Saturday, June 9, 2007
Psst. We've got a secret to slip about "The Sopranos."
Lean in. Closer -- in case that ziti pan is bugged.
As we eagerly anticipate the HBO show's finale tomorrow night, there's something you should know about series creator David Chase:
He hates surprises.
Oh, like any good TV crime-drama writer worth his final assault, he relishes smart plot twists and hairpin turns and sudden switchbacks. But along Chase's dark turnpike, such story-line maneuvers typically demand the proper signage alerting to dangers ahead. Roadside cues and clues, but no blind deadman's curve.
So with one hour to go, as mob boss Tony Soprano lives in the shadows, we're thankful that Chase instead lives in the foreshadows. Because of his precise plotting of harbingers, "Sopranos" fans have hard material with which to play their favorite parlor game. Not Whack-a-Mole (though you're warm), but rather: Fantasize Your Own Finale.
Who flips? Who tips off? Who sleeps with the scrod? For the show's addicts, such mullings provide endless amusement. And in this decade-honored vein, we've asked five staff writers who are die-hard fans to peer into their crystal laptops and tell us: What would your dream finale look like?
No smarty-pants predictions here, no smirky prognostications -- just pure hoped-for endings. So before Tony takes his final opening-sequence drive, sit back in the shotgun seat and dream a little dream.
(And to play along at home, go to http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sopranos/ and write your own.)
* * *
Tony Soprano survives but as a hollow man.
He is not whacked -- too wildly out of character for this very Shakespearean TV drama -- but instead finds succor in the very thing he has flouted and loathed all these years: the law.
He needs the feds now. Too many sharks are circling, and Tony can't rely on his own crew -- Paulie has become Tony's would-be Brutus. So Tony comes in from the cold, getting immunity and protection by agreeing to testify against Phil and the New York mob.
The surprise is that A.J. -- yes, that feckless disappointment of a son -- emerges from his cloud of self-absorption and despair to save his father with one last primal act of violence (pick your own would-be perpetrator). And so, a new generation of sociopath is born, as an older one dies.
Tony lives, but at the cost of his bloody code of "honor," his (corrupted) sense of principle and his self-respect. His capitulation to the law leaves him compromised and self-loathing.
How ironic. How ambiguous. How "Sopranos."
-- Paul Farhi
* * *
What goes around comes around. As ye sow so shall ye reap. Big wheel of karma keeps turning, proud Tony ends up burning.
Wrong. Have we learned nothing from watching "The Sopranos" for eight years?
Tony may be guilty of catastrophic, chronic and inevitable evil, but he is not guilty of unadulterated evil, so why should he suffer an unadulterated punishment?
He strangles, betrays, steals and lies, but we can't help hurting for the guy -- he feels remorse, visits the sick, weeps for his dead horse and loves his family, which drives him crazy with its whining and screw-ups. He even wants to send his daughter to medical school.
And, most redeeming of all, in this age of morals as dictated by People magazine, he seeks professional counseling. Good, evil, good, evil.
Dramatically, psychologically, theologically, Tony could die Sunday, but it could be worse. He could lose his power and money and turn into just another shopworn slob, a cafone like Paulie Walnuts. He could go to the feds and lose his dark grandeur by ratting everybody out. Or way better: In keeping with the teachings of this show, he could end up back in his big house with the swimming pool.
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.")
-- Michael Cavna
* * *
Tony Soprano, wanting to come out of hiding and get back to business, cautiously agrees to meet with rival mob boss Phil Leotardo.
Cut to Janice's house: Tony's wife, Carmela, emerges from a bathroom looking stricken. Son A.J. sees a positive pregnancy test in the bathroom trash and confronts his mother, who says she wishes she could tell Tony; A.J. resolves to deliver the news.
Cut to hospital: A.J. and Carmela accompany Gabriella to visit her husband, Silvio, the consigliere. A.J. lingers, wanting to know how to find Tony; Silvio, barely conscious, scrawls the address of a safe house.
As A.J. arrives at the house, Tony and his men are driving away. Following them, Paulie backs out of the driveway, and A.J. jumps into the passenger seat.
At the meeting between Tony and Phil, at a typical Jersey industrial area, Paulie orders A.J. to stay in the car. A.J. watches wide-eyed as Tony, Phil and their crews gather. He sees movement behind heavy equipment and realizes an ambush is in progress. He shouts to his father and all hell breaks loose.
Tony, wounded, seeks shelter behind a car. Phil moves in for the kill and, as he's about to fire, he himself is riddled with bullets by A.J., who has found his father's AR-10.
A.J. drops the rifle, kneels beside his father and delivers the news about Carmela's pregnancy. Tony takes a second to digest the news, then looks at the sun rising through the industrial haze and begins laughing uncontrollably.
-- Debra Leithauser
* * *
The final scene:
INTERIOR: Vesuvio's restaurant. Very late. Carmela alone at a table.
Artie, the restaurateur, and his wife, Charmaine, hovering.
ARTIE: Carm, what can I say?
CARMELA: I just couldn't go back there tonight. At least they didn't touch the bedroom set. My Frette linen . . .
ARTIE: Bleeping feds, right?
CHARMAINE: Artie, your melanzane! (Artie gestures, "Oh right.") So what will you do now?
CARMELA: I don't know. (Welling up.) So much evil in the world, Charmaine.
CHARMAINE: Who's coming for you?
CARMELA: Ro is taking care of Gaby. She's fallen apart. To watch Sil go like that. They said he had no more esophagus.
CHARMAINE: Meadow --
CARMELA: In Vermont with Patsy, studying for her LSATs. That reminds me. I've got to check on A.J. I don't think the doctors are going to bring him out of it this time.
ARTIE: (from the kitchen) Carm, do you know if they got Paulie, too? (To Charmaine) What? Not the Phil thing -- he got what he deserved. Paulie's still got quite a tab.
CARMELA: I don't think he was implicated. (a pause.) I still can't believe it.
CHARMAINE: It'll take time.
CARMELA: Ade, oh Ade.
CHARMAINE: How did they get him?
CARMELA: Christopher. From beyond the grave. Some notes the police found in that dead screenwriter's apartment. In Christopher's hand. And a dog finds her "skeletal remains." All those months, he lied to me, every time I brought up her name. Ran off, my ass. He killed her. He slept with her and he killed her. I will curse him and curse him and . . .
CUT to INT. of a cell. Camera finds hollow-eyed Tony. Camera pans to a TV set tuned to Ebert-Roeper-type movie-review program. Logo of "Cleaver" appears. Camera back on Tony, as one of the commentators is heard.
COMMENTATOR: It's a splatter classic! They spill blood from orifices I didn't know existed! The movie's a hoot! Randy, I gotta give it a thumbs up, too!
FADE-OUT. Over the credits, Billy Joel's "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant."
-- Peter Marks
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