Best ' Whack ' on The Sopranos.

After reading/ laughing my way through all the pages of this thread I went ahead and bought DVD's of Seasons 1-4. I need to revisit Tony and Company. IMO still the best television show ever. Thank you Forum Members.

 

Which would have the obligatory, "My family!" line. "I was eatin' in a restaurant and this scumbag tries to kill me and my family!" (Although I think the hitman was only going after Tony) Whereafter surviving the attempt on his life Tony goes on a rampage - and we have a movie or three or four episodes on the non-existent next season to show the fallout.

Could have been interesting to see how Tony turns the situation to his advantage. But I think his end reflects real life better than any continuation of the show would have. **** catches up with people.

 

Sure, who among us wouldn't have loved to tune in for a sequel. But back to planet earth, there's just no way that would have ever happened, even if Gandolfini lived another 20 years. That assassination at Holsten's was the 3rd attempt. Tony survived the first two but I don't know why it's hard for some to admit he died in Holsten's.

 

My question would be, why is it hard for some to admit it wasn't meant to be conclusive?

 

Because it is conclusive. You're confusing Chase's artistic decision not to show the bloodbath with a lack of a conclusion.

 

I don't know where you are from, but Chase said Americans are conditioned that shows and movies have an ending. I think he said that's not so in other countries.

 

David Chase: 'Whether Tony Soprano Is Alive or Dead Is Not the Point'

"Whether Tony Soprano is alive or dead is not the point. To continue to search for this answer is fruitless. The final scene of The Sopranos raises a spiritual question that has no right or wrong answer.”

 

He said in an interview I read years ago the point is not if he's dead or not, but that he will always be looking over shoulder, suspicious. The final scene and the song confirm that. And as was said in the final season, you never know when it's coming.

 

One thing to me is that Bobby Baccalieri, whom Tony treats like dirt, is the wisest one. Tony laughs at him when he sees how he is dressed in hunting clothes and an orange vest. But hunting gear is designed for warmth, protection against against moisture and visibility so other hunters don’t mistakenly shoot at you. Tony isn’t dressed properly for wandering in the snow. When Paulie fires his pistol in anger, Bobby recognizes it isn’t a hunting rifle and fires his Sporten Mauser 98 in the air to signal the two knuckleheads where they are.
Everytime I take the train to NYC and see the train store in Lynbrook, I think of the Blue Comet and Bobby. A felon but he rose from being Junior’s driver to being on Phil’s hit list.

 

He was on Phil's hit list because he was Tony's brother-in-law, right? He had tried to kill Chris already because he was the closest relative to Tony after Tony B. There were higher ranking or more important guys than Bobby.

 

No, I think at that point he was considered the closest advisor to Tony after Sil, therefore he was one of the three they went after (Tony, Sil and Bobby). I doubt it mattered that he was Tony's BIL. Had Paulie been in Bobby's position, he would have been the target. Patsie was only targeted as well because he just happened to be with Sil with the hit men showed up.

 

But then years later, he said this by accident:

Oops: Creator David Chase accidentally calls 'Sopranos' diner finale a "death scene"

(I'm not seriously arguing this point - I just thought it was really funny when it happened.)

 

All those little towns in Jersey have small downtowns that look similar. I lived and worked in Maplewood for a couple years. Made a couple friends in a bar there. They were bad guys. Horrible work ethic. Stole from their family's budget to buy drugs for freebasing. I wouldn't do that but I sat around playing guitar while they were getting high all night. This was in the early '90s. Sopranos is very authentic in capturing that whole NJ vibe.

As I mentioned about Chase as well as Dylan and Fagen before, you have to take everything these artists say about their work with a huge grain of salt. They are more cagey than attorneys in defining their work or saying anything conclusive about it, and when they sense a journalist closing in they are like animals backed into a corner and tend to deny at all costs, even if the journalist is correct. Chase is exactly like that. He knows he meticulously set up that scene for Tony to be assassinated and turned it to a dead screen to symbolize Tony's death. But he'll never come right out and say so, any more than Fagen will say the "bookkeeper" in Don't Take Me Alive is God.

 

Most memorable for me was Phil Leotardo's murder.
I thought it was funny with two product placement logos (Ford) ....This 'hit' was brought to you by your local Ford dealer.
Seeing Leotardo waving bye bye to the children in the back seemed so final when watching that scene again and whatever
Phil needed from the pharmacy/doctor was no longer required because he was instantly cured.
His wife leaving the car in Drive and it not moving for several seconds after she exited it was questionable.
The scene ended with the common street call out of "Oh s***".

 

My takeaways from the final episode and scene:
1) Not a dream -this scene has zero in common with the past dream sequences in the Sopranos
2) Tony is whacked by the Members Only guy as Meadow enters the diner. The hit actually seems to harken back to the Godfather scene where Michael goes to the restroom to retrieve the gun.
3) Tony takes a head shot and is killed instantly -all goes black. No afterlife, no purgatory, no hell, just the same dark empty oblivion that awaits us all. Tony lived a bad, immoral life, yet suffers the same in death as the most righteous of us. That's hard to stomach for many of us and something that Chase must have felt strongly about, as he could have ended this many other ways that most of the audience would have found more satisfying.

I have no idea whether my interpretation is "correct", but it works for me.

 

One character remarks marrying the boss’s sister is a good career move. But Bobby is efficient in his mob activities: intimidating a union leader, convincing a juror to vote to acquit Junior and get a mistrial, his one kill in Montréal is successful….more than you can say about the two attempts by Tony Blundetto with his 157 I Q. Since Bobby is pretty likable he doesn’t make enemies either. If Tony had sent him instead of Chris and Paulie to collect from the Russian interior decorator, he won’t have insulted him and broken his universal remote. He probably would have said he was going to get a similar system for Bobby Jr.

 

The Joey Peeps hit always bug me. I love the framing of it and the choice of music and ending the episode like that, but we go from Joey and the hooker greeting Tony at the window in a friendly manner to a wide shot of Tony standing at the window with the gun already pointed at them. I am pretty sure had he greeted them with a gun already pointed at them, neither would have been as friendly in their greetings (Joey's greeting was friendly, and the hooker smiled at him). And it is a split second before we go from Joey's comment to the wide shot of Tony B. with the gun pointed and ready to fire. The few seconds of Tony B. raising his arm and aiming is simply not there. That always bugs me.

 

The best acted and writen TV show of all time in my opinion. I cannot imagine how many times I have rewatched many of these episodes. But it was time to end the show. The last season was just not as good as the previous 5. As Christopher said, all shows have an arc, and this one was past it.

 

After everything is said and done, I'm left with this simple question; whatever happened to Paulie? It'll never happen, but I'd like to see what happened to Paulie Walnuts!

 

Actually, wouldn't Paulie pretty much be the boss at this point?

 

The Sopranos Complete Series on Bluray is $60 right now. That's a 65% reduction. Sold! Six Feet Under collection is $58.

 

He may have helped plan the hit on Tony.

 

Chase dropped plenty of hints that Paulie had something to do with it. His final "I live but to serve you, my liege" quote was dripping with sarcasm.

 

Yea a bunch of hints and foreshadowing. Tony and Bobby's conversation about getting whacked where he says, 'You never hear it. Everything goes black' or some such.

I think its clear Tony was killed. But Chase intentionally left some wiggle room in case he wanted to do a sequel.

 

Bobby saying, "Everything just goes black." is apparently an example of the Mandela Effect. I clearly remembered him saying it, lots of people seem to have, but he never did. He did say the first part though.