Bullshit

I wouldn't lie to you and your 6 or 7 lines of unnecessary space between quotes.

Go find the Season 1 thread.

The finale was shit upon pretty heavily.

I've since changed my opinion on this. I've watched that last scene at least twenty times and I now think Chase made it very obvious that Tony was killed. However, I also understand people who hated the ending or those who aren't sure what happened. If he really wanted to kill Tony he could have made it more clear. I do think he left himself an out.

The Seinfeld finale was fine. That wasn't a show designed for a big shocking finale. The funny thing is that people seemingly wanted the finale to be different than the rest of the show was.

The show was really about three things.
1) Mundane every day things and the absurdity of it.
2) Great secondary characters.
3) All of them being bad but not evil people.

The finale nailed those three things.

The dopes are the ones that wanted it to end with Jerry and Elaine getting married or for them to become rich tv stars.

redirecting this from the TD thread JORR just bumped.

what i hated most about what happened to "the sopranos" was that chase was put in a bad position for a writer. he could've owned up to that. HBO didn't want to let this show go, so they wanted it to keep it continue. then he started acting like this was his plan all along. i think it's all just a copout. he knew he had to end with tony dying, that was the whole plan from the beginning. but now that it was so painfully obvious that's how it had to happen, he tried to get cute with it. and then tried to play it off like "well, maybe that's not what happened!"

i'm sure he made enough money to not lose sleep over it, but as a writer he should be ashamed of himself for trying to cover up his own sell out.

Or are we supposed to believe that New York will sit down for a truce, then break it in the next couple of days to kill a boss?

i've watched the finale 3 times since its initial airing in 1998 and my opinion has never changed. it was badly written. that's because it was written by larry david, who apparently still had an ax to grind with the show that made him a millionaire. seinfeld should not have let david come back to write it. they had taken the show in goofier directions that served the latter half better once david wanted to let the show go off the rails in the 7th season, culminating in killing Susan off.
.

Yes.

They were acting shady in that meeting, too. I always assumed MOG was sent by the new power in NY.

Im unclear who is "they" and the "latter half" here

Then it is a poorly supported ending, not in keeping with any narrative theme brought up in that season or in any other. People who cling to the "But Bobby said 'you probably never hear it coming.'" are just as bad as those who think Tony would still be trudging down to get the morning paper. Picking up the thread of a single line from a handful of episodes ago is not neatly wrapping up a plot

If even once that season they had broached the topic of a soldier not obeying orders to stand down, or New York actively subverting a freshly agreed-to truce, then I'd buy it. However as it stands, none of the MOB theories are properly supported by the narrative, which supersedes the cinematography of the ending to make it a poorly thought out, bad, ending to a drama.

No, the Tony might be alive people are wrong and the people bringing up the Bobby thing are just pointing out the obvious foreshadowing that Chase threw in.


You keep referring to not obeying orders. That's not what happened. You're one of the only people I've ever heard think it was an old Phil order. Most people think it was the new guys taking over the NY crew or some other living breathing enemy of Tony. THAT had precedent in the show. NY was constantly looking down on NJ and truces were broken routinely.

What truces were broken by New York earlier in the series? To my knowledge that was the first and only time Tony was depicted in and resolving a war with another family. Phil killing Vito was not acting counter to a previously agreed-upon truce, and though it remains unsaid, it is implied that Tony was the one who gave up Vito to Phil. Blundetto killing Peeps (because Tony was keeping him on the proverbial bench) and then Billy Leotardo (in retaliation for Johnny Sack killing Angelo) wasn't breaking an armistice. In fact in the next season after Johnny Sack gets pinched, Phil tells him during a visit in lockup that he is abiding by the truce Johnny and Tony agreed to the morning Sack got nabbed by the FBI raid, and that remains true all the way up until Phil goes to war with Tony.

When I watched the ending, I hated it. Within a few days, it made more sense, but I still think it was overly artsy and too suggestive. He died. Perfectly fine and would have preferred to them showing him being shot or something and then cutting to black.

What drove me nuts (argh) about the show is how they just kept leaving open story lines. I recall reading an interview with Vince Gilligan about Breaking Bad and he specifically mentioned one of the worst things you can do with a show is leave unresolved storylines out there. The Sopranos did that for numerous seasons and it clearly showed they were milking the show to drag it out longer. Total shame....it started out as a great show.

That's not really a steadfast rule though. A lot of writers would disagree with that, obviously including David Chase. One of his writers, the guy that went on to do Boardwalk Empire, really wanted them to wrap up the Russian in Pine Barrens story line, and Chase thought the episode and story would be better if left unresolved. He was probably right. That's now one of the most famous episodes of the whole series.

Life is full of "unresolved storylines." That's something Chase got absolutely right (along with his overarching thesis that people are virtually irreparable shitheads). The Russian coming back in the finale would have been so hokey.

And yeah, the ending was artsy. That's the point. If The Sopranos had run on CBS after back-to-back episodes of Kevin James Is Some Fat genius or whatever, I'm sure America would have had the finale adequately explained.

That's not really a steadfast rule though. A lot of writers would disagree with that, obviously including David Chase. One of his writers, the guy that went on to do Boardwalk Empire, really wanted them to wrap up the Russian in Pine Barrens story line, and Chase thought the episode and story would be better if left unresolved. He was probably right. That's now one of the most famous episodes of the whole series.

Christopher: Could be him out there, stalking us.

Paulie: With what, his cock?

That was the only good episode that season, they came back after that episode and never really followed up anything from it. That's when I started losing interest in The Sopranos