Johnny Soprano Come Lately... (Spoiler alert)

Ok.... I finally finished watching the entire series of the HBO series "The Sopranos". What a ride! Firstly, I would like to thank David Chase for creating a family of characters unlike any other in a gangster series. You got a real look inside this extended family and how they loved each other, even if their ways of showing it weren't always conventional. (Yes, in this series, even hastening someone's death was ultimately an act of love.)

The one thing that puzzles me, however, is the great deal of controversy over how the series ends. To me, there is no controversy. Those who wish to parlay the ending into something more than it is, waiting for a sequel or something more, will be forever disappointed. Sometimes you just have to take what the artists give you. When it comes to art, asking more, more, more from the artist is asking for disappointment. Inspiration cannot be forced. My feeling is that David Chase is done with Tony Soprano. This seems clear to me simply from Dr. Melfi's dismissal of Tony in the next-to-last episode. I think David Chase intended the audience to be perhaps an aspect of Tony's psyche. We traveled with him and watched the events leading to his demise. That's it. All stories, however great they may be, have an ending. The audience, as Tony's psyche, cut to black when he died.

I haven't had as much time to mull over all of the "signs and signals" that were supposedly planted to clue the audience in on what ultimately happened to our hero. I seriously doubt I will even put much more thought into it, because I have resolved in my mind what happened. The conversation with Bobby on the boat, talking about how it happens when it's "your time" really said it all I needed to hear, and when the cut-to-black occurred, I was satisfied. This gentleman put up a video on YouTube that points out quite a few things supporting the death theory, and I thought it was pretty good. Check it out here. Perhaps you could find equal evidence to support that he lived, but this is my forum, so we're only considering the death scenario here. :-)

Anyway, I bid the Sopranos goodbye. I will miss them, but I do realize that all good things must come to an end. I hope David Chase lets this work stand on its own and resists any temptation to trifle with perfection.