Again with the Sopranos

Okay, I know. This is getting old. But the last week has brought a deluge of magazine and online pieces devoted to the finale, and forwarded emails professing to explain how Tony died threaten to outstrip even the fifty or so HGH come-ons that bog down my inbox on a daily basis. And so, I feel compelled...

All of this analysis, to my mind, is utter nonsense. Leave it to the detestable Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly to perfectly encapsulate the preposterousness of these deep readings in the space of 4 paragraphs. If you haven't read it, let's just say his opining sounds like he just ran breathlessly out the doors of his freshman Intro to Film seminar, straight to the computer. Not only does Ross manage to get the entire thing wrong, but he can't help insulting and patronizing anyone who dares not see what he does. Oh, we just didn't get it. Right. Ross sounds like he's on David Chase's payroll.

I don't think I've got the energy (or enough caffeine in me) to go through the theories piece by piece, so I'll just stick to the main points of why they strike me as false on the whole. Oh, but the onion rings as communion wafers (or whatever; I'm Jewish)? The waitress's white arm symbolizing death? This is like 9th rate early Scorsese. What's next, Jersey represents Hades? The Turnpike from the opening credits is Tony's journey across the river Styx? Gawd, I hope not.

But here's the thing: to my mind, there's no precedent for having to employ this level of symbolic analysis in order to understand what the hell just happened on this show. I'm not saying there's never been imagery, or that clues and harbingers have never been built in to the set design, script, etc etc etc. What I am saying is it's never been the audience's responsibility to do the heavy lifting. Think about it: do we know Bobby died because the trains symbolized some Freudian inability to function as a man, thus neutering him (I'm just riffing here)? Did the kids in the train shop mirror Bobby's own children, who would be left alone after he died? Did the shop owner's slight stature somehow invoke the specter of Death? Is this how we know he died? Uh, no. We know he died because two dudes riddled him with bullets.

Let's do another: Um, Phil. Did Phil's SUV symbolize the dichotomy of America's juggernaut strength and precarious reliance on foreign (NJ???) powers? Was the sweatsuit he was wearing (if memory serves) meant to tip us off to a relaxation of his defenses, a letting down of his guard? Oh, I know: the fact that he was in Bay Ridge (again, if memory serves) must tip us off to the fact that Phil was teetering on the ridge between life and death. Right? Isn't this how we know he died?

Actually, no. We know he died because we saw (or heard, actually) his head get crushed under the wheel of the SUV. THIS was the Sopranos. I don't know what show everybody else was watching (to paraphrase our buddy Dalton).

And so to buy into these theories is to accept that after about ten years, in the very final scene, the rules of the show just changed completely. If so, why? What's the point? If we are supposed to read all the clues and deduce that Tony is dead, why not just show us that he'd dead? This seems absent from all the analysis: why now? Oh, would it be too easy, too anti-intellectual to just come out with an ending. Please. Is The Wire (a much better show, by the way) any less amazing or challenging because it wraps up its plots at season end? I would argue no, it certainly isn't.

One more thing and I'll put this to rest (hopefully). I now present the major flaw to all of this theorizing: So let's assume all of this is correct, that the clues really do lead up to Tony taking one in the head. OK....well, maybe I'm missing something, but aren't we still completely in the dark? Do you mean to tell me that at the end of this series, with all the plots and characters swirling about, that Tony is going to get killed by some guy at a diner we've never seen before? Um, who is that guy? Why does he kill Tony? What's his role? Is he just a stickup guy robbing the register? Does it have anything at all to do with the plot of the Sopranos??? How is this even remotely fulfilling in any way? Oh, so some random guy kills Tony. Great, I'm glad I watched for ten years.

Aside from some feeble efforts to cast Members Only Guy as an esoteric member of Phil's crew, there seems to be little concern or interest in the fact that, even if these theories are correct, we're still totally in the dark regarding what happened.