The Sopranos Didn’t End — It Stopped

The final frame

Well, you can forget the “Will Tony Survive?” question. David Chase and co. over at HBO decided to leave its fans and eight years of makeshift Italian Sunday dinners on the edge of an overwrought, overused classic rock cliché (Journey sang “Don’t Stop Believin’”) — an ending that you had to write. You are, after all, the person of the year. (Fitting, too, since — as the waiting room copy of Departures in the finale can attest — HBO’s writers love magazines.)

And, of course, the non-ending ending left an opening for the long-rumored Sopranos movie.

Selected Sopranos coverage:

• Nikki Finke: This is why America hates Hollywood. The line to cancel HBO starts here.

• Salon: We may try to hate Tony, but our love for the careworn killer wins out. It’s that moral perversity, in the age of Bush, that I’ll miss most about The Sopranos, writes Gary Kamina.
• Variety: The final episode, no matter how you slice it, presented Tony Soprano as a winner, a decisive leader who refuses to tolerate indecision over all else.
• LAT: It was an ending that, if nothing else, had millions on their feet.
• Washington Post‘s Tom Shales: It may have been the greatest double-take — by the audience — in the history of American television.
• NY Sun: Not many fans can be satisfied with the outcome of the series after eight years of emotional investment.
• Daily News: Did they enjoy dinner together? Or were they wiped out in a hail of bullets? The answer is unclear.

EARLIER:

Will Tony Survive?

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