Jersey Bounce: Five Fans Take a Stab At the Finale

Whatever rubs our noses in the fact that justice comes and goes like the weather, whatever makes us sleep a little worse knowing that cosmic payback is never a sure thing, that's what we'll get, the way we've gotten it for eight years.

-- Henry Allen

* * *

As the first ray of sun glints into Tony Soprano's safe-house bedroom, it's Morning in "made" America.

( Cue "Morning Has Broken" by Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam, in a sly nod to Muslims and the Mideast.)

While the rest of his crew dozes, Tony -- sensing he's not safe with a potential Brutus in his house -- lumbers toward his Escalade and hits the open road alone. (Cue the Dropkick Murphys' "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" from "The Departed" soundtrack.)

Confused in this hour of need, he pops Prozac and calls not wife Carmela but rather Dr. Melfi on his cell. Sensing renewed doctorly obligation, Melfi talks him through protracted ramblings about his mother and the mother of his children and his guilt and his sacrifice. As he hyperventilates and our insights into Tony deepen even further, Melfi tells him to get to a hospital.

As migrating birds honk overhead and he emotionally runs on empty, he ends the call and pulls over at a gas station. He grabs a three-meat sub and begins huffing, woozy from a panic attack. He climbs back into the car and drives through wooded wilderness, having delirious daydreams of Italy and Vegas and his boyhood ice cream parlor in Jersey.

Turning on the radio and hearing news reports of troop deaths in Iraq, his mind flashes on violence and he makes a sudden U-turn in the Cadillac, driving back to the estate house where his wife, kids and sister are supposed to be holed up. ("They never touch the family" rings in his head.) He gets there: Janice tells Tony that rival Phil Leotardo shot Carmela at the house and that Paulie -- who planned to turn traitor -- instead killed Phil.

Tony rushes to the hospital, not knowing whether his wife is alive or dead. He feels worse than dead -- he's empty. He shouts expletives about his own mother. Final scene: Carmela's alive -- but she says she and the kids are leaving him, heading West.

He's alone, without mission or means -- robbed of family and Family.

(Fade-out to the song "Mother," as John Lennon screams "Mama don't go.")