There seem to be convincing arguments against the Tony’s dead hypothesis:
http://testpattern.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/06/11/222698.aspx
Including the issue that the guy in the diner was apparently not the same actor as Nikki Leotardo.
Did we even see Meadow walk through the door, though? Yes, we saw her dash across the street. We also saw a car pass in front of her while she did so, and the perspective was such that it was reasonable to think she would be hit. A minute or two before that, a guy who sorta looked like AJ walked into the diner, then he stepped to one side, and AJ was behind him. So who’s to say that it was Meadow walking in at that moment? Someone could have been on the sidewalk and gotten to the door before she did.
I’m not basing any argument on that, mind you. Just saying that the way that scene was edited, absolutely nothing could be predicted. When Members Only got up from the bar, he could have pulled out his gun right then. Or pulled it out when he got to Tony’s table. Instead, he walked past him. So the setup of Meadow crossing the street does not automatically lead to a payoff of her walking through the door. Nothing had been set in stone before “Don’t stop–”.
HEY----
I think I just figured out how Matt Groening is going to end the Simpsons…
I heard an interview with Chase on the radio this morning. The interviewer flat-out asked him, “so, are we to assume that Tony got whacked in the last scene.”
Chase goes, "well, there are probably different ways to interpret the last scene, but if you look at the order we introduced the trucker, the boy scout, and the man in the member’s only jacket, you can clearly see
Okay, I thank the several posters who have shown the importance of the blank screen, such as
So the black screen is part of the story, but as I see it, even with the black screen, there’s no evidence for Tony being whacked. Rather, as time goes on, I find myself more and more in agreement with the ideas most elegantly expressed by newcrasher:
Indeed, I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t know what happened. I was among millions of others who grabbed the remote and switched channels for a second to see if the cablebox was still working. I sat there stunned, not knowing what hit me.
According to Slate’s Timothy Noah:
Dammit, you just made me switch websites and call my ISP to make sure my internet hadn’t gone out.
I’m not sure, but didn’t they even have that scene where Bobby says, “everything just goes black” in the “previously on” prior to the episode?
While I like the interpretation posted by newcrasher and first proposed by Euthanasiast in post #212, This would make more sense to me that in this final scene we were in some sort of 3rd person view by proxy of Tony. Even though the camera was in 3rd person, we were really looking out on the world, or understanding the world, through Tony’s eyes. So in essence, Tony was us and we were Tony… when he gets whacked, we get whacked. When Tony’s gone there is no show.
And to wax philosophical on the side that Tony did get whacked, if and when you die, you wouldn’t know it. All you’re ever aware of is that you’re alive. So, if we were watching vicariously through the eyes of Tony, when he gets shot in the head he wouldn’t know it… so we wouldn’t either.
A bittersweet thought about death… just like the end of the show.
I think I agree. Picture Phil’s “last scene”. He’s saying goodbye to his grandkids, and then black. He doesn’t hear his daughter’s screams or see what happens next. Why would it be any different for Tony?
I guess I would have to see it again, but I remember the camera being from Meadow’s perspective last.
The Soprano’s finale truly is gripping.
I was wondering:
Where is the obvious GQ question about the physics of an SUV slowly rolling over someones head? Off to GQ for me, because non-entranced Dopers would normally have been all over that!
Because we weren’t looking through Tony’s eyes, we were looking AT Tony. If Tony were the one getting whacked, we’d have seen Meadow coming into the diner. Instead, the viewers got whacked and the last thing we saw was Tony’s face.
I’ll have to watch again, but I remembered hearing the bell as the door opened, and seeing things from the perspective of a person sitting in the booth. I accept that I might be incorrect though!
What do you mean “he’s saying goodbye to his grandkids, and then black.”
He says goodbye, gets out of the truck, shuts the door, asks his wife to pick something up a the pharmacy, and then gets shot in the head.
Nothing went black. Unless you just mean that dead people can’t hear anything anymore.
He didn’t linger like what happens on some whack-jobs.
Anyway. . .
There seems to be just as many things in the final episode that indicate he’s going to live as is going to die. After re-watching, there’s no doubt in my mind that Chase meant to leave it ambiguous.
One thing that sort of bugged me about the last episode is that, like Chase said. . .you couldn’t predict it. You know why? Because it was really inconsistent with everything else that happened the rest of the season.
There’s been no hints that Phil’s men were uncomfortable with his power grab and that they wouldn’t care about his whacking.
There’s been no hints that the FBI guy would help Tony.
There’s been no hints that AJ was just going to snap out of it when he got a new car, or that his parents were going to cave.
Meadow’s change to want to be a mob lawyer was very abrupt, almost a 180.
There’s been no real indication that Paulie is thinking about reducing his role.
For all of these reasons, I found the final episode a bit lacking. Still, I loved the ending.
Looking “through” someone’s eyes doesn’t always literally mean a POV shot. Almost everything we have seen on this show has been through Tony’s eyes, meaning from his point of understanding or as he perceives it. Remember the Italian dental student? We saw that from a 3rd person POV, but the fact that we saw her too means we were seeing it “through” Tony’s eyes.
Sorry, I meant picture the scene as if it had been filmed from inside Phil’s head. It would have just ended abruptly, as the final scene for Tony did. No warning, no sound, just black.
Sorry, but there have. Go back and watch all the scenes with Phil, but don’t look at him, look at his guys’ faces. They clearly thought something was not right. There’s a scene in the next to last episode where Phil says something that makes no sense at all and Butchie (I think) looks very confused and apprehensive. It stood out like a sore thumb that he didn’t have his guys’ complete support.
Edit: originally said “his guys didn’t have his complete support” :rolleyes:
Someone else - I can’t remember if it was a Doper or a quoted blogger - noted that there was a pattern of shots in that scene, and one in every few shots was from Tony’s perspective. The last shot in the scene was of Tony, and some people are interpreting the ten seconds of black as “Tony’s point of view”- an artistic representation of him seeing nothing because he’s dead.
Opal, I was trying to direct my comment to Trunk. Maybe I didn’t need to; I wasn’t sure if he was asking “did anyone catch this reference?” or “what did this mean?”
I thought I remembered seeing Meadow at the door. But it appears I was wrong. The last shot is of Tony, with an ambiguous expression on his face- he is not as smiley as he was a minute before, but he is not obviously scared or excited either.