Inside Tony's Skin

Quote of the day:
“An assumption deeply integral to capitalism ... [is that there’s] not enough to go around: not enough love, not enough time, not enough appointments at the food-stamps office, not enough food stamps, not enough money, not enough seats on the subway. It’s pervasive. We learn mistrust of each other, bone deep: everything is skin off somebody’s nose.”
--Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

Ok. Have we all calmed down about how The Sopranos ended? Many people took the seemingly-abrupt ending very personally. The Los Angeles Times TV critic said that producer David Chase “owed” all of us a much tidier resolution.

Merrie and I were both a bit jarred when the screen went black. We digested it for a minute or two and then simply said, “well, it’s all over.”

I had a chance this evening to watch the last 15 minutes of the episode again. Knowing what was going to happen allowed me to watch objectively. And I was impressed at how well these few scenes--especially the last one--summed up the series.

Karla Peterson of the San Diego Union-Tribune pointed out that the final scene was both ambiguous and filled with dread--set in the midst of an ordinary dinner at a family restaurant.

What we experience while watching this is likely what Tony Soprano feels as he continues to live his life. And the ambiguity, anticipation and uncertainty is what we all feel as we live our lives.

It’s an unusual end for an unusual TV series. The Sopranos will be remembered for many years. It has marked and even defined the first decade of the century.