We’ve had to wait months to know what all the fuss was about, but now that we’ve seen the final scene from The Sopranos (aired last night on E4), finally we Brits can enter the debate on the seminal show’s ending. Or interesting lack there of. In an interview in new book The Sopranos: The Complete Book, creator David Chase, who recently won two Emmy awards for producing and writing the HBO drama, has spoken of the creative decisions behind that ending.
“There are no esoteric clues in there. No Da Vinci Code. Everything that pertains to that episode was in that episode,” claims Chase. “And it was in the episode before that and the one before that and seasons before this one and so on. There had been indications of what the end is like. If people want to sit there figuring this stuff out, I think that’s just great. Most of them, most of us, should have done this kind of thing in high school English class and didn’t.”
According to Chase, the inclusion of Journey’s tune “Don’t Stop Believin’” was a late call: “As I recall, it was just that Tony and his family would be in a diner having dinner and a guy would come in. Pretty much what you saw. I actually took several songs…and played them for the crew. I’d never done that before.” Many had initial doubts about Journey’s tune “But then they started to say, ”You know what? This is kind of good. This is a great f–king song!”
On those fans that complained that Tony didn’t suffer a brutal and graphic onscreen death, Chase is shocked: “They had cheered [Tony] on. And then, all of a sudden, they wanted to see him punished for all that. It’s one thing to be deeply involved with a television show. It’s another to be so involved that all you do is sit on a couch and watch it. It seemed that those people were just looking for an excuse to be pissed off. They wanted ‘justice’. They wanted to see his brains splattered on the wall. I thought that was disgusting, frankly. The pathetic thing—to me—was how much they wanted his blood, after cheering him on for eight years.”
Fans eager to air their views online actually crashed HBO’s website, and they’re not the only ones to bemoan the ending with many TV critics accusing the show of making a cheap shot. Chase defends against this criticism: “Why would we want to do that?” he questioned. “Why would we entertain people for eight years only to give them the finger? We don’t have contempt for the audience. In fact, I think The Sopranos is the only show that actually gave the audience credit for having some intelligence and attention span.”
Earlier in the interview he also comments “But, I must say that even people who liked it misinterpreted it, to a certain extent. This wasn’t really about ‘leaving the door open.’ There was nothing definite about what happened, but there was a clean trend on view—a definite sense of what Tony and Carmela’s future looks like. Whether it happened that night or some other night doesn’t really matter.”
Do you have a theory to explain the ending, have the hump with Chase for settling on such an ambiguous finale or want to say your fondest farewells to Tony, Carmela and co? As always, leave a comment and let us know what you thought of THE television moment of the year.
[via E! Online]
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Final Episode aired here in Australia on October 30, 07 at 10:45pm. I have to say that as an avid and passionate fan of the show since the very beginning I was disappointed when I wouldnt be able to see it when I moved here 2 years ago. Thankfully I was able to purchase or download whatever episodes I was missing and even more thankfully they aired the finale!
But I have to say that it is an extreme disheartening disappointment. The previous episode that culminated in the wacking of Bobby Bacala and the attempted wacking of Silvio Dante was riveting to say the least. Which gave me the impression the final episode would conclude the series in a major mob house cleaning, especially when Tony is hold up with the fellas in his mothers old house fittingly with the weapon that Bobby had given Tony as a birthday present….
I can not begin to tell you how utterly demoralizing it is to see this series end in such a pathetic manner…The whole time I watched it I could feel the tension building in my stomach, the anxiety continued to mount until what I can only describe as an anti-climatic moment…as if I just learned that the hot chick I was on the verge of banging revealed that she was indeed a he!
I am utterly and totally pissed off to discover that all this time Ive invested in watching what has got to be the finest, most creative series HBO has ever produced was brought to its end in this manner…
FUCK DAVID CHASE….he’ll never get another moment of my time or cent of my money!
Well, I’ve had the episodes for months on my laptop but I refused to watch them. Held out until they were aired on E4 so I could get into the spirit with the rest of the fans in the country. Every week I enjoyed it so much, it was building and building, I knew what was going to happen, Phil was going to get killed then Tony and the crew were going to get whacked by a two faced Carmine to pick up the pieces himself after eliminating the New Jersey and New York capos. Well, bugger me if I was wrong big time! It was a let down of an ending, I don’t care what Chase says. He did wrong and he knows it. As fans we are not satanic in wanting Tony’s death, we just want what we knew was coming from episode one. Every fan knew that although we love Tony, he was going to fall to the error of his ways.
BUT HE DIDN’T!!
You know what David Chase, don’t insult us by having a go because we didn’t like your ending just because you can. Now the series is over Chase feels he can offend us because he no longer has to keep our interest. Well, I agree with the above guy, FUCK DAVID CHASE.
He gave us probably the best drama on tv which was written with tones of genius and moments which really were superb. With that all said, just because I didn’t like the ending it doesn’t make me uneducated and insignificant as he has made out. Remember, it’s fans like me that kept the show running for as long as it did and Chase thought as we’d been watching that long he could get away with a stupid moment of self indulgence. Well he didn’t and I for one am a little disheartened by this. Still, practically every episode before it was near perfect so I remain a Sopranos fan. Just a shame the creator seems to have turned into an arrogant prick