Don't take this 'filler-sequence' lightly. Notice AJ's leaving Lone Wolves Productions. Little Carmine RUNS the company. The song playing as AJ drives off in his car is "Scratch Your Name" by the Noisettes. Here are the lyrics...

Inside spotlight
Fire is burning in my eyes
2025
There'll be fantasy costumes for your sign
We had a deal
We had a sign
We had a feel that was broken
I'm not fooling around, fooling around
Over hills under ground break it open

Scratch your name
Into the fabric
Of this world
Before you go
The skin will tear
Under the pressure
Make it deep
So it always shows

In a trance petrified to dance
You wait in the wings for your curtain call
On your marks come on, get set go
People defend your sovereignty
We had a deal, you were divine
We had a feel that was smoking
I'm not fooling around,
As the merry go round
Or convulse on the floor like a rabid

Scratch your name

The truest love is insane

Scratch your name
Into the fabric
Of this world
Before you go
The skin will tear
Under the pressure
Make it deep
So it always shows

The album that this song is from is entitled, What's The Time Mr Wolf, which is named after a children's game. These are the basic rules off of Wikipedia...

One player is chosen to be Mr Wolf. Mr Wolf stands at the opposite end of the playing field from the other players, facing away from them. A call-and-response then takes place: all players except for Mr Wolf chant in unison "What's the time, Mr Wolf?", and Mr Wolf will answer in one of the two ways:

1) Mr Wolf may call a clock time (e.g., "3 o'clock"). The other players will then take that many steps out loud as they go ("One, two, three"). Then they ask the question again.

2) Mr Wolf may call "Dinner Time!" Then Mr Wolf will turn and chase the other players back to their starting point. If Mr Wolf successfully tags a player, that player becomes the new Mr Wolf for the next round.

WHAT TIME IS IT when AJ gets in his BMW? Oviously THREE O'CLOCK for he's picking up Rhiannon from school. Instead of taking three steps, lets take THREE SCENES forward - first the scene where they're both in the living room watching TV and laughing as Carm announces, to Rhiannon's glance of notice (no, I don't make anything of that, Tony saying "Who's she going to tell" earlier in the ep stands true - Red Herring), that they'll be going to Holsten's, SECOND step forward, I mean second SCENE forward, is when Carm goes out back to tell Tony what 'the concensus' is, then finally the third scene when Tony visits Uncle Jun. What does it read on the bulletin board right above Uncle Jun? 'Next Meal, SUPPER.'

Whether Patsy (or even Paulie, a possibility I highly disregard) helps out in this, LITTLE CARMINE, to me, was behind Tony getting whacked in the end! He's 'Mr Wolf' and in 'sheep's clothing' mind you because he always 'seemed' like an unlikely candidate. He wasn't as 'Brainless the II' as he seemed. He stepped back in the shadow, initiated the Jersey/NY war and when all the REAL players/obstacles were out of the way, he finally took the reins. Yes, they held that sitdown/truce but Walden screwed it up with how the Phil hit went down (in front of family; car rolling over head). This may have made Little Carmine say, 'enough', and didn't he say to Tony two episodes earlier that he was, “at a PRECIPICE of an ENORMOUS crossroads.” Someone elsewhere stated that when Little Carmine took Tony to Phil's ("hat in hand, bends at knees") at the end of that very AJ-suicide-attempt/breaking Cocoa's teeth episode, he may have led Tony to his whacking right there and then, but Phil out his window told him to leave and take Tony with him being that..."cooler heads prevailed". With apologies to those intelligent Sopranos fans who DON'T think Tony got whacked in the end, what are all your thoughts on this (agreements, partial agreements, or rebuttals)?

I can't follow half of what you said but it seems as plausible as any theory. I think he got wacked at the end (pretty obvious). But who? Thats a good question. I have never really thought about it. To me, I dont know how important that answer is. The reality being conveyed (at least in my eyes) is that Tony led a very dangerous life for a very long time, fucked over and killed alot of people and managed to survive. At some point, it was going to come back and bite him in the ass and it did.
Do I think Chase even contemplated who was responsible? Possibly, but like I said, I dont find the answer to that question important. He was a Jersey mob boss who survived a war with New York and took out an NY boss. How likely is that ever to happen and have the Jersey guys survive? Its like David vs. Goliath except that doesn't happen in real life.