Finishing the Sopranos
The Sopranos are no more...
After "six" seasons stretching over ten years, we're done. Including a very controversial ending which I'll explain at the end of this posting [so if you haven't seen it and don't want to spoil it for yourself, stop now!].
The "final season" was broken into two separate components and takes a very interesting turn: inward. Throughout the series, we're exposed to each character's actions but a lot less to their thoughts. In this, we learn a lot more about what it is (besides money) that makes each person tick.
Not that what we see at all attractive. If we ever kidded ourselves into thinking that these people were heroes, this season pretty much scotches that perception.
Tony is a self-centered, violent, destructive man who is capable of emotional poetry. In my view, the poetry is not good enough to make the guy a hero - and that goes for everyone else here, too. [If you see a heroic figure in this bunch, let me know who it is.] This season could not have been created but for the loving care that went into creating and then writing each of these characters, and the great acting that brought each of them to life.
It is amazing that this series lasted as long as it has with the continued quality and increasing depth which we can see in it. Compare it to "Six Feet Under," for example, which had to resort to bizarre and shocking gimmicks to sustain itself.
In the latter part of this final season, Tony visits one of Christopher's girlfriends in Las Vegas and does some peyote. After a night of hallucinations and highly successful gambling (this on the heels of Tony losing pretty consistently and showing symptoms of a gambling addiction), they stumble out into the desert and watch the sun rise. Seeing the sun come up, in a montage of garish color against the desert rock formations, a disheveled Tony screams that message to God and the universe. "I get it!!!" He's winning at the table and that must mean that he's unlocked the mystery of - whatever: his panic attacks, his bad luck, his fears, his malaise.
Now, if only that meant Tony had found something approaching peace. In this final season, Tony curses the people he loves and even his own gene pool. He is enormously self-absorbed and hugely narcissistic, and more brutish than ever. He shows great empathy and horrible sociopathic fixation, sometimes in the same scene. When met with the expressed needs of people closest to him, a stock response is, "oh, poor you."
Respect, whether earned or not, becomes the only thing that matters. And people die.
The violence and loss is met with the classic urban phrase, "What are you gonna do?" The loyalty and allegiance that is at once the lifeblood and the illusion of Mafia life is summarized with Paulie's phrase, "When I get put to the test, what will I do?"
How could we have been brought to care so deeply for such unattractive people? Well, not like freaks in a carnival. Each character showed us so much of our own humanity, and taught us something about the value of unsparing, unsympathetic honesty.
The ending created a lot of controversy. In fact, it's very intentional. Several seasons ago, Tony and his younger family are stuck in a violent storm and seek refuge in Artie Bucco's restaurant. The resulting scene was so memorable to me that I made an audio recording of it to meditate on. They're served a really delicious impromptu meal, served by Artie himself, and just as they prepare to eat, Tony says the following, verbatim, amid rolling thunder and wind:
"Now wait a minute.
I'd like to propose a toast - to my family.
"Someday soon, you're going to have families of your own
and if you're lucky, you'll remember the little moments
Like this.
That were good.
"Cheers."
[SFX glasses click, storm noises increase outside, tree branch creaks loudly]
The scene is delivered with great power and emotion - I can view it or listen to it repeatedly and it loses none of its force or poetry.
Then, the last scene in the entire series: Tony is seated at a diner with his wife and son AJ, while his daughter frustratingly tries to parallel-park outside. He is "razzing" his son about a new job...Journey's "The Stranger" is prominently playing on the juke box.
TS: "It's an entry-level job. Buck up."
AJ: "Yeah - focus on the good times."
TS: "Don't be sarcastic."
AJ: "Isn't that what you said one time? 'Try to remember the times that were good'?"
TS: "Me?"
AJ: "Yeah."
TS: "Well, that's true, I guess."
[Music / SFX interval; waitress brings a plate of onion rings]
TS: "Oh, I went ahead and ordered something for the table."
[Music smash cuts to black on the song lyrics, "Don't Stop")
"I get it!!" The punishment for Tony's evil is the loss of the one thing he might really value: remembering the good moments. So as not to be tortured by how he killed the people and things that mean the most to him, to cope he must forget.
He said "if you're lucky, you'll remember the good moments." His son remembered the most valuable lesson Tony ever carried to him - and Tony couldn't even remember saying it. Tony's luck was restored to him in the last season, but he paid the price He won't be remembering the best things life offered to him. He forgot he even valued these things.
So yes, the ending might be intentionally ambiguous to some, since we don't remember what's important, either. This is, perhaps, the only way it could have ended.
We're human. Tony is us.
Well, whaddaya gonna do?
After "six" seasons stretching over ten years, we're done. Including a very controversial ending which I'll explain at the end of this posting [so if you haven't seen it and don't want to spoil it for yourself, stop now!].
The "final season" was broken into two separate components and takes a very interesting turn: inward. Throughout the series, we're exposed to each character's actions but a lot less to their thoughts. In this, we learn a lot more about what it is (besides money) that makes each person tick.
Not that what we see at all attractive. If we ever kidded ourselves into thinking that these people were heroes, this season pretty much scotches that perception.
Tony is a self-centered, violent, destructive man who is capable of emotional poetry. In my view, the poetry is not good enough to make the guy a hero - and that goes for everyone else here, too. [If you see a heroic figure in this bunch, let me know who it is.] This season could not have been created but for the loving care that went into creating and then writing each of these characters, and the great acting that brought each of them to life.
It is amazing that this series lasted as long as it has with the continued quality and increasing depth which we can see in it. Compare it to "Six Feet Under," for example, which had to resort to bizarre and shocking gimmicks to sustain itself.
In the latter part of this final season, Tony visits one of Christopher's girlfriends in Las Vegas and does some peyote. After a night of hallucinations and highly successful gambling (this on the heels of Tony losing pretty consistently and showing symptoms of a gambling addiction), they stumble out into the desert and watch the sun rise. Seeing the sun come up, in a montage of garish color against the desert rock formations, a disheveled Tony screams that message to God and the universe. "I get it!!!" He's winning at the table and that must mean that he's unlocked the mystery of - whatever: his panic attacks, his bad luck, his fears, his malaise.
Now, if only that meant Tony had found something approaching peace. In this final season, Tony curses the people he loves and even his own gene pool. He is enormously self-absorbed and hugely narcissistic, and more brutish than ever. He shows great empathy and horrible sociopathic fixation, sometimes in the same scene. When met with the expressed needs of people closest to him, a stock response is, "oh, poor you."
Respect, whether earned or not, becomes the only thing that matters. And people die.
The violence and loss is met with the classic urban phrase, "What are you gonna do?" The loyalty and allegiance that is at once the lifeblood and the illusion of Mafia life is summarized with Paulie's phrase, "When I get put to the test, what will I do?"
How could we have been brought to care so deeply for such unattractive people? Well, not like freaks in a carnival. Each character showed us so much of our own humanity, and taught us something about the value of unsparing, unsympathetic honesty.
The ending created a lot of controversy. In fact, it's very intentional. Several seasons ago, Tony and his younger family are stuck in a violent storm and seek refuge in Artie Bucco's restaurant. The resulting scene was so memorable to me that I made an audio recording of it to meditate on. They're served a really delicious impromptu meal, served by Artie himself, and just as they prepare to eat, Tony says the following, verbatim, amid rolling thunder and wind:
"Now wait a minute.
I'd like to propose a toast - to my family.
"Someday soon, you're going to have families of your own
and if you're lucky, you'll remember the little moments
Like this.
That were good.
"Cheers."
[SFX glasses click, storm noises increase outside, tree branch creaks loudly]
The scene is delivered with great power and emotion - I can view it or listen to it repeatedly and it loses none of its force or poetry.
Then, the last scene in the entire series: Tony is seated at a diner with his wife and son AJ, while his daughter frustratingly tries to parallel-park outside. He is "razzing" his son about a new job...Journey's "The Stranger" is prominently playing on the juke box.
TS: "It's an entry-level job. Buck up."
AJ: "Yeah - focus on the good times."
TS: "Don't be sarcastic."
AJ: "Isn't that what you said one time? 'Try to remember the times that were good'?"
TS: "Me?"
AJ: "Yeah."
TS: "Well, that's true, I guess."
[Music / SFX interval; waitress brings a plate of onion rings]
TS: "Oh, I went ahead and ordered something for the table."
[Music smash cuts to black on the song lyrics, "Don't Stop")
"I get it!!" The punishment for Tony's evil is the loss of the one thing he might really value: remembering the good moments. So as not to be tortured by how he killed the people and things that mean the most to him, to cope he must forget.
He said "if you're lucky, you'll remember the good moments." His son remembered the most valuable lesson Tony ever carried to him - and Tony couldn't even remember saying it. Tony's luck was restored to him in the last season, but he paid the price He won't be remembering the best things life offered to him. He forgot he even valued these things.
So yes, the ending might be intentionally ambiguous to some, since we don't remember what's important, either. This is, perhaps, the only way it could have ended.
We're human. Tony is us.
Well, whaddaya gonna do?
posted by John Bernat @ 5:01 PM
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