The Sopranos: Season Six, Episode 21 (Don’t Stop Believing)
A tv post by matt, posted on June 10, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Was it just me, or did anyone else’s cable go out for a few seconds right at the end of this episode?
A special bonus recap! Spoilers for “Made in America” below.
In One Word
First, in one word: disappointing.
(But maybe that was that point.)
The Sopranos versus the Fake Sopranos
The Sopranos has never been an easy show. For a lot of its run, I felt like it has existed in parallel with some alternate mobster show. In this other Sopranos, people get ‘whacked’ all the time, and the whole series centers around violence, sex, swearing and funny Italian words for things. And a lot of viewers of the real Sopranos have tended to confuse this alternate show with the real-life one, to the point where they’d watch every season of the real Sopranos and then complain, loudly, about how “nothing is happening!”
These viewers would always confuse me, because they’d never been given any reason to believe that the show should be like what they seemingly hoped it would be each and every season. This is a show that focuses on psychiatry almost as much as it focuses on mob living. And, hell, it focuses on family more than those two things combined. It was never — in concept or execution — Goodfellas on TV. But, I guess, that didn’t stop some people from hoping it some day would become exactly that.
Season Six And Defying Expectations
I say that because I imagine there’s going to be a lot of people pissed about this episode. In sixty minutes, pretty much every bit of plot with momentum behind it was silently defused through little more than conversations around tables. Meanwhile, I imagines some people’s ideas for this episode involved Furio returning and teaming up with The Russian to help Tony and his crew go to war with New York. (And all throughout we’d wonder ‘But are they really on the right side?’)
Of course, that wasn’t what we got. Because that would be stupid. But even what we did get was far removed from what any reasonable person could have expected.
Creator David Chase had a lot of fun with his audience this season. Despite constant assurances in pre-season interviews that there would not be some cataclysmic finale, he dropped enough hints in the very character-driven run-up to the series finale that, perhaps, there would be some final showdown that even the most hardened and realist viewers were probably doubting themselves.
Hell, they killed Christopher, they killed Bobby, they almost killed Syl. It didn’t seem all that inconceivable that Tony could be next. Or maybe that Tony, alone in the world, would flip to the FBI. In either case, or other cases, the series felt ripe for a big cinematic finale, the kind that wraps everything up with a nice little bow.
But that didn’t happen
Tonight’s episode was the series finale, but it wasn’t the end of anything. Chase’s chosen arc for this season was never about endings, because life is never about endings, really. It just ends, often suddenly, at some point, and people eventually move on.
Chase used television and mob movie conventions to make the viewer feel like all these threads were converging together, combining into some glorious pastiche of mob war and family strife and glorious death. When Tony fell asleep with the gun on his lap last episode, we expected that to be the image that took us to our finale, but ultimately that was a powerful, iconic image that meant almost nothing. Tony never fired that gun — or any gun — in this episode.
If the end was a let down, I’d argue that it was meant to be a let down. Because that’s what Tony’s life has been: a series of build-ups with no pay-offs, an ending cycle of violence and depression all building toward essentially nothing. His best end is a pathetic one, taken down by federal authorities, or shot in the head at a gas station like Phil Leotardo.
If that seems existential then, well, that’s The Sopranos, isn’t it?
But disappointing anyway
There was a lot about this episode that I liked a lot. It was exceptionally well written, with some conversations that alluded to all sorts of events from the history of the show. Tony’s conversation with an extremely senile Uncle Junior, in particular, was one of my favourites of the season, precisely because it hit on exactly what Chase wanted to say with this episode (and, I’d argue, the season as a whole): nothing Tony has done has mattered or will ever matter. He’s just a thug.
Kudos to Gandolfini, as well, for portraying such a tragic, pathetic yet somehow noble character. His conversation with Meadow was another great scene in the episode, as it ended with an audible silence, wherein you could tell that maybe even Tony wanted to tell his daughter that he’s not much more than just a bad guy, and that he doesn’t deserve much in the way of justice.
All that said, though, Chase’s direction in this episode pretty much sucked. The black screen at the end was cute, sure, but most of the cuts between scenes were jarring. It was very amateurish throughout, with characters seeming like they had teleported or walked at a high rate of speed in between shots. It felt rushed and awkward and did nothing to give the episode any kind of holistic feeling.
A missed opportunity
Still, though, it wasn’t bad. Looking back, I don’t know what kind of ending I would have hoped for. Going in, I was one of those people hoping for all-out action scenes. By the end, I just felt empty. The episode worked — I don’t doubt that — but it should have been stronger. With a few tweaks, and maybe another half hour or so, it really could have been something special. As it was, it was good, but it will never make anybody’s Top 10 Episodes list.
They hit the big scene they needed to hit, though. When Tony was walking out in his backyard, he heard a duck quack. And then he looked up in the sky, a little bit hopeful, but saw nothing. There’s your fucking metaphor right there.
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Big John wrote:
Tony did not get whacked, at least not until AFTER the VIEWER did and the viewer never heard it coming.
Posted on 11-Jun-07 at 12:31 am | Permalink
Jack wrote:
I tried really hard to like this show. I watched seasons 1 and 2 on DVD and waited for it to get as awesome as everyone said it was, but that never happened, and I decided my time was better spent rewatching The Wire. Maybe it’s because everyone thinks The Sopranos is such a mature show, and I don’t think mass whackings and really stupidly stereotypical Italians constitute that. That, and all the dream sequences and supposed metaphors have the depth of intro-to-creative-writing exercises.
But thanks for the series finale recap, so if I ever get around to watching the show, I’ll know that nothing ridiculous happens so I won’t be invariably disappointed.
Posted on 11-Jun-07 at 9:30 am | Permalink
matt wrote:
Big John: I’ve heard the “viewer got whacked” theory a bunch of times, but it doesn’t really work for me. The show never was about “whackings”, metaphorical or otherwise. I think the whole “build-up and no pay-off” explanation is a better one.
Jack: It’s a really good show! I don’t know. I haven’t watched The Wire yet, but I will, so maybe once I do I will be like everyone else and decide that it is the king of show and all others must tremble in its presence, but The Sopranos is really really great. I will defend it to its end. And, apparently, beyond.
Posted on 11-Jun-07 at 11:20 am | Permalink
Jack wrote:
Yeah, The Wire is pretty great. For your case, I’d wait until they finished the fifth and final season and put out the DVD set until you start. Then you can binge-watch the entire series instead of pining for the next season to be released on DVD.
Posted on 11-Jun-07 at 11:42 am | Permalink
Myles wrote:
I was preparing to watch John from Cincinnati (Which, weird), and caught the end of this. And I was convinced that The Movie Network had cut out. Completely convinced.
I figure this will be one of the shows I catch up on in future years (The Wire is another one, actually). I think my next cable TV choice shall be Weeds, though.
Posted on 11-Jun-07 at 6:40 pm | Permalink
Jack wrote:
Myles – Weeds is pretty solid. It’s nice to have a drug comedy that isn’t entirely about teenagers.
Posted on 11-Jun-07 at 7:49 pm | Permalink
Lorenzo wrote:
Tony didn’t get whacked, he didn’t go into witness protection. They were still talking to AJ about his job as if it were going to continue, no way the conversation was indicative of going into FBI protection. The entire episode was about a return to status quo for Tony and the both the NY and Jersey crews. Carmella was back to her house business, Janice was alone again and back to her scheming for money, Tony emerged from all of this just as evil and with an indictment looming over head. All of the things these people went through didn’t change them really at all. At the end Tony is stuffing his fat face, looking around suspicious of everyone and wondering if this was the moment the feds would rush in. People wanted something incredible to happen, but that was never chases intent or style with this series. These people are who they are.
Posted on 12-Jun-07 at 10:58 am | Permalink
eric wrote:
Matt-I’ll defend it to the end, and, apparently, beyond is really f-ing funny. Well said.
Posted on 12-Jun-07 at 1:05 pm | Permalink
Mariano wrote:
Lorenzo, you hit the nail on the head so hard it’s not even funny. The song remains the same. Tony getting shot int the side of the head by Mr. Members Only Jacket works. So does they have a dinner that starts off nice and ends up everyone pissed off. Status quo. Life goes on or it doesn’t. Either way, I think it was a great final scene.
Posted on 12-Jun-07 at 4:06 pm | Permalink
serge wrote:
ok this is the ending, the show is in the eyes of tony soprano, as you can see, when the song goes on in the begining , tonys driving and we get to see wha he sees, and as the show goes on , its events in his life, and in the episode prior to the last one tony said when u die, thas it, everything just goes blank, and boom meadow walks in, and boom he got shot. or carmella said meadow went to the clinic to get birth controll pills, and for some reason she couldnt park her car as if she had something on her mind, so she came in to tell the family shes pregnant.
Posted on 14-Jun-07 at 11:52 am | Permalink
briank wrote:
I wish I did what Jack is doing. I wasted an hour on a show which could be summed up in 25 words or less without needing to see a single frame of video – well maybe Phil getting run over. Sure the Sopranos was all about the character development and nuances but Chase took a potentially epic series and let it fizzle out. I didn’t need to see a blood bath or cliche ending, I just wanted to be entertained which I wasn’t. Like Matt, I felt empty and I realized it was all a waste of my time filled with talking heads vs. the actual action quickly giving me some symbolic/intrepretive closure to most of the storylines. The episode went through the motions never reaching any sort of climax (story as well as in craft) to the Soprano families’ tumultuous lives.
Posted on 14-Jun-07 at 1:30 pm | Permalink
Jack wrote:
Months after the fact, I finally made it through the rest of the series and ended with this finale.
The Sopranos is a very uneven show, to a frustrating extent. The good episodes are really great, and the average episodes only seem to bide the time. Like many others HBO shows, the cast ballooned to ridiculous proportions, and many of the series-long arcs weren’t interesting. For example: Artie and the restaurant; Paulie and his mother; Vito in that small town; and that really long stretch with Adriana and the FBI.
So in a way I’m glad that I went into this episode knowing that “nothing” would happen. Leotardo’s death, though, was black comedy at its finest, and was one of the best scenes in the series. The ending, though, I still have problems with. I knew it would be abrupt, and I was expecting it right after Meadow came in the door, but it was even more abrupt that I figured. As much as the man denies it, Chase was really just toying around with the audience, and moves like that just piss me off. Yeah yeah I know that life has loose ends, but it’s a goddamn TV show, end it with some semblance of a conclusion or one of those not-so-subtle metaphors that Chase is so crazy about. (Case in point, the multiple close-ups of Ford logos on the car that ran over Phil.)
In other news: Now that season 4 just came out on DVD, I can reaffirm that The Wire my favorite TV show. It’s not perfect (but close), and it’s so ridiculously good that it sets standards so high for other shows that it’s almost unfair.
Posted on 16-Dec-07 at 11:41 pm | Permalink