Tony’s Blackout
'Sopranos' Auteur David Chase Left a Majestic Wrap-Up, But His Onion-Ring Existentialism Causes a Panic—Where’s Dr. Melfi? It’s a Media Anxiety Attack!
What rough beast is David Chase riding?
He seems to have understood the mood of his nation better than anyone since Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola forecast the fate of the American empire in The Godfather.
And he has world leaders mouthing his dialogue, day and night. Here is Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the prime minister of Iraq, in The New York Times yesterday: “There are two mentalities in this region,” he said. “Conspiracy and mistrust.”
Baghdada-bing.
The rest of the world was muttering about Tony Soprano’s final blackout, but Mr. Maliki proved once more that David Chase has been battling for something worth fighting for. What do I mean, battled?
Try David Chase himself, as interviewed cathartically and perceptively by the hardest-working man in Sopranos land, Alan Sepinwall, the TV critic for Tony Soprano’s end-of-the-driveway hometown paper, The Star-Ledger: “No one was trying to be audacious, honest to God,” Mr. Chase said. “We did what we thought we had to do.”
He had completed his story, but he was giving us a gift in the last scene: He was telling us more. What happened in the four last minutes was plenty of information, and not of the conspiracy-theory type: We got to see the world as Tony does, suffused with anxiety and some amusement and apprehension. It took David Chase eight years to get Tony in and out of therapy, and he was improved about as much as a patient can be improved, maybe 2 to 5 percent.
“It felt like ginger ale in my skull,” he told Dr. Melfi in the first episode. The Sopranos ended up as it began—not with a bang, but an anxiety attack.
Only this time it was ours. This time we blacked out.
“I was shocked by the ending,” said Peter Bogdanovich, the movie director and film historian who played Dr. Elliot Kupferberg, Tony’s therapist’s therapist. Mr. Bogdanovich said he had shot another scene that didn’t make the final episode, in which he was comforting an exhausted, bereaved Dr. Melfi.
“It ends at that moment because that’s his life,” said Mr. Bogdanovich. “He’s anxious about getting blown away, the F.B.I. is going to indict him, Syl is going to die, everything is insecure and tense. It kept going, and the insert shots kept making you feel it was the last thing he was going to do. Endings, endings, endings. The little things in life are the last thing you are going to do. In fact, that’s his life. Next Page >
Holy Magilla!
Peter you are my new favorite film critic!
Like an orphan in a storm, I searched in vain for some sort of, um, unambiguous comments on the amazing finale of The Sopranos.
Unfortunately, our culture's kneejerk tendencies toward instant comment and instant wisdom is playing out on comment boards across our poor benighted nation.
Yeah, I was shocked, too, and went and changed the channel and watched the Spurs/Cavs game and went to bed.
I wondered why I wasn't thinking more about the ending, but I do trust my unconscious to give me things when I need them.
So I woke up out of that in between world the next morning and understood that the tension I was feeling was Tony's reality.
I don't think any film ever narrowed this down on me like "Made in America."
Thank you and god bless David Chase, who I have followed for a long, long time.
Back to the digital recording I go with all that Peter Kaplan has given me to think about. He's wonderful. I wish he wrote more often.
Mary Murphy, Ossining, NY
i was one of the 'disgruntled' at the soprano's ending* but thanks to your brilliant article i have changed my thinking. keep up the great work
voxpop
*well at least i didn't think my cable had gone out..lol
Sorry to say I disagree wholeheartedly. We were not only hoodwinked at the final episode, we've been toyed with for eight seasons. Coming up with plots is easy. Coming up with surprising, memorable and impactuful climaxes is what makes a screen writer (or any writer) a genius. All we ever got were plots with cliffhangers and were left hanging on the following episode that made no reference to or explanation of what happened on the previous one. And when and how did AJ get a Hispanic girlfriend? Why did she break up with him? Take away the gratuitous nudity, profanity and violence and this show couldn't make it anywhere. Looking for symbolism in onion rings and Boy Scouts? Get off it. This is a sham and those that claim to recognize the "genius" of this work are only trying to rationalize eight seasons of following a tale to nowhere and nothing.
Hercky
Man, I've been finding these goofballs all over the comment boards.
Unbelievable.
They claim to watch "eight seasons" of something that they hated.
You're not "sorry to say it..."! You're waxing your own horn.
In my neighborhood there is a guy that hangs out at the easy-mart all day long.
Coming up with plots is easy? Th... Bu... Wea... Excuse me, let me pick up my jaw off the floor.
You must either already be a very successful screenwriter and you're just putting us on or you and your ilk are the advance guard of some deeply disturbed individuals.
I pray it is the first.
It's amazing, everywhere I go to find half-way intellingent conversation about something, there is the idiot that wants to piss in the soup.
Maybe it's David Chase.
Maybe it's somebody whose script got rejected.
What an empty life you must lead, Hercky.
I may see symbolism where there is none, but I don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
I keep getting these views into minds that I wish I hadn't seen.
I guess I'll go scrub my brain now.
What was wonderfull about the ending, is that it left us salevating for more..... The scenes were very tense I was expecting something cheesy that we always see on ''regular'' boring tv. I must admit I was not disapointed by Mr. Chase, weather we wanted it or not we were going to have to know that Mr.Sopranos life continued as sleek and as violent as ever... I have no problem accepting that as it began so it ended, troubled.... dark.. moody... Tony ending with just being anxious? Why not? Mob bosess have died in there death bed, not in prison or shot, why could Tony not survive his tv voyeuristic moment by us the audiance??? All vey possible and all whit class. Loved it and all very delicious. Is it that what great art is all about???
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