Bada...Bing?

Although I don’t watch The Sopranos – I think I’ve seen maybe one half of two or three episodes over the years – I am quite positively oozing with sympathy for all the dedicated fans over what I’ve been reading was an absolutely atrocious end to the series. Apparently the final scene plays out with Tony sitting in a diner watching his daughter through the window as she parks a car. Then the door to the diner opens and the screen cuts to black. And… that’s it. The discussions that have popped up all over the internet since the “finale” on Sunday have broken down into two camps: the ones who feel cheated out of closure and the ones who think the ending ranged anywhere from “appropriate in context” to “sheer genius.” The people of this latter camp seem to be furiously attempting to fit the ending retroactively to the motif of the entire series – where life, even for a mobster, is mundane and full of loose ends. I read one quote on CNN, some professor who said, “In our popular culture, we've come to expect things to get tied up neatly… [But] real life doesn't have neat endings.”

I read that and similar quotes like it, which defend Sopranos creator David Chase, and I just get pissed off – as a writer, as a reader and as an overall lover of well-told stories. I’ve heard the same argument many times before, though usually it’s an argument used by amateur writers and filmmakers while defending their work’s monotony and boring self-indulgent dialogue. “Well that’s what happens in real life.” Yes, you’re right. Real life, when you think about it, is boring and monotonous. It’s a lot of waiting around, doing chores, standing in line and having the same old boring conversations that don’t mean anything over and over again until you die. But stories, whether they be on paper or on film, are merely microcosms of real life. They are not intended to mimic real life detail by detail. And as a storyteller, you have a duty, an obligation to your audience to provide some kind of closure to the story you’ve opened. That’s what makes it a story. Beginning…middle…END. It doesn’t have to be neat. It doesn’t have to be happy. It doesn’t even have to be perfect. But it has to be something.

As I’ve thought about David Chase’s decision for the end of his story, I think of a series I recently finished reading and the way it ended. The Dark Tower series by Stephen king is a monster seven-novel story arc that follows a gunslinger named Roland on his quest to find the mysterious Dark Tower. (WARNING: Plot spoiler ahead. Don’t read this paragraph if you don’t want the ending ruined.) Throughout the series, while the Hollywood part of you knows that Roland has to succeed and find the Dark Tower, you do gradually come to the sober realization that that ending might not necessarily happen. You realize that in this story there is a very good chance that Roland will die before he accomplishes his goal. In the end, Roland does reach the Tower and after all the trials, all the horrors, all the heartbreaks he has endured, he climbs to the top. Then he opens a door and is shoved forcibly through by the hand of God… shoved back to the first scene of the first book. Before he goes through he has a brief moment of horror as he realizes that he must go through all those trials, all those horrors and all those heartbreaks again… and again, and again for the whole of eternity. If you’ve been following the series, it is a sickening, gut wrenching ending, mostly because it is SO unexpected. And the human part of you so wants to pull Roland back and say, “No no no, not like this.” So that ending, as a reader, pisses you off. But, as a reader following the series the whole way through, you know that that is an appropriate ending. Perhaps the only appropriate ending. And even though it sickens you, you accept it because even though the ending wasn’t neat and tidy, it did provide appropriate closure.

From what I’ve heard, The Sopranos did NOT do that. It wasn’t neat and it wasn’t tidy. But so much worse than that, it wasn’t anything. I haven’t felt this bad for an audience since the end of X-Files. Damn that Chris Carter. He converted a whole generation into believers in aliens and the paranormal and encouraged them to keep following the characters as they searched for answers. And then he cut them off without anything. No answers. Only questions. I’m not saying he needed to answer all the questions, or even most of the questions. I’m not saying he couldn’t have opened up even more questions at the end, or left the audience to figure a few things out, Hitchcock style, on their own. But damn, throw your devoted audience a bone. Give them something. Anything. Real life doesn’t always provide answers or give you real closure. But a story SHOULD.

Take another much-loathed finale: Seinfeld. We all hated it when we saw it, but even in the midst of “a show about nothing” they still found an ending that was appropriate – namely landing in jail for the despicable people we all knew they were and then (finally) running out of stupid things to talk about. It wasn’t the greatest ending of all time, but it was appropriate to the series (hilarious even, in retrospect) and, most of all, it was at least AN ending.

Shame on you Sopranos. What you did doesn’t strike me as “art.” It doesn’t even strike me as a shameless tease for some future movie. It certainly doesn’t strike me as motivated or inspired writing. It strikes me as a cheap trick played by a storyteller who realized he was either too afraid or too incompetent to deliver a real ending. And your fans deserved better than that.

Sorry Sopranos fans. I feel your pain. I only hope the writers of my dear intriguing show, LOST, don’t pull that same crap on me.