I don't know which one was worse...John from Cincinnati (<--fu%^&* terrible show!) or the ending of Sopranos. I want Deadwood and Rome to come back dammit!

I've read that Gandolfini says that he's "done" playing Tony Soprano. I wouldn't hold out much hope for a movie.

I can't rush to summary judgment of this episode, I really can't. Sure, definitive endings are what the audience expects, but if this show played to the audience's expectations, it would never have been the show that it became.

For those who want their gangster goombah greaseball whackings (1 garroting, 1 fatal shooting, 1 critical), they got them last week. The filmmakers wanted to make it obvious that the death scenery was a literal train wreck.

Other than that, we've witnessed the death of another high-profile character in the show, the gruesome treatment of a rival which ended in his "curbing," a couple of random beat-downs... there's been plenty of violence this season, along with the drama.

What exactly would be the point of painting the screen with more blood?

So we don't find out if Tony lives, or if Tony dies. Well, we also weren't able to figure out, throughout this whole thing, if Tony was basically a decent guy or if he was a sociopathic monster. We've been left with that ambiguity time and again. Does his death really resolve that issue? Would it be tragic, or heroic? What point is served by watching a man get killed in front of his family, or to watch the entire family get butchered on camera? (The criticisms I've seen so far speak volumes about the audience, not about the actual rendering of the storyline.)

Why do people crave that sort of "resolution," rather than a mundane night out for dinner where they discuss their respective futures?

Should we have seen the return of The Russian? Reading the buzz, that sort of cheap ending would have pleased a lot more people.

Bah.

Masterful storytelling as it was. An ambiguous end to an ambiguous tale.

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I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!

Most analysis centers around the idea you mention that the whole thing was ambiguous, morally and otherwise, from the very beginning, so the ending was appropriate.

And the theory that Chase a) wants people to make up their own ending, and/or b) wants everybody to talk about it. He seems to have succeeded there.

All the standard issue drama and tension buildup there at the end could have been a big joke, like, hey, this is what we've been doing to you all along, so here's a final dose -- the joke's on you and we get the last laugh!

Or it could have been some kind of final metaphor for how they are just a normal family except for that little thing with the criminal gangster patriarch hanging over them that injects all the drama and danger into their lives and makes them interesting. Or something like that.

The best theory for those wanting closure is the reference to Tony Soprano's earlier conversation with Bobby about "hits", when Bobby says something like "I don't think you even hear it. Everything just goes black."

P.S. If the cut to black and the long pause before rolling the credits was for shock value and to make people imagine for themselves what happened, it backfired.

The most common reaction seems to be WTF?! MY CABLE JUST WENT OUT AT THE MOST DRAMATIC MOMENT AT THE END OF THE MOST DRAMATIC SERIES EVER TELEVISED!

WTF?! MY CABLE JUST WENT OUT AT THE MOST DRAMATIC MOMENT AT THE END OF THE MOST DRAMATIC SERIES EVER TELEVISED!

Didn't Andy Kaufman pull a prank like that?

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I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!

a non-ending ending is EXACTLY what they should have done. Some folks say Jimmy Hoffa is dead, some folks say he might still be alive in hiding somewhere, some folks say he's buried in one of the Great Lakes, some folks think he is buried in the end zone in a football stadium near New York...

The not knowing for sure is what has made Jimmy Hoffa's story live for many years and is what makes it a modern legend.

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"You can't fix stupid..." ~ Ron White"

"I never said I wasn't a brat..." ~ Talidapali

As for a movie sequel, here's how it might go:

Act 1, scene 1: Tony Soprano's funeral, A.J. does not shed a tear, stares blankly at the casket...

Act 2: Entire NY and NJ mob organization in disarray, Jr. tells A.J. where the money is and tells him to take advantage of the situation by taking over his father's business and expanding it to consolidate the NY/NJ mob operations, coaching him from behind the scenes. Janice becomes A.J.'s new age feminist gangster consigliori but is secretly plotting to knock him off and take over as the first ever female mob boss.

Act 3: A.J. decides it's too much work, goes all Charles Bronson/Rambo and there is an hour long gore fest as he brutally murders Janice and everybody left on Phil and Tony's crew one by one in the most gruesome and graphic violence ever filmed. Covered in blood, he lays Paulie's severed head on Tony's grave. A cat sits atop the tombstone, licking its paws.

Final scene: A.J. and Jr., side-by-side in wheelchairs at the mental institution, staring blankly out the window at ducks in a pond in the garden. Fade to black, roll credits...

directed by Quentin Tarantino.

I'd rather know where to get a decent salsiccia or peppers 'n eggs. A decent prosciutto sangweech.

Maybe an osso buco alla milanese.

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I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!

Italian fare in Tennessee is awful. You really can't even get decent pizza around here, much less a decent plate of ziti or salsiccia fresca.

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I'm a guy in a Reagan mask -- and I'm running for President!

I thought the ending stunk. I tuned in to "The Sopranos" for the humor and the mob stuff. I always thought the show succeeded as low art but failed as high art. The ending is, to me, a perfect example of that.

"Interesting they ended it with "Don't Stop Believing." That song always reminds me of the melancholy that was the 2004 Kerry election night party in Knoxville. The deejay kept playing the song over and over again and the belly dancers kept dancing to it, while they kept calling states for Bush. No matter how much anybody drank it didn't help. The song just made it worse. "

HAAAAA HA HA HA HA! Oh my god, that's great! Kerry supporters deserved that pitiful ending. Oh man, what a bunch of maroons! Jeez, oh man...

The pizza place in Windsor Square is really good. The owner looks like one of the Sopranos and has picturtes of them hanging up and you might catch the workers in a cursing fight.