End of the Sopranos

[Margarette]

NEW YORK (AP) - Viewers weren't the only ones who didn't know what to make of the boldly ambiguous ending of "The Sopranos" - some of the stars didn't, either.

James Gandolfini told the Daily News in Friday's edition that he had "no idea" what to think was to happen to his character, the emotionally tortured mob boss and suburban dad Tony Soprano, after the hit series' final episode closed Sunday with an abrupt cut to a blank screen.

"You have to ask ("The Sopranos" creator) David Chase that. Smarter minds than mine know the answer to that," Gandolfini said. "I thought it was a great ending. You decide."

The screen went black and silent as Gandolfini's character and his family sat down to dinner, leaving fans guessing - and some complaining - about the ending's meaning or lack thereof.

Some have suggested that the movements of a man in the background portended a "Godfather"-style shooting. Others surmised that the show, which delved deeply into the domestic life of its mobster protagonist, was simply ending on an everyday note. Chase has declined to explain.

Several of Gandolfini's cast mates echoed his praise for the show's open-ended conclusion.

"A conventional ending would have been a fraud," Steven Van Zandt, who played Silvio, told the Daily News.

"Life doesn't have tidy little endings," said Van Zandt, a member of rocker Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band. "Even some great songs just fade out like the last episode of 'The Sopranos.'"

[UTVols2]

I didn't really know how to take it when I saw the ending. At first I was mad because I wanted to see all hell break loose, then as I thought about it a little more it didn't seem to bad, but everytime they kept showing people walking thru the diner I thought here it goes, they are all going down then bam, blank screen. WTF

[Ironlung]

I saw a thing on Jimmy Kimmel the other night, I think it was from a NY newscast. They were stopping people on the street and asking them what they thought about the ending. They stop this one 40 yr old black lady and they're talking to her asking what she thought. She was talking about how she liked the last episode and then right at the end she says "I'm mad though, because at the end my cable went out and I missed the end.". [img]/LDPforum/ubbthreads/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif[/img]

[UTVols2]

At first I thought my satelitte went out and was getting ready to throw something thru the TV until the credits started rolling.

[Margarette]

That is funny, haha. I think they probably did it the way they did so everyone can come to their own belief about what happens to the family.

[Margarette]

Think Tony Soprano's dead? You may be right
POSTED: 2:53 p.m. EDT, June 15, 2007

Story Highlights"? "Sopranos" creator David Chase has said, "It's all there"
"? HBO notes that some theories have come close
"? Key clue may be in Bobby Bacala dialogue

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Fans of "The Sopranos" are seizing on clues suggesting the controversial blackout which abruptly ended the TV mob drama meant that Tony Soprano was rubbed out, and HBO said Thursday they may be on to something.

One clue in particular, a flashback in the penultimate episode to a conversation between Tony and his brother-in-law about death, gained credence as an HBO spokesman called it a "legitimate" hint and confirmed that series creator David Chase had a definite ending in mind.

"While he won't say to me 100 percent what it all means, he says some people who've guessed have come closer than others," HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer told Reuters after speaking to Chase.

"There are definitely things there that he intended for people to pick up on," Schaffer said. (Watch viewers try to make sense of the end )

Chase himself suggested as much in an interview Tuesday with The Star-Ledger newspaper of New Jersey when he said of his end to the HBO series, "Anyone who wants to watch it, it's all there."

In the final moments of Sunday's concluding episode, Tony, the conflicted mob boss who has just survived a round of gangland warfare, sits in a diner with his family munching on onion rings as the 1980s song by rock band Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'," blares from a juke box.

Tension builds as a suspicious man wearing a "Members Only" jacket eyes Tony from a nearby counter before slipping into a restroom. Then, as Tony looks toward the restaurant's entrance, the screen abruptly goes blank in mid-scene -- with no picture or sound for 10 seconds -- until the credits roll silently.

Stunned viewers, many initially believing something had gone wrong with their cable TV reception, were left wondering whether Tony ended up "whacked" or whether his sordid life went on as usual.

Even star James Gandolfini wasn't sure.

"You have to ask ('The Sopranos' creator) David Chase that. Smarter minds than mine know the answer to that," Gandolfini told the New York Daily News. "I thought it was a great ending. You decide."

The jarring, fill-in-the-blank finale, concluding a show widely hailed as America's greatest television drama, sparked a furious debate about whether Chase had conceived of an actual ending and whether he left the audience any clues.

The biggest hint, according to a consensus taking shape on the Web, is a scene from an earlier episode in which Tony and his brother-in-law, Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri, muse about what it feels like to die.

"You probably don't even hear it when it happens," Bobby says while they sit fishing in a small boat on a lake.

That scene is recalled briefly in a flashback played at the end of the penultimate "Sopranos" episode, as Tony is lying in the darkened room of a safehouse clutching a machine gun to his chest in the midst of a mob war.

"I think that is one of the most legitimate things to look at," Schaffer said when asked about theories that the Bobby Bacala flashback was meant to foreshadow Tony's death.

Moreover, he said the man in the "Members Only" jacket could be interpreted as a symbolic reference to membership in the mob. "Members Only" also was the title of the episode in which Tony's demented Uncle Junior shoots him in the gut.

The "Members Only" guy was played by the owner of a real-life pizza parlor, Paolo Colandrea. Schaffer denied reports that Colandrea had appeared earlier in the series as the nephew of Tony's New York gang rival, or that there ever was such a character. He also dismissed reports that Chase had filmed more than one ending to the finale.

[NotSoSilentBob]

I can finally read this thread, two and a half months after the fact.

The tension over the last few episodes was extreme.

All in all, a Seinfeld-esque ending, but as the articles said, an ending that could mean many different things.