The Sopranos (HBO) TV Show • Page 76

Damn I teared up when Tony pulled AJ out of the pool and was holding him. Had a lump in my throat for the next ten minutes.

 

It’s such a heart wrenching scene and a reminder how much he loves his kids despite their fuck ups during their adolescence. He feels guilty for passing down “this wretched disease”.

 

Honestly one of the best scenes in the show

 

That scene absolutely destroys me. The pool symbolism throughout the whole show and culminating in that moment is so powerful. That also may be my favorite episode, hard to say with all the last season. The Yeats poem, goddamn.

 

that scene might be Gandolfini's best work in the show, the way he switches from his usual anger/disdain for AJ to compassion, man

 

He calls him “my baby”. Just shatters my heart in a million tiny pieces.

 

the transition from "what the fuck is wrong with you??" to "it's ok, my baby,"

ugghh

 

So good

 

well that's one way to end a show

 

It’s the best way to end a show

 

Definitely would’ve been cool to have seen it live and discussed it with people irl att. Didn’t get into the show for a while after it ended

 

I will always remember my father asking me to go online and see if other peoples' service was interrupted.

 

I watched the last season live without seeing any other season aside from stray eps of 1. I’d come in and talk to my history teacher about it. For the finale, I had kids over my house who had never watched the show before to sit there and watch it lol

 

I know the ending has its fans and its critics; I personally think it’s bold and masterful. Everything about the final sequence FEELS like a final sequence to the biggest show ever, and yet contextually nothing occurs to make it seem that way—besides the way it’s edited. Thematically the story is complete but, narratively, it feels like it could go on (and on). Chase has your emotions and all your attention in the palm of his hand at the end; then, he just makes it all vanish. It’s brilliant.

 

It concludes all of Tony's relationships. He is seeing Junior and Silvio for the last time, Paulie and Janice show that they will continue with their eccentricities, and his children are finally "set". It as if he knows what is coming, whether he does get shot in the diner or is going to go to jail based off of Carlo flipping.

 

The Sopranos wiki fandom page suggests that there is an underground gang of Members Only jacket people and they were getting revenge for Eugene. That is enough for today.

 

I definitely didn't not like it, it just caught my wife and I supremely off guard lol

But yeah, at no point did it seem like they were setting it up for Tony to survive in the last couple of episodes. It got to the point where there were ten minutes left in the episode and I'm thinking "come onnn...something bad is gonna happen."

Then the fkin Journey song, Meadow struggling to parallel park, and Anthony telling AJ to focus on the good times, etc. So much tension! The more I think about it, the more I like it - but I can see how it might have been polarizing.

Of course we immediately took to Google to learn more and just last year the producer finally confirmed that Tony does in fact die. What a crazy long period of time to not know, if you ever had any doubts.

 

I still choose to believe otherwise, even if I'm wrong lol. I think the point is that it doesn't exactly matter either way. It's about consequences

 

I didn't watch the show during its original run but knew the finale was airing when it did in 2007. Next day on all the news shows they aired the final scene and discussed how it went to black and I was like, "welp, guess that's how the show ends"

 

To me it really depicts the paranoia that comes with the lifestyle, even if nothing is going on in the moment (and I do think the storm had passed Tony that time), and the fact that the paranoia is nevertheless justified, because at some point it will go wrong

 

Yeah I finally watched this in 2020 but knew how it ended from when the finale originally aired.

 

My thoughts are also that he doesn’t die in that moment, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I think Chase has also said that same thing many times, that it’s a pointless discussion, until he’s basically been bullied into giving an answer. The real message is that everything’s corrupted at that point. The cycle begins again in his children and the people left behind.

 

Some days he dies. Some days he doesn't. Some days he goes to jail. That's the beauty of it to me.

 

All of the foreshadowing says he dies, but the biggest problem is motive. Butch is not going to kill Tony immediately after brokering a peace deal.

However, as others have said, it is the fear itself that is the issue. With Silvio unlikely to recover, Tony doesn't really have any friends left in the gang. Look at the people guarding the house; they are younger and most of them are barely named. He's lost more and more of those around him which has also been why he has lost his humanity. The inability to sincerely console Hesh shows how far he has gone.