The hip crowd will cherish this as a brave defiance of audience expectations as if frustrating one's audience were anything more than mere adolescence. Yes, I'm frustrated, but not at unfulfilled assassinations, it's the realization that there's nothing to care about, that the show was a waste of time.
The question was never just, will Tony die? The question is, What is the point of the show, why am I watching this? If we're just watching mobsters whack each other, we're not much better off than the human animals depicted in the show itself. In the final episode, Chase is smart enough to include a character, an FBI agent, who reacts with glee -- like many in the audience -- when Tony's nemesis Phil Leotardo is off'd leaving the Sopranos as the last man standing. Those who cheered along are guilty of siding with depravity: we can't honestly side against one ugly repugnant mobster just because we are smitten by another cute-as-a-teddy-bear repugnant mobster.
The show concludes with a paean to moral relativism; everyone's been corrupted and no one cares. Carmela is a willing participant in Tony' s illicit money deals and abets his murders, helping him hideout during a mob-war; A.J. finally stops whining about the state of the world, and gets a job in the movie business complete with Mercedes-Benz; Meadow is in law-school but apparently about to give-up her poverty-law project for a job in a high-powered law firm and by-the-way marrying the son of one of Tony's capos.
Great, now what does Chase have to say about this morally bankrupt universe? Apparently, nothing. Tony goes to visit his uncle one last time; though his uncle was similarly criminal and powerful, his dementia is now almost total. Tony sees that in the end, no matter how powerful you are, you're going to wind up staring vacantly into the void. Whatever, fuggedaboutit.
Do I want to spend hours watching a show teach me that the universe has no meaning? I don't need 7 years, mind-numbing dream sequences, and graphic violence to make that point. More importantly, if the universe has no meaning, what choices are we supposed to make in our lives? I guess running northern New Jersey is as reasonable a choice as any?
It's oh-so post-modern to say that it's up to the audience to complete the picture. That's just a cop-out: for any civilized person the outcome is simple -- Tony goes to jail for hundreds of years. Unfortunately, that's not very dramatic. I'd like to pay to see an artist depict that kind of moral judgement for me, and in a creative and vital manner. That's the job.
Is the show then just a testament to Chase's power to tease the audience? The point was to see if he could end a 7-year series with a pie-in-the-face joke? Frankly, I get frustrated when the toothpaste doesn't come out of the tube in the morning -- stopping a story in mid-climax and making me testy isn't a particularly impressive feat. There are plenty of shows/movies with great acting, smart writing, and technically proficient directing. But there's more to great art than those attributes. Even pure-technicians such as Quenten Tarantino have a sense of moral order.
Not to compare the great and profane too closely, but how does "The Godfather" deal with morality? Turns out, very clearly and cleanly. In each episode, Michael Corleone makes increasingly evil pacts with the devil and, though a fascinating and compelling character, there's never any doubt in our mind that he's making bad choices. Coppola's genius shows us that Michael is despicable; notably, though Tony is the far grislier criminal (Michael's only personal murder is faintly justified as revenge for Vito's attempted murder), our final glimpses of Michael depict an increasingly isolated figure, facing his immorality alone. Tony, on the other hand, though his crew has been decimated, is on the top of the world business-wise and he's even got a finally happy nuclear family.
There's supposed to be tension in that a hit-man may or may not be in the diner about to kill Tony. If true, this would apparently be a mod-hit; again, what do I care if one mobster kills another? There's simply nothing to be learned from this.
One of the original advertising posters for the show summed up the basic dramtic conflict: It showed Tony flanked on his left by his mob family and on his right his real family, with the tag line, "One of these families will kill him". Cute, but in the end, no one kills him.
Some have said the show is thus just about (biological) family. Really? As in, stay with a morally bankrupt and criminal husband no matter what? As in, don't ask too many questions about Dad's business, even though you're a lawyer? If the show is about family, then it is apparently endorsing the view that family trumps ethics.
What has been so aggravating to me is the absence of anyone directly confronting Tony with his mis-deeds and refusing to go along with him. The penultimate episode finally showed his shrink saying "no more", but that stand was then subverted by the successes Tony had in the final episode. I thought that her position was going to be reinforced with more active rejection of Tony's lifestyle by others but his family (though they didn't like living in fear) does nothing but support him. Again, as a civilized person, the rational response to this is easy: that they are making the wrong decision.
One critic writes "I think this may be Chase's way of showing how strange it is that the audience is with Tony, too. We have forgotten that he is a remorseless killer." What an odd thing to suggest. Does the critic think that the audience is composed of idiots? It's not "strange" that the audience is with Tony - that's a deliberate choice of Chase's. He and Gandolfini have used every trick they know of (and several they invented) to make us like Tony. Is Chase just playing us for fools - How long can I make them enjoy Tony before they realize that they are wrong?
But then why not show some sort of comeupance? Wouldn't that, more than anything, explain to the idiotic audience that they had their xxx on the wrong horse? So the reason Chase doesn't do this is because he respects us, and we can figure out our own ending? As I said, that's what I'm paying him for.
So the show ends, teasing us with a self-centered, show off's send off. There's arrogance in its amorality - Chase can show us terrible acts of human behavior in a world where few come to justice and actions rarely have consequences so long as your family loves you (and your buddy in the FBI tells you where your enemy's hanging out).
Chase leaves it up to me to finish the show? The attractive to look at, creatively marvelous show has, at the end nothing that should be finished. A pointless waste of time.
Posted by netrc at June 11, 2007 04:43 PM