I agree 100% with every word. Just because you stop telling a story doesn't mean the story stops. I could not imagine being more pleased about being so completely wrong about everything I thought would happen in the final episode.

Thank you David Chase. Short of Bob Newhart waking up to tell Susanne Pleshette about a dream he had where he was an Italian gangster, this finish could not have been better.

( and I'll bet a whole lot of folks who actually witnessed the filming of the last episode didn't know how this was going to end and there are a lot of dead bodies on the cutting room floor. )


>>Oh, the deals we have to make in life - for me to get the downstairs TV tonight to watch the Sopranos, I'm currently sitting through "The Lakehouse". Please God, take me now!
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>I thought the finale was terrific and completely true to the spirit of the show. I didn't think Tony was going to get whacked and I didn't think everything was going to get wrapped up in a bow. To an extent it did with
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>Phil's crew agreeing to a truce with Tony's crew and then Phil getting bumped off. (As an aside, I am not one of those who watches -- sorry, watched -- just hoping to see people get whacked, but admit I smiled when the SUV rolled over Phil's head). But they also found out Carlo is going to testify, so Tony still has the threat of prison hanging over him. And the threat of being killed will never go away. The final scene was brilliantly suspenseful without anything actually happening. The guy who comes into the restaurant at the same time as AJ, sits at the counter, and sits there looking ominous before walking past their table -- before turning toward the rest room. The two other guys who come in after that. Meadow having all the trouble parallel parking, then running across the street just as the show ends.
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>I *loved* it when it ended with a hard cut right before she (hopefully) joined her family in the booth. The "one big happy family" angle would have been way too tidy for David Chase. As would the ducks coming back in the final shot, which I for some reason had a feeling might happen. To me the message was life goes on and people don't really change. Almost all the major characters made feints in other directions in this episode and all of them went back to who they have been all along, except maybe Janice. I laughed when Carm was looking at that brochure for beach houses near the end. (There was a lot of humor in this one, much more than I would have guessed).
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>And you know what I really loved? The way it ended so abruptly -- fade to white, audio cuts out in the middle of the song Tony played on the jukebox, the credits rolling in silence. And then no previews of the next episode, because there won't be one, and straight into the premiere of the new HBO series. It was like Chase was saying it's over, it's definitely over -- for him, for the cast and crew, for we as fans, and life goes on. A perfect grace note.