What I’ve noticed in the last hour or so is that hits on websites talking about The Sopranos are going through the roof! And hey, that’s great for all of us who have websites where we try to have some fun and blog about what we see on a daily basis.
Which brings me to some of the great, fun things that I’ve read so far about The Sopranos season finale. Among the best things I’ve read online is the awesome drama in the last scene. Why is it awesome? Well, if you live in New Jersey, you’ll understand this a little bit better…
We have the Soprano family gathering in a diner in beautiful Bloomfield, New Jersey. Meadow is having some trouble parking (who hasn’t had THAT problem in New Jersey?!) while Tony orders some onion rings for the family. In walks a suspicious looking trucker type of guy who sits at the bar. By the way, there seems to be a cub scout troupe and a couple of young lovers sitting in the diner.
Then in walks some suspicious looking character who sits down at the bar and keeps shooting an eye towards Tony before two young “thug” looking kids walk into the diner.
The brilliance in this scene, so far, is that this is a completely common night in New Jersey at a diner!!! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the same exact experiences at a diner. You sit down and some shady looking character comes in and gets a coffee at the bar. Then some kids walk in that you’d rather weren’t there for whatever reason (in New Jersey, it’s mostly because they’re drunk).
But up until this point, there is nothing crazy about the final scene. Not for a New Jerseyan, at least.
And then as the door opens and Tony looks up (seemingly to see Meadow walking in), we cut to black. This can mean a couple of things. The first, and most likely, meaning is that Meadow walked in and this completely common night in a completely common situation carried on. But what about what Bobby Baccalieri said a few weeks ago to Tony?
Remember? When Bobby asked Tony if he ever wondered if you hear or feel anything when “it” happens? Did this sudden cut to black mean that Tony got knocked off in the diner in front of his family?
Or (and here’s something that’ll give you a headache), did Sopranos creator David Chase want to answer Bobby’s question with this last scene, but in the viewers’ perspective? In other words, was David Chase’s answer to Bobby’s question the collective, “WTF?!?” that Sopranos fans yelled as the show cut to black?
Sure, that might be a reach, but it’s the Sopranos that we’re talking about here!
What do you think?
I loved the ending, all its flaws and all. I’m going with the POV that Meadow runs in and the family enjoys a nice dinner together at a Jersey diner.
My boyfriend thinks otherwise, but he’s not from Jersey so he doesn’t get it!
Ha ha ha! I like it, chickpea. I tend to agree – I think the Sopranos enjoyed a nice dinner at the diner and then went home.
Don’t stop believing, right?
what do the onion rings mean? It looked like me that they all were receiving communion hosts, the way they put the entire thing in their mouth.
Interesting – communion hosts. I haven’t heard that one yet. Though if you assume that the 5 seconds of black silence after Tony looks up is the family getting shot up in the booth, then you can also assume that the onion-ring-as-communion-wafer could be a symbolic final atonement for their sins.
You could expand this further by saying that since Meadow never really got deeply involved in anything negative, she was excluded from the final atonement before the family was shot up.
Another way of thinking about this is that the Sopranos are really an Americanized, non-traditional mob family. So the end of the series isn’t a family gathering over manicotti and spaghetti with some meatballs, rather it’s at a low-rent diner in Bloomfield, New Jersey over a plate of onion rings. This would further the idea that we are completely “Americanized” – even to the point where our communion wafers are onion rings!
Nice theory – I like it. Though I honestly still subscribe to the idea that Tony and the family had a nice dinner and went home afterwards to live another boring, mundane day in New Jersey mob life.
Fugghedaboutit