Finale!

It’s amazing the way people behave when they don’t get what they want. Is it any wonder video stores organize their shelves by categorical grouping in order to help us make up our minds, while any movie that offers a complicated experience and happens to be in a different language gets dumped into foreign? It’s a sad fact that no American film studio could have made Hot Fuzz, or Shaun of the Dead, too many mixed signals. Americans want an action, drama, comedy, family, horror, sci-fi experience, and don’t even think of mixing the ingredients, or boy o boy. As defined as an American audience wants our entertainment, one could say we also want our endings to conform even more to categories: final, sad, jubilant, funny, resolved, etc. Case in point: The Sopranos, which ended its wonderful six (and a half) season run this past Sunday. I happened to catch the finale at a local sports a bar, where I was watching my Spurs dismantle the Cavs, and I couldn’t help, like most of the people there, constantly glancing up at the other screens that were playing the final episode on mute (a surreal sight). Since I don’t have cable and hate the rigid conformity of weekly appointment television, any show I find myself interested in I try to wait for the DVD. I didn’t want to spoil the final episode, but who am I kidding--I read TV watch columns on shows I’m interested in just so I am up to speed when I eventually sit down to watch them (Lost, Veronica Mars, My Name is Earl, 24, Anything by HBO). It was in this environment, announcers railing against the early foul troubles of LeBron James (French for The Bron James), when two things struck me concerning The Sopranos. One: the Sopranos has always been a quiet show (think back to when Tony first walked down his driveway, or when he first saw his ducks take flight—or, come to think of it, every season finale of the show since its conception), and, while the mixed simile and metaphor has always been a staple on The Sopranos, talk has never been one of their métiers (they leave that to Deadwood). So it makes sense to end the show in silence. A tactic that, for me at least, cements The Sopranos as the most literary show in the history of television (Deadwood being most beautiful, and The Wire the most important). And by literary I mean literary in the sense of a good Raymond Carver or Alice Munro story—stories that may have the rumblings of an earthquake, but never level a home as much as send spidery cracks up the walls. The overall response from people concerning the finale seems to be one of personal offense: the unbearable tension (“I think I swallowed my tongue!”) that built prior to that last fade to black cut (“No! My cable!”). But let’s examine our assumptions. We knew the end was coming, and, as was typical in these situations, each minute that built towards the ending tightened the strings incrementally Watching AJ escape from his burning SUV—was this a hit? (at least in the bar, with no sound, it reminded me of DeNiro's narrow escape in Casino)—was an ingenious way to rope the audience into thinking the violence would only escalate, when, if you go back and watch it, it’s such a pathetic blaze, so lazy in its desire to burn, one couldn’t help but think of AJ and his own morose march towards adulthood and realize there was never any real danger there. Perhaps rather than blaming David Chase (who has fiercely maintained his stance that the finale would not be melodramatic or histrionic in the slightest), we should blame ourselves for our outrage. The heightened ratings for the finale illustrate that a good portion of the people who tuned in where either ignorant of the seasons developments, or weren’t regular watchers. So naturally there would be a collective sigh of frustration at something in which you were told was going to be special, even though you had no idea what really made it special in the first place. Nobody wanted to go into work the next day without an opinion, no matter how unfounded that opinion might be. Second: Tony Soprano is the mob boss of Jersey! There were only two ways Tony could have died: as a young captain (ala Vito or Bobby: a “cost of doing business” sacrifice between the real bosses), or rotting in jail as an old man (ala Gotti, Johnny Sac, or Uncle Junior). For men like Tony, their lives are a prolonged existence between these two points. And since Tony (the boss not a captain) wasn't exactly exactly “old” jail wasn’t an option. Two words why Phil died and not Tony: “acting boss”, a title that easily removed once Phil demonstrated his unwillingness to focus on business. Still, we’re dealing with violent people, and what should have been in our minds since the beginning, what we have to remember about The Sopranos finale (and the show in general), is that anytime Tony went into the wild, venturing outside of his home (but even there) his life was in danger. We programmed ourselves to think that as long as HBO and David Chase wanted to have their show, regardless of what happened, Tony would never be whacked. It was the finality of the series ending that got our minds racing towards Tony’s death, but that’s our fault (more specifically, the casual observers) and not the show’s creators (more specifically, the artist’s). Still, this is the mob, and Tony is, and always has been, a candidate for a violent end. Credit Chase for playing on those expectations with his well (referenced and) placed unnamed characters in that final scene, who reminded us of these things: the shifty guy at he counter who goes to the bathroom (ala Michael Corleone--seriously the number of Scorsese and Godfather references alone...), the appearance of the loud black youths (a favorite tool in Tony’s arsenal when dealing out a big hit and wanting to remain above suspicion), anyone of whom could have been an assassin sent for Tony. But that’s the life of a New Jersey mob boss (evidenced by Phil’s brutal, yet comical slaying earlier in the episode), anyone who you cross paths with can take you out at any time. Bravo to Chase, the artist, for reminding us that life is always happening and doesn’t stop just because someone changed the channel.