Diatribe Of The Day: The Sopranos Ending

Since i posted an article hyping HBO, I figured I was required to respond to the Sopranos final episode. If you haven't seen it and somehow haven't heard what happened, maybe skip this article. Although, it would be hard to not know what happened if you turned on your TV or read a newspaper yesterday. It was amazing to watch everyone go on and on about it on every show imaginable. Even ESPN shows were talking about it around the clock; Jim Rome had a roundtable discussion on it for crying out loud. So, it's time for me to put my opinion down.

When the ending happened initally, I didn't really know what i thought about it. The American Beauty ending meets Rules of Attraction ending ending caught me by surprise just like everyone else. Now, I could intellectually explain all the different things the ending accomplishes that I appreciate, such as the multiple interpretations of what happens in the scene (do the sopranos get assassinated, did a terorist bombing just happen, do they just live and prosper?) or the "whacking" of the audience. But really, there's one real reason I think i now love the ending, and that's cuz it pissed off everybody.

It takes a lot of balls to take a pop-culture show like the Sopranos and play a practical joke on your audience. As i watched every talking head on television yesterday cry about what they wanted the ending to be and everyone i know and on message boards so upset, I realized they did something no television show has ever accomplished, a reaction so huge from a fictional work. I mean if anything, people stopped talking about Paris Hilton for a day. Maybe it is the inner-asshole in me that loves this ending so much, but I also feel like there is a more central conflict here at play, and here's where this discussion bleeds into music; the paradox of the sometimes opposing values between entertainment and art.

The Sopranos always operated on many different levels, and the one thing i probably enjoyed the most about the show was the mocking of human idiocy that was always threaded into every episode. Watching Tony hear some phrase from his psychiatrist and then repeating it wrong to someone else, watching Christopher try to be a writer with such terrible ideas; the show intricately satired bigotry, arrogance, hypocrisy and especially the pop-culture masses. That was always the biggest appeal to me was that the show could appeal to a mass-media audience, while sort of making fun of them the entire time. The mob plot lines were more of a setting to achieve other things.

So, in my opinion, flicking off the audience at the very end was the most appropriate thing i could imagine; one last mockery of a people who want the same old thing fed to them over and over again. The Sopranos was always art and entertainment at the same time and I'm happy they didn't betray that in the end. Whether you liked the ending or not, you reacted, and that's what art is all about. Sorry suckas, if you want gratuitous violence without meaning or nuance, there's this Fox show with a third tier Chuck Norris that is probably right up your alley.

If you still have a bitter taste in your mouth, here's some tracks off of the Six Feel Under soundtrack, probably the best ending of a TV show ever:

• Cold Wind (Arcade Fire)
• Direction (Interpol)
• Feeling Good (Nina Simone)