The Sopranos Ending- Explained Once and for All

the series finale of the sopranos will probably best be remembered for the ending [Music] why does it do that that's it what do you mean that's it that's it that's the end what do you mean that's the end of the series no that's it i'm not cool with that i seriously thought my cable went out i felt like after all these years we were faithful i don't feel they were faithful to us the season finale sucked many believe the end was really just the beginning and this opens the door for the sopranos to possibly be made into a movie i loved how the series ended because i think there was no way that everybody was going to be happy so david chase did what made him happy which is uh you know leave a lot of people talking about it what ultimately happened to the family isn't that funny how many people have said that like i understand i understand but what actually happened so many people say to me about the ending so what the hell was that i'm like you know i know pretty much what you do and they're like all right i get it but but what really happened i have to say i haven't heard a new question about the sopranos in a long time i'm sorry as for soprano's creator david chase he got whacked in the headlines he got whacked by the new york post cartoonist who showed fans getting whacked and chase literally got whacked online made a lot of people angry um there were people who just wanted a mob show and their motto was less yakking more whacking that when i would read things like that it would only make me do more more hacking so i would have done anything differently with the ending of the show i don't think so as time has gone on sopranos has survived with a reputation as probably the greatest tv show of all time and the response to the final scene has turned into mostly a debate over its meaning so for people getting into the show now it might be hard to understand just how much of a shock and how much outrage there was at the ending at the time it originally aired the fact that it's still the subject of endless debate and interpretation though means that people still never really quite come to terms with it and there's still no consensus completely about what it means the simplest answer and i think the correct answer to the question of what happened immediately after the screen went to black in the last scene is that there is no single correct answer i think audiences really seem to struggle with the idea of ambiguity i see this all the time with other movies like you know obviously with the ending of inception people debate this endlessly with theories about whether it does or doesn't mean he's still in the dream honestly this is a fundamental lack of understanding of how ambiguity operates the point is that he could be in a dream if the filmmakers wanted to tell you one way or the other that he was in a dream or he wasn't then they would have done it the point of not saying it directly is to leave multiple possibilities open it's not a puzzle to decode whether or not tony dies in that final cut to black is beside the point of the suggestion that he could die in that final cut to black of course the show lays the groundwork to suggest that if he did die this would be how he would experience it and how they would portray it the [ __ ] scary thing was i didn't know what happened until after the shot was fired [ __ ] weird you probably don't even hear it when it happens right but it's much more powerful than just showing somebody getting shot to suggest all the different things that could happen to him and leaving him in a place where due to the decisions that he's made in his life from now on for him anytime when a door opens it could possibly be somebody there to kill him the problem for people with saying that the answer is a non-answer is that to a lot of people this seems like a cop-out they would say that it was just a way of avoiding giving a good ending or a satisfactory ending that could be true if the final scene had just come out of nowhere and if the story had been going someplace different and then just stopped but that's actually not what happens in the show the show actually spends not just a few key moments but two entire seasons earning that end cut to black and imbuing that ending with meanings are endless little things building up to that moment and that's actually what i want to talk about if you're wondering what the last scene means the previous moments in the show pertaining to it tell you in great detail what it means if you watch them carefully but i saw at one point that i wanted to the bus drivers you're going home i am but no they are the bus see they're a vehicle that gets us here they drop us off and go on their way they continue on their journey and the problem is that we keep trying to get back on the bus mother grandma what daddy is he losing is he i don't know he could be sometimes they see people who've passed so first just to quickly define what it means when i'm talking about two seasons and when i refer to different seasons uh the sopranos has seven seasons i know the last 21 episodes are usually referred to as season six or season six part one in part two but the reason for that is basically because after a sixth season some of the cast would have been able to renegotiate their contracts so hbo negotiated the deal for the final two seasons together and called them one season the two halves though they aired separately with a break in between and they were made separately and david chase considers them two different seasons but because of the fact they're negotiated and planned at the same time when they started season six they knew that they were working towards the end and they knew how many episodes they had left and so many things in season six were conceived of to lead into season seven and the story they created to build to the show's finale really kicks off at the beginning of season six and it makes a straight line all the way through to the final episode you know albeit with an intermission between the two seasons if you look at season six as being part of the show's final stretch you can see that david chase clearly lays the groundwork for where they're going in the first scene of the first episode [Music] the ancient egyptians postulated seven souls uh the music and narration that starts at the end of the first scene of the first season describing seven souls postulated in egyptian mythology that's a recording of william burroughs reading passages from his book which is called the western lands the album of these recordings was originally released with the title seven souls and then it was re-released in an updated version called the road to the western lands so in the context of the sopranos the title the road to the western lands already has a meaning that you could think of because one of the major themes of the show has always been the immigrant experience in america specifically of european immigrants who settled on the east coast immigrating from europe across the atlantic the american east coast is the western lands in the context of william burroughs book though which is about ideas in egyptian mythology about the afterlife the western lands that he's talking about are specifically the western banks of the nile river which in some egyptian mythology is referred to as the land of the dead the road to the western lands is by definition the most dangerous road in the world or it is a journey beyond death beyond the basic god standard of fear and danger it is the most heavily guarded road in the world where it gives access to the gift that supersedes all other gifts immortality so the road to the western lands means crossing the river into the land of the dead or more broadly dying in the context of the sopranos where you might think of the theme of immigrants crossing the atlantic ocean instead of the nile river the title immediately becomes a pun because it can simultaneously refer to the two major themes of the final season immigrants being assimilated into the american culture and people crossing over to the land of the dead a body of water being a metaphor for either of those two journeys is a central symbol that can carry through the entire last two seasons of the show and it's actually there from the beginning of the show it can symbolize death but also rebirth as something new or just generally a journey or a transformation opening with this material though is just the first message that the show is going to be dealing with those ideas the first four episodes spend most of their time dealing with different spiritual ideas about the afterlife i know it's not any kind of surprise or secret to say that because in many of the scenes where tony is in the hospital the characters are talking about these ideas directly but the totality of the idea that they lay out is giving you context for the symbols which will appear throughout the next two seasons so that when one of these things recurs you can refer back and infer the possible meanings the ancient egyptians postulated seven souls top soul and the first to leave at the moment of death is written the secret name with the william burrow seven souls piece the show is directly relating burroughs explanations of the different aspects of a person's being in egyptian mythology to particular characters and events in the show since he's explaining that the seven types of beings or all aspects of one individual though you could also take the seven ideas to be aspects of one character who in this case would be tony if you look up the idea of egyptian mythology of the soul you'll find different lists of the different parts with different meanings and different names our knowledge of ancient egyptian mythology is incomplete and also their belief systems changed and evolved over the span of their history within the sopranos though having different contradictory theories about the afterlife makes sense because in the following few episodes they'll try to look at what's happening through all different mythologies from egyptian to buddhist to native american to christian but from the sequence though they're tying these characters to the specific things that burroughs has to say in his explanation of the seven souls this corresponds to my director he directs the film of your life from conception to death the secret name is the title of your film when you die that's where ren came in the first soul that burroughs names is rin which he describes as being the director of your life for the story of your life from the time of your birth to the time of your death it's interesting that he describes in terms of a director because as the two seasons go on a major way that they use the idea of death is in examining how you end stories so there's a meta thing going on of them constantly looking not just at how stories end but at how you present that and how they appear to the person that is experiencing it versus the people that are witnessing it it's also interesting here that he describes rin is encompassing both birth and death and some explanations of the idea it's said to be your name and symbolic of your identity and experiences burroughs frames it as everything that happens between birth and death and a major theme that they're going to come back to again and again in the last two seasons of sopranos is birth and death being two halves of the same thing two transformations and the point where you travel from one kind of reality to another all i can say is i sure for pretty certain that this everything we see and experience that's not all there is alternate universes are you gonna be a [ __ ] comedian now i'm not when they're talking about birth they show janus nursing her baby and then when burro says the word death they cut to a black train that bobby's playing with on its own right there that might not really be enough to say that in the show trains equal death or something like that but there's a reason why they introduced bobby's model train hobby at that moment to go forward for a second the episode where bobby dies is called blue comet and when he's shot he's in the middle of purchasing a model of the blue comet train which used to be a famous train that traveled down the jersey coast atlantic city i've already talked about the symbolism of oceans or bodies of water representing a journey or a migration or ultimately traveling from life to death or vice versa but in case it wasn't spelled out with the western lands idea the blue comet train was named that because it famously was painted blue to resemble the ocean and it traveled to atlantic city of all places and it also went through ocean county so when bobby says that he'll buy the blue comment train it's pretty easy to see that he's buying a ticket for his trip to the afterlife on top of all that the root of the blue comet also happened to go through the pine barrens which of course fans of the show will know as the place where christopher and paulie went to dump the body of somebody who they thought that they had killed but who actually turned out to be alive my theory on why they selected trains as an image of a journey to the afterlife aside from a train being an obvious metaphor for a journey was that they could use model trains where the characters building them and playing with them you know they're playing god in a visual way setting up little cities and people and deciding their fate when bobby tries to share his hobby with his son it's the father trying to pass on what he's learned about life and fate but of course as his son enters adolescence he's not interested in learning anything from his father anymore [Applause] your son will like this too looks fast he don't care it's also worth mentioning as far as train symbolism that the train is briefly used to symbolize sex later when they do a version of the famous train joke from north by northwest [Music] [Music] second soul and second one off the sinking ship is second energy power light the director gives the orders second presses the right button then the second soul that burroughs names is secum which he describes as power or energy or light they show eugene and his wife opening a letter and celebrating something but at this point we don't yet know what that is of course it turns out that what they're celebrating is that they got an inheritance from eugene's aunt so in this case you could say that sekum or power is money it's a pretty arched comment on the themes running throughout the show that to represent power they would choose money in america power is money burro says that the director or wren gives the orders on what is to happen but second is what presses the right buttons to make it happen so why me in him you guys got my buttons on my grandmother's [ __ ] corsets in other words we have our personality and desires but in this society money is what you need to actually make those desires a reality it's also interesting that this money is being inherited talking about death and souls they're talking about what we leave behind when we die in this case eugene's aunt's power or her money or her second is left behind for him the third soul that burroughs talks about his coup which he describes as a guardian angel the show has meadow represent this [Music] [Applause] number three is cool the guardian angel he shear it his third man out it also edits the full recording here of what burrow has to say about each of the souls but if you look up the whole thing he describes ku as being a bird with luminous wings and head that's made of light convicted is flying away across a full moon a bird with luminous wings and a head of light sort of thing you might see on a screen in an indian restaurant by associating meta with a bird we come to another of the show's favorite major symbols which has of course been around since the first episode it's the ducks tony's fascination with the ducks having a family in his pool has been an often recurring symbol for his own family and his depression when the ducks flew away had to do with his fear of losing his family and of course we come back to bodies of water here again which is how the symbolism that they're bringing in with the atlantic ocean or the nile river ties all the way back to the beginning of the show back to tony's pool as being a place that represents both birth and death or the journey of life the family of ducks is born there and they fly away from there we worry so much sometimes it feels like that's all we do but in the end it just gets washed away all of it just just gets washed away if anything other than because of time i would guess that they cut out the line of burrows saying that ku is a bird because meadow being compared to a bird or a duck here would just almost be two on the nose if they actually came out and said it out right up with the [ __ ] birds number four is ba the heart often treacherous [Music] this is another one where the full recording of what he says is a couple lines that weren't used in the show but which are also interesting this is [Music] when he says that the heart is treacherous they show ray on a treadmill and of course later in this episode he'll have a heart attack they're telegraphing that one to you because it's actually foreshadowing different other events that will come later me my heart is an open book i'm dying my heart oh my god that's my point though what you just said johnny goes away it's phil's turn in the driver's seat and his heart gives out right his heart i know what it's a metaphor he lost his balls is what i'm saying just say it then walk [ __ ] whip me over here but of course when you say heart it can represent more than the physical organ and when you say somebody is betrayed by their heart it can mean more than a heart attack burroughs says minnie a hero has been brought down by a perfidious ba it's worth noting that he also describes ba as looking like a bird and in the end after a long chain of events it's tony's idea of how he should protect his daughter that is ultimately what makes phil leotardo decide to kill him my daughter come on my daughter you got a little girl number five is car the double the god which usually reaches adolescence the time of bodily death is the only reliable guide through the land of the dead uh in in egyptian mythology in ambrose book the devil might not strictly be an evil thing burroughs describes it as adolescent and a guide to the land of the dead they're showing aj here at this point in the show who eventually tries to kill himself in the same pool where tony's family of ducks was born also worth noting that when burroughs here mentions the land of the dead the show cuts to a shot of carmella's speck house where she's with the dead character adriana and what will be revealed in a few months to be a dream i'll get more into the ideas behind carmilla's spec house in a bit but obviously this is important number six is cohabit the shadow memory your whole past conditioning from this and other lives then the sixth soul borough's names is called cahabit which is memory or shadow and this is where they show adriana who at this point is a memory and also a shadow hanging over the season and she disappears adriana is the shadow here but being the victim of a murder order by tony she represents a lot of shadows that are hanging over the characters number seven remains this could be the physical body or the corpse that somebody leaves behind um and then the show cuts to tony and junior digging in junior's backyard and you might at first guess that they're digging from one of the many bodies that they've buried in a moment though it's revealed that they're actually digging for money that junior thinks he buried which could be seen as a wry comment on what they'll leave behind when they've died believe me nobody ever laid on that deathbed wishing they saved more no-show jobs but generally speaking when you start wondering how much all the little details are related one thing that almost everybody who worked on the show or anybody who read the scripts have all said is that every little detail on the sopranos was deliberate the script would never just say generic type for a small character it would spell out what kind of clothing they were wearing what brand of clothing they were wearing if there were logos or anything what their ethnicity was and so on when i'm talking about the motif of bodies of water having to do with death or transformation it's worth noting that in the first episode of season six before eugene kills himself he's not just looking at generic photos of himself and his family he's specifically looking at pictures of them on a trip to the beach then when he kills himself he takes a seashell in his hand when he's in the car with fbi agents and he realizes that his plan to move away to florida won't work there's a sign on the street at the beginning of the scene that says dead end uh you know when carmela and rosalie have their first big moment appreciating the city in paris the first statue of this show is a statue listening to seashell one of these things might be incidental but cumulatively when they're repeated and when the same symbols are used deliberately in frequent places elsewhere you know that they have to be intentional the circle of life circle jerker life so after the first episode hinting around these themes of course where the idea of crossing over into the land of the dead becomes more literal is in the end of the episode when tony's shot after the first scene of the first episode of the series which is tony's first therapy session they opened the next scene with a distinctive shot of tony waking up in his bed with a camera over him looking down into his face directly that's actually the scene where he talks about how he feels like he came in at the end of something the series starts with tony talking about an ending the final episode of the series then opens with a new version of that same shot with tony waking up in bed in his safe house where they're hiding fearing that phil leotard was sent somebody to kill him and the camera is over tony in the same way that he was over tony in that scene in the first episode so david chase directed each of those episodes and opening each of those episodes at the opening and closing of the series with tony waking up in bed like that and being filmed in the same way like that is an obvious framing device what's interesting about that here is that after tony is shot by uncle junior they do another version of the same shot again with the camera above him and with him on the floor before he passes out now that they've set up the idea of crossing over into the land of the dead they metaphorically and almost literally kill tony and the episode fades out as he blacks out everything in the series after that i think can be read on some level as musings on the idea of death and the afterlife we've at this point now gone into the land of the dead now i don't mean that in some kind of way like saying that tony actually dies in this episode and the rest of the series is a dream or a hallucination or anything dopey like that nice place to live around here it's dead but i do think that him dying here on some symbolic level is an intentional way that you could read it i'm dead right they had to do that because everything else is examining the idea of death and different ways the character can die in different ways the stories can end and different cultural ideas about what happens after death and what death means they do hit on the idea specifically that tony dies and comes back in obvious ways you know with him repeatedly talking about a second chance and how every day after he leaves the hospital as a gift they hit the concept more directly with the pastor that visits him in the hospital and talks to him about christ rising from the dead i brought you something born again i'm supposed to be dead now i'm alive the luckiest guy in the whole world snap that's this from now on every day is a gift the episode later on where aj tries to kill himself is also called the second coming these things are all layering in the idea that on some level tony died so what's happening to him afterward can be seen as a commentary on that and on the afterlife but the fact that they don't do a literal minded thing like having everything afterward turn out to be a dream that's done for the same reason they don't spell out exactly what happens in the final scene of the series not giving one concrete explanation doesn't take away the meanings it would have if it were that concrete explanation because they've given you enough hints to look at it that way if you want to but not making it so literal allows you to also look at it in other ways as well they set up the different themes that they're using this all to look at directly in the dialogue in a few different ways there's the obvious imagery in tony's dream sequence or hallucination or vision or whatever you want to take it as where he's being prodded to go into the light which is one common description of a near-death experience but there are also other sets of symbols that they established the buddhist monks in tony's dream describe the idea that after you die you'll lose your individual identity and become like a tree one day we will all die and then we'll be the same as that tree no me no you this isn't referring to the idea that your body will become mulch but it's a broader idea that your identity and personality will join the larger universe after tony comes out of his coma the same idea is explained further but in scientific terms by the character that he meets who goes into the idea that people aren't actually separate things from one another in the same way that two waves are both part of the same ocean well think of the two boxes as ocean waves or currents of air two tornadoes say they appear to be two things right two separate things but they're not the tornadoes is just wind the wind stirred up in different directions the fact is nothing is separate everything is connected you know the baby's cussy giant tree branch came through the window and demolished it she would have been dead caitlyn mangled beyond recognition the white building that tony goes to in his dream that's obviously meant to represent crossing over or going into the light is called the in at the oaks which is again coming back to trees and again tying that to death yes the end of the oaks left on jamboree boulevard out towards the beacon what is that beacon anyway oh i lost my real briefcase up my whole life isn't it maybe being a rebel in my family would have been selling patio furniture on room 22. maybe i'll be selling patio furniture in san diego or whatever tony you never did tell us how you made the jump from selling patio furniture to precision optics well like my wife says that's a good question the tree symbolism i think is chosen because it goes back to another symbol used earlier in the series like the ducks and the pools there's this um key shot in season five when adriana is being murdered in the woods and rather than showing the murder the camera tilts up to show the trees above them and the sky beyond look at those clouds paris skies the camera move isn't just there to avoid showing the violence the choice of imagery being delivered is emphasized because later in the same episode they use a similar image when the camera looks up to the trees above the characters when they're in the woods on the plot of land where carmilla plans to build her spec house connecting those woods to the woods where adriana is murdered by using the same kind of shot again emphasizes the idea that the house carmela's building is built on a foundation of blood and antoni's murders they go there again in the first episode of season six where they associate the house carmella's house with the land of the dead and they even show adriana's ghost in the house speaking with carmela this plays out in the storyline over carmela's house being built out of bad lumber and although carmela is trying to do something good with her house and she's trying to do something on her own her solution is rather than replace the bad lumber to get tony to go and force the building inspector to turn a blind eye carmella actually building a house is the idea of her being a homemaker turned more literal so what do you do i'm a homemaker oh you must make a very nice home to drive a benz but whether she takes the easy route or even when she tries to do the right thing the house that carmela build still has a rotten foundation and it's built on crime and that spec house i made the down payment i bought the materials i leaned on that building inspector you had your thumb up your ass so stop talking about your money and of course all of this being symbolized by the lumber that she's using for construction materials it goes back to the trees throughout the season they return to this kind of tree shot a few more times when carmela is in paris and she has another dream about adriana they do the same shot again looking up at the sky with trees around it and then panning down to the characters the difference is this time instead of being out in the woods they're looking up at manicured trees in paris boulevard i take that as being symbolic of how the art and beauty that carmella admires when she's in paris is our way of trying to bring order to the chaos and wilderness into which we're born and another comment on what the artist does with these themes when he takes events and arranges them into a story they do a variation again on the tree shot before paulie beats up jason brone starting with tony looking up at the trees in his backyard then following the shot of trees panning down to reveal that they aren't actually the trees that tony was looking at but rather ones near a lake where jason is about to go rowing the other way that they use the trees throughout is to reflect the quote that's left near tony's bed after he comes out of his coma beautiful thought who put that up they combined the tree symbol with the wind to show how all these things are interconnected they pointedly show wind moving along the surface of the water as well at several points when paulie goes to reconcile with his mother the episode ends showing the wind blowing through the trees outside of her window when carlo is disposing of that dom's head the song on the soundtrack is moonlight mile by the rolling stones starting with the lyric when the wind blows and the rain feels cold with a head full of snow but most pointedly when tony is having his near-death experience and being prodded to enter a white house and go into the light what stops him is a voice in the wind blowing through the trees behind him it's a girl's voice most likely meadow's voice from when she was a child telling him to come back and not to cross over [Music] so you know of course every time it was a windy day on set that doesn't mean there was some intentional symbolism to the moment but when it's done deliberately not just showing trees but doing a lingering insert shot of them or replicating a specific camera move from the scene where adriana was killed and doing it again in another scene where adriana appears you can assume that they're trying to call your attention to the parallels in those moments water is likewise a default location where they would naturally place a lot of scenes but it's different when they deliberately do it again and again and again in scenes that have to do with death going back to season one you have the ducks in the pool but as soon as season two the water symbolism is turned around when they repeatedly referenced the idea of a killed character you know sleeping with the fishes and they kill [ __ ] on a boat and drop him into the ocean what the hell is this that's a sicilian message that means local brassy sleeps with the fishes these guys on either side of me they're asleep don't say that it's not [ __ ] funny i run down to the boat show in edison that's what you might want to join bottom feeding huh that's where the big fish are then you know white caps the house that tony and carmella dream of buying together is a beach house on the water uh as is the house that carmela bought for an investment and where she stays in the final episode when they're hiding from phil's hitman uh in season seven when tony is contemplating killing paulie he takes him out on a boat just like the one that they used to kill [ __ ] when aj tries to kill himself he does it in the family pool when patsy is contemplating killing tony he settles instead for pissing in tony's pool after moving the body of the first person that he killed twice christopher finally disposes of him for good by dropping him into a lake they get rid of ralphie's body by dumping him off a cliff into another lake to get rid of fat dom's head carlo kicks down a storm drain which could also take things out to the ocean and on and on and on the show spends a lot of time examining why people end up in these dangerous situations in their lives or put themselves in those situations i think the main idea the show arrives at is most clearly stated in the episode the ride which asks why people like scares and thrills [Music] you look around all these people are lined up for this [ __ ] the kids uh adults families rides yeah they pay money so they can almost puke they scream they yell what do you think that is they're bored i don't know tony it's like just the [ __ ] regularness of life is too [ __ ] hard for me or something i don't i don't know the desire to feel alive in the shadow of death is why characters like christopher develop chemical dependencies but it's also why somebody like tony feels like he has to constantly gamble but if you could lose what's the [ __ ] point huh so you need to risk what are you chasing money or a high from winning original reward it's reflected again in vito's story where he could have escaped but instead he chose to try to return to his old life i got kids i couldn't live without them [ __ ] it was the [ __ ] life you couldn't live without when vito finds a peaceful little town where he could have stayed safely he's seeking shelter from a storm and he finds a little place to stay called the white mountain bed and breakfast it reminds me a lot of course of the in at the oaks which is what represents death in tony's dream white mountain white caps the white light going towards the light and so on vito could have stayed there but he chose to return to physical danger rather than feel bored or you know not feel alive the usual guys are we boring yeah yeah i'm good all i can say is i sure for pretty certain that this everything we see and experience is not all there is why i was in that coma something happened to me it went someplace i think but i know i never want to go back there and maybe you know what i'm talking about it's why even though tony's rich and he could be richer if he didn't waste his money tony would risk getting shot to steal a few boxes of wine of course some of tony's misdeeds are much more serious than stealing some wine the show also makes the point that when the characters become murderers they're actually killing a portion of themselves when bobby commits his first murder the man pointedly has an ankh tattoo which is an egyptian symbol again so it brings back the egyptian mythology and the ankh specifically as a symbol of life when bobby goes back to see janus and his daughter having a sweet little domestic scene he's obviously thinking about what he did as he looks out over the lake they make a point of saying that the man he killed was a father who was trying to take his son back and when bobby kills him he sees his own reflection in the glass of the laundry machine the point being that i think by killing this man bobby's killing a part of himself he can never ever again be open with his daughter in the same way he might have been before because now there's always this thing that's part of himself that she can't know about in the midst of that we are in life huh was it the other way around i think it's the other way around earlier when tony's sitting by the lake brooding about his fight with bobby and before he decides to have bobby kill the man there's a shot where in the background behind tony you can see a duck flying away this idea is reflected many times like in the scene where eugene has murdered somebody in the hopes that in doing this favor for christopher uh they'll let him leave for florida with his family back in the car after he kills the man he wipes the man's blood off on a map you know a map that could have been for the trip with his family that he'll never take they're always trying to show that everything affects everything else and the consequences of these characters actions affect every other part of their lives like a pebble in a lake even the fish feel it everything is everything for tony his boat represents his aspirations his peace and contentment but how he pays for it has its costs when they show him having a you know lighthearted moment on the boat with aj the show also makes a point of showing the people in a smaller boat that's capsized in their wake as they sail by the big scene in the penultimate episode where silvio is shot they also show an innocent person who was riding a motorcycle near the scene and is killed in the mayhem the drama between the characters will always have consequences that they can't escape and consequences that they can't predict on other people tony living this life that he's chosen has got him success in a lot of things that he's wanted but it's also put him in a constant state of danger where any moment he could be arrested or killed is this it my estimate historically 80 of the time it ends up in the can like johnny shack or on the embalming table of course your alleys don't even say i'm worried aid everybody's worried no i am worried all the time i worry tony i do you already got shot now you won't even go down to get the paper who is out there come on what is it what are the million other possibilities the fbi waiting to take you away right you eat and you play and you pretend like there's not a giant piano hanging by a rope just over the top of your head every minute of every day the show makes the looming possibility of tony's death clear all the time in ways great and small one early visual pun in the show was the first time that somebody made an attempt on tony's life in season one they showed him holding a bottle of orange juice which was shattered a lot of people noticed that he took it as a reference to the scene in the godfather where an attempt is made on don corleone and there's a shot overhead showing oranges spilling out onto the sidewalk in season seven in the episode where they find the body of tony's first victim and he goes on the lamb with paulie when paulie tells tony the news tony is looking at tomato plants in his backyard when he tells carmella that he's gonna go leave and hide he says that his tomato plants were just coming in this is what life is still like at our age my tomatoes are just coming in and it the lines kind of seems like a non-sequitur of course there's the obvious metaphor of his earlier actions bearing fruit but i think it's also a reference to don corleone there the scene with an attempt on don corleone's life has the oranges but when he actually dies he's playing with his grandson in his tomato garden it's worth noting also that in the last episode when tony is visiting carmela and the new house that she bought as a real estate investment he also stopped seeing orange what are you talking about mo green and one mo green's eyes got too big for his stomach so they put a small caliber in his eye shoot him up means the guy was a rat the eye is just how francis framed the shot for the shock value it also comes to mind in the scene with tony's lawyer trying to get ketchup out of a bottle which is a kind of humorous analogy of the frustration of waiting for something to happen or the other should drop but it's also ketchup it's bottled tomatoes again of course throughout the whole show food is always very important and symbolic chase chooses to end almost all the seasons with some kind of family gathering usually over a meal in the first season they take shelter from a storm at vesuvius for italian food in the first episode of season six but before tony's shot they make the point of showing him eating sushi several times and they also show him weighing himself as he's begun gaining weight in the same episode before hesh and his nephew are attacked they make the point of mentioning that they're eating chinese food you could extend that to be an analogy for americans subsisting more and more on things produced in china and japan i know this is hard for you to believe but food may not be the answer to every problem well nato is acting like a whiny little [ __ ] and of course the final scene of the final episode tony is with his family eating in an all-american diner and they're having onion rings what the [ __ ] is happening to this neighborhood famous little italy it once covered over 40 pueblos but have now been reduced to one row of shops and cafes if you're to take the events of the season as being analogies for both the journey from birth to death and also the journey of the immigrant to becoming part of america the food they're eating has now in the last scene become fully americanized the final episode of the show is also called made in america and in the scene where phil leotardo is killed just for one example they're at a gas station it's festooned with american flags everywhere and they make a point of showing at least three different close-ups of the ford logo on the truck that ends up rolling over phil's head and my family made the trick up giddy gulch bloomfield avenue but my routine go way back my grandfather came from abelino like most of the people around here and i grew up right over there my father was an early community leader with the constant question of tony's fate hanging over the show the show goes to great lengths to examine all the possible ways a story like this could end in the last two seasons and especially the last season we get in total inventory of all the different possible ways that a character like tony could end up you know there's rey who has a heart attack it's a sudden natural death paulie's mom gnucci dies of a stroke dying in old age again johnny sack dies of cancer and in jail it's another natural death but a lingering death instead of sudden like a stroke eugene commits suicide to let his family escape the life that he made adriana's mother tries to kill herself not to save anybody else but because she can't live with what she thinks happened to her daughter aj tries suicide but he can't manage it vito is murdered for not conforming to mob ideas about how he should live jt dolan is murdered for getting involved in christopher's life but not belonging to that world fat dom rusty emilio and doc santoro are all murdered in mob violence if you're hoping for some sort of you know action-packed mob war they give it to you with those characters uh bobby is murdered by his enemies christopher is murdered by somebody that should have been his friend they try to murder silvio but it shows another possible outcome because he is shot but he hangs on and he has an ambiguous fate possibly won't come out of his coma and then they also examine the fates of characters that we don't follow all the way until their death but that we do follow until functionally the end of their story they leave uncle junior lost to senility having no memory of the life he lived or who he was he's still alive but who he was is gone how are you doing today i'm dying to slow death that's how i'm doing you're my dad you two ran north jersey we did yeah hmm well it's nice but in the end it just gets washed away all of it just just gets washed away hesh doesn't die but his partner does and he's left alone which could be the alternate scenario if you do manage to outlive those other people around you and paulie is left alive but his ocd leaves him in a constant fear of death well my time comes tell me will i stand up i'd rather face ten guys with shifts than something i can't see exactly too susceptible to the psychics and the dream messages and dirty [ __ ] toilet seats we worry so much sometimes it feels like that's all we do right you eat and you play and you pretend like there's not a giant piano hanging by a rope just over the top of your head every minute of every day the cumulative result of all of that is that when people say that they want to know what tony's fate was the show spent two entire seasons showing you every possible faith that he could have and exploring them all what they meant for the people who they happened to it's been 21 episodes answering the question but at the end i think the point is that regardless of which of these scenarios he ends up in he's created the situation where he can never really be happy in the moment that he's in because anytime a door opens it could be one of those things the show gives you more than enough information to know that if he was shot at the end of the final scene this would be how he would have experienced it in the idea of death that the show was presented you probably don't even hear it when it happens right but to just nail it down that that's what happened would negate all these other possibilities the show gives you enough to read it as the fate of this person but it also leaves it open so that it's about more than just one attack or one violent crime or one moment in time it's about death as a concept and how stories end in general it's not a multiple choice thing where you have to figure out which of the possible kinds of fate tony would have had but rather a way of looking at the idea of fate in general and comparing all these different possibilities and what they'd mean to different characters and within different ideas of death and afterlife i mean the answer is there with bobby's speech that you probably don't even see it when it happens and it's there with the guy in the members only jacket going to the bathroom where he could be preparing a gun like michael corleone and with all the other characters in holsteins who could also be there to kill tony for one reason or another if you want to know what happened to tony there are answers everywhere but after seven seasons of being the best tv show of all time and examining the ideas of death and fate in such detail ending with just a scene of somebody being shot or almost shot and escaping or being arrested or you know any of these possibilities would have not only been something you'd already seen on the show before it would have been so reductive compared to the complicated way these issues could play out over years and multiple episodes to use another example when they show the character of christopher getting killed his death is one scene but then they're also able to show the wake and the reactions of all the other characters to how he died they're able to deal with plot consequences over several episodes they're able to have a variety of reactions from characters who had different types of relationships with them they're able to examine not just the actual murder but what it means and the effect that it had like a pebble in a lake even the fish feel it if they had done that with tony in the last scene of the last episode or even near the last scene with a few little scenes after it wouldn't have been much more than just a you know bloody death scene rather than going into detail into all the implications if people wanted tony to go out in some kind of action-packed gory fight scene then i don't think they ever understood that that wasn't the kind of show that they were watching to begin with jesus christ aj and you make me want to cry it's a movie you gotta grow up you're not a kid anymore you hear me you gotta grow up people who demanded to see tony's fate on screen would have just got one bloody scene instead of this complicated examination of what the event could mean we've already seen tony shot in a coma we've already seen him about to cross over into the afterlife even we've seen characters reacting to that we've seen examinations of every possible permutation of how the life of a character like tony could end we even got extensive philosophical and spiritual discussions of what all that means the people who were upset with ending wanted a cut and dry explanation which would have amounted to you know one shootout scene that we've seen not only a million times in other mob movies but we've already seen many many times on the sopranos what they got instead of that one scene was a 21-hour essay on death and the purpose of life and how we tell these stories to ourselves and somehow they thought that was disappointing nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the american public after all the [ __ ] had done after all the complaining and the crying and all the [ __ ] [ __ ] is this all there is but of course now that i've talked about all that the real question becomes what do the eggs represent there are of course the famous ducks laying eggs in tony's pool which symbolizes desire for a family but the eggs recur at several points throughout the show the eggs at the dumpster when tony decides to kill tony b uh the eggs valentina is making when she catches on fire how about some egg beaters and tabasco uh the eggs junior asks bobby to cook for tony i'll take an egg you want an egg bobby make my nephew an egg i don't want on it i think i'll take an egg make us a couple eggs you and tony egg again and so on i think that when you put it all together the eggs are the key to understanding everything in the show and obviously the eggs represent dad that was neat at the end the creepy figurine and the crucifix i'm glad you caught that alexandra very observant the sacred and the propane

Channel: Rick Worley

Views: 295,778

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Id: rtiGl27jjxs

Length: 51min 49sec (3109 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021