For what it's worth, although I don't like them that much, I always eat onion rings whole. I noticed how they were devouring them - Carmela doing so seemed most odd, or out of character, or deliberate, or symbolic.

But let's deconstruct things a little further, here, not to demystify that incredible final scene and prove what happened this way or that way; whether Tony lives or dies takes nothing away from the brilliance of that scene, and frankly, whether Tony lives or dies is besides the point.

Firstly, if Chase intended all of those things (which, for the sake of argument, let's say he did), the colour palettes, the food references, that Tiger, the bulge in the guy's jacket, the cut to black, the flashbacks to Tony's conversation with Bobby, AJ's entrance, everything - and so it's so fucking "obvious" to us, right? Yeah, of course: Tony dies, deal with it.

Well, no, not exactly.

Before I go on: that oepning shot of the episode, which shows Tony lying possibly at a wake - I don't think Carmela would have agreed that he's dressed like that at his own wake - he is, after all, Head of the Family.

My first point of contention, then, is that this guy Bob Harris is writing as if the symbolism is obvious (a "two by four over the head", he calls it). Symbolism is obvious, otherwise it's abstract - it needs to be obvious in order to be extracted and understood - and Chase and the other writers and directors have been very obvious in their meaning and signifiers throughout the show; I've nothing against that at all, by the way, it makes for sophisticated narrative threads, and it reached its peak in season 6 part I. But if this is so obvious, if everything points to Tony dying, then why is it even a point of discussion? Why is it even open to debate? It is symbolism, but it's not symbolism to infer something in one way, it's suggestive symbolism, to suggest something in one way only to manipulate and offer an opening in the other way, the other possibility (and hence the question "Is He Dead?")

Secondly, Harris's whole argument amounts to, "I'm either right on this, or I've been undone by a massive, massive coincidence". Riiiiiight. Like we don't already know. (Actually, forget that sarcasm, the majority of people actually don't know, that the entire mise-en-scene in that scene was deliberate, was intended, and that's why it's such a fucking tense scene, and why it's ultimately a brilliant one.)*

So, because of this, I'm not disputing that everything which happens in the scene is deliberate - Chase knows what he's doing, he's well aware of the psychological manipulation of an audience that mise-en-scene is capable of, and responsible for. But coming back to my first point of contention: my favourite novelist John Fowles once said of the climax to my favourite novel The Magus that, "They never saw each other again". He said this years after telling a dying man who wished to know that, "Yes, of course they saw each other again."

My point isn't merely to remind us of the ambiguity of the final scene of The Sopranos, but it is to lament how curiosity leads to reductive demystification. I realise sometimes the need to find out, to prove something this way or that way, to wonder what happened or what happens. At the end of the second season of 24 I was like WTF? I couldn't wait for the third season to start, to find out what happened. Why couldn't I wait? Because I knew that a third season was being made and going to be released, so I was in the hands of an artificial show, and was happily going along with it.

Now, The Sopranos is finished (for now, at least), with that finale. It's final. Furthermore, like my 24 example, it is a product of artifice. We all know this, of course, but to follow the insightful Bob Harris's line of thinking, Chase not only was deliberate in including oranges, onion rings, references to Catholic death and "The Last Supper" in that scene, but was also deliberate to include a narrative thread in season 6 I and II with Christopher making movies - we see an artificial work inside an artificial work, and Tony and Carmela drawing up different interpretations as to what Christopher intended or didn't intend with his portrayal of Tony in Cleaver. That's as much a stroke of genius as is that tiger on the wall of the restaurant (a big stroke or a little stroke, I don't know).

And so if I've gone along with the show and been happily manipulated by its fine acting, writing and directing (despite irritating moments), then I can do nothing but go along with the ambiguity of the finale.

A profound scene? A cop-out? I don't know, but what I do know is that I could easily (as I did by pointing out Tony's clothes at that possible foresighted wake) get onto issues as to who, of all the remaining characters, would want Tony dead, and furthermore, why? Bob Harris might answer, "But that could be anybody, that's the whole point", in which case I'd answer that that final scene was indeed lazy.

But I don't think it is.

On top of this, hasn't anybody heard of subjective verisimilitude. For an example, watch David Fincher's recent masterpiece Zodiac, and see the scene in which Jake Gyllenhal enters a basement of a benign man who suddenly turns into prime suspect for serial killer. He isn't, of course, it's just Gyllenhal's paranoia - and, more importantly, our paranoia, as an audience. Just because Tony's paying attention to AJ doesn't mean he's oblivious to Members Only guy; it's because, in light of what's happened, we as an audience are entrenched in his way of thinking. It's a very expressionistic slant on dramatic irony.

But coming back to withholding some sort of integrity and respect for ambiguity. I'm the kind of person who, as you may have gathered, so long as it doesn't strike me as contrived pap (which, had that scene gone on for three seconds later than it did, would have), goes along with a narrative's ambiguity. To me, it's not even a question of whether or not Tony Soprano died, it's a question whether or not the scene worked.

Which it did, because I'm going to watch it again in a minute.

* Mise-en-scene is that inside the frame, or inside the narrative - it includes props, positions of actors, relationships between characters implied by those positions, the use of music, the lighting, the colour palette, etc.