FMC 3.0

This thing may or may not contain spoilers. You have been warned.

Wow. 2.33 outta 5. I will admit that when the credits started to roll, the first words out of my mouth were “What. The. Fuck?”. That came shortly after the screen went black and I said “David Chase wouldn’t…” (Which my father followed up with “Yes, the mother fucker would.” - can you tell the Sopranos have worn off on us?)

At first I was kinda ticked. That would be yet another show to end this year that didn’t come to a conclusion (Stargate SG-1 winning that award first. Wait, has that finale aired on Sci-Fi yet? Sorry if that was a spoiler, but trust me, you’ll be pissed.) I was formulating this rant in my head about how PC Hollywood has gotten that they don’t want to offend any predictions so they just go for zero closure. I’d only been that ticked by an ending of a show ever, and that was Farscape. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, suffice it to say I boycotted the Sci-Fi channel a long, long time after that happened (well, till they green-lit PeaceKeeper Wars.) There were some obvious plot points hashed out, and one or two interesting moves. But it was mostly filler without closure. I wasn’t a happy camper.

So, I’m mulling this over in my head while watching John from Cincinnati, the next HBO drama to start (it came on right after the Sopranos. It has potential.) Anyway, about half way through I started not to hate the ending of the Sopranos. It started to fit.

The last sequence is Tony waiting for his family in a restaurant. One by one they meet up there. There’s tension building. Tony watches every person that comes through the door. He’s look at them, looking over his shoulder. Always alert. Carmella comes in, and he’s chatting, and still watching. AJ walks in (I was right about that, Emo boy stopped crying) with a guy on his tail that looks shady. Shady guy sits at the bar. Last we have meadow, trying to parallel park her car out front. The scenes cut between the family at the table shooting the shit, Tony keeping an eye out, and Meadow trying to Park. This description isn’t doing this justice, but the scene is just building this crescendo of tension - going back and forth between the resturant and the parking lot. The shady guy heads for the restroom. You don’t know if he’s about to come out blazing, or if the place is about to get blown sky high, or what. At this point anything is possible. Meadow finally parks her car, and heads into the resturant. You can feel it, something big is coming. 6 seasons of this family has come to this moment, something big is coming. Meadow walks up to the resturant, goes inside the door, and…

nothing. blackness. silence. That stays on the screen about 30-45 seconds, and the credits roll.

You may now understand why I was pretty ticked at 10:02 PM. But the more I thought about it, it fits. So long as he’s alive, Tony will never know whats around the corner. It could be a jail cell, it could be an assassin. The rest of their existence is going to be that very moment. Trying to hold together this rather fucked up family, and always looking over shoulders.

At first I thought that they just didn’t have the balls to make and ending, and would just leave it open. Now I think that was the point - to leave you in that adrenaline pumped shape, not knowing what’s coming. That’s the bleakness of the existence the Soprano family has to look forward to.

I’m sure this discussion will continue on for days. Weeks even, as there are lots of fans of this show. It seems amazing that show could garner such a large and devoted following in only 86 episodes. I’m not sure what else HBO can conjure up to take its place. For a while I thought Rome would be it, but it was too expensive, and the BBC pulled out of the deal. But there will always be more stuff down the pike.