4 result(s) tagged “The Sopranos”

Have you calmed down yet?

Are you over the orgasmic delight you felt at the way David Chase defied all predictions about the end of his beloved series, The Sopranos? Have you recovered from your rage about ambiguity, a lack of closure, and Journey?

Good.

Now let’s clear a few things up. Tony Soprano did not die. That last scene was not at all a cinematic expression of Tony’s anxiety, and therefore David Chase did jab his middle fingers into your eyes. Yet there was nothing wrong with the way it ended, even if it was manipulative.

In this “Five Minutes” audio commentary, Culture Snob will explain all that and more, without abruptly cutting to silence mid-sentence.

This final “half-season” of The Sopranos — only five episodes remain — reminds me of the movie version of Clue, in the sense that series creator David Chase has set up any number of possible endings, none any better than another. Each week brings new foreshadowing — a new suspect if you’re inclined to think that Tony’s going to bite it — but no real sense of a final destination.

To me, it feels like a narrative cheat. The best stories are those whose outcomes are both surprising and inevitable, whose authors from the start build toward a terminus without sacrificing suspense. At this point, Chase could pull any of a dozen equally fitting endings out of a hat.

“Not with a bang ... not even a whimper ... it was more like a wet fart.”

Throughout the show’s 12-episode run this spring, the House Next Door has generously given series creator David Chase credit for knowing where he’s taking his Sopranos ship. The commentary on Sunday’s episode, however, marks a re-evaluation — a shortening of the critical leash. The premise of the analysis has been that Chase would brilliantly bring his gangster and family saga to a close. But after 12 episodes, we’re pretty much back where we started.

Matt Zoller Seitz continues to clearly and insightfully break down the new season of The Sopranos. In his post on “Join the Club,” he makes a connection that seems obvious now, but it eluded me when I watched the episode: With Tony’s brain playing out an alternative existence, The Sopranos is paying its respects to Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective.

The March 19 episode, Seitz writes,

“felt like a muscular American response to Potter’s masterpiece, from the hospital location to the expressive, knowingly nostalgic use of pop music. ... The tone of this extended sequence is very Dennis Potter, but the unexplained identity swap has a touch of David Lynch’s Lost Highway about it.”