I have to believe that around 10:04pm est last night, there were a lot of people screaming at their television sets. Last night's series finale ended with a giant "WTF?", that had most people feeling like it came from the same shower Bobby Ewing once came out of.
While in many blogs & boards people were demanding HBO refund 7 years worth of cable bills & cursing David Chase, there were a lot of theories last night on what it all meant. After watching the episode again, I think I may have an idea of what Chase was going for with the final scene......
If you haven't seen it yet, here's the final scene of the show.....
The simplest explanation to the diner scene & the abrupt ending is that it's truly an open ending left for the audience to fill with their imagination, and has no right answer. Other TV shows have ended their runs with ambiguous endings ("Dallas", "Angel", etc.), and some movies too. Is Shane alive or dead when Joey screams: "Shane! Shane! Come back!" We'll never know.
What makes this even more interesting is the fact three different endings were shot. On some message boards & blogs, there have been claims HBO aired two different endings for the east & west coast feeds. Some claim to have seen Meadow actually coming through the diner door with a shocked look on her face, before cutting back to Tony & the screen going to black.
A whole host of theories have been thought up to explain what people "think" the final 5 minutes mean, whether they are the "right answer" is another question.....
- Tony Was Killed Or Arrested - The screen cutting to black & the chime of the restaurant door (presumably Meadow or someone else coming in) was the last moment of Tony Soprano's life, right before he was killed. A lot of people cite Bobby once telling Tony that when the end comes we'll never see it & it all fades to black as foreshadowing Tony's death. But instead of death, maybe the chime of the door was the FBI coming to arrest Tony and the diner was full of undercover FBI agents?
However, none other than the AP discounts this interpretation......
In the end, the only ending that mattered was the one masterminded by "Sopranos" creator David Chase. And playing against viewer expectations, as always, Chase refused to stage a mass extermination, put the characters through any changes, or provide his viewers with comfortable closure. Or catharsis. After all, he declined to pass moral judgment on Tony—he reminded viewers all season what a thug Tony is, then gave him a pass.
- Nothing Happened - Meadow came through the door and sat down at the table. All of the tension is built manipulating the audience's expectation. There is really nothing in the scene that proves Tony is in any real danger. Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" is telling us that the family will go "on and on and on."
- The Diner Is A Metaphor Of Tony's Life - The diner is full of all the different people in New Jersey ("Made In America"). The jukebox in the diner is full of all the songs that have played in episodes over the series run. Carmela is still Carmela in trying to figure out whether Tony is going to jail & probably thinking about how that might affect her, A.J. is still selfish & complaining about getting coffee and making phone calls at his new job while driving a BMW & screwing a model, and Meadow is separated & in a different place than her father, mother & brother. The disfunction of his life & the tension of possible danger in the diner is what Tony goes through every day of his life, whenever he goes anywhere. Whether Tony died in the diner, five years later in prison or 20 years later of old-age, this is the private hell he must live with that in the words of Journey "goes on and on and on and on."
- There's No "Right" Answer - Over the course of the show there were multiple plot points in almost all of the seasons where David Chase either didn't pay it off or give a definitive answer about what it meant. The ending is ambiguous because there really isn't a true ending, but an ambiguous situation for you to fill in with your imagination. It's just like the Russian in the Pine Barrens. And Chase's answer to people who wonder what happened to the Russian (which was never resolved) is probably indicative of how he feels about the ending of the series.....
"They shot a guy. Who knows where he went? Who cares about some Russian? This is what Hollywood has done to America. Do you have to have closure on every little thing? Isn't there any mystery in the world? It's a murky world out there. It's a murky life these guys lead. And by the way, I do know where the Russian is. But I'll never say because so many people got so pissy about it."
I leaned toward the "open ending" after seeing it the first time last night, but after watching it again I think it was probably.....
- The Audience Was Whacked - When the screen cuts to black & Tony looks up, it's not Tony who was killed but the audience who is being collectively "whacked" from continuing in the Sopranos universe. Bobby's warning to Tony that you'll "never see" the end coming and it all "goes to black" was not a foreshadowing of Tony's death, but of the audience's experience with the show.