I take it bada-back

For lack of anything better to do, I just pulled up The Sopranos’ final scene on YouTube to actually see for myself what everyone was talking about (I'd post the link, but in the time it took me to write this, it has already been removed due to copyrights and all that stuff). Two days ago, I joined with the pissed off masses in condemning creator David Chase for his “nothing ending.” Well, I would now like to say that after watching the scene in its entirety, and readily admitting that I don’t know the context of the scene within the show as a whole, the ending actually does seem an appropriate end.

Over the course of the four-minute scene, a whole lot of nothing happens. Tony is sitting in a diner waiting for his family to show up and looking around at the various patrons of the restaurant. He picks a song for the jukebox, Journey’s now-infamous “Don’t Stop Believing.” As his family members trickle into the restaurant, they have a couple of meaningless, boring conversations about what to order and what they did that day. Meanwhile, Tony continues to look up every time the door opens, possibly checking to see any anyone is coming in to whack him. He does this probably a good half-dozen times over the course of the scene. The final shot of the show is of Tony looking up as, we can only assume, his daughter finally runs into the restaurant. And then, of course, the cut to black heard round the world.

Again, I’ve never watched the show, but I know a little about it. Tony is a mobster with a family, and a conscience apparently because he’s famously in therapy. In between his duties as a gangster, he has a typically boring domestic life. Or more appropriately, in between the episodes of his typically boring domestic life, he has duties as a gangster. What I understood from this scene is almost more heartbreaking and poignant than if Tony or his family had been whacked. What this ending said to me is, this is never going to end for this guy. He has been on this path his entire life and he’s never going to get off it. The rest of his life will be spent doing what he can to support his family, but he’s never never going to be able to stop looking up every time a door opens, for fear that some rival will come through it and end it all. I actually get sick just thinking about it, much the way I did upon reading the final page of The Dark Tower series.

Granted, I have the luxury of outside objectivity. I wasn’t personally invested in these characters over the course of however many seasons. But from a storytelling point of view, I am sorry to admit to all the irate fans, that while it may not have been the ending you all wanted, it was in fact the right ending to this story. My apologies to David Chase (who of course reads this blog). You got it right, man.