Fuck the arena-rock scored ending, I’m here to complain about the rest of the show.
Going into last night’s overly hyped finale of the Sopranos, the only television drama I have ever seen every episode of, I honestly did not want to see any of the following scenarios play out…
a. Tony gets whacked by the New York crew, abruptly or climactically.
b. Tony snitches to his friends in the F.B.I., relocates Henry Hill style.
c. New Jersey triumphs over New York, the remaining Sopranos crew live to tell about it.
d. Tony meets his maker within his own kin, either Carmela, A.J., Janice, etc…
Of course I left out Paulie snitching/turning, a Newhart esq. “it was all a dream” sequence, or the countless other predictions made on talk radio and fan blogs in the week leading up to the finale. When people asked me my prediction, the response was simple. “I don’t really have one, it’s almost irrelevant, I just want the show to be good.” Ever since an almost flawless first three seasons, the show has traded off good and bad years in my mind, leading up to the final slate of nine episodes that for the most part didn’t disappoint. The last episode was one of my favorite ever, albeit it had a high hit count, but more because it was perfect from beginning to end.
Last night’s episode, however, was far from it. From the moment it began, I patiently awaited a perfectly structured narrative to unravel before my eyes, hoping that David Chase could pull of a finale which didn’t adhere to any cliché prediction, but at the same time, left me thoroughly entertained and satisfied. I know a straight forward narrative is not the man’s style, but he has proven on many occasions his capability to tell a good story. A half an hour into the show, my patience and faith in the finale seriously began to dwindle. When the clock reached 8:50, I knew there was very little chance that the episode’s ending, no matter what it was, could save what I felt about the entire finale.
And then…the ending that everybody just can’t stop talking about. The uneasy tension of Tony waiting for his family at a dingy diner, a place which prior to this episode, we never thought the Soprano clan would be caught dead in (and after the black screen, maybe they were). A majority of fans were left frustrated that Chase left everything up to interpretation, and a few even insulted that he tried to trick them into thinking their cable went out. His decision not to use any exit music was as if he wanted dead silence to resonate in every living room across the country. Me, I wasn’t at all shocked. It was a typical of a guy who probably secretly hates a majority of the lowbrow mafia movie fans who have come to embrace his show just for the…whacking.
But my beef wasn’t really with those final four minutes, as the title of this column states. To me, most people who view television and film make too big of a deal over how the show or movie ends. It’s almost as if an entire film can suck, and as long as the ending is amazing, none of that matters anymore. I really don’t understand that logic one bit. Nor would I deduct points from a really good Sopranos episode if the ending left something to the imagination. But this was perhaps, in all honestly, one of the dullest, poorly written, directed and in one character’s case, acted episodes of the show’s entire run. And that is what people should really be complaining about, the first fifty minutes, not the final four.
Where do I begin? Well first off, the episode obviously threw narrative out of the window, by stringing together what felt like 50 one-minute scenes, which when viewed on their own, feel rushed and underdeveloped. Whether it was Paulie complaining about a curious cat or Meadow having another (and repetitive) convo with Tony about social inequalities, I really wish they could have done something fresher that actually had a cause and effect. It’s one thing for Chase to make sure not every storyline is wrapped with a bow on it, it’s another to make sure none are resolved.
If I had to boil it down to one thing that really angered me about the episode, and honestly, the Sopranos in general, is the amount of attention that was placed on A.J., Tony’s always troubled son. More like inconsistent. In my view, this character was the most poorly developed in the show’s whole cast, and he happens to play the patriarch’s only son. It’s not because I dislike his character. I can’t stand Janice, but yearn for her scenes sometimes. A.J. is just a horribly inconsistent, overly obnoxious, befuddled character, and what makes it even worse is how awful an actor Robert Iller is. None of his rambling rants, when he attempts to justify his means, ever sound slightly believable, almost as if Chase’s signature dialogue is too hard for him to express. I guess when you hire an actor at age 10; it’s hard to predict if he’s got the chops to carry such a complex character past his adolescence.
There were few things I liked. The only scene I really enjoyed was when Tony visited Uncle Junior, who has become such a shell of him former self, his only response to being informed that he used to North Jersey was, “that sounds nice.” Other than that really, the first 50 minutes of Sopranos, the bulk of my favorite drama’s final episode, was one of its worst. As for the ending, I wasn’t crazy about it. But if the content of what led into it was all the more better, who knows, maybe I could deal with the fact that Chase decided to end Sopranos on these two final notes.
a. Meadow can’t parallel park
b. The Sopranos eat their onion rings whole
Wow, that list is a lot different from what everyone else predicted. Mission accomplished…I guess.
And as for those who praise the ending for its build-up and originality…it’s called suspense people. Alfred Hitchcock and countless horror directors have been doing it for years, and were able to make my heart pump a lot faster than that ending ever could.
