is, but I found this to be relatively interesting. It was linked on the Sopranos Wiki.
Meadow walks into a diner for a typical family meal, and that’s a logical stopping point for the series? Does not compute. That’s largely why I’m pretty sure Tony got whacked. There’s no good reason for the aprubt cut to black (let alone lingering on a blank screen for 10 seconds) unless it’s to at least suggest that Tony may have been killed. I’d have been perfectly happy with a “life goes on” ending, but if they were really going with that, they could have ended it in a more artful and satisfying way.
As it is, I’m perfectly happy with the “Tony’s a goner” ending, and I love the execution of it.