The Obligatory Sopranos Post

You know what the world needs right now? Another opinion on The Sopranos finale. Now that every newspaper, blog, and the PTI guys (as well as SportsCenter, ATH, and every sports talk radio show I listened to today) has chimed in and I've had 20+ hours to digest it, I think I'm ready too.

Mediabistro probably said it best: The Sopranos didn't end--it stopped. The more I think about that, the better I feel about it. That wasn't the case last night, however. I wasn't outraged, just a bit "miffled."

Now, I've never been a serial TV watcher. The Sopranos was my first experience with can't miss television, the first time I scheduled my life around being in front of the tube for a non-sporting event. I didn't even start watching until the show was four seasons old, but I caught up quickly thanks to On Demand and last night's episode was my first true "event programming" moment. I'd been thinking about it for weeks, talking about it with anyone who would listen. Let's just say I've never been more excited for one hour of television.

Was it worth it? Not immediately, but in the long run, in the conversations that we're having right now and will continue to have, I think it will be.

I'd like to think that we're comfortable at this point with the relationship between profundity and ambiguity. Namely, one doesn't always equal the other. Performance art, foreign films, Captain Beefheart--all often ambiguous and frequently ridiculous.

The final episode wasn't like that. In fact, it was like 50 or so other episodes of the series we'd seen before. Methodical, plodding, a fuse that fizzles just before the big bang. The only difference is that now there's no next week. That big bang is never coming, so perhaps the bigger surprise is that we ever expected it in the first place.

The Sopranos "altered the playing field for dramatic television" because it wasn't like anything else out there. It never was going to go out like a "very special" 2-hour finale of Friends. But what if we knew Tony's fate when we woke up this morning? What if everything truly was over? We'd have our reviews and our memories and we would move on.

But now we have a moment that will live on in our cultural history forever. The Sopranos went from one of the most popular television shows ever to the most controversial ending ever.

Writer/Director David Chase is hardly the first person to play the ambiguity card, but I don't think anyone has flipped it over in such a high-stakes game. If his last name wasn't already a verb, I'm fairly certain that it would become one just to describe this sort of ending. (Q: "How did you like the new Wes Anderson film?" A: "First half was good, but he totally Chased it at the end.")

Was this laziness on the part of Chase? Absolutely not. That final scene was as good a lesson in tension as you'll ever get. Was it selfishness on the part of Chase? Absolutely. He took his series and ended it on his terms and this points to the larger question at hand here: what responsibility does the artist have to his audience?

My inclination is none. Pick any famous artist you want, they all started for some variation of the same reason: the hope that someone out there would find their vision, their work, their words, worthy. Michaelangelo didn't paint for the greater good of mankind, he painted because it gave him some sort of personal satisfaction. Hendrix didn't pick up a guitar to make people happy, he did it to make himself happy. In the art, literary and music worlds that's seemingly okay. In fact, to abandon that strategy is to commit the worst of artistic sins: selling out.

But with television the expectation is different for some reason. Why? I'm not sure, but it probably has something to do with the amount of time involved. A painting or a photograph can be consumed in one sitting. An album is about an hour, a movie two. A book lasts as long as you want it to, but television last as long as they want it to. It's finite, but not on your terms.

For example, we know that we've spent exactly 86 hours watching The Sopranos. That's 3 1/2 days of our lives spent with Tony, Carmella and, unfortunately, A.J. You can keep track of exactly how much time you've invested and when you know how much you're spending you know how much you expect in return.

Maybe in that sense The Sopranos failed as a television ending, but that's also why it succeeded as an artistic one. In the relatively brief history of television, many point to this show as one of the first to elevate the medium to an "art."

Last night's ending may not have been the one you wanted, but it was the one that confirmed that very notion.

A Weekend of Endings?

Originally published in BostonNow.

There are two sides to The Sopranos. Some episodes are your good old fashioned, off a guy and scatter the appendages throughout New Jersey mob drama. Other episodes are more cerebral. Lots of therapist face time and ho-hum household tension.

It seems like the final season has been a little heavier on the cerebral side which is surprising when you consider there are only two episodes left. It's been like watching a firecracker fuse burn: you know the big boom is coming and the anticipation might just be better than the actual release.

We're about to find out if we've got an M80 or an inch-and-a-halfer, which got me thinking: what's the body count going to look like over these last two episodes? I'm not so sure it will be the shootout everyone thinks it is, but let's break it down:

-- Tony - Popular opinion seems to say that Tony's death is the only logical end and I tend to agree but I'd actually be more interested if the series ended with the Skipper still heavily mouth-breathing. Nevertheless, my money in the Black Hand Stakes is on Carm. After turning a blind eye to Tony's lifestyle the entire series, the revelation that Tony killed Christopher and Adriana will be too much to deal with. The perfect crime and catharsis.

--Phil Leotardo - Did you see the look Tony gave him at the end of the episode last night while Phil was yelling out his window like a little girl? He's gone.

--Paulie - He's just too big of a prick not to meet an ugly and (un?)timely fate. It's actually a miracle he's made it this long. Probably gone before the final episode.

--Silvio - The rock. I think Silvio escapes a dirt nap, but the preview for the penultimate episode led me to believe that he might turn on Tony. If that happens, goodbye Sil.

-- A.J. - The wildcard. The fate of Tony's heir might be the most interesting arc left. His time to die was last night and he escaped so I think he's safe unless things get totally Shakespearean.

Throw in a couple of random goons and I'm setting the body count over/under for the final two episodes of The Sopranos at 8.5.

Morning Walk-thru - Coming back to you, Omaha

Danagate hits home...Matt Perrault, an Omaha radio host whose blog I quite enjoy and link to in my "blogroll" (what an awful word), has had quite the go of it with the Altman departure/return.

First, he had a reliable source tell him that Dana was not going to Iowa, only to "flip" when Perrault said the same on the air. Then, he quoted an ESPN.com report that said Creighton AD Bruce Rasmussen could follow Altman to Arkansas and eventually replace the lame duck Frank Broyles.

Following an interview with Rasmussen, posted on Perrault's blog, the AD himself e-mailed Matt to express displeasure with his opinion of the situation. Next, Omaha City Weekly Media Watch jumped on the story, and the comments accusing Perrault's of irresponsible journalism followed, both on that site and Perrault's own.

Personally, I'm shocked that Rasmussen took such offense to Perrault's take. Isn't that what radio hosts are supposed to do? Have a take? I haven't heard a second of the radio broadcasts that covered this topic in depth, simply looked at the blogtrail (another awful word), but I have a hard time saying this was totally mishandled. Maybe it wasn't perfect, but it was far from irresponsible...in my opinion.

For what it's worth, Perrault doused the coals as best he could in a follow-up post by admitting that he was "wrong."

Is baseball over already?...Second day of the MLB season and, after a day full of games on Monday, there wasn't a single one on the tube last night. No Sox, not even the Braves. But the women's national title game got the Full Circle treatment on the "ESPN family of networks." Great.

With few other options, I was left to witness the oddest hour of television that I've seen in at least a year. It was part of the Sundance Channel's "Iconoclast" series which puts two celebrities together and gives them the opportunity to mutually fluff one another.

Pretty ho-hum concept, but the episode last night featured Quentin Tarantino and Fiona Apple which was an interesting pairing because Apple is, for all intents and purposes, a reclusive misanthrope while Tarantino is a 6-year-old boy. Tarantino continually compared filmmaking to male arousal and Apple giggled uncomfortably...for an entire hour.

Honestly, it was fascinating. If you have 44 minutes or so, you can find the whole series in five parts here. Or you can just watch the the final segment, where Fiona reveals her unhealthy amusement with bats.

The best thing I can say about K-State...For whatever reason (partially the above reason), I've found myself watching two Kansas State home baseball games over the past four days and there's something strange going on in Manhattan.

As a Nebraska fan, I have a lot of reasons to hate KSU--their hideous purple and black baseball hats, the ridiculous "powercat" logo, Josh Freeman--but I will give them credit for one thing: being the first school I've ever seen use George Jones' music at an athletic event.

In both of the games I've seen, KSU has used Jones' "A Picture of Me Without You" to herald an opposing team's pitching change, which is odd for a couple of reasons.

1) It's a painful, slow, 100% whiny country song (also known as "great" to me), that seems entirely out of place at an athletic event.

2) It doesn't seem particularly effective as a taunt, which is all to customary in baseball stadiums throughout the country. I suppose that you could consider KSU to be the "me" in the song and the unsuccessful pitcher to be the "you" since he's now leaving. Additionally, because he was yanked, it remains feasible that the Wildcats could want, nay yearn, for him to remain in the game but now we're stretching. Why wouldn't they just use "Hit the Road Jack" or "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" like everyone else?

Because they're K-State that's why and, for once, I'm okay with that. Long live even the misappropriated Possum!

(And if I may make one more music related note, the song "Knocked Up" off the new Kings of Leon album, released yesterday, is phenomenal, as is the first single "On Call", which you can watch below.)