Sunday, June 10, 2007

Made in America   [Peter Suderman]

On the final episode of The Sopranos, David Chase leaves us with exactly what made the show so compelling—complexity and frustration. It's too early to get into much details and spoilers, but this was approximately what I'd been expecting from the end of the series, just without the major events of the penultimate episode. Chase has always taken pleasure in being cruel to us viewers; like so many modern dramatists, he's made a spectacular art of out that cruelty.

So although I think there's far more to the final episode than that—the stuff with the terrorism and A.J. in particular—the last scene serves, at least in part, as the show's ultimate act of intentionally frustrating the audience. (Most of the talk about the episode is going to revolve around that final scene, and while I think it's certainly important, I think it'd be a shame to forget about all the other wonderful stuff that went on in the episode.) So: Lots to discuss, but all in all, I think it's a fitting end to one of the greatest TV shows of all time.

06/10 11:24 PMShare