Thrill of the Chase

I've never been a Soprano's fan. Just not enough to shake me from the usual demands of life, I suppose. And it was just an excuse to accomplish other things around the house as I eagerly waited for Entourage to show up. But I did catch the big finale to see how much it appealed to me as a one-off. Along those lines, some friends of mine will be taking a non-Simpson's viewer to see the movie release next month as well. So this was a sample of what that friend is in for, in a sense.

I still don't get the show, but I did love the ending. Apparently, I'm in a minority on that one.

The Washington Post's Lisa de Moraes sums of the hubbub thusly ...

In conclusion, for all you "Sopranos" fans who speculated Tony died when that last scene went black because those people in Holsten's were various characters from the series' past who had tried to do in our Tony, you are mistaken, according to the HBO rep.

And, if you are hoping to weigh the final scene that aired against the two alternative endings, that will never happen because, contrary to reports, there were no alternative endings shot, the HBO rep said.

But most important, if you were counting on . . .

[CUT TO BLACK]

For a more refined take on the show, there's Leon Wieseltier:

Consider only the language. Or more precisely, compare David Chase's dialogue to Aaron Sorkin's dialogue. In Sorkin's shiny nonsense, people speak in repartee, and always find the words they need, and nothing insignificant, nothing tedious, is ever uttered. They talk as nattily as they look. Even their afflictions are oddly high-spirited, as coolness conquers all. There is not an unmordant or unmoralized second in anybody's day. Sorkin's phony people go from portentousness to hipness and back. They are the figments of a disastrously glamorous imagination, the polished puppets of a shallow man's notion of profundity. In The Sopranos, by contrast, there is no eloquence, even when there is beauty. Silences abound. These people speak the way people actually speak: they lie, and lie again; they hide; they repair gladly to banalities, and to borrowed words; they struggle for adequacy in communication; they say nothing at all. Their verbal resources are cruelly lacking for their spiritual needs. They cannot say what they mean, or they do not know what they mean. Their obscenities are their tribute to the power of their feelings: the diction of their desperation. When they reach for sophistication, they mangle it. Their metaphors are awkward and homely, as in Tony's climactic soliloquy in his therapist's office about getting off, and staying off, the bus. Yet all this inarticulateness is peculiarly lyrical, and deeply moving. It is also a relief from the talkativeness that passes for thought in fancier places. Words should be fought for.

After one episode, I'm still not a fan. But seeing the show through the eyes of Wieseltier, I nearly wish I saw it the way he did.