Don't Stop

Sopranos viewers will be furious from coast to coast, but I thought the final episode of the show ended on exactly the right note.

For years, this show has been about confounding audience expectations. So much so, that when last week's episode, "The Blue Comet", delivered a fairly standard mafia war, it seemed fresh, almost shocking.

But despite that history, people across the country expected some genuine closure from tonight's episode. I can't imagine why. What we got instead was one of the best looks yet inside Tony's head. The last scene at the diner is set up to be as ominous as possible. We get repeated shots of extras we've never seen before. One guy at the counter keeps looking over in Tony's direction. A young couple seem strangely artificial. Meadow has trouble with her parking.

It's a veritable TV playbook of tricks that directors have used before The Big Moment arrives. We're set up to expect any number of things. The guy at the counter could be a fed. The two black guys walking in to the diner could have been sent by the New York family to get revenge for Phil Leotardo. Meadow could have been hit by a truck.

All of that would be infuriating if it was just a game played at the audience's expense. But that's not what was going on. As the series ends, Tony Soprano is left wondering when the end will come for him, and in what form. Every time someone walks into the diner, he's asking himself: is that one an FBI agent, here to arrest me for the RICO charges that have been building up for years? Is that one going to kill me, on the orders of some other mafia group?

As his conversation with Paulie showed, Tony's aware of all of this and keeps up a good front of bravely soldiering on. But behind the facade, he knows he's at the end of the line. He's perpetually flinching, just waiting for the blow to land.

As the last week went by, I wondered where things could possibly end. Tony's death seemed likely, but that would have been a little too pat for this show; too "on the nose" for a show that's all about subtext. Victory in the mob war seemed possible but unlikely -- I was fairly certain that we hadn't followed Tony's repeated failures at redemption to see him wind up standing triumphant over the bodies of his enemies.

We got, instead, ambivalence. Tony's triumph over Phil is hollow. As he said to Bobby earlier in this final half-season (or did Bobby say it to him?), there's really only two ways he can end up: shot by the mob or locked up for life by the Feds. Life goes on for the Sopranos, but Tony's already in prison.