It’s been over a week now, and the firestorm over the last scene of The Sopranos will not abate. I swear to gods, I was going to stay out of it, though I thought it was fracking brilliant in all of its slammed-door ambiguity, and thought that those demanding closure were like peep-show patrons who had the window closed on them just before they, er, “finished.”
Or Michael Palin in the Argument Clinic: “that was never five minutes just then.”
I didn’t even have trouble with that Journey song I’ve always hated (which actually is pretty much any Journey song) playing over the ending, because it was perfectly in character for Tony to like Journey.
Nevertheless, I could see why these things pissed people off, but that just added to the fun for me. However, I had some thoughts to a couple of things I read over this past weekend that seem to be trying to appease the “What Do We Need? CLOSURE!! When Do We Want It? NOW!!” crowd.
The first is a quote from an HBO spokesperson in Friday’s New York Times that claimed that David Chase wanted 30 full seconds of blackness, instead of the 10 that we got. That seems to go with the “Tony was whacked” theory.
But it also seems to go with the “David Chase hates his audience” theory, as well. I can only imagine the chaos that would have ensued at my house — and millions of others — had that happened. Hee.
The second, coming courtesy of the Chicago Tribune is an online petition started by their TV writer — Maureen Ryan, someone I read pretty regularly — which asks David Chase tell us if Tony Soprano lives or dies.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
This is actually so easy to make fun of on so many levels that I’m just not going to even really try. Nor am I going to point out that had Chase given her the only interview instead of Alan Sepinwall, she probably wouldn’t have started it. Seriously, if David Chase was going to be influenced by a goddamned online petition, he would have actually given you a resolution in the first place.
You know what? I don’t what to know. I want it to be like “Deep Throat,” — Watergate not porn — and to stay a mystery for most of our lifetimes. Or after David Chase dies, then he can let us know via safe deposit box, or even better, with a crumpled-up note clutched in his hand that says something like “Meadow killed him, that’s why she couldn’t parallel park the car: she was nervous about having to off her pop.”
Of course, if you think that this is pissing people of, just wait and see what happens when JK Rowling actually offers an actual resolution to the question of whether Harry Potter lives or dies.