Onion rings, Journey and women who can’t parallel park to save their lives: and with that Sopranos creator David Chase left us with the biggest set of blue balls in the history of television. Call it cinematic coitus interruptus.
The Sopranos ended…errr, went to black unexpectedly as Tony and his family were reconvening for a quaint family diner dinner. A suspicious looking fella with a members only jacket was clocking Tony and his family; if you want to be “racialist” about it, a bunch of black guys entered the dinner around the same time and a scary looking bunch of boy scouts surrounded the family. What would happen? Would Meadow redeem Jersey women and learn how to park? Would Tony need the Heimlich maneuver? Would A.J. get it in the back? Would Carlo narc everyone out to the Feds? Perhaps the Arabs blew up all of North Jersey just as Meadow entered the dinner?
David Chase Hates You and Your Family
We’ll never fucking know. In a final scene full of potential dread, brimming tragedy and screaming-on-the-edge apprehension and terror…nothing fucking happened. David Chase jerked us off to the tipping point and cut to black before anything disastrous went down. There was that brief, “Oh my god, what the fuck happened to the TV signal!,” before the those cockteases finally went to the credits in total deafening silence. Earlier in the episode Phil Retardo finally got his just desserts when he got whacked by one of Tony’s guys, in the lamest plum track suit in the history of Jersey mob guys wearing track suits. To add insult to injury his stupid fuck got his melon pulverized when the car in neutral ran over his already-dead fontanelle.
And what the fuck was up with the creepy cat that kept praying to long-dead Christopher? We realize David Chase is known to defy expectations, but give us a kit-kat sized fucking break. TV audiences, who have never been so royally fucked over before, will never be the same.
To set the record straight: Despite this sadistic jerk-around from Chase, I still liked this episode and how it ended. It was characteristically ambiguous and without closure, as I assumed it would be. The ending was definitely in keeping with the show’s overall tone.