Is this the price to pay for having made it too far through life without having had your mind blown?
So it’s all over, fans of The Sopranos. What did you learn? That brutal dago mobsters have feelings too? That the root of so many of our problems is Mom? That Steven Van Zandt leads one of the most charmed lives on the planet? That even a wop mobster can enjoy getting head from another man? That killing people on a weekly basis can lead to much anxiety? That family, in its literal sense, is what keeps us going? I hope you enjoyed the ride.
As you might be able to tell, I was not a fan of the 4 episodes of The Sopranos I caught over the years. Now that I’ve got my digs out of the way, what I’m interested in is the concept of the quick-snip ending. I heard that the series ended with the Soprano family sitting in a diner, surrounded by suspicious characters, friggin’ Journey playing on the jukebox, and then a quick cut to black. In musical terms, I’m reminded of the effectiveness of this technique on one of those Sex Pistols songs. Any quick-snip song endings you particularly dig? Were you OK with their lack of closure? I look forward to your comments.
it was perfect.
Tony is a classic rock guy. He selects Journey on the diner’s jukebox, but the best musical cue last night was when he woke up at the beginning of the episode. He’s still sleeping with his gun in the safe house, and the alarm clock comes on with the organ intro from Vanilla Fudge’s You Keep me Hangin’ On.
As far as pop song quick snip endings, there’s a Buzzcocks song in my head that I can’t identify right now. It speeds up at the end with Pete Shelly shouting some phrase over and over again, and then … nothing. What the hell is it?
The final Sopranos scene was filled with dread, but the quick snip there was so abrupt, cutting to black and total silence, that I, and probably millions of other people, thought their cable/satellite signal had gone out at the worst possible moment.
And Mr. Mod, what’s up with the ethnic slurs? I know you don’t like the show, but jeez….
It’s OK, Big Steve, Mr Mod is allowed – He’s Eyetalian (well, half)
we dropped HBO after the last season, So I only have seen the 1st episode this season. Doesn’t Tony say something to the extent of – “you won’t know your dead, it will just become black” Maybe he was whacked?
For endings – “I Want You (She’s So Heavy) – I never know when that things going to end.
Also – what a coinky dink – when I posted the last comment. The picture on the banner was of Bruce, Patti, and Little Steven
BigSteve, to explain, the ethnic slurs were inserted for effect. My mother’s side is of Italian descent, and I’m very proud of my heritage. One of the first episodes I ever saw of The Sopranos involved Dr. Melfi’s husband, if memory serves, bitching about the stereotypical portrayals of Italian-Americans in films and on tv. I thought it was an intelligent and sincere built-in criticism by the creator guy, David Chase (?), but as the show went on without my viewing it over the years, I still heard too many of the fans speak delightedly about the stereotypical portrayals of Italian-American mobsters “whacking” people each week. I got the sense that the stuff Chase meant to better explore – the psychiatric disorders, the shocking homosexual act (god, the way people talked about it for weeks afterward you’d think it really blew their minds), the marital stresses, etc – was for many window dressing or something to endure until the next whacking. I miss the days when “to whack” had a more loving initial meaning.
I’d be happy to delete the sarcastic use of ethnic slurs if you think it’s the right thing to do. My point stands that I, like Melfi’s husband, is tired of that stuff.
“I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is a great one. And BigSteve, is the Buzzcocks song you had in mind “I Believe”? That’s got a really long ending with Shelly screaming something like “There is no love in this world anymore!” The ending is so long and I haven’t listened to the song in a few years, so I forget if it ends with the snip. That song, by the way, is a song I LOVE in concept more than in execution, although I do like the song itself. I’ve been carrying around the idea of “improving” the concept of that song for about 5 years now, but I never get past my opening couplet.
Yes – “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” is a great effective example…
The Sopranos – maybe I’ve watched even less of the show than Mr. Mod? I’ve never seen an episode at all – maybe just a promo commercial or two, and my background is Italian even…(then again I don’t watch TV or have HBO…)
But I’ve enjoyed reading the reviews of the final episode today. The ending sounds great! I’m laughing at all the whiners complaining of “no definite ending” and threating to cancel their HBO! hahahaha!
Right on, MrClean! You see what I’m getting at re: the ending. DEAL WITH IT! (Of course, I’m aware that the cultured, emotionally mature crowd that tends to populate RTH is cool with this ending, which as a caller on one of our local sports talk radio stations said this morning was Chase’s way of “whacking” the show.)
How soon till the last season of The Wire begins?
And btw Mr Mod the mobster was the one blowing the other guy. And when Vito got a boyfriend (Johnnycakes) the bedroom scene was shot in such a way as to suggest that Vito was the bottom in that relationship. That’s what would be offensive to the other mobsters, who after all have often done prison time.
Whaddaiknow, BigSteve. Thanks for the clarification. I thought it was mob-on-mob action not mob-on-civillian.
I’m pretty sure “I Believe” is one of the several Buzzcocks songs with an absurdly long fade-out. “ESP” is of course the all-time king of same: I swear the fade-out on that song takes close to 90 seconds.
Quick-snip endings can be effective, but I’ll have to ponder which ones are my favorites. There’s a Monochrome Set song that’s right on the tip of my tongue that has a very good one.
As for The Sopranos, I didn’t watch either (no HBO, since I watch way too much TV as it is), but I looked online to see what happened last night and was deeply amused to see how many people were violently upset with Mr. Chase. To me, it just sounds like an either/or: if you want to think Tony was suddenly, unexpectedly whacked, fine, and if you want to think he has to spend the rest of his life being scared that the next person coming through the door is going to either kill or arrest him, fine. However, I think the comment “YAAAAHHH! HATE AMBIGUOUS ENDINGS!” that I read last night sums up a lot of folks’ reaction.
For some reason the first song that I thought of with that description was “Oh Shit” but then again now I think I probably misunderstood given the other replies.
As for The Sopranos, Big Steve is right on. I distinctly remember a scene in one of last season’s episodes when they find out that Vito had not only been caught with another man in Atlantic City, but that he was the one on the giving end of the exchange. This is what really seemed to rile them up, even more so than the fact that he was gay.
As for the ambiguous ending (which I still haven’t seen yet), I think many people’s “outrage” over it has everything to do with what was discussed on this list a while back with Dr. John stating that many folks have been conditioned by Hollywood to expect a resolution to everything within an hour and a half or so. This is no different, unfortunately. And to the person who pointed out that way too many people enjoyed it for its violence (without grasping the theme of how it destroys families), you’re right on, too. It’s just a shame, really.
Some of my favorite moments on The Sopranos were when they exposed the ignorance of Tony’s feelings on the racial makeup of Newark or Carmela’s feelings on immigration, to use two examples, thus making their hypocrisy crystal clear.
I did my research in Itunes, and the Buzzcocks song with the abrupt ending that I had on the tip of my mind was Sixteen, which ends with no accompanying instrumentation right after Shelley declaims:
And I hate modern music
Disco boogie pop
They go on and on and on and on and on
How I wish they would STOP!
I got into the habit of watching the Sopranos, and I think what appealed to me (and probably most people) was that you started caring about the characters even though most of them were monsters.
And when you’ve invested so much time in following the characters of a series, you kind of want some sort of resolution in the last episode. That doesn’t mean everything needs to be tied up in a bow or that the ending has to make you happy, but you want some sort of idea about the fate of Tony and his family.
So count me as a person who thinks the cut-to-black ending of the finale was a cheap gimmick that showed disrespect for the show’s fans. I’m not going to cancel HBO or write an angry letter or anything, but I do believe that David Chase is just an asshole who thinks he’s so much more intelligent than the great unwashed members of the audience who made him a ton of money by watching his show over the years.
I felt the same way at a Robyn Hitchock concert one time when he refrained from doing most of his best tunes–probably because as an artiste, he thought there was something crass and disgusting about making the audience happy.