The End

Yesterday was sad day as the Sopranos finally ended. But it went out at the right time, before the show got stale as it hinted at getting last season. This season was certainly impressive, especially the way they handled AJ. He went from being the least interesting character to one of the most watchable in the course of 8 episodes. His bits in the final episode were by far the funniest, only eclipsed by the momentary crowd pleasing moment of Phil Leotardo's crushing death.

I always thought Tony was going to die at the end in an operatic gangster style, but alas, I was wrong and Chase brought it back to the core: The family. Final scene was unbelievable and will be talked about as one of the greatest end scenes in TV history, except that it is momentarily overshadowed by the abrupt end cut. I admit to thinking it was a technical error for a moment (being that my job is spotting technical errors on shows), but the tension mixed with sentimentality mixed with the mundane of the entire scene was pretty awesome. A few things I read regard the end cut as brilliant. I suspect it was the type of thing where it left a lot of the viewership unsatisfied...sort of like watching Zidane's wonderful performance in the World Cup Final only for the performance itself to be eclipsed by the head butt.

Overall, I thought the final episode was a little clunky with a few awesome moments. But whatever...if stuck on a desert island, I'd take the Sopranos, clunk and all, over any work of fiction - TV, movie, novel created in the last 8-9 years.