A Fitting End

*Beware, spoilers abound this post!*



So I finally got around to seeing "The Sopranos" finale and let me just say that I thought it was a perfect ending. I don't think that people realize that the real ending came when Phil Leotardo was knocked off at the Raceway gas station, with his crew giving him up to keep the greater peace.

If you listen to the DVD commentary on the penultimate episode by Arthur J. Nascarella when he talks about the last read through, in which all of the principal characters do a dry run of the script...

"At the end of the table read, there was about ten seconds of silence. And Jimmy Gandolfini looked at David Chase and asked him, 'why did you end it that way?' David Chase said to him, 'I didn't want to show that crime paid...and I didn't want to show that crime didn't pay."

And that's how it should be for a show that never really was conventional. The other thing that Nascarella and Steven Van Zandt touch upon in their commentary was how Chase did such a tremendous job building up tension, with Meadow struggling to parallel park her car. Van Zandt spoke of how it had him on edge and all this while he still obviously knew the scene's outcome.

The end scene at Holsten's was a beautiful cliffhanger. Will that guy with the Member's Only jacket come out of the bathroom blazing? Or will Tony be whacked by the two African American guys, in a similar manner to what occurred with Jackie Aprile Junior? You don't know and you probably never will.

My only question about the finale is, what was up with the cat that so attached to Chris Moltisanti's picture? Was the cat the reincarnation of his father? Or was the cat the reincarnation of Adriana?