Not with a bang, but a whimper? My case for a better “Soprano’s” finale.

“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”

— The Second Coming, W.B Yeats

“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”

— Hollow Men, T.S Elliot

Therapist: Have you considered writing about your experience… a short story… poetry?
A.J: Why would I do that?
Therapist: It might help clarify your feelings.

— The Sopranos, S6 E19

I call bullshit and I’m going to write a blog post about it.

— Tom, after watching the Sopranos finale

————————

My flatmate, Stuart, called bullshit, literally screamed it, at the TV tonight. “Not with a bang but a whimper”, was the first thing that came to my mind. I wanted a bang, not a blackout.

That first poem by Yeats (it’s pronounced “Yates”, A.J) The Second Coming, has been given some thematic attention in the past few episodes of the Sopranos. It’s about the fall of civilisation and can be linked to the Russian Revolution, WWI, or decline of the Roman Empire. Melfi quoted it a few seasons back and A.J has been throwing quotes out at the dinner table. The clichéd “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” could have almost been the logline for the whole Sopranos series.

Honestly, my money was on terrorist attack (nuclear?) of massive proportions to end the series. Here’s my case:

Islamic terrorism and the Iraq/Afghanistan wars have been a constant and rich theme throughout the series, illustrating the changing global situation:

• Constant mention of rag-head terrorists and how the world is changing
• Organised Crime investigators (Agent Harris and team, who started showing up a lot more in recent eps) being re-assigned to Counter-Terrorism as a higher priority than Mob crime
• (Admittedly, this is a bit “meta” but it still holds) Re-cutting the opening sequence so the World Trade Centre didn’t appear in the rearview as Tony drives along (the week after 9/11) got a lot of press
• The Arabs who hung out at the ‘Bing, and who Tony seems to fear enough to get involved with the FBI as an informant
• A.J’s obsession with Iraq, Al Jazeera website, and wanting to enlist
• Tony tripping out on Peyote, in the middle of a scorched desert landscape outside Vegas, screaming “I get it!” at the sunrise as it supernova-flashes and looking utterly dumbfounded and helpless. Visual metaphor, much?

“If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.”

— Anton Chekov

Basically, there was a gun on the wall from the first season and David Chase just let it hang. Remember the constant reference to “Things are changing…”, “It’s not like in the old days…”, “Jamba Juice and Starbucks on every corner…”, “Anthrax… Al Qaeda… all that depressing shit…” over the years? This, I believed, was leading to something a bit more poignant than a finale of (albeit very well played) gangster movie call-backs*.

Overall, it just seemed like there was this lingering feeling of decline and demise – the fall of the “Roman Empire” to the barbarians kind-of-thing. Insert US Imperialism or Little Italy/La Famiglia reference as required.

David Chase: So why don’t you write a better ending then, bitch?

Tom Kelshaw: Done. I wrote it about 5 weeks ago because I knew you were going to be a total douche and disappoint. So here goes…

Season 6, Episode 21 (Series Finale) – Phantom edit by Tom Kelshaw:

Carlo flips because his son get ratted out??? Who the HELL is Carlo anyway? Hows about Pauly flips (becomes a rat, hence his intense fear of the new cat they found) because he’s been blabbing his mouth off about shit for years. See: “Jeannie Sacks got an 80 pound boil cut off her ass” joke that almost got everyone killed.

Tony, who let Butchie live (in the diner after American History X-ing that Coco guy) brokers the truce and they arrange to put a hit on Phil. Tony and some guys get into SUVs (Tony still has that big M16 looking gun. Totally sweet.) and head over to Brooklyn, taking the Lincoln Tunnel from Jersey to Manhattan. Tony has been driving through this tunnel every episode for the past 7 years. USE IT.

Meanwhile Carmela and Meadow are going to Manhattan to do some boring law firm or Patrick Parisi wedding plan shit. Who cares.

A.J has to die because he is a little bitch. I’ll concede he gets to go out in a blaze of high-school-age model glory, and gets trapped in the SUV. Nobody finds out just yet though, because…

BOOOOM. A massive bomb goes off in the tunnel, collapsing it and the bridge above it, basically separating Manhattan and the other boroughs from Jersey. Total chaos. How’s that for “dividing territories” or “blowing each other up over some patch of sand that their god says they’re entitled to…” (A.J says this to his therapist about Arab/Israeli conflict).

So at this stage we don’t know if Tony’s crew or Meadow/Carm are dead by some Deus Ex Machina, random act of Allah. Deus Ex Machina (wikipedia) is a literary device used in Greek/Roman tragedy where an implausible or unexpected, random event turns the story right around when it reaches an impossible climax. Think “raining frogs” at the end of Magnolia. Or all the robots getting the Flu at the end of War of the Worlds. It highlights the powerlessness of flawed mortals compared to the gods and chance. The Sopranos is the Greek tragedy of our day, complete with power struggles, gnarly violence and a flawed hero with mother issues.

Boom. Right there. That’s it. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

Next scene, we see Tony in Manhattan, about to pull into the spot where they’re going to make the hit on Phil. His sees the bomb go off, the flash he saw in the desert again. We infer Carm and Meadow died in the tunnel. There’s total anarchy. Tony knows he’s powerless, he’s lost his entire crew and now this shit has happened, ruining his chance at getting Phil. But does that even matter anymore? Does anything? So we leave him, his entire family is dead, and he’s the only one alive, silently contemplating the world. See ending of Godfather II, which leaves Michael Corleone sitting in an empty house whilst everyone else is massacred.

*Giving credit where it’s due – Cool bits to leave in:

1. Tony peeling the orange at the safe house – this happens in Godfather I when old man Corleone dies, he’s eating an orange and scaring little grandson in the orchard.

2. The diner scene – keep it as-is, throw it in the middle somehow, it was pure nailbiting gold. A total homage to the best gangster movies: Hitman-Guy leaving to go to the bathroom (Michael’s first hit when he tapes the gun in there in Godfather I) to the diner scene from end of Goodfellas when De Niro rats out Liotta, to every other gangster/film noir movie that ends in a diner. Swingers and Pulp Fiction both riffed on this.

3. Agent Harris banging the other Agent and calling Tony right afterwards, as he gets the information about Phil.

Final thoughts?

Hell, at least it wasn’t no final Seinfeld. That REALLY sucked.