See Ya, T

I read an interview with Quentin Tarantino, where he said his job is to get the audience off. As you can imagine, he used slightly more colorful language to make his point. Anyway, last night David Chase left most of America with a world class case of Blue Balls. I think the first reaction, for most fans, was of huge disappointment. But with some time, for me, that gave way to more of a comfortable feeling with how things ended for Tony Soprano, mainly because they didn’t end.

It isn’t the first show to end without a real ending. “Cheers” and “Friends” both rolled the final credits, with us feeling that the characters lives went on as usual, and that is all that happened with “The Sopranos.” Had Tony’s brain ended up scattered across that diner, we wouldn’t feel any better about things. Sure there would have been “closure” but there isn’t a bigger bull shit theory than “closure.” It doesn’t work in real life, and it wouldn’t work in television. Seeing a dead Tony, wouldn’t have made us feel better. Having Tony rat on someone would have been the biggest sin of the millennium, and seeing him behind bars wouldn’t give us any of that “closure.”

This morning, he woke up and started his day. He had some meetings, he ate (a few times) His son disappointed him, he was proud of his daughter and his wife probably bust his balls some more. He doesn’t know what will happen with New York, and he knows he’ll get indicted pretty soon. He’s hoping he can beat the case. And every time he starts his car, he’ll wonder for a split second if it’s going to blow up. He’ll always sit facing the door to see if someone comes for him. He’ll soon have to decide what, if anything, to do with Paulie. And that’s exactly what I want to think.

I’m not saying I was happy with how the show ended, but when did the show ever give us what we wanted? We saw Tony kill his best friend, we saw Carmela leave and come back. We never saw Meadow naked, we never saw Tony absolutely beat the shit out of AJ and we saw Adrianna rat and get killed. This wasn’t Newhart, expecting an ending wrapped in a big bow that answers all questions is a ridiculous request. If anything, the ended was true to form.

And of course it left the door wide open for that much talked about movie. Say five years from now, AJ had made his bones. Meadow is a big shot lawyer, who knows how to keep her daddy well informed and out of jail. There’s still story left to be told, if they so choose to. Or they can leave it up to the bloggers of the world, most of whom will spend the next three years bitching about the two seconds they thought their cable went out.