i'm still drained but i'm cooking up a huge post about all this
i think the show kind of called it quits at the perfect moment. it became difficult to continue to engage and have vague sympathy for all these characters whose humanity is forever receding and declining. unadulterated psychopathy.
david chase said the finish wasn't supposed to rile anybody up, it was just the way it needed to come out and i completely believe him. it was all glorious and un-glorious at the same time. a cliffhanger and not a cliffhanger, an answer and a question. the most beautiful thing about the Sopranos, as several others have noted (which made me real happy tbh) was how un-sensationalist it was. it didn't try to affect your judgement, and it didn't render characters with any substantial bias. it allowed you to make up your own mind about these people, because they were believable AS PEOPLE. because people are different and multifaceted and hypocritical at different times. that's how good the writing was.
this ending - it doesn't even matter if Tony got whacked right then and there or not. the idea is that all this paranoia and fear he's dragging around like a sack of bodies on his back, it's just waiting to happen. today, in two years. it doesn't matter. the idea is we almost don't truly know if all those talks with Dr. Melfi were truly candid conversations with sincere intent of recovery behind them, or if they were just conversations of rationalization and enabling a psychopath to continue doing what he does. (and it was beautifully brought up within the show itself) it's all so beautifully balanced on a head of a pin - i now agree this is the GOAT so far that i have seen. Breaking Bad pales in comparison, and that truly says a lot.
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