In the end they are all just eating onion rings. In the end, they are all just feverishly reaching for this American invention–A vegetable in that vast unknowable space lurking somewhere between transparent and opaque—the essential translucence of the Soprano’s existence, the core of which is encrusted in grease and slime. The “circle” is cut, fried in oil, completed, and then of course, eaten. We finally get the metaphors. These onion rings–a completely American invention, having nothing what so ever to do with the “Italian thing” of eating the quintessential Italian meals with the wine and the pasta and the culture and the fancy designer clothes, and all of the concomitant obscenities. Until now, we’ve never really and fully known the banal reality that is revealed to us in this, the FINAL EPISODE–that on a typical week night, Carm isn’t cooking, (on the lam she “just wants to get home”), while people are dying and Janice is looking for another spouse and maybe she (Janice) will alas devote herself to the kids who have a dead father), just maybe, after she sucks the money with Tony’s inimitable pleas for justice from the demented murderer of an uncle who can’t remember anything that has actually transpired in his immigrant family history–Tony to Junior– you shot me, so leave me your stash. Junior somehow perversely owes this to him…. and in the end, as it were, they are not dining at the establishment of the theatric and dramatic Mafioso backdrop. They are just another American family taking a false vote on which cheap eats joint to go to and get fat at, which Dad announces the decision on, all while they engage banal conversation about nothing, conversation about the next law suit; Meadow has given up medicine to improve the justice system with the self righteous grandiosity that only a Soprano can invoke–the justice system, the dysfunction of which has come to inhabit (and has made) Meadow’s spoiled ethnic brat existence possible– the justice system that has never failed to protect her in it’s dysfunctionality— hers and her family’s. And AJ, who momentarily, before considering a botched suicide, flirted with an ethinic/of color girlfriend, has traded her in, leaving her child fatherless, for a blond model white bitch, where for both of them, fiery sex in the soon to be in real flames SUV is more important than friendship– AJ, who in real life has grown up a TV star and in the Soprano’s life has shucked and plundered in his concern for the injustices that America perpetrates for a career in entertainment, one that his Dad will invest in, but only if it shows promise–the Soprano hookup. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Where’s the love? In the FAMILY, of course– isolated and empty, clinging to what they know and to each other in this vast New Jersey wasteland in the deep mist and midst of other depressed Americans, some eating alone, black, white, going to the God damned bathroom just like everyone else. Are these people the ultimate assassins or just nobodies lost in the digestive tracts and in the black holes of America. As Olivia Dukakis said elegantly and eloquently in Moonstruck–”I know who I am.” NOT! Unlike in Moonstruck, where there IS actual humanity, all these American/ized Sopranos really care about is eating after all. Just eating, filling their corrupt valueless fat faces after parking, albeit frustratingly, their Goddamned oil sucking cars that they each self absorbingly and smugly transport themselves in–separately, (but as my Friend Tim put it, this, the Sopranos, is the most real and human of TV history, where people really do park and talk this way). No commitment to anything sensible. AJ is forced by Mom and Dad to give up his SUV for miscalculating the responsibilities therein, prompting him to flirt with public transportation and going green, but ultimately he gets an even cooler car as he drives it with reckless abandon making some shit excuse or another for himself, this Gen Y depressive with a video game virtual conscience and no real understanding of history—his family’s cultural amnesia if they ever knew what there is to know. His parents have no parental backbone or resolve, cause they have never resolved to delay their children’s gratification, wherein AJ sells his drumset to buy twelve hundred dollar champagne to impress his peers because the real Problem with SUV’s is that you can fry an egg on their catalylic converters, and there coulda been a kid playin in those leaves. As AJ says, it would have turned out worse but we got lucky– the explosion would have been bigger had he not been low on gas. An inverted reference to our delusion that oil is the solution. This gas guzzling culture. And all of this while Carm looks on knowingly, absent self reflection and honesty, and passively, at the obscenity and con, as Tony seduces the next woman therapist/ mother/sex object who is enthralled and thrilled and titillated with his narrative of the tragic depraved childhood of a sadistic mother who controlled his psychopath father, which by the by is supposed to clarify and explicate everything–while The FBI is fucking each other, while being totally corrupt and enjoying the prospect of “winning” this thing. One big football season, on the big screen. This Soprano’s thing is and has always been about the same thing–AMERICA. America the corrupt. And as my Soprano’s devotee son Daniel astutely pointed out, “ya know what the title of the last episode was? MADE IN AMERICA! This double entendre of a title. This complexly obfuscating culture. This false melting pot where no one gives a shit about anything but their own moment, their own despair, their own job, their own economy, their own capitalism (or failure therein), both local and global. Disenfranchised lives, unless you win by stealing and murdering. Cars, food, grease, jukeboxes, pretend voting, lost futures that wouldn’t mean anything anyhow cause there is no big picture. What did the last song have as a refrain? Something about keeping the dream alive? I’ll have to watch again to be sure. But it’s all about America, one series of reruns after another (now on demand, and are you TEEVOED?). Was the joke on us for even caring, just for a minute (or eight years), because of our own despair over bad TV that we were raised on, eating our frosted flakes and always hopin for something better? Fuckin brilliant if ya ask me. One big Country Western juke box thing, in some shit diner with shit togetherness, shit food, shit cars, a shit justice system and never bein able to trust strangers, since that’s what we all are. Strangers with the potential to end one another’s lives. Beyond crass. And if Tony does get whacked in the end, even though he has this thing for animals, this thing for the vulnerable abandoned creatures, the ducks and geese, the majestic horses, the cat with nine lives who looks on focused and fixatedly at his prey, all reflecting his bewildered internal states of the moment, we don’t need to see it because they, the brilliant creators and cultural critics have taught us over the years what it looks like. We no longer need (or should), to be thrilled and patronized and gratified without having to use our imaginations. We’ve seen it all, a hundred times and more. All whacking is the same in the end. No one is innocent, but some are spared…til later. The Soprano’s creators care for us, they don’t condescend to us, they don’t pander to the least common denominator in us. In the end, the tape runs out, the screen goes black (or the damned tape/DVD player breaks with it’s planned obsolescence) before we figure out what’s gonna happen—which of course IS NOTHING. A better existential piece of nihilist theatre there never was. The corruption is everywhere. As my brother Dan and I agreed that when Jennifer endures a “sit down” with her organization, this “thing of ours,” while the peer pressure of HER organization forces HER to betray all humanism, cause it’s just “business.” — this is the way we do it—just among friends and the ORGANIZATION, where the last drop of humanity—her empathy for how even the psychopath suffers, must be trashed. They leave us with our imaginations–something America doesn’t have. And the greatest testimony to all of this ironic and eloquent metaphor is that at least in our family, this has brought us together, every Sunday night, with meals lovingly and ritualistically concocted direct from the Sopranos cook book, for years of our family’s lives. “The pump don’t work cause the vandals took the handles.” Bob Dylan said that. “You can be in my dream if I can be in yours. I said that.”
(Dylan, circa 1962)
I did not bother to read through the message but I am VERY upset with that ending… People say they liked it blah blah, but they know they would have liked to see an “ending” rather than a black screen with no closure…
People think Tony died, some think it ended by showing that Tony will always have to look over his shoulder…
The fact of the matter is we have NO CLUE how it ended and the only option is to bring the show back!
Wantmoresopranos.com is a site with a petition to bring the show back… They will be submitting several letters to HBO but they need our support so please stop at the site and sign the petition so that we can create an enormous list of names to show our support.
Besides, I would absolutely love to hear HBO announce a new season or a movie or something… If they see thousands, even millions of people dissatisfied, they will have no other choice!
Bobby, Get the hell out of your mom’s basement! Onion rings representing the circle of fat, gluttenous, gas guzzling America? It was a TV show! You read WAY to much shit into it. Let me guess, “You’re a 9/11 was an inside job” person. Quoting Dylan? “the vandals stole the handles” isn’t an insight. It’s a cheap rhyme. Dylan said that.
Well here’s my idea of the perfect Sopranos ending…
Final draft for my “Family” and “friends.”
The final Episode:
In the end they are all just eating onion rings. In the end, they are all just feverishly reaching for this American invention–A vegetable in that vast unknowable space lurking somewhere between transparent and opaque—the essential translucence of the Soprano’s existence, the core of which is encrusted in grease and slime. The “circle” is cut, fried in oil, completed, and then of course, eaten. We finally get the metaphors. These onion rings–a completely American invention, having nothing what so ever to do with the “Italian thing” of eating the quintessential Italian meals with the wine and the pasta and the culture and the fancy designer clothes, and all of the concomitant obscenities. Until now, we’ve never really and fully known the banal reality that is revealed to us in this, the FINAL EPISODE–that on a typical week night, Carm isn’t cooking, (on the lam she “just wants to get home”), while people are dying and Janice is looking for another spouse and maybe she (Janice) will alas devote herself to the kids who have a dead father), just maybe, after she sucks the money with Tony’s inimitable pleas for justice from the demented murderer of an uncle who can’t remember anything that has actually transpired in his immigrant family history–Tony to Junior– you shot me, so leave me your stash. Junior somehow perversely owes this to him…. and in the end, as it were, they are not dining at the establishment of the theatric and dramatic Mafioso backdrop. They are just another American family taking a false vote on which cheap eats joint to go to and get fat at, which Dad announces the decision on, all while they engage banal conversation about nothing, conversation about the next law suit; Meadow has given up medicine to improve the justice system with the self righteous grandiosity that only a Soprano can invoke–the justice system, the dysfunction of which has come to inhabit (and has made) Meadow’s spoiled ethnic brat existence possible– the justice system that has never failed to protect her in it’s dysfunctionality— hers and her family’s. And AJ, who momentarily, before considering a botched suicide, flirted with an ethinic/of color girlfriend, has traded her in, leaving her child fatherless, for a blond model white bitch, where for both of them, fiery sex in the soon to be in real flames SUV is more important than friendship– AJ, who in real life has grown up a TV star and in the Soprano’s life has shucked and plundered in his concern for the injustices that America perpetrates for a career in entertainment, one that his Dad will invest in, but only if it shows promise–the Soprano hookup. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Where’s the love? In the FAMILY, of course– isolated and empty, clinging to what they know and to each other in this vast New Jersey wasteland in the deep mist and midst of other depressed Americans, some eating alone, black, white, going to the God damned bathroom just like everyone else. Are these people the ultimate assassins or just nobodies lost in the digestive tracts and in the black holes of America. As Olivia Dukakis said elegantly and eloquently in Moonstruck–”I know who I am.” NOT! Unlike in Moonstruck, where there IS actual humanity, all these American/ized Sopranos really care about is eating after all. Just eating, filling their corrupt valueless fat faces after parking, albeit frustratingly, their Goddamned oil sucking cars that they each self absorbingly and smugly transport themselves in–separately, (but as my Friend Tim put it, this, the Sopranos, is the most real and human of TV history, where people really do park and talk this way). No commitment to anything sensible. AJ is forced by Mom and Dad to give up his SUV for miscalculating the responsibilities therein, prompting him to flirt with public transportation and going green, but ultimately he gets an even cooler car as he drives it with reckless abandon making some shit excuse or another for himself, this Gen Y depressive with a video game virtual conscience and no real understanding of history—his family’s cultural amnesia if they ever knew what there is to know. His parents have no parental backbone or resolve, cause they have never resolved to delay their children’s gratification, wherein AJ sells his drumset to buy twelve hundred dollar champagne to impress his peers because the real Problem with SUV’s is that you can fry an egg on their catalylic converters, and there coulda been a kid playin in those leaves. As AJ says, it would have turned out worse but we got lucky– the explosion would have been bigger had he not been low on gas. An inverted reference to our delusion that oil is the solution. This gas guzzling culture. And all of this while Carm looks on knowingly, absent self reflection and honesty, and passively, at the obscenity and con, as Tony seduces the next woman therapist/ mother/sex object who is enthralled and thrilled and titillated with his narrative of the tragic depraved childhood of a sadistic mother who controlled his psychopath father, which by the by is supposed to clarify and explicate everything–while The FBI is fucking each other, while being totally corrupt and enjoying the prospect of “winning” this thing. One big football season, on the big screen. This Soprano’s thing is and has always been about the same thing–AMERICA. America the corrupt. And as my Soprano’s devotee son Daniel astutely pointed out, “ya know what the title of the last episode was? MADE IN AMERICA! This double entendre of a title. This complexly obfuscating culture. This false melting pot where no one gives a shit about anything but their own moment, their own despair, their own job, their own economy, their own capitalism (or failure therein), both local and global. Disenfranchised lives, unless you win by stealing and murdering. Cars, food, grease, jukeboxes, pretend voting, lost futures that wouldn’t mean anything anyhow cause there is no big picture. What did the last song have as a refrain? Something about keeping the dream alive? I’ll have to watch again to be sure. But it’s all about America, one series of reruns after another (now on demand, and are you TEEVOED?). Was the joke on us for even caring, just for a minute (or eight years), because of our own despair over bad TV that we were raised on, eating our frosted flakes and always hopin for something better? Fuckin brilliant if ya ask me. One big Country Western juke box thing, in some shit diner with shit togetherness, shit food, shit cars, a shit justice system and never bein able to trust strangers, since that’s what we all are. Strangers with the potential to end one another’s lives. Beyond crass. And if Tony does get whacked in the end, even though he has this thing for animals, this thing for the vulnerable abandoned creatures, the ducks and geese, the majestic horses, the cat with nine lives who looks on focused and fixatedly at his prey, all reflecting his bewildered internal states of the moment, we don’t need to see it because they, the brilliant creators and cultural critics have taught us over the years what it looks like. We no longer need (or should), to be thrilled and patronized and gratified without having to use our imaginations. We’ve seen it all, a hundred times and more. All whacking is the same in the end. No one is innocent, but some are spared…til later. The Soprano’s creators care for us, they don’t condescend to us, they don’t pander to the least common denominator in us. In the end, the tape runs out, the screen goes black (or the damned tape/DVD player breaks with it’s planned obsolescence) before we figure out what’s gonna happen—which of course IS NOTHING. A better existential piece of nihilist theatre there never was. The corruption is everywhere. As my brother Dan and I agreed that when Jennifer endures a “sit down” with her organization, this “thing of ours,” while the peer pressure of HER organization forces HER to betray all humanism, cause it’s just “business.” — this is the way we do it—just among friends and the ORGANIZATION, where the last drop of humanity—her empathy for how even the psychopath suffers, must be trashed. They leave us with our imaginations–something America doesn’t have. And the greatest testimony to all of this ironic and eloquent metaphor is that at least in our family, this has brought us together, every Sunday night, with meals lovingly and ritualistically concocted direct from the Sopranos cook book, for years of our family’s lives. “The pump don’t work cause the vandals took the handles.” Bob Dylan said that. “You can be in my dream if I can be in yours. I said that.”
(Dylan, circa 1962)
isn’t any one gonna comment?
www.WantMoreSopranos.com
I did not bother to read through the message but I am VERY upset with that ending… People say they liked it blah blah, but they know they would have liked to see an “ending” rather than a black screen with no closure…
People think Tony died, some think it ended by showing that Tony will always have to look over his shoulder…
The fact of the matter is we have NO CLUE how it ended and the only option is to bring the show back!
Wantmoresopranos.com is a site with a petition to bring the show back… They will be submitting several letters to HBO but they need our support so please stop at the site and sign the petition so that we can create an enormous list of names to show our support.
Besides, I would absolutely love to hear HBO announce a new season or a movie or something… If they see thousands, even millions of people dissatisfied, they will have no other choice!
w
Bobby, Get the hell out of your mom’s basement! Onion rings representing the circle of fat, gluttenous, gas guzzling America? It was a TV show! You read WAY to much shit into it. Let me guess, “You’re a 9/11 was an inside job” person. Quoting Dylan? “the vandals stole the handles” isn’t an insight. It’s a cheap rhyme. Dylan said that.