Matthew Yglesias (June 11, 2007) - More <em>Sopranos</em> Blogging (Culture)

There is more than one way to end. Short stories and especially poems often end with an intuitive sense of something happening rather than solid plot. I really have to disagree with you on this one. This was a wonderful ending.

Posted by Mtukufu | June 11, 2007 9:00 AM

"I feel like Scott Lemieux is suffering here from some kind of television version of the Stockholm Syndrome: Since David Chase is a genius, and The Sopranos is a brilliant show, it therefore follows that all of his narrative and dramatic choices were brilliant coups."

Or, it could just be that you're the kind of guy who enjoys Michael Bay movies, and thus finds the joys of the Sopranos to be a bit over your head.

-----

Of course, the show did have an ending. It just happened to occur a few episodes ago. The final three episodes were all epilogue.

Don't blame Chase if you can't follow along. It's not all that obscure.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 9:15 AM

I don't think he' saying that resolutions are inherently middlebrow - just that the Sopranos has distinguished itself by not going for obvious or straightforward themes or plots. I liked the ending, but I don't think it leaves everything up in the air. It seems to me that, in the end, Tony is condemned to live perpetually in the kind of suspense that the restaurant scene developed so well. The suspense and anxiety "don't stop" in the end for Tony.

Posted by berger | June 11, 2007 9:16 AM

Narratives have structure. It's why we read them rather than dictionaries.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 11, 2007 9:18 AM

Read Ulysses for one example of an alternative approach to literature. There are many. Naked Lunch is another. This ending was a stylistic choice, one which I admire. I don't think it was lazy or meant to be a silly puzzle.

Posted by Mtukufu | June 11, 2007 9:25 AM

Ambiguous endings are perfectly fine if they make thematic sense. The best example of this is in Thomas Pynchon's "Crying of Lot 49", which essentially replicates Maxwell's Demon in narrative form. There are, essentially, two endings to that book, which makes it a masterpiece. Ambiguous endings because you can't figure out how to finish things off, however, are just a cop out. Saying that, and without ever having seen a single episode of the Sopranos, Berger's analysis seems to justify the ending in this instance.

Posted by Nasara | June 11, 2007 9:29 AM

Any existential philosopher would have been proud of that ending. I loved it.

http://www.americanlegends.blogspot.com

Posted by J. Mark ENglish | June 11, 2007 9:35 AM

My take on the last episode is very similar to Berger's. I posted this on another comment thread:

"The ending was all about tension vs plot content. Tony's and his family's life did not change throughout the series and I believe that that's the point. They continue to exist in the center of a maelstrom, blind to it except in a visceral, reactive way and therefore unable to truly change. They just keep on doing what they do. I loved the ending. Endings are quite difficult. I think time will show that this was a brilliant (especially for TV) close."

Posted by Mtukufu | June 11, 2007 9:36 AM

Or, it could just be that you're the kind of guy who enjoys Michael Bay movies, and thus finds the joys of the Sopranos to be a bit over your head.

I really don't think The Sopranos is over anyone's head, Petey. It's the most popular show on HBO for a reason: it's by far the most readily accessible (leaving aside the borderline sitcom structure of Entourage).

I don't have the gut-level opposition to ambiguous endings that Matt apparently has, and think this ending might have worked perfectly well if the last several seasons of The Sopranos hadn't demonstrated a slow but steady slide into creative stagnation. The reason this ending was jarring to so many people, I think, is because the lack of resolution underscored a lack of character progression in the series itself for the last several years. We've seen season after season of the same characters repeating the same patterns of slightly increased moral depravity with nothing really changing - and nothing really at stake - for years. So when the last scene ends, and nothing happens, it adds insult to injury to those who suspect that nothing has been happening all along.

Posted by Christmas | June 11, 2007 9:37 AM

Like I said in the previous comment thread, I thought last night's finale was pretty good.

That said, Showtime has a better series called Brotherhood. Season 2 starts sometime this summer, I think. See if you can find season 1 in the meantime.

Those of you who like the writing, acting, local authenticity, and occasional violence of The Sopranos will like Brotherhood -- where you get all that and old school features like coherent plots, narrative arcs, etc. As an added bonus, no tedious scenes with Dr. Melfi.

Posted by Fred | June 11, 2007 9:38 AM

Is Matt seriously proposing that Anna Karenina is highbrow? My god, I guess what they say about the decline in value of a Harvard education is true.

Posted by vanya | June 11, 2007 9:43 AM

I think vanya is onto something. In his day, Tolstoy was a rock star.

Posted by Martin | June 11, 2007 9:47 AM

Matt, surely at some point in either high school or college at least once you had an instructor offer up the cliche that "This [film, novel, poem] teaches you how to [watch, read] it." There isn't a medium whose rhythms are *better* suited to that kind of thinking (and that kind of creativity) than television, although only in the last decade or so have the great potential strengths of TV as an artistic medium been really explored, IMO.

I'm not going to say "The Sopranos should've taught you to expect an abrupt cut to black," but if you're surprised by an apparently anticlimactic ending, you weren't watching the show carefully enough over the course of its run. A definitive conclusion would have been a big surprise of artistic misdirection*; the ambiguous sense that maybe things just keep on keepin' on is exactly what you should've learned from the season finales of, well, pretty much every prior season.

*A perfectly valid one, but not in the end the choice Chase wanted to make. Consider that the first season of the show, which Chase thought was going to be the only season (i.e., this doesn't appear to be a decision made with the logic "Nancy Marchand's too good and popular for us to kill her off"), didn't end with Tony resolving the issue at hand by getting to kill his mother - think about that! we would've been with him all the way, which is exactly the kind of moral bind into which Chase delighted in putting the audience as the series went on, that we'd root for a guy to kill his mother - but with her instead suffering a stroke, prolonging the issue and denying Tony, and the audience, a complete resolution.

Posted by Quarterican | June 11, 2007 9:49 AM

"I really don't think The Sopranos is over anyone's head, Petey. It's the most popular show on HBO ... I don't have the gut-level opposition to ambiguous endings that Matt apparently has,"

Of course the show was over the heads of the bulk of its audience. Given that you think the ending was ambiguous, it seems to be over your head as well.

-----

"The idea that desire to see the story of the show brought to some kind of conclusion rather than this childish "is he dead?" / "did the FBI pinch him?" / "guess we'll never know" BS is inherently "middlebrow" has got to be the prime symptom of the illness"

Gawd. So much to unpack here.

Matthew's interpretation of the ending is the lowbrow one. It's plot-obsessed, "who's gonna get whacked?" reading that Chase demonstrates such contempt for.

The middlebrow interpretation of the ending is that Tony will always need to be on guard. It seeks more sophistication than Matthew's clueless reading, but still misses the point.

The correct interpretation of the ending starts with realizing the agitation of the final scene lies only in the viewer, not in Tony. One you get to that point, you can start seeing how the Melfi breakup is integral to the final scene.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 9:51 AM

I think the test may be whether Lemieux thinks Seinfeld's last episode was brilliantly subversive, or just sucked.

Posted by Anderson | June 11, 2007 9:52 AM

"Is Matt seriously proposing that Anna Karenina is highbrow? My god, I guess what they say about the decline in value of a Harvard education is true."

Dude thinks Michael Bay makes good movies. What do you expect? If it's old, it must be highbrow, right?

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 9:53 AM

Is Matt seriously proposing that Anna Karenina is highbrow?

The next thing you know he'll be saying Shakespeare is highbrow.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | June 11, 2007 9:55 AM

I think the test may be whether Lemieux thinks Seinfeld's last episode was brilliantly subversive, or just sucked.

These are not mutually exclusive statements. (Well, "brilliantly" implies a level of success, but it's possible to hold, as I do, the idea that the final episode of Seinfeld was a conceptually brilliant idea that wasn't well executed.)

Posted by Quarterican | June 11, 2007 9:57 AM

Or, it could just be that you're the kind of guy who enjoys Michael Bay movies, and thus finds the joys of the Sopranos to be a bit over your head.

I really don't think The Sopranos is over anyone's head, Petey.

You're going to ruin his only enjoyment of the show! C'mon now.

Posted by neil | June 11, 2007 10:00 AM

"The correct interpretation of the ending starts with realizing the agitation of the final scene lies only in the viewer, not in Tony. One you get to that point, you can start seeing how the Melfi breakup is integral to the final scene."

Ye gods, more post-modern crap where what matters isn't the actual show but what BS excuses and explanations the not-nearly-as-smart-as-he-thinks-he-is viewer comes up with.

You people are no different than the Star Wars geeks who walked out of Phantom Menace desperately trying to convince themselves it didn't suck.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | June 11, 2007 10:08 AM

(Well, "brilliantly" implies a level of success, but it's possible to hold, as I do, the idea that the final episode of Seinfeld was a conceptually brilliant idea that wasn't well executed.)

Amen to that. The biggest problems with the Seinfeld finale had nothing to do with ending up in jail and everything to do with 1) the strained plot contortions to get them into that situation, and 2) the fact that spending most of the finale showing old characters at the trial wasn't half as charming as it might have been if we hadn't just watched a 45 minute clip show that had all of these same people.

Similarly, I have less a problem with the ambiguous ending than I do with the fact that the Phil/Tony dispute wasn't all that interesting as a post-Chrissy epilogue, and tying up the Phil/Tony dispute that ultimately didn't amount to much and watching AJ be AJ didn't seem to be very strong notes to go out on, epilogue or not.

Posted by Royko | June 11, 2007 10:12 AM

"Ye gods, more post-modern crap where what matters isn't the actual show..."

Of course, what matters is precisely the actual show. As you can see by reading the reactions the show is getting, the problem is that most viewers aren't that interested in the actual show.

Since season 3 at least, Chase has reacted to the broad based popularity of the show by spitting in the faces of the less perceptive viewers. Matthew doesn't like when someone spits in his face, which I can understand, I suppose.

But we're certainly not in George Lucas land here...

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 10:14 AM

Look, I think Petey's withering hail of contempt for everyone whose aesthetic taste doesn't sync up perfectly with his is obnoxious, but (said contempt aside) he's pretty much spot on here. Quoting Sars from over at The House Next Door, putting it better than I did:

"[Chase] did exactly what he's always done, in exactly the way he's always done it. If his audience didn't enjoy his enduring refusal to provide narrative symmetry, I don't think I understand why they continued watching the show, as this more than anything else is probably his hallmark. The scorpion's been stinging you for close to a decade so why'd you keep crossing the river with him?"

Posted by Quarterican | June 11, 2007 10:17 AM

I don't know about 'highbrow' or 'middlebrow' or any of that, but I don't think it's all that big of deal that the climax about a show that's about a 'anti hero' to be 'anti climactic'.

Posted by j mct | June 11, 2007 10:19 AM

"Petey's withering hail of contempt for everyone whose aesthetic taste doesn't sync up perfectly with his"

Meh.

I think the show is brilliant. But I'm perfectly willing to accept the taste of someone who understands the show is doing and doesn't like it.

My withering hail of contempt is reserved for folks who don't get what's going on with the show but think that they do.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 10:26 AM

"Petey's withering hail of contempt for everyone whose aesthetic taste doesn't sync up perfectly with his"

Meh.

I think the show is brilliant. But I'm perfectly willing to accept the taste of someone who understands what the show is doing and doesn't like it.

My withering hail of contempt is reserved for folks who don't get what's going on with the show but think that they do.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 10:26 AM

"We've seen season after season of the same characters repeating the same patterns of slightly increased moral depravity with nothing really changing - and nothing really at stake - for years. So when the last scene ends, and nothing happens, it adds insult to injury to those who suspect that nothing has been happening all along."

That's the whole point -- nobody has made any progress. Tony wasn't any closer to any sort of breakthrough after 7 years with Melfi, Carmella never really reconsidered selling her soul to the devil, Meadow's now going to become a mob lawyer, for chrissake -- only AJ showed a glimmer of hope, with the Army thing (he seemed actually serious about it, in a way he's never serious about anything), until his parents bribed him with more blood money.

Posted by too many steves | June 11, 2007 10:27 AM

I'm with you, too many steves.

I want to be sure not to suggest that I believe all episodes of The Sopranos were brilliant. They weren't. I agree that Tony's gambling addiction was last-minute, grafted on and clumsy. There were a number of points when the show seemed creatively stalled. I just don't think this ending was one of them.

Also, I disagree with the "correct" interpretation of the ending offered by Petey. The tension did not just lie with the viewer. Tony felt plenty of it. Remember him almost running back up the driveway while getting his morning paper when a car pulled up? And in the last episode he keeps checking his environment. I believe that that's a result of his anxiety.

Posted by Mtukufu | June 11, 2007 10:44 AM

"The tension did not just lie with the viewer. Tony felt plenty of it. Remember him almost running back up the driveway while getting his morning paper when a car pulled up?"

I'm just referring to the final scene in the restaurant. There, the tension was ours, not Tony's.

The final scene was all about us finding ourselves with Melfi's dilemma, not about Tony.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 10:48 AM

Also, I think we're missing the fact that the story did have an ending, sort of. We're supposed to assume that Tony takes over Phil's family, right? So the Sopranos is the story of a New Jersey underboss becoming the boss of a New York family. Of course, that's not the whole story, but that's the traditional mob-movie story. We find the resolution sort of unsatisfying because Tony finds it sort of unsatisfying, too.

Posted by too many steves | June 11, 2007 10:48 AM

"We're supposed to assume that Tony takes over Phil's family, right?"

Plotwise, no. The #2 guy in Phil's family will take over, not Tony. That's why Phil's underlings were amenable to a deal in the first place.

But as always, the show is not about plot.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 10:52 AM

The only episode of the Sopranos I've ever seen was last night's episode. So, I don't know anything about character development, story line, etc.
But I thought last night's episide was great.

One thing that I think was going on that nobody has mentioned here is the set of movie-cliche jokes. Where the creator sets up a scene that seems bound for some sort of standard finish, and then turns a different, surprising direction. In this episode the surprising direction was almost always a scene that seems destined for a dramatic finish ends in nothing. I'm thinking of the moment Tony entered the FBI agent's car (I didn't know he was FBI). I was thinking "no, don't do that! I've seen this; he's going to whack you!!" Or when Philly strays behind after no one was at the meeting place; I was sure that guns would be blazing. There were many, many cliche set ups, none of which followed the cliche format. Maybe the most dramatic was the end, with the mysterious guy going into the bathroom (a la godfather) and nothing happens.

The movie that I enjoyed this pattern most with is Truffaut's "Stolen Kisses". I remember several scenes that seemed destined for the misfit main character to get embarrassed or caught or whatever, and invariable something surprising and non-cliched finishes emerged. Frequently, the non-cliched ending was for the action to have no consequence. In "Stolen Kisses" is really liked the scene where the camera follows the amourous couple up the stairs, but then falls too far behind and gets lost.

There were many, many dashed expectancies in this epside. The dramatic difficulties that the daughter had in parking her car. Clearly, this will lead to her arriving late at the table and missing the massacre!! But nothing. The evil cat who never predicted anything and never got bashed. The babies locked in the moving car who didn't go over a cliff. I'm sure, like the bathroom scene at the end, there are many movie references to look for.

I thought it was very clever and a hoot. It also seems like a good way to end it.

Posted by John | June 11, 2007 11:02 AM

"I thought it was very clever and a hoot."

Along similar lines, I thought this was the funniest episode in quite a while.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 11:06 AM

I don't really watch the Sopranos (I tried, but here in Latin America, HBO shows the Sopranos in the most tupsy turvy way, and it's impossible to know what season you're watching whenever an episode's one).

However, the one thing that I am reminded of when people mention how this episode didn't really have an ending is the final episode of Seinfeld (10 years ago).

That was also not a finish with any closure to it, either.....

Posted by JRVJ | June 11, 2007 11:09 AM

"I'm just referring to the final scene in the restaurant. There, the tension was ours, not Tony's.

The final scene was all about us finding ourselves with Melfi's dilemma, not about Tony."

I stand by my point that Tony was quite vigilant regarding his environment in the diner. To my mind the series began with his anxiety and now ends with it. The anxiety we feel in that last scene is his. He never found a way out of it, which suggests Dr. Melfi might have been correct in her decision to terminate treatment, that is if he didn't find a way out because he never really wanted to do what was necessary to find relief. Having said that, she was certainly unethical in the way she ended the therapy with Tony (also, that plot point was too quickly handled for my taste).

Anyway, that last little bit is just my hoo ha. Petey's interpretation is certainly arguable. I just have to resist the idea of a "correct" intepretation. Too limiting. For example, I'm intriqued by the idea that the blackout is Tony getting whacked, though I tend not to go there. It's a fun idea and arguable given Tony's conversation with Bobby in the boat.

Posted by Mtukufu | June 11, 2007 11:09 AM

"I stand by my point that Tony was quite vigilant regarding his environment in the diner."

Watch the scene again. He definitely looks up from time to time. He perks up when people come in the door. But he's more focussed on his menu and his depression than anything else.

Chase is bombarding us with a thousand and one clues to be vigilant about the environment in the diner, and the very fact that Tony doesn't share our level of agitation is something that makes us even more agitated.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 11:17 AM

"Of course, what matters is precisely the actual show. As you can see by reading the reactions the show is getting, the problem is that most viewers aren't that interested in the actual show.

Since season 3 at least, Chase has reacted to the broad based popularity of the show by spitting in the faces of the less perceptive viewers. Matthew doesn't like when someone spits in his face, which I can understand, I suppose.

But we're certainly not in George Lucas land here..."

When you start talking about "the less perceptive viewers", that's when you enter George Lucas Land. Unless what you're copping to is that the show has pretty much sucked as a piece of entertainment for the last several years. It's valid to question why folks who enjoyed the show as entertainment the first few years have stuck with it as The Sopranos became a show about "The brilliance of Chase". If your defense of the show is a commentary on how Chase tells the story, INSTEAD OF THE STORY ITSELF, you can't really claim to be interested in the actual show.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | June 11, 2007 11:28 AM

Petey, is this all some kind of a sly goof for you, or are you really the pretentious, supercilious asshole you're coming across as here?

Posted by Feathers McGraw | June 11, 2007 11:33 AM

"It's valid to question why folks who enjoyed the show as entertainment the first few years have stuck with it"

The bulk of the viewers watch because of buzz. The show became a requirement for cultural literacy. These folks weren't even viewers in the first couple of years.

HBO on Demand ran a wonderful ad for VOD by having a woman watch old episodes of the Sopranos to have talking points for a first date with a guy she liked. This is the audience for whom, "who's gonna get whacked?" is the reason for watching.

"If your defense of the show is a commentary on how Chase tells the story, INSTEAD OF THE STORY ITSELF, you can't really claim to be interested in the actual show."

You're kinda dim, if you actually believe this.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 11:37 AM

"Petey, is this all some kind of a sly goof for you"

No. I really dig the show. And more generally, I think lousy audiences get waaaaay too obsessed with plot in movies and TV.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 11:39 AM

"and the very fact that Tony doesn't share our level of agitation is something that makes us even more agitated."

Yup. That is what I got. We keep expecting more from Tony and his environment.

I stopped watching regularly after the second season. It is almost a cliche, used by Woody twice in Crimes and Misdeanors and Match Point. The tension is between the banality of evil and the audience's demands for justice and structure. Which is the central human tragedy...umm...we watch a million die in Iraq for nuthin and cry to Heaven:"Why doesn't the world end?" It doesn't. We go shopping.

I liked the old Showtime series Dead Like Me. Young college student gets billboard dropped on his head. Every show started with an unexpected death. Same with Six Feet Under.
Very few of the departed in DLM complained about the injustice. Oh well.

Like I said, the banality of evil & death & injustice has become a cliche for some secular intellectuals. The banality of evil no longer horrifies us. Banal.

Posted by bob mcmanus | June 11, 2007 11:51 AM

"The tension is between the banality of evil and the audience's demands for justice and structure."

I'll buy that for a dollar.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 11:52 AM

I happen to sort-of agree with Petey on the specifics of this episode. But a guy who thinks Edwards is a lock in the general election and Isiah is a good GM shouldn't go around calling our Harvard-boy host a moron.

Posted by too many steves | June 11, 2007 11:57 AM

I want to resist the contrast with Tolstoy for a minute: Anna Karenina doesn't end with Anna's suicide; it ends with Levin (the other protagonist) at a very Tony-like moment, trying to figure out what it all means. And we don't know what happens to him or his family in the end at all.

Posted by Tim | June 11, 2007 11:58 AM

"But a guy who thinks Edwards is a lock in the general election and Isiah is a good GM..."

Edwards is a lock in the general election. Everyone already knows that. It's the primaries that are an uphill struggle.

And my position on Zeke has always been that he's had hits and misses as the Knicks GM - his broad gameplan is sound, but the execution has been spotty - but that's he's an above average coach.

"...shouldn't go around calling our Harvard-boy host a moron."

I went to a better school than Harvard.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 12:00 PM

Petey, is this all some kind of a sly goof for you, or are you really the pretentious, supercilious asshole you're coming across as here?

Petey is the kind of guy who would tell Kurt Vonnegut he didn't know a thing about Kurt Vonnegut.

Posted by Steve | June 11, 2007 12:05 PM

I think the show is brilliant. But I'm perfectly willing to accept the taste of someone who understands what the show is doing and doesn't like it.

My withering hail of contempt is reserved for folks who don't get what's going on with the show but think that they do.

OK, fair enough so far as it goes, though "withering" is a rather self-important way to describe oneself. But by repeatedly insinuating that anybody who "doesn't like" the ending are people "who don't get what's going on", you're trying to have your cake and eat it too, no?

Posted by Evan McElravy | June 11, 2007 12:06 PM

I think Petey's pretty much right on. The Sopranos is probably the most elitist show that has ever run on television. It is certainly more "highbrow" than a fairly conventional narrative like, oh, Anna Karenina. If you did not watch every single episode carefully you definitely do not know what was going on, and you have no basis from which to criticize the finale. Anyone claiming that Lemieux, Petey or others are "reading into the show", the way desperate academics claim that Gilligan's Island is an allegory for Marxism, or search for subtext in Star Wars, is clearly not paying attention. Which is not to say Sopranos is the greatest work of art of all time by any means. Like any ambitious creative work, it fails occasionally, it overreaches, it has many flaws. Personally I find Sopranos too negative and bleak to really be a work of art I can really love. I prefer something life-affirming like Anna Karenina too, but I also don't think "middlebrow" is necessarily an epithet. But if you can't offer criticms more trenchant than "it was a copout!" or, even sillier, "there was no conclusion!", really you should just be quiet.

Posted by vanya | June 11, 2007 12:06 PM

"Petey is the kind of guy who would tell Kurt Vonnegut he didn't know a thing about Kurt Vonnegut."

Of course Kurt Vonnegut doesn't know a thing about Kurt Vonnegut. Dude's dead. The dead don't know nothing about nothing.

Even zombies are pretty dim, hence the constant need for brains.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 12:08 PM

"And we don't know what happens to him or his family in the end at all."

Sure we do. Levin has gained the world, in the very best bourgeois sense, but lost his soul. Tolstoy was a fucking mystical Christian, and Levin is the toughest most challenging example of the banality of evil in literature. AK is so highbrow that highbrows think it's middlebrow. Over the head of everyone but saints and mystics.

I usually think Levin is the important half of the book, but then I figure I am missing a point sommewhere.

Posted by bob mcmanus | June 11, 2007 12:08 PM

I'm with Petey (minus the contempt; lots of brilliant people decline to think hard about TV).

But one addition: the show begins with a panic attack, so it may end with one as well.

This is not inconsistent with Chase's comments. The show is about therapy, not the mob.

Posted by awc | June 11, 2007 12:08 PM

I was the one who described Petey's withering hail of contempt; he was just quoting me back to myself.

Posted by Quarterican | June 11, 2007 12:11 PM

Petey's contempt for plot is shared by many a "high-brow" artist and academic. That said, I believe that his interpretation of the final scene is the only reasonable one.

Tony checks the door, but it's obvious he's just looking for Carmela or AJ to walk in. The camera focuses on various people in the restaurant, but when we see Tony, he's watching the menu. And what about Meadow and her parallel parking problem? Tony can't possibly be watching that. Only the camera is. Or when she dashes across the street and we see a car come rushing toward her, only to realize that it's a trick of the perspective and the car is well behind her?

This is the sort of thing I call psuedo drama--momentary of tension with no impact on plot or story. Of course, Chase is doing this on purpose and it's all just a joke on the audience. I'm not a big fan of that sort of thing.

When Petey says the Soprano's has never been about plot, well, perhaps Chase would like to agree with that statement, but I find it absurd. If it's never been about plot then why so much plot? Why so much sex and violence and mellodrama? Just to get the rubes to watch so Chase can continue to focus on his non-plot artistic expression? The idea is absurd. The Sopranos may take a non-traditional approach to plot resolution, but plot is certainly what it's all about.

Posted by Rob Mac | June 11, 2007 12:18 PM

"Personally I find Sopranos too negative and bleak to really be a work of art I can really love."

No doubt that all the episodes that come after 9/11 are bleak. (The show was more optimistic before that.) And the last couple of seasons fall directly in Godfather Part II uber-bleak territory - a movie which wasn't all that easy to sit through itself.

But the black humor sprinkled throughout the show helps the bleakness go down smoothly. It may be a show about depression, but I always felt happy watching it.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 12:23 PM

"If it's never been about plot then why so much plot?"

I'm an enormous fan of the Coen brothers, and their movies have more plot in them than most movies ever made. But despite the abundance of plot, their movies are never actually about the plot.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 12:31 PM

It was a brilliant ending. Like this guy says:
http://heywriterboy.blogspot.com/2007/06/dont-stop.html

Posted by bubba | June 11, 2007 12:32 PM

"If it's never been about plot then why so much plot? Why so much sex and violence and mellodrama?"

You think there was "plot" in the Sopranos?

Nah, narratives and Perl's (Husserl + Zen?) structure-hunger, this is getting to be too much like work for which I am not qualified.

40th anniversary of the Beatles's Sgt Pepper a while ago. I always liked Harrison's "life flows on within you and without you."

Posted by bob mcmanus | June 11, 2007 12:34 PM

The correct interpretation of the ending is apparently that both David Chase and Petey are smarter than you. On the other hand, disdaining character and plot is a distinctly juvenile affectation that limits ones ability to enjoy narrative art as much as overinvestment in character and plot in art where those are secondary. (Michael Bay is, however, evil.) You have to be able to tell the difference in the creator's intent. And Chase certainly started out, at least, interested in some of his characters.

If it matters, I happen to agree that the show reached its climax when Tony killed Christopher. But these last couple episodes' worth of epilogue were lame and didn't add much, mainly because Seasons 6a and 6b were mostly lame and didn't add much. For me the show was never entirely about Tony; it was about Tony, Carmela, and Christopher. Carmela in particular was almost completely neglected for the last two seasons, and especially in 6b. Chase just couldn't find any more interest in her.

Further, if David Chase really did hate his audience for the way they liked his show from Season 3 on, real respect for his art would have dictated that he end the thing with Season 4. Unless you're so naive as to believe he continued to make it for "me and perhaps a few dozen others as brilliant and perceptive as me."

Finally, Petey, if the final scene had the meaning you ascribe to it (and I think you're probably right about Chase's intent there, actually), then the sudden black screen was a gimmick that added absolutely nothing.

Posted by Antid Oto | June 11, 2007 12:44 PM

Let me try to make this clear. Right now I am listening to John Fahey play a Christmas Carol on guitar while my dogs are trying to get to take them for a walk. The dogs don't hear the melody, for them it is just one damn thing after another, regardless of what Fahey intended.

The dogs are not "wrong."

Posted by bob mcmanus | June 11, 2007 12:44 PM

Carmela in particular was almost completely neglected for the last two seasons, and especially in 6b.

That's because Carmela blew her last chance at redemption when she took Tony back at the end of Season 5.

Posted by Chris Conway | June 11, 2007 12:51 PM

"Levin has gained the world, in the very best bourgeois sense, but lost his soul. Tolstoy was a fucking mystical Christian, and Levin is the toughest most challenging example of the banality of evil in literature. AK is so highbrow that highbrows think it's middlebrow. Over the head of everyone but saints and mystics.

I usually think Levin is the important half of the book, but then I figure I am missing a point sommewhere."

Now who's adding subtext that isn't there. You're right that Levin is the important half of the book - he clearly represents the author (it's not even subtlet "Lev Tolstoy = "Levin", and "Levin" in Russian also means "of Lev", i.e. Leo's). And Levin's spiritual quest is probably the part that Oprah book club readers and Matt Yglesias probably skip over, but it's a stretch to say he "sells his soul" - the mystical Tolstoy of later years would probably agree with you, but the younger Tolstoy who actually wrote the book seems to be saying that life goes ever on, and only in the eternal verites of rural family life, far from the intellectual and material temptations of the false city, can one find faith in God, as Levin does. Pretty damn middlebrow. Your reading is more interesting, but I don't see where the text justifies it.

Posted by vanya | June 11, 2007 12:51 PM

That's because Carmela blew her last chance at redemption

And she couldn't have any more why?

Posted by Antid Oto | June 11, 2007 12:55 PM

The dogs are not "wrong."

This is genius, Bob.

Posted by Steve | June 11, 2007 12:56 PM

I reallly don't understand this logic that goes, "The Sopranos is like a really great novel. All novels have a beginning, middle, and end. QED, the Sopranos must have a resolution at the end."

The Sopranos is (was!) a TV show. It's episodic. Not every episode advanced the narrative arc. There were lots of asides and digressions about Artie Bucco cooking rabbits, etc. You can't compare it to a novel or an 86-hour movie. It just wasn't structured like that.

To naively compare it to a movie or novel and then fault it for not conforming to your flawed comparison is just silly.

"Cheers" ended with Sam closing the bar for the night. But he didn't close it down, he was going to come back and re-open it in the morning. "Seinfeld" ended up with the gang in jail, but quibbling with each other over stupid things like always. The end of good TV shows is often ambiguous.

I loved it for what it was: a great TV show. 86 awesome one-hour movies that often involed the same characters and collectively formed an interesting, textured tableau of life in the NJ mafia and suburbs.

Posted by Frank Bruno | June 11, 2007 1:05 PM

Why are you so concerned with "middlebrow" vs "highbrow" et al?

It seems so collegiate of you...

Posted by tfo | June 11, 2007 1:12 PM

In terms of the ending, de Gustibus non disputatum est; I agree that the neat endings aren't necessarily "middlebrow" (although I think the idea that such an ending is necessary is.) For me, the ending was consistent worth the logic of the show and also effective on its own terms. On the Stockholm Syndrome charge, I'm on the record as saying that the 6A dream sequence episodes are as bad or worse as you've argued...

Posted by Scott Lemieux | June 11, 2007 1:18 PM

"That's because Carmela blew her last chance at redemption

And she couldn't have any more why?"

Well, I suppose she could have, but it would have gotten repetitive. In Season 3 she was told, in no uncertain terms, that leaving Tony and his "blood money" was her only chance for redemption. A season later, she finally got up the gumption to leave him. After she took him back, the game was over: the writers decided not to give her another "leave Tony/take Tony back cycle" and instead she spent the rest of the series locked into her oblivious materialism (which was underscored in the last episode with a shot of her paging through a home decorating catalog).

It sas probably a mistake to "climax" her storyline so early. I agree that she was underused in the last season. (Though I really enjoyed her trip to Europe.)

Posted by Chris Conway | June 11, 2007 1:19 PM

"In terms of the ending, de Gustibus non disputatum est"

As always, just because there's no disputing taste doesn't mean some taste isn't better than others.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 1:24 PM

P.S.: This obsession with AK is bizarre -- the only reason it is regarded as highbrow is because it is so fucking long that no one ever gets through the whole tedious thing. It is a very traditional, very well-done narrative.

If you want highbrow, start talking about something everyone can argue about without ever actually reading, Finnegans Wake.

Posted by tfo | June 11, 2007 1:29 PM

"If you want highbrow, start talking about something everyone can argue about without ever actually reading, Finnegans Wake."

Or even better, take Dostoyevsky, who is genuinely highbrow despite having written as a lowbrow.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 1:35 PM

Frank Bruno:

"The Sopranos is (was!) a TV show. It's episodic. Not every episode advanced the narrative arc... To naively compare it to a movie or novel..."

To be fair, since Hill Street Blues, most TV dramas (with the deliberate exception of Law & Order, where Dick Wolf aimed all along at syndication) have combined episodic stories with (usually) season-length narrative arcs, and longer, series-length character arcs. There's nothing low-brow about keeping those three balls in the air over the course of a well-written TV series.

The Sopranos maintained that convention, for the most part, except for the character arcs. Instead of arcs, you got more layers of detail, because none of the characters grew. You also got, IMO, characters becoming reconciled to their fates. By the end of last night's episode, Tony didn't seem upset that Meadow went from med school ambitions to mob lawyering ambitions; Tony also seemed grateful that he had saved his son.

Posted by Fred | June 11, 2007 1:37 PM

Chris Conway: That does help crystallize a lot of my feelings about why the last two half-seasons have been so dissatisfying. Carmela was the only character with a real moral choice to make. She made it. Show should have ended there.

Posted by Antid Oto | June 11, 2007 1:50 PM

someone upthread mentioned the final black-out as the gimmick. i somewhat agree---i was of the opinion that the show "ended" several episodes ago. i'm not so sure what they added thematically following Tony's post-Christopher, peyote-induced catharsis in Vegas. to me, the whole show revolved around that relationship---it was crucial for both forwarding the plot as well as the meta-theme re: depression. say what you will about chase as a storyteller, but the man knows depression and therapy, which is what the show was really about anyway. (which he really drove home with AJ's character development). That last scene in the desert w/ Tony was the right note to end the series. what occured afterward was post-climactic from a thematic standpoint. (I think Petey noted this upthread but we may have different reasons for believing so.)

Posted by benjamin | June 11, 2007 1:53 PM

Dostoevsky has absolutely ripping and fascinating and engaging yarns for plots - murders, betrayals, hookers w/hearts of gold, family secrets, political rebels, etc. Really juicy stuff.

But the "plot" is not the point of any Dostoevsky that I've read (Notes, C&P, Demons, Bros. K; maybe The Idiot is all about the plot).

BTW, I endorse Fred's take on the structure of The Sopranos; over the last decade more and more shows have embraced the potential inherent in not only telling weekly one hour stories, but sustaining and building on them with both season-long and show-long arcs. And, as the characters on this show don't change, Fred's right: they deepen. Over the, what, 90-something episodes, Tony has become probably the most richly drawn character in the history of the filmed medium.

Posted by Quarterican | June 11, 2007 1:55 PM

""If your defense of the show is a commentary on how Chase tells the story, INSTEAD OF THE STORY ITSELF, you can't really claim to be interested in the actual show."

You're kinda dim, if you actually believe this."

Let me see if I can explain this in simple enough terms for you to understand. Someone interested in the actual show is interested in what happens to Tony and company. Someone who views The Sopranos as a chance to bow before the genius of Chase and pat themselves on the back for "getting it", doesn't care about the show. You'd be just as happy watching David Chase being interviewed about The Sopranos as you would be watching the actual show.

I see someone else already touched on the juvenile denigration of plot by folks too much in love with their own supposed intelligence.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | June 11, 2007 2:11 PM

I agree with Petey, as others have, but I'm curious about peoples immediate reactions after the credits rolled.

I laughed out loud and had a smile on my face for 15 minutes. I really viscerally enjoyed it. I have read that others have laughed, but many more cursed.

I'm guessing your reactions says a lot about how you saw the purpose of the last 6 seasons.

Posted by Rich | June 11, 2007 2:15 PM

benjamin said:

i was of the opinion that the show "ended" several episodes ago. i'm not so sure what they added thematically following Tony's post-Christopher, peyote-induced catharsis in Vegas.

I think this is correct, as far as it can be said that the show ever had an ending. Mostly, it seems to me that the decision was made to end the show for various creative and business reasons, -- ultimately, you can't continue a high-quality franchise of that nature indefinitely.

Unless, you know, you have all your actors, directors, etc BOUND TO YOU BY OATH AND BLOOD.

Posted by tfo | June 11, 2007 2:17 PM

MBunge:

My entire sense of self-worth is deeply tied to whether my appreciation of television/music/pr0n is seens as proper.

Posted by tfo | June 11, 2007 2:23 PM

re: the above typo.

OOPS.

Posted by tfo | June 11, 2007 2:24 PM

"I'm curious about peoples immediate reactions after the credits rolled. I laughed out loud and had a smile on my face for 15 minutes. I really viscerally enjoyed it."

Yup. As far as my reaction went, you've hit the nail on the head.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 2:52 PM

The final, restaurant scene has been so thoroughly discussed that I see little point in discussing it. (Suffice it to say that there is a certain "Emperor's New Clothes" quality to the esoteric celebration of Chase's "genius." Furthermore, not only is Anna Karenina highbrow; but, if you think otherwise, then you're not.)

Rather, I'd like to state that the ending was but the final straw in a show that, overall, was disappointing:

The crime war lacked all drama. It just arbitrarily fizzled out. The prior show had suggested Tony was on the ropes, but New York just caves in.
The thing about the cat was weird.
A.J. was the least interesting member of the Soprano family but the focus of this show.
Pauli was the least interesting member of the crime family, but - once again - got a big role.
The business about Janice was boring.
The entire show dragged. E.g., the scene with Phil and at least one of the scenes with Junior could have been cut entirely.

So, no, I don't get Chase's esoterica - and if that makes me "lowbrow," then I shall make the most of it.

Posted by Duncan Kinder | June 11, 2007 3:09 PM

"My entire sense of self-worth is deeply tied to whether my appreciation of television/music/pr0n is seens as proper."

You can appreciate what you want any way you want it.

Mike

Posted by MBunge | June 11, 2007 3:35 PM

Duncan,

Thinking AK is "highbrow" only reveals your shocking ignorance of Russian 19th century literary culture. Tolstoy would have been amused. However, I suppose learning Russian to read Anna Karenin in the original is arguably a "highbrow" approach to the novel (if the student is not Russian), and I assume you've done so.

Posted by vanya | June 11, 2007 3:38 PM

Isn't this high-brow/low-brow dichotomy a fairly recent and modern invention? Was Aeschylus considered high-brow in ancient Athens, or a night out at the theater? What about Shakespeare in Elizabethan England?

My guess is that folks in earlier times left the question of high-brow/low-brow to posterity and used other means to signify their status, e.g., how many slaves they had, or how much land they owned, etc.

Posted by Fred | June 11, 2007 3:53 PM

Fred -- I think you're agreeing with me, so thanks.

There's a natural tension between having an arc and being able to deviate from it from time to time. LOST for example, is very intentionally trying to be a 100-hour movie. But even they stray for some one-off "filler" episodes.

Chase has explicitly stated that he wanted to combine larger story arcs with one-off, self-contained episodes.

That said, we got a LOT of character resolution here: Meadow, AJ, the Tony-Junior drama that's been building since Season 1, etc. I found the last few episodes incredibly satisfying for what they were.

Posted by Frank Bruno | June 11, 2007 3:58 PM

"Isn't this high-brow/low-brow dichotomy a fairly recent and modern invention? "

No.

"What about Shakespeare in Elizabethan England?"

Low-brow.

Posted by Petey | June 11, 2007 5:16 PM

""Isn't this high-brow/low-brow dichotomy a fairly recent and modern invention? "

No."

If Shakespeare was low-brow, what was high-brow? What would fit the low-brow/high-brow distinction from ancient Greece or the late 19th century? Was Da Vinci or Michelangelo low-brow or high-brow or both? How about Homer? Was Emily Dickinson low-brow poetry? Robert Frost?

Mike

Posted by MBunge | June 11, 2007 5:22 PM

"Isn't this high-brow/low-brow dichotomy a fairly recent and modern invention? "

No."

The words date from the late 1800s. Post-phrenology, that is. I'm relatively confident that the distinction more generally between high and popular culture comes from the Romantics (who valued the latter) in the early- to mid-1800s.

Posted by Antid Oto | June 11, 2007 5:35 PM

if you're surprised by an apparently anticlimactic ending, you weren't watching the show carefully enough over the course of its run. A definitive conclusion would have been a big surprise of artistic misdirection

This and the other comments that suggest that this just is the way the show has operated surprise me, and strike me as rather revisionist.

The first several seasons had fairly definitive "Will they get killed/pinched/etc" story arcs. In the season finale of Season 1, Junior gets pinched. Season 2, Big Pussy is shot; season 3, Jackie Jr; season 5, Adriana (2nd to last episode). These were all actual conclusions to long-running story arcs. Even in season 4, the decision not to hit Carmine (as expected) was a conclusion. There were other end-of-season conclusions, like Furio leaving and Carmella ending her possible dalliance with Father Whatshisname.

It is only in the last two seasons that the writing has become meandering, and, at times, rather lazy.

In this season, for example, both Chris killing JT and Tony killing Chris were deeply out of character, cheap tricks to distance the viewer from the characters, making them less morally ambiguous (and therefore less interesting) than in previous seasons.

Personally, I read the entire episode as Tony (and, by extension, the mob's) continuing slide into irrelevence. Everything we see is outdated, from Uncle Junior and his senility, to the superstitions about cats, to Agent Harris' flagging interest in Tony's business, to that epic final scene, where they are sitting in a relic of a diner listening to Journey, every motion was toward feeling that the show, and the characters, had become dated. Frankly, the black-screen ending just seemed like a way to express that the writers didn't care about the characters they had invented anymore.

So why should we?

Posted by Brad L | June 11, 2007 6:01 PM

What was with the lame Journey karaoke song at the end? Was Livin On A Prayer not available? Summer Nights?

Posted by Random Dude | June 11, 2007 6:20 PM

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