Bada Bummed

Warning: If you haven't seen The Sopranos series finale, stop here. If you did see it or you just don't care anyway, please read on.

It's become known as the "Huh?" heard round the world. Tony sits in a New Jersey diner. He chooses a song -- Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" -- on the tabletop jukebox. Carmela and AJ join him. They order a basket of onion rings and talk about AJ's new job as a movie producer. Tony suspiciously eyes fellow diners (are they hitmen or just normal people?). One man in a Member's Only jacket mosies towards the bathroom (perhaps retrieving a gun from the toilet, a la Michael Corleone in The Godfather?). Meadow is running late and obviously can't parallel park. Meadow finally parks and runs across the street, a bell on the door jingles, Tony looks up....CUT TO BLACK. SILENCE. Did my cable just go out? SILENCE. CREDITS. What the deuce? Were Tony and his family whacked? (In an earlier episode, Bobby had said that if you're shot to death, you won't hear your killer coming, everything will just go black.) Does Tony have a massive heart attack after one too many onion rings and "gaba-gool" subs? Do the Sopranos live to have just another family meal? Apparently we'll never know, and the rest is up to our imagination. If you want Tony to die for a lifetime of murder, corruption, and adultery, then by all means kill him. If you want to believe Tony can be redeemed, then by all means let him eat in peace. The Sopranos -- ambiguous and thought-provoking to the end.

I've done a lot of thinking about this series ending, and I can't decide what I thought of it. The build-up of suspense using quick camera cuts was incredible (Hitchcock would have been proud), but my initial reaction was to feel robbed. You don't devote nearly 90 hours of total viewing time to be left out in the cold. I -- like most people -- definitely didn't want to see Tony gunned down, but some sort of closure, some sort of answer -- no matter how shocking or placid -- would have been more satisfying. The more I think about it, the best part of those final scenes was actually Journey's song. Therefore, I've included this sweet music video from the 80's. It gets really entertaing around the 1 minute/(-3:06) mark. Steve Perry's blouse -- sorry, shirt -- is priceless, and I could swear he's packing heat (and I don't mean a gun) a la Randy Quaid in Christmas Vacation. He's clapping like Steve Martin in The Jerk too. Enjoy!