Apocalypse & pointless recursion & Television Posted by Oaktown Girl, 14 Jun 2007 05:53 am

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

By Michael Bérubé

OK, so I’ve now seen the final minutes of the final Sopranos episode for a second time. And a third and a fourth and a fifth time. Then I went back (once I remembered that I have DVR and that Janet actually knows how to use it) and watched the whole thing again, and talked it over with Janet. And you know what? I’m no longer convinced that the final ten seconds of dull black screen (and I counted– it was ten, not twenty) signifies Tony’s death. I still think that’s a plausible reading (though I’ll mention a few caveats), but I don’t think it’s at all certain. But then, even when I suggested the Tony-gets-clipped reading over at Digby’s place, I hedged my bets, as any ordinarily pusillanimous literary critic should, by suggesting that “We’re left to wonder whether we’ve been duped into thinking that Tony dies because all the staging in that final scene– the brief shots of each of the restaurant patrons, the focus on the guy going to the men’s room, the closeups of Meadow having trouble parking the car– feels like the generic suspense-creatin’ mechanisms that precede a catastrophe. We stop and ask ourselves how much of our reaction depends on those narrative mechanisms.”

And yet, and yet. If indeed we were supposed to conclude, from those final sequences in Holsten’s, that Tony’s life will just go on and on like that damn Journey song, why not cut just when Tony looks up, just before Meadow enters the restaurant? Why give us that brief blackout?

In the Digby thread, Factlike asks who did it; alkali follows up with a question I’ve been asking myself– how could any of Tony’s adversaries know that he would be at the diner that night? Fair questions, these. I still think the shady guy at the counter could have been dispatched from the New York crew somehow, because, after all, The Sopranos was a series filled with bit players who wind up playing a brief but critical role in the drama. But how did he get there? I don’t know.

But I do know this: we of the WAAGNFNP must reject out of hand the reductive Marxist readings of certain bloggers who insist that the open-ended ending is all about the benjamins in the end. Despite the fact that Jane Hamsher knows infinitely more about the business of makin’ movies and TV shows than I do, I am a bona fide professor of dangeral studies, and, as you surely know, dangeral studies began in Britain in the late 1950s as a repudiation of precisely the kind of reductive all-about-the-benjamins Marxism that would suggest David Chase wrote the ending so as to keep the cash cow alive. So I think I can safely pull rank on Jane here.

All theoretical dangeral-studies kidding aside, though, let’s get real: how in the world can Chase follow up on this series? Christopher is dead; Adriana is in another dimension; Bobby is dead; Sil isn’t breathing on his own; Uncle Jun doesn’t know he’s in The Sopranos; Phil Leotardo is dead; and all the other supporting players, from Big Pussy to Johnny Sack, are also dead. What would a Sopranos encore look like? Something, perhaps, like a 1995-96 Chicago Bulls reunion consisting of Michael Jordan, Jud Buechler, and Jason Caffey?

Besides, there’s something else going on in that final episode; there’s another subplot we never see on the screen. We learn about it only when Paulie enters the empty Bing (and there’s a nice visual summation of the series right there) and realizes that Carlo is a no-show. Paulie thinks that they’ve “been had” at that sitdown orchestrated by George and Little Carmine, and that Carlo has been killed by Butch (who was supposed to kill Tony); but Tony suggests that Carlo has flipped, and Paulie suddenly remembers that Carlo’s son Jason, the “imbecile,” was picked up for selling ecstasy.

Who’s Carlo, you ask? Well, just scroll through the summaries of season six to find out. The idea that Tony might be brought down by Carlo, for reasons that we never witness onscreen, is of a piece with the idea that any one of the things Tony sees in Holsten’s might be the last thing he sees. For Tony might be indicted, after all he’s done, for one of the most trivial little plot asides in the series– the gun he threw away after his meeting with Johnny Sack at the end of season five. And that, in the open-ended end, might be an appropriate ending for Tony: fingered by a minor underling and indicted for crimes committed with a gun he no longer owned. As Episode 65’s summary reminds us, “Johnny is chased down and arrested, but Tony escapes through the woods. A safe distance away, he phones his lawyer, Neil Mink, who tells him not to worry, it was a Brooklyn sting operation and Tony wasn’t named on the warrant. ‘Be of good cheer,’ Neil advises. Then Tony hangs up and continues his long walk home.” But in the final episode, episode 86, Mink is not of good cheer. The series with Tony suggesting that he had arrived in the final days, long after the Golden Age of organized crime; the series closes on a series of dimuendi, as Tony’s world gets smaller and smaller and more claustrophobic.

And thus, folks, we have the basis for a new conclusion about the conclusion: Carlo’s offscreen flip to the feds will bring down what remains of the family. And the suspicious guy at the counter kills Tony not because of his mob connections; indeed, the suspicious guy at the counter, despite his extra suspicious Members Only jacket, has no mob ties at all. Rather, he kills Tony precisely because Tony has subjected the entire restaurant to that damn Journey song.

Works for me!

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Responses to “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”

  1. on 14 Jun 2007 at 8:25 am 1. Kiera PSI said …

    I can see murder and mayhem over a jukebox song. Sitting in a pizza place for a weekly gathering with a group of armed friends (not real weapons…historical recreation weapons), I was often tempted to perpetrate such on people who insisted on playing songs from “Grease” over and over again. If I’d heard Olivia Newton John trill, “You’re the one that I want” or “Hopelessly devoted to you” JUST. ONE. MORE. TIME, I’d probably still be in jail…or confined in the mental ward if I had a good lawyer.

    It’s amazing how the most seemingly innocuous things can trigger our baser instincts - as opposed to Basic Instincts, that’s a subject for another thread entirely. People do, indeed, just snap. Maybe that’s what happened to Tony, but I still like the theory that a hit finally caught up with him.

  2. on 14 Jun 2007 at 8:58 am 2. JP Stormcrow said …

    So you’re not seeing Mourning Becomes Carmela as a sequel?

    I’m a Sopranos n00b (I could probably make it onto a Sopranos jury.), but I did catch the last 10 minutes on an HBO rerun. It certainly was a skillful build-up of palpable tension (diners in New Jersey need valet parking).

    However, I am still holding out for Dennis Hopper (as Frank from Blue Velvet), hiding in the Women’s Room with his oxygen mask. Maybe he’s the one who provides the music critique: Journey? F*ck that sh*t! Gorillaz! And it is consistent with the ending of another Hopper performance:

    There were no screams. There was no time. The mountain called Monkey had spoken. There was only fire. And then, nothing.

  3. on 14 Jun 2007 at 9:56 am 3. peter ramus said …

    You know, there’s sensed menace in that final moment, Tony crouched at the table, looking up, and all the plausible reasons for that unsparing menace to be felt by the character Tony and by his audience. The menace of the moment isn’t extinguishable by the cut to black. It’s carried forward, the menace, into whatever conceivable future might be proposed for Tony to inhabit past the closing of the tale. David Chase declines to provide more story, but whatever might be conceived there in that imagined space behind the blackend screen he does provide must include the unsettling menace brought all the way to and implicitly beyond the abrupt ending of the now closed narrative of the menacing life of Tony Soprano.

    Fairly, Chase leaves his audience unsettled by the menace and the man in the end, and that’s a legitimate and artful achievement, to sum the story in such a way as to leave the audience to carry away as its chief residue the irreduceably unsettled context of continuous menace that Chaser has explored since the series began.

    Not that I’ve actually seen the episode, mind you.

  4. on 14 Jun 2007 at 11:05 am 4. Oaktown Girl said …

    Peter’s quite right. Done skillfully and artfully of course, the TV shows, movies, plays, and books that stay with me the longest usually have some sense of menace or big question/uncertainty left hanging in the air It’s hard to achieve that if all the loose ends are sewn up nice and tidy.

    Due to financial reasons, I didn’t have access to HBO, so I never watched The Sopranos. I do have HBO this year because my cable company cut me a (temporary) deal. So I decided to watch this final season, even knowing that I’d be missing many of the plot and character intricacies, because at least I could enjoy the ending and be “surprised” like everyone else. No way could I ever NOT hear how The Sopranos ended until I saw it on DVD in my own good time. The show is just too much a part of popular culture. And was I ever right Monday morning was blanket Sopranos coverage.

    Well, now at some point down the line I can go back and rent the DVD’s and see what the “best drama ever” praise was all about. Several times over the last couple of years I toyed with viewing all The Sopranos episodes on DVD, but something more interesting at the time always seemed to grab me instead. HBO-specifically - I ended up renting the Deadwood DVD’s to see what all that fuss was about.

    I’ll have to tell you about my Deadwood trauma experience sometime.

  5. on 14 Jun 2007 at 11:55 am 5. Dr. Free-Ride said …

    One of these days I’ll be ready to watch The Sopranos, but for now I need a little more sunshine in my noir. (Which is to say, I’ve been watching Veronica Mars on DVD. I’ve never been more possessed of the need to punch Harry Hamlin in the mouth.)

    And now, the Dangeral One, who has given up blogging, blogs here too? I feel as though, if I had properly understood this sense of “giving up”, I might have enjoyed Lent more.

  6. on 14 Jun 2007 at 12:24 pm 6. mds said …

    And now, the Dangeral One, who has given up blogging, blogs here too?

    Indeed. Who would have thought he might make an occasional post here, of all places?

  7. on 14 Jun 2007 at 2:08 pm 7. black dog barking said …

    I recently read Ms Hamsher’s memoir noir based on her Hollywood experiences and found it both pleasant and informative. Fast-talking and back-stabbing feature prominently throughout. Although money-grubbing is not unheard of, the especially adept or brazen could apparently make things happen for free.

    The really really famous Quentin Tarantino and Hamsher cross épées more than once with Mr Tarantino finally succumbing to self-inflicted blowback from his own written words. Caution advised for any dangeral professor contemplating an incautious bon mot or two.

    I’m hoping the Dangeral Institute of Dangeralness will turn its Eye toward the Hortatory Subjunctive and the exculpatory role of language mood in Hatch Act prosecutions. Le subjonctif is the primary reason I can’t speak French. That and studying and stuff.

  8. on 14 Jun 2007 at 2:49 pm 8. JP Stormcrow said …

    Massively obvious statement number #103: Endings are hard work, and yet they hardly ever work. (GNF aside, which is one relatively unexplored theory for the show.) This is in contrast to beginnings - easy, and titles - very easy.(You can generally come up with any number of appropriate titles for any given piece of work in a relatively short period of time.)

    I blame the nature of reality.

    In trying to dredge up examples to compare and contrast this week, I realized that in my own personal database of narratives, real crisp memories of various endings of otherwise familiar works are missing. Of course this might just be a personal problem, but I think rather, that I tend to purge many of them since they really are not that “important” to what I take away from the overall work. Or as appears to be the case here, the narrative trajectory is generally clear and the mechanics of how to actually stop writing, filming or whatever is just an annoying technicality.

    Take this comment for instance. Is there a way to grac

  9. on 14 Jun 2007 at 3:12 pm 9. alphie said …

    On the financial front, I think Jane Hamsher is missing another important consideration.

    Sure, there is the possibility of a lucrative Sopranos movie or reunion show sometime in the future, but most of the money the Sopranos will make for its principals from here on out will come from syndication rights and DVDs.

    I think people will be less willing to watch the Sopranos in syndication or buy the DVDs if they know that, in the end, Tony gets offed (”Why watch it, I already know how it ends).

  10. on 14 Jun 2007 at 3:42 pm 10. Oaktown Girl said …

    Good points, Alphie. Of course there will always be the people like me, who after hearing years and years of critical raves, want to see what all the fuss was about, regardless of having seen the final season or episode.

    One observation I haven’t seen much of yet (not that I’ve been scouring the Sopranos chat threads, so I can’t be sure on this), is the whole thing with Meadow and parking the car. We are led to believe she’s the one entering the diner when we hear the door bell go ding-a-ling. But the last shot we see of Meadow, she’s nowhere near the diner door yet. So…it’s totally possible it could have been someone else walking in (to blow Tony away).

    Indeed. Who would have thought he might make an occasional post here, of all places?

    Better late than never, mds, and please we are indeed! So pleased, in fact, we won’t tease him about doing a post on a hot topic that was hot 3 days ago. Oh, what the hell. Michael’s big enough to take some ribbing: What’s next, Michael, your breaking hot-off-the-wire analysis of the Monica Goodling testimony in the Justice Department hearings?

  11. on 14 Jun 2007 at 4:18 pm 11. Seattle said …

    Soprano…that’s the high women’s voice in the choir…right? The Sopranos…that would be all of those shrill types singing at the same time-the ones who rarely had to sing harmony ’cause somebody always figured we shouldn’t be too hard on the poor gals and gave them the melody… HBO TV series….something someone expects me to pay money to see….hmmmm. So, I take it it was a good series? Better than The Wire? ‘Cause that’s a damn good series. Say YES to DVD’s!

    So I “woke up this morning, got myself a gun…” or rather listened to everyone and their mother talking about the ending of The Sopranos. Reminded me of the end of “Soylent Green” where the Millenium comes and the guy who’d been running around saying the world was coming to an end said, “We’re still alive,” and the main character said, “Yeah, what did you expect?”

  12. on 14 Jun 2007 at 5:07 pm 12. Oaktown Girl said …

    Seattle - you sound like you’ve have some very frustrating choir moments dealing with persnickety sopranos. Too bad you’re probably too classy to have ever launched spitballs at ‘em.

    But I really like your theory: Soylent Green is made out of dead Sopranos characters!

  13. on 14 Jun 2007 at 5:45 pm 13. Michael Bérubé said …

    Who would have thought he might make an occasional post here, of all places?

    Nobody expects the GNF! Our chief weapon is surprise, surprise and giant nuclear fireballs . . . damn. I can never get that right. Cardinal Fang, you’ll have to do this bit.

    What’s next, Michael, your breaking hot-off-the-wire analysis of the Monica Goodling testimony in the Justice Department hearings?

    Who’s Monica Goodling? Surely with a name like that she must be a nice young woman. I hear that the Downing Street Memo is going to be really big, though. It could bring down the entire Bush Administration! And if that doesn’t do it, just wait for Richard Clarke’s book on national security!!

  14. on 14 Jun 2007 at 7:55 pm 14. Oaktown Girl said …

    Who’s Monica Goodling? Surely with a name like that she must be a nice young woman.

    Gah! I never even thought of the name aspect of it. Rove and Co. could have hardly done better had her name been “Suzy Sunshine”!

  15. on 14 Jun 2007 at 10:02 pm 15. JP Stormcrow said …

    And if that doesn’t do it, just wait for Richard Clarke’s book on national security!!

    The smart money says that it is going to be Bush’s suspicious sale of Harken Energy stock that is going to do it. It happened like 17 years ago, but Jeff Gerth has an article coming out in the Times that says it is very important. And you know how that goes, “paper of record” and all. I can’t wait. Maybe they will name Patrick Fitzgerald as Special Prosecutor and he will go all “out of control” on their asses.

  16. on 14 Jun 2007 at 10:49 pm 16. alphie said …

    Hehe,

    Michael sounds more like Paul Newman in The Color of Money than the Spanish Inquisition.

  17. on 15 Jun 2007 at 4:41 am 17. Bill Benzon said …

    Did the fat lady sing yet? After all, it is the Sopranos.

  18. on 15 Jun 2007 at 6:10 am 18. JP Stormcrow said …

    Ken Levine has a very funny piece entitled If THE SOPRANOS were on a major network.

    Some highlights;

    The finale would be at least two hours.

    There would be a one hour clip show hosted by Bob Costas preceding it.

    There would be a little animated promo swooshing across the bottom of the screen after every commercial break of every other prime time show on that network for two weeks. A little gun would shoot a little mobster. The blood would spell out SOPRANOS.

    Also, on the bottom of the screen there would be a little countdown clock for a month leading up to the finale.

    He concludes with: So if you’re still pissed at David Chase for the way he really ended the series just think of the alternative.

    Some of his commenters still weren’t having it, though.

  19. on 15 Jun 2007 at 12:41 pm 19. JP Stormcrow said …

    Another somewhat interesting take.
    But I only note it because it concludes with this dubious statement:

    One last thing: Chase’s other major achievement in that last scene was to make Journey cool again. Pretty amazing feat, all things considered.

    Confession: I have always kinda liked Wheel in the Sky.

  20. on 15 Jun 2007 at 1:13 pm 20. Oaktown Girl said …

    JP - those bits from Ken Levine for if the Sopranos finale had been on network TV are priceless, especially the vomit-inducing idea of Costas hosting the one hour clip show. Too true, too true.

    And the verse section of Wheel in the Sky has what I think is a very interesting and original melody and syllable meter (don’t know what else to call it), which is why I like it too.

  21. on 15 Jun 2007 at 3:52 pm 21. James Killus said …

    No one expects the Giant Nuclear Fireball (provided the YouTube link makes it through the filters; if not, you can see it here):

    Some might wish to cease watching about a minute from the end. Thus do I pull a reference to The Sopranos from an undisclosed location.

  22. on 15 Jun 2007 at 3:53 pm 22. James Killus said …

    Okay, dammit, then from here.

  23. on 17 Jun 2007 at 3:11 pm 23. doug r said …

    I was thinking the guy with the farmer hat at the booth could be undercover FBI. The guy going to the bathroom (besides the Homage to The Godfather), was blocking the exit to the rear. The two suspicious guys at the counter-either hitmen or OCTF.
    Tony’s been in the middle of a war, after all-the FBI/OCTF should be following him.
    I’m thinking there’s an arrest or bloodbath or probably both…right after we the audience get whacked, of course.