Cut to black--So long Tony Soprano

There are a few absolutes in life.
The Super Bowl doesn’t end in a tie, what goes up must come down and to lose weight you need to expend more calories than you consume.
On the other hand, most things in life are a lot more uncertain, and a lot less tidy.
In this particular instance, I’m talking about the finale of The Sopranos.

How could a show that has shown so much creativity end in such a shamelessly uninspired way? They teased multiple possibilities throughout the entire episode; why not give the fans a sense of closure?

Ah, could it be we are all missing the point?

Maybe what we saw was the right way to wrap it up after all. If you think about it, in the final minutes of the episode we had a chance to view life not through the eyes of Tony Soprano but from that place in his mind that harbors his inner demons. In his world, there is no closure, you don’t get things tied up in a neat little bow.

Take Tony’s friend, Paulie, for example. He looked like he was up to something – like he could he be ready to roll over and give testimony about the family or worse.

In the final scene at the restaurant, we have Tony eating dinner with his family. How many parts of that scene showed the threats to his wife and children? The thing is that they didn’t materialize and that makes us, the viewers, angry because we want to see the resolution.


In Tony’s world, it’s just one long line of persons who might be gunning down the people you love, one more threat to the power that is held onto by using fear and intimidation.

In the end, the final episode faded to black. What a fitting conclusion because in the end, all the drama that is Tony Soprano’s life – that life we devoured for the years it filled our TV screen – eventually will end, fading to black, too.