How Should It End?

So, how do all of you Sopranos fans believe the show should end?

I'm thinking something bad is bound to happen to Tony. If it has to go out that way, I think a fitting end would be for Carmella to shoot him dead. What are your thoughts?

Well, if it must end I suppose the best ending would be for Tony to get his just desserts. Exactly how, I'm not sure. Yes, Carmella murdering him would be interesting.

I was thinking about him losing his entire famiy, both blood family and crime family, leaving him totally alone in the world. And not to be like Michael Corleone's ending, maybe Tony's family would be murdered and his crime family would disown him somehow.

But what do I know. I just am looking forward to this last season, and hope there are interesting surprises of some kind.

TIS

Sing, Sing, Sing,

Just like a Soprano

The guilt of Adriana's death is going to haunt Chris and he is going to kill Tony because of it. Then everyone is going to jail.

DS

Okay. Here's my Soprano series finale.


The FBI conducts a widespread dragnet to round up Soprano family members. They find some of them at Silvio’s club, at Satriale’s, and at their homes. They raid Tony’s home where they find him. Many of the series’ women are gathered there for Meadow’s wedding shower like Carmela, and Rosalie, and Janice, etc. They are grouped near the front door. After the FBI escorts Tony outside, Agent Grasso is the only one left in the house near the door and he is about to walk out when one of the women makes a remark like “You ought to be ashamed of yourself paisan. You betray your people, your heritage.”

Grasso has one hand on the door handle, but stops when he hears those words. He looks down at the floor for a few seconds. He looks up, let’s go of the door handle, and walks a few steps toward the women. He stops a few feet from them and starts talking.

“There was this kid, 20 or so. One night he and a couple friends raided a card game. Unfortunately, they killed one of the players. The guy who ran the game was a made guy and he knew who the kid was. So, the kid got scared. He ran; he hid out. So, the guy asked his boss what he should do about the kid. His boss told him to do what he thought he needed to do. So, later that week the kid was found with a bullet in the back of his head.

Grasso walks a couple of steps closer toward the women. "You see, the kid’s name was Jackie Aprile and the guy that ordered him killed was Ralph Cifaretto. And the boss that gave Ralph the go ahead to murder the kid was – he pauses - Tony Soprano."

Grasso turns and walks out the door. The women stand there horrified. The camera moves from one women’s face to the other. Then Meadow falls to her knees crying. Anthony Jr. walked in just at the as Grasso is teling his tale and now he runs out of the house.

The camera fades to black.

The next scene opens with an extreme closeup of someone’s profile. All you can see is the eye in profile. The camera pulls back. It’s Tony. He’s sitting in a lawn chair by the pool in the backyard of his home. He’s dressed in his shorts, a v-neck t-shirt, and his robe. He doesn’t move; he’s just staring straight ahead. The pool is empty. But it is littered with a lawn chair or two, a half deflated beach ball, a small rusted table. The lawn in the backyard is unmowed; it’s scraggily. There is lawn furniture littering the yard along with pieces of newspaper. Obviously, the place is not being kept up.

The camera swithches back to Tony’s eye in profile. Then you hear a flutter of wings and a few quacks. The ducks have returned. The camera shows them walking around a little near the edge of the pool. Then the camera centers on the eye of one of the ducks. Then it switches back to Tony’s eye. Then back to the ducks as they fly off.

When the camera switches back to Tony, there is a someone standing between the camera and Tony. You see the backside of a women in a nice suit skirt. It’s Dr. Melfi. You hear her say “It’s time, Tony.”

The camera moves slowly to her right as Tony gets up from the chair. Dr. Melfi walks toward him and takes his hand as they both walk toward the back door of the house. When they get to the door, Tony stops and turns to Dr. Melfi and asks, “Where are we going?”

She answers. “Hell” and they open the door and walk into the dark house and the door closes behind them.

Personally I'd like to see Tony fall and Chrissy be made the new Boss (possbily as some have suggested, killing Tony over Adriana's death)

I think it could end with an uprising in Tony's faction. Perhaps whomever takes control (Paulie? Silvio?) gets Christopher to whack Tony. I dunno.

Olivant, I didn't think that the cops knew about who whacked Jackie Aprile (unless that Capo, I forget who he is, the guy who had flipped told them?)? So why would it make any sense for him to tell the women?

I don't think they'd want Tony to talk, but it would send home a message that even the most hardcore gangster is really a coward at heart.

I'm watching a rerun of the Sopranos where I heard Tony tell Chris that he's going to be turning more and more stuff over to Chris. When Chris asks why not Sil or Paulie Tony tells him that he's his blood. I wonder if that's going to be the bases for the series' finale.

Actually there is going to be two more seasons. I believe that there will be 13 episodes this season and only 7 the next.

I think that Tony will go to jail ( they will not kill him because it closes the door for any future movie, etc. ). And I think that Uncle Junior is faking his memory loss and forgetfullness, to spare himself prison. When everyone else is either killed or sent to jail, uncle Jr. will take everything for himself in the end.


Don Cardi

But weren't there scenes where Junior was manifesting symptoms of alzeimer's only to Tony? Surely, that wasn't fake. In fact, Tony recognized Junior's symptoms after Junior's doctor talked with him on the golf course. But, if Junior gets it all in the end, I would be very disappointed.

Maybe Chris finally does a Henry Hill and rats out Tony, Paulie and Silvio. He seems like the Hill-type (going by Wiseguys at least) - a young, flash, tough made guy who has more interest in drugs, girls and money than omerta and the chain of command.

Kinda like Carlo Rizzi, and we know how he turned out...

I like olivant's prediction. But I think a few minor modifications should occur.

First off, I love the part about Ralph Cifaretto being responsible for Jackie's death. A different presentation of this fact to Carmella and company would be best. Maybe after a few days, Grasso gives Carmella a call letting her know. After that I don't know what Carmella should do with the news. Lets say she holds on to it, and for the rest of the series, she'll know one critical bit of information Tony doesn't. Even if Tony did know about it, he wouldn't be able to do anything because the damage has already been done. So she patiently holds on to the news, and for the rest of the series, no one has any idea. But instead of presenting the news, it makes her go crazy inside. She has an Adriana moment in the presence of her family and bursts into tears. Tony and AJ first are concerned, but after a while don't think of it. I don't know...

When it comes to hell, it's another good idea. The symbolism of Tony going to hell would definitely be cool. I couldn't see Chase doing something straight forward like that. Instead, lets say he's sitting there, next to the pool in his housecoat. He looks up and finds a ghostly image of his mother in a black dress from across the lawn (after all, she's more likely to be in hell than Melfi). Tony gets up and walks towards this image, and his mother starts walking away, into the woods behind his house. He follows her into the woods and blackout, the series ends.

TLove, that could work. I'd forgotten about Tony's dreams. Remember the one about his entering that old house and seeing that dark shrouded figure on the steps. Maybe that could be tied in with the ending somehow in a way you suggest. Maybe that figure could have represented Tony's mother.

I proposed the Jackie Aprile scenario because at the time that was the most sensitive of all the murders that would dramatically affect everyone. But now, with Ade's murder, maybe that's the one. But then I think that of those two murders it is probably Aprile's that the Feds would be more likely to learn about. But Carmela in torment over Jackie's murder - that could work.

Up to now, one of the main points in Sopranos is that sociopaths like Tony and Silvio and near-psychopaths like Ralph, Jackie and Paulie live a life much better than the rest of us unless they stop playing by the rules of the game, in which case they are whacked. This despite the fact that they are lazy illiterate bastards whose only real interests are how much more they will "earn" and which broad will give them a blowjob each night. In view of this, I would think of two general types of ending.

1. "Godfather I" ending. Everything goes on roughly as in the previous seasons. Somebody in the organization cooperates with the feds, somebody gets indicted for relatively minor charges and the traitor is found and whacked. Some other guy thinks he is the rising star, he disrespects the bosses and gets whacked. Tony manages to survive all this and either remains the boss of the NJ crew or assigns somebody else as the leader and retires - in the latter case, Melfi is happy. This ending is realistic and consistent with history. After all, most of the crime family leaders died outside jail, while organized crime only gets more organized as time goes on.

2. "Goodfellas" ending. The whole thing breaks down. Somebody high-ranking in the organization, even Tony himself, gets trapped by the feds, flips to save himself and his family and talk his brains out. All codes break down and everybody reveals what a selfish and scared bastard he really is when he has nobody to protect him. Tony's pathetic family begins to realize where their classy lifestyle is really based on. With Tony and his crew facing the electric chair or life sentences, everybody ends up with a different view of life in general. This ending has the moral that crime never pays, but it is also less realistic than the previous one. Another problem is that, with this ending, a possible next season or a film sequel are out of the question.

Of course, there are many other options in between these two.

Those are cool, MC, but I want something inbetween the two. It seems as if the predictable and traditional mob ending is: the system breaks down, somebody rats, and every one is trapped (as what happened in GoodFellas). I don't want something common and opened ending, like what happened near the end of GFI because that's not the way to end a series. I want something new, unique, and unpredictable. Any ideas?

I'd count on Chase to be unpredictable. Whether that's a good thing or not is another matter. He has been unpredictable in the past for explosive moments that paid off (Ralphie's death), and unpredictable to the point of a yawn, where he builds up tension and then erratically has it all fade with a "filler" episode unrelated to that tension.

The Sopranos, as with The Godfather saga in film, is the closest modern television can get to a King Lear-like tragedy: of a haunted, tormented soul trying to lead two lives and struggling to prevent them from colliding into one another. Something needs to happen with the Family vs family situation. Something needs to become ultra-personal. It's the only thing, I feel, which will send Tony over the edge.

Mick