By Matt Nippert
And so it
ends: Not with a bang, but with a blank screen. In 1977 oddball American comic
Andy Kaufman produced a television special that featured fake static, the joke
being that millions of viewers would simultaneously get off the couch to try
and fix their apparently malfunctioning television sets. David Chase, creator
of The Sopranos, seems to have tried the same gag, but his epic mob
drama isn't a comedy. After six seasons the bloody New Jersey suburban soap
opera was crying out for resolution, not a meta-joke punchline.
Other
shows, notably Sex and the City and Friends closed with neat,
overly-wrapped endings. Long-serving characters were given the equivalent of
gold watches, paired up and practically married off, and were last seen
waltzing into a picture-perfect sunset. The Sopranos clan -
bearish Tony, trophy Carmela, princess Meadow and whining A.J - were in the
middle of ordering dinner when the screen faded to black.
After 86
episodes and a run longer than the presidency of George Bush, is this it? For a
television show known for intricate arcing plot lines, cutting-edge obscenity
and a quality of acting usually only seen on the big screen, is an ending this
abrupt just?
Sure, the
bungling Soprano clan had managed (finally!) to whack photosho shopped Don Phil
Leotardo, but more questions were asked than answered. Did the
perpetually-slouched Silvio recover from his gunshot-induced coma? Does Tony,
waste management king, ever move into New York City with an eye on becoming the
boss of bosses? Does the FBI man ever get over his bad curry from Karachi? And
did A.J, ostensibly in his late teens, finally manage to outgrow infancy?
Viewers are
inevitably left with conflicting views about Tony given that he was, albeit
loveable, a sociopath. In the very first episode, the bearlike suburban Don
introduced himself to psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi: His name was Anthony Soprano
and he had been depressed.
Tony: The morning of the day I
got sick, I been thinking. It’s good to be in something from the ground floor.
I came too late for that, I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I
came in at the end. The best is over.
Jennifer: Many Americans, I
think, feel that way.
Tony: I think about my father.
He never reached the heights like me. But in a lotta ways he had it better. He
had his people. They had their standards. Today, whadda we got?
Through the
entire series Tony and Jennifer sparred on the couch and discussed family and
work and hinted at matters much darker.
He fretted about his family (both criminal and nuclear), was torn over his
parents (his father was an idol, his mother a murderous harpy) and was
afflicted with the same sort of aspirational middle class malaise suffered by
most of those watching the show.
When A.J.
attempted suicide, Tony moaned over the cost of mental health care. When his
defacto son Chris became a junkie, the Family agonised over rehab. The best
elements of The Sopranos emphasised family drama over the blood-and-guts
styling of Mafioso warfare. This was a serious Desperate Housewives, with peyote-fuelled orgies in Las Vegas with goomah taking the place of discrete
affairs with the gardener, and gunfights instead of catfights.
Petty
crimes, petty tragedies and common complaints defined the series. Could anyone
summon the moral courage to care for a increasingly senile, yet technically
senior, Uncle Junior? Would nightmarish sister Janice finally throw off her
narcissism? Would Chris, stalker of Ben Kingsley and dreamer of Hollywood, make
it to the twelfth step? We’ll never know, because beneath Tony’s petty worries
and likeable veneer lay a genuine sociopath – and David Chase seems little
different.
During the
build-up to this weeks’ finale Tony’s mask of respectability family man was
finally torn off. Chris, back on the coke, was suffocated by his enraged boss.
When daughter Meadow was slighted by a drunken mobster, Tony went nuts and
smashed in the guy’s teeth, throwing his closest associates and friends into a
war that would see many long-serving characters killed.
And at his
birthday celebrations, Tony repaid the gift of an expensive new machine-gun
from his associate Bobby with a drunken brawl – which the boss lost and sulked
over. Later, in the penultimate episode, Bobby was gunned down shopping for
model trains. The boss that triggered that chain of events leading to this
murder, and others, was left clutching his birthday present, anxiously trying
to fall asleep on the lam. Matte-black machine guns make strange security blankets.
Melfi the
psychiatrist, whose chin-wags with Tony were the catalyst for the entire
series, showed more perception than the series creator, and acted for viewers,
when she cast judgement and dumped her client. She realised her therapy
sessions were allowing the mobster to hone fraudulent empathy, allowing a
stone-cold killer to pretend he had an emotional quotient higher than a shark.
Yet in Jaws, the monster got it in the end. In The Sopranos, despite stringing along
the possibility that the FBI were assembling a case, rival families were
angling for a hit, and even that his heart might give out, Tony lives to fight
another day. Justice would see the series close out like The Godfather, with Tony in total control of the city after
knocking off his rivals, or climax like Scarface
with an all-in shootout leaving the protagonist, covered in blood and glory,
dying the way he lived.
And the
hanging Sword of Damocles, in this case a pending trial, remains,
frustratingly, dangling. Tony as jailbait? Tony as turncoat? The possibilities
were mouth-watering, but – Fughedaboutit! – with this travesty of an ending
we’ll never know. After the credits rolled, we’re left with the disturbing
thought that, after that blank screen, life just plods along on for Tony and The Sopranos: This rough beast keeps
slouching in New Jersey.
