The episode was brilliant!

But for those of you who may have missed some of (the writer of this episode and series creator) Chase’s tactics for last night’s finale, then let me help you out (spoiler alert):

1. The subplot of terrorism was a commentary on a public gone pop crazy while we have terrorists on the loose and incompetent public officials. See, gangsters are not the problem right now.

2. Chase further drove this home by driving you crazy with a blank screen and no music.
3. The cat thing was an ode to Poe where he often had the murder victim come back in some form to reveal their murderer (usually a body behind a wall).
4. He didn’t kill off his hero! Tony was basically a family guy (and fictional) who took care of business and far too many anal retentive people wanted him to die! Brilliant!

Meadow and the whole parallel parking thing was symbolic of her trying to get her life together as a young person (three mistakes and then she parks perfectly. I think everything else is pretty straightforward, meaning that it is what you saw or left open for you to fill in the blanks. But more important…Tony lived! Yeah!)

Chase is a prankster and wanted to have a little fun. Anyone notice the opening song that was played throughout the episode? It was Vanilla Fudge’s 1967 psychedelic/hard rock remake of the 1966 The Supreme’s Motown hit, “You Keep Me Hanging On.” Talk about a foreshadow! He lets you decide how it ends. The jingle at the door could have been Meadow or it could have been a hitman. You decide. I thought it was an excellent finish that could possibly leave an opening for a movie.

Although this is a mob story, this is more a story about the characters, the dynamics of their everyday existence. Essentially Chase has created a series that examines several unknowns. The show deals with psychology. What do we really know about the capabilities and limitations of the human mind? The show deals with death and the afterlife… dreams… omerta, the list can go on and on. What I gathered from the last episode was that the unknown is constant. We don’t know when and we don’t know how, but we do know that someday the villain we all root for will meet his match, and even then the family will prevail.

Movie or no movie, survivors or no survivors, from day one the show was about how the moral bankruptcy of the individuals enabled the entire operation to chug along. Tony decapitating Ralphie; Carmella’s pitiful rationalizations; Meadow’s phony desire to seek social justice; Janice’s efforts to steal from Junior. The individual acts of selfishness perpetuate the collective evil. As much as Tony is everyman - what with his rebellious kids, depression, physical compulsions and more - at the end of the day he he had a sense of entitlement when it came to the rest of the world.

To me, the scene that best reflected Tony’s insatiable desire to maintain this existence where he could act however he wished whenever he wished was when he convinced Paulie to take the job, even after Paulie claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. Tony didn’t deny that Paulie saw the Virgin Mary. He just made him feel that it didn’t matter. Now that’s manipulation. Better yet, that’s great writing and film making.

Maybe when the DVD comes out they will include a few more seconds at the diner - as a way to sell a few million DVDs. I for one will own it.

[tags]hbo, sopranos, tv[/tags]