The Sopranos: The Final Season Part II

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BoMac

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Ok, I'm starting this new thread now because I've been avoiding anything to do with The Sopranos—including the old thread.

I missed the last four episodes(don't have TiVO or a DVR) and I can't seem to find them online.

Can anyone help me with this? I have a Macbook laptop and I seem to be unable to download any episodes floating around out there.

If you could help me please PM me since I won't be venturing into this thread out of fear I will read any spoliers! I'm quite computer illiterate by the way!
 
Interesting article in the NY Times today with the reactions of other top TV writers about the ending:

June 12, 2007
TV Writers Were Also Watching ‘Sopranos’
By BILL CARTER

After he completed the final episode of “The Sopranos,” David Chase told publicity executives at HBO that he was leaving for France and would not take any calls asking him to comment about the ending of his classic television series.

He also said that he had instructed all of his writers and producers to turn down any requests for information about the decisions that had gone into shaping the show’s last chapter.

The reason for his resistance became clear on Sunday night when “The Sopranos” ended, not with a moment of final summation, but with a literal blank. The reaction to the stunning last shot of an empty screen has been a mix of outrage among some fans at being left sitting on the edges of their seats, where they had been perched for much of the show’s last batch of episodes, and awe among others who have always regarded the show as the most ambitious and unconventional of television series.

Included in the latter group were many people in the same line of work as Mr. Chase, storytellers in the entertainment business.

Damon Lindelof, one of the creators of the ABC hit show “Lost,” another series whose viewers have high expectations about quality, said: “I’ve seen every episode of the series. I thought the ending was letter-perfect.”

Like millions of other viewers, Mr. Lindelof said he was initially taken aback by the quick cut to a blank screen and thought his cable had gone out at that crucial moment. He even checked his TiVo machine and saw that it was still running several minutes beyond the end. When he checked the scene again, he said, he noted “the scene cut off right as Meadow is coming through the door and right at the word ‘stop’ in the Journey song.”

He said: “My heart started beating. It had been racing throughout the last scene. Afterward I went to bed and lay next to my wife, awake, thinking about it for the next two hours. And I just thought it was great. It did everything well that ‘Godfather III’ did not do well.”

In an e-mail message sent right after the final scene, Doug Ellin, the creator of another HBO hit series, “Entourage,” said: “The show just ended, and I’m speechless. I’m sure there is going to be a lot of heated discussion, but that’s David Chase’s genius. It’s what made ‘The Sopranos’ different from anything that’s ever been on TV. It invented a whole new approach to storytelling that isn’t afraid to leave things open-ended, and now the biggest open story line in the history of television.”

For David Shore, creator of the Fox hit “House,” one of the best touches was Mr. Chase’s own refusal to discuss the ending. Mr. Shore said: “Obviously he wants us to speculate on what it all means. Obviously that’s what we’re all doing.”

David Milch, who has created highly regarded dramas like “NYPD Blue” and “Deadwood,” said: “It was a question of loyalty to viewer expectations, as against loyalty to the internal coherence of the materials. Mr. Chase’s position was loyalty to the internal dynamics of the materials and the characters.”

Comedy writers also said they were impressed with Mr. Chase’s choices. Chuck Lorre, who created and leads the CBS hit comedy “Two and a Half Men,” emerged from screening the final episode and said with a laugh, “This is what you get when you let a writer do whatever he wants.”

But he added that he was saying that with admiration. “People just finished watching that show and immediately talked about it for a half-hour,” Mr. Lorre said. “That’s just wonderful. What more could you want as a writer?”

If any shows feel special pressure from the attention “The Sopranos” finale is receiving, it is current series looking down the road at their expected finales, even if long in the future.

Tim Kring, the creator of this year’s NBC hit “Heroes,” said, “I have to admit that as soon as it ended, I immediately went there. I don’t have an ending for the series yet. I put myself years in the future thinking about what you do when you have viewers with these sorts of expectations. And I think you just have to be true to what you were originally trying to say.”

Mr. Kring said he had only come back to “The Sopranos” this season, anticipating the buildup to the ending, and he said he found “the storytelling in the finale a bit disjointed, so that you lost the cause and effect of some scenes.” But he said he admired the choices Mr. Chase had made to be true to the nature of his series. “This was a show that always did everything its own way,” Mr. Kring said.

For the producers of “Lost,” who have declared an official finale in three more seasons, the conclusion of “The Sopranos” carried special weight. “There was immediate blowback for me,” said Carlton Cuse, Mr. Lindelof’s creative partner on the show. “A sense of fear ran through my veins, thinking that we are going to be in this position,” he said, adding, “we know the end is coming in 48 short episodes.”

He had admitted to some initial frustration with the ending of “The Sopranos.” “But it settled well with me,” Mr. Cuse said. “In that blank screen, there was a certain kind of purity in the choice Chase made to make it the fulcrum of the ending.”

Mr. Lindelof said that as daunting as it is to think of the expectations of ending a popular piece of entertainment, there was also a bit of benefit. “If you feel that everybody is going to hate it anyway, no matter what you do,” he said, “there’s a certain liberation in writing it.”
 
MrsSpringsteen said:
I never saw The Sopranos but I read that NY Times article-and if they are thinking about ending Lost in a similar fashion they better think twice :angry:

expect there to be a lot loose ends

with Lost

it will not tie up neatly, at all.
 
If anyone is bored at work and still can't let go ;) :

http://www.gotoquiz.com/which_sopranos_character_are_you


You are Adriana La Cerva

You're naturally sexy, strongly feminine and sadly sweet. You love dogs. You can have a pretty good entrepeneur spirit, but tend to follow your bossy fiancee, because you take too much for love. If the FBI gets into your life, it may affect your health, or even worse... never trust people.
 
Your Result: Christopher Moltisanti

You take drugs, you're in the mafia and beat women. You may lool like an heartless douche, but maybe you're just feeling terribly guilty for not taking that one chance in life... But you have a sense of humor.
 
:sexywink:

You are Adriana La Cerva

You're naturally sexy, strongly feminine and sadly sweet. You love dogs. You can have a pretty good entrepeneur spirit, but tend to follow your bossy fiancee, because you take too much for love. If the FBI gets into your life, it may affect your health, or even worse... never trust people.
 
WildHoneyAlways said:


But we know they get off the island. :drool:


Remember the series finale (or maybe a TV movie?) of Gilligans' Island when they all got back together in the real world, went out for a ride and ended up BACK on Gilligan's Island? That's what I think will happen with Lost.
 
erm ...

[q]Tony Soprano:

Macho, alpha-male, heartless (but this is not sure). You're a boss to the others, not to much to yourself: you need some peace, that you can't find, or can't allow yourself to find. There are some issues that you need to explore in your mind, with the help of doc. Melfi.[/q]
 
Y'all gotta answer to me! :wink:

Your Result: Tony Soprano


Macho, alpha-male, heartless (but this is not sure).You're a boss to the others, not to much to yourself: you need some peace, that you can't find, or can't allow yourself to find. There are some issues that you need to explore in your mind, with the help of doc. Melfi.

:ohmy:
 
Which sopranos character are you?
Your Result: Carmela Soprano

You're worried all the time. You're a caring mother and wife, with a noble philosophical spirit. Life could have given you much more than an unfaithful husband and a housewife profile...but you're getting your life back, don't let down your projects. Take time for yourself and call that dude from Naples
 
LarryMullen's_POPAngel said:
If anyone is bored at work and still can't let go ;) :

http://www.gotoquiz.com/which_sopranos_character_are_you



Which sopranos character are you?
Your Result: Carmela Soprano

You're worried all the time. You're a caring mother and wife, with a noble philosophical spirit. Life could have given you much more than an unfaithful husband and a housewife profile...but you're getting your life back, don't let down your projects. Take time for yourself and call that dude from Naples.
 
Which sopranos character are you?
Your Result: Carmela Soprano

You're worried all the time. You're a caring mother and wife, with a noble philosophical spirit. Life could have given you much more than an unfaithful husband and a housewife profile...but you're getting your life back, don't let down your projects. Take time for yourself and call that dude from Naples
 
I made my peace with the ending and although I never put as much thought into it as Heather Havrilesky from salon.com below, she hits on some points that nicely sum up how I initially felt about it. Plus there's the revealing first line of the excerpted bit below that I had not heard about but I sorta stopped paying attention. :ohmy:

http://www.salon.com/ent/tv/iltw/2007/06/14/sopranos_reaction/

Of course, now we know that it looks like Chase intended to suggest that Tony got whacked at the end. The guy who played Agent Harris, Matt Servitto, told the New York Post that the final scene originally ended with the menacing Members Only guy approaching Tony's table.

This last bit of information made me want to start weeping and crushing things again. Why oh why did Chase cut that last shot? I had started to make peace with the notion that Tony was simply on edge, fearing for his life, and that he was doomed to spend the rest of his life the same way, taking his Communion onion rings and silently saying "Amen" as he dodged bullets and evaded prosecution and lived to see another day. He was just like us, living in a dream world, chowing down on fried crap, listening to Journey while the apocalypse loomed.

Instead, we were supposed to get that Tony was killed? So then, why didn't we get it? I noticed that the music ended on the word "Stop," I knew it wasn't a technical malfunction, but I still didn't have any clue what had happened.

I can't help feeling that the relentless references and mob clichés were manipulative and, frankly, beneath Chase, at least in terms of creating the last scene of the entire series. Why undercut the scene with sly bullshit or even an elaborate mystery? If it's just another moment, then make it just another moment -- make that beautiful. If we're seeing the end of it all, then make that clear. The combination of references and ambiguity and then the black screen and silence -- I think he tried to do a few contradictory things at once, and it was a failure. He undercut himself -- created something dramatic, then pulled the rug out from under it, and in the end, it felt like a practical joke. The experience wasn't engrossing or enlightening or even powerful; it was just alienating.

That can't be the point. I don't care what his intentions were -- his goal couldn't have been to take people out of the story and make them check and recheck their TiVos and the digital cable boxes. And don't talk to me about how people booed Beethoven and couldn't stand Van Gogh. This isn't some dadaist experiment -- it's a mob show, for God's sake! Even if it's a great crime drama, or a true work of art, it shouldn't end with what's perceived as a technical difficulty. It's not consistent with the visual and narrative paradigm that we've experienced over the course of six seasons.

Yes, I know: Art is designed to provoke us! The more violently we're provoked, the more brilliant the art is! But this isn't a painting, or a sculpture, or a piece of music. This isn't a two-hour film. This is a show on TV, one that many of us have watched for eight years running. We've been made to expect payoffs all along. Whether Chase has screwed with our heads or not along the way, there were always some satisfying conclusions at the end of each season. To give us one thing for eight long years, and then suddenly get all artsy on us and turn the lights out? That's a bad call, plain and simple.

Sure, people are talking about the fact that Chase is covering his ass so he can make a movie, but that's too cynical even for me to buy. No way do you build the last scene of your legacy around the promise of future payola.

"The Sopranos" will go down in history as a truly great, groundbreaking TV drama, of course. This last scene won't change that. But a clear ending would've been nice, if only to put an end to the rampant speculation and predictions that have dominated any discussion of the show for the past few years. That was going to be the saving grace of this last episode, no matter how it ended, wasn't it? To shut everyone up, once and for all, about the escaped Russian or the fact that Sopranos "sing" or every other theory in the book? Ultimately, the problem with Chase's ending was not that it confused most people, but that it gave those who can't tolerate confusion (or consider themselves above it) an excuse to inform us of what we saw on Sunday night, whether it was a brilliantly executed nod to the mob genre, a truly provocative choice that will keep us angry for years ("That's the beauty of it, dude!"), or just a clever way for Chase to hedge his financial bets.

Why, just today I got an unsolicited 2,000-word manuscript in my e-mail that clarified everything: The finale actually ended with Holsten's exploding in a spectacular, fiery terrorist blast, killing everyone. The first sentence? "I think I might be the only person who was not particularly confused by the finale of the Sopranos this Sunday."

Don't stop believing, my man. You keep filling that void. But pass the onion rings first, will you?
 
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i'm leaning more and more towards "Tony's dead."

the first shot did look like him in a coffin. i remember noticing that.

i think the cat is Adriana as well.
 
[q]Think Tony Soprano's dead? You may be right

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Fans of "The Sopranos" are seizing on clues suggesting the controversial blackout which abruptly ended the TV mob drama meant that Tony Soprano was rubbed out, and HBO said Thursday they may be on to something.

One clue in particular, a flashback in the penultimate episode to a conversation between Tony and his brother-in-law about death, gained credence as an HBO spokesman called it a "legitimate" hint and confirmed that series creator David Chase had a definite ending in mind.

"While he won't say to me 100 percent what it all means, he says some people who've guessed have come closer than others," HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer told Reuters after speaking to Chase.

"There are definitely things there that he intended for people to pick up on," Schaffer said. (Watch viewers try to make sense of the end)

Chase himself suggested as much in an interview Tuesday with The Star-Ledger newspaper of New Jersey when he said of his end to the HBO series, "Anyone who wants to watch it, it's all there."

In the final moments of Sunday's concluding episode, Tony, the conflicted mob boss who has just survived a round of gangland warfare, sits in a diner with his family munching on onion rings as the 1980s song by rock band Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'," blares from a juke box.

Tension builds as a suspicious man wearing a "Members Only" jacket eyes Tony from a nearby counter before slipping into a restroom. Then, as Tony looks toward the restaurant's entrance, the screen abruptly goes blank in mid-scene -- with no picture or sound for 10 seconds -- until the credits roll silently.

Stunned viewers, many initially believing something had gone wrong with their cable TV reception, were left wondering whether Tony ended up "whacked" or whether his sordid life went on as usual.

Even star James Gandolfini wasn't sure.

"You have to ask ('The Sopranos' creator) David Chase that. Smarter minds than mine know the answer to that," Gandolfini told the New York Daily News. "I thought it was a great ending. You decide."

The jarring, fill-in-the-blank finale, concluding a show widely hailed as America's greatest television drama, sparked a furious debate about whether Chase had conceived of an actual ending and whether he left the audience any clues.

The biggest hint, according to a consensus taking shape on the Web, is a scene from an earlier episode in which Tony and his brother-in-law, Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri, muse about what it feels like to die.

"At the end, you probably don't hear anything, everything just goes black," Bobby says while they sit fishing in a small boat on a lake.

That scene is recalled briefly in a flashback played at the end of the penultimate "Sopranos" episode, as Tony is lying in the darkened room of a safehouse clutching a machine gun to his chest in the midst of a mob war.

"I think that is one of the most legitimate things to look at," Schaffer said when asked about theories that the Bobby Bacala flashback was meant to foreshadow Tony's death.

Moreover, he said the man in the "Members Only" jacket could be interpreted as a symbolic reference to membership in the mob. "Members Only" also was the title of the episode in which Tony's demented Uncle Junior shoots him in the gut.

The "Members Only" guy was played by the owner of a real-life pizza parlor, Paolo Colandrea. Schaffer denied reports that Colandrea had appeared earlier in the series as the nephew of Tony's New York gang rival, or that there ever was such a character. He also dismissed reports that Chase had filmed more than one ending to the finale.

Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.[/q]
 
Irvine511 said:
[q]Think Tony Soprano's dead? You may be right

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Fans of "The Sopranos" are seizing on clues suggesting the controversial blackout which abruptly ended the TV mob drama meant that Tony Soprano was rubbed out, and HBO said Thursday they may be on to something.

One clue in particular, a flashback in the penultimate episode to a conversation between Tony and his brother-in-law about death, gained credence as an HBO spokesman called it a "legitimate" hint and confirmed that series creator David Chase had a definite ending in mind.

"While he won't say to me 100 percent what it all means, he says some people who've guessed have come closer than others," HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer told Reuters after speaking to Chase.

"There are definitely things there that he intended for people to pick up on," Schaffer said. (Watch viewers try to make sense of the end)

Chase himself suggested as much in an interview Tuesday with The Star-Ledger newspaper of New Jersey when he said of his end to the HBO series, "Anyone who wants to watch it, it's all there."

In the final moments of Sunday's concluding episode, Tony, the conflicted mob boss who has just survived a round of gangland warfare, sits in a diner with his family munching on onion rings as the 1980s song by rock band Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'," blares from a juke box.

Tension builds as a suspicious man wearing a "Members Only" jacket eyes Tony from a nearby counter before slipping into a restroom. Then, as Tony looks toward the restaurant's entrance, the screen abruptly goes blank in mid-scene -- with no picture or sound for 10 seconds -- until the credits roll silently.

Stunned viewers, many initially believing something had gone wrong with their cable TV reception, were left wondering whether Tony ended up "whacked" or whether his sordid life went on as usual.

Even star James Gandolfini wasn't sure.

"You have to ask ('The Sopranos' creator) David Chase that. Smarter minds than mine know the answer to that," Gandolfini told the New York Daily News. "I thought it was a great ending. You decide."

The jarring, fill-in-the-blank finale, concluding a show widely hailed as America's greatest television drama, sparked a furious debate about whether Chase had conceived of an actual ending and whether he left the audience any clues.

The biggest hint, according to a consensus taking shape on the Web, is a scene from an earlier episode in which Tony and his brother-in-law, Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri, muse about what it feels like to die.

"At the end, you probably don't hear anything, everything just goes black," Bobby says while they sit fishing in a small boat on a lake.

That scene is recalled briefly in a flashback played at the end of the penultimate "Sopranos" episode, as Tony is lying in the darkened room of a safehouse clutching a machine gun to his chest in the midst of a mob war.

"I think that is one of the most legitimate things to look at," Schaffer said when asked about theories that the Bobby Bacala flashback was meant to foreshadow Tony's death.

Moreover, he said the man in the "Members Only" jacket could be interpreted as a symbolic reference to membership in the mob. "Members Only" also was the title of the episode in which Tony's demented Uncle Junior shoots him in the gut.

The "Members Only" guy was played by the owner of a real-life pizza parlor, Paolo Colandrea. Schaffer denied reports that Colandrea had appeared earlier in the series as the nephew of Tony's New York gang rival, or that there ever was such a character. He also dismissed reports that Chase had filmed more than one ending to the finale.

Copyright 2007 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.[/q]


I saw this today too.. I have to say I think now I am a believer that Tony is dead and that last scene was thru his eyes.. not us, the audience getting snuffed out but him. That previous scene with bobby on the lake confirmed it for me..

btw ... what scene/shot are we talking about looked like him/tony in a coffin?? Did I miss something or this in reference to the screen going black?
 
Irvine511 said:
[q]Think Tony Soprano's dead? You may be right


The biggest hint, according to a consensus taking shape on the Web, is a scene from an earlier episode in which Tony and his brother-in-law, Bobby "Bacala" Baccalieri, muse about what it feels like to die.

"At the end, you probably don't hear anything, everything just goes black," Bobby says while they sit fishing in a small boat on a lake..[/q]

I just saw this, too. Yeah, he's dead.

Ciao, Tone.
 
U2Fanatic4ever said:

btw ... what scene/shot are we talking about looked like him/tony in a coffin?? Did I miss something or this in reference to the screen going black?



the very beginning of the episode.

when he wakes up after falling asleep with the assault rifle.

and if he did die, i'm glad i didn't have to see Carmela and AJ covered in his blood and brain matter and watch Meadow scream.
 
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