David Chase won his first Emmy for his terrific work on The Rockford Files, a ground breaking TV show in its own right. And unlike David Lynch who treats his audience like fools and then laughs about it, David Chase decided to end The Sopranos the way HE thought was best for the true fans. After all, he IS the show's creator! And given all of the different theories I've read so far today about what REALLY happened, he succeeded brilliantly! Just reading them all has been a delight! Proof that TV is never a "passive medium" in the hands of a master like David Chase. I even read one that said "It was the fans who got whacked!" This has truly been one of the most entertaining "what is art?" discussions I've been engaged in for years. IMHO, trying to decide what the ending was all about is the TV equivalent of Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" and the thirty years of debate on who she wrote the song about. Simon publicly acknowledges she wrote the song about a certain person, and Chase knows why he wrote the ending he did, but neither will ever go public because they know that answers stop questions from being asked and interest wanes as a result. And everyone keeps mentioning the Journey tune at the end, but don't forget the three times Chase used "You Keep Me Hanging On" by Vanilla Fudge, which he even opened the episode with. The lyrical title part of the song was never used, only the instrumental sections, but that's Chase's way of not hitting the audience directly over the head with it. All I can say is this: If you wanted a finale with everything spelled out in CAPITOL LETTERS, then they would have hired Robert Zemickus to write and direct! At least it didn't end with Tony waking up and finding that it was all an eight year dream. That was done before and was perhaps the Greatest Final TV Episode of All-Time. The last episode of "Newhart" in which the star, unlike Tony Soprano, actually DID get whacked! You have to have seen it to know of what I speak!
Review of Made in America
