The Definitive explanation of the final episode of the Sopranos and my reaction to it as a guy who's 1st exposure to the Sopranos was the final scene.

It's an odd co-existence I have with television. They say the average American watches 153 hours of TV a month. I am far below average. Like, massively below. I watch Mad Men when they are showing new episodes (Gloriously good show) a lot of sports (mostly football) and since I am a dad, I see a lot of cartoons using Comcast On Demand. Sadly, they keep the same episodes up for weeks at a time, so I am perhaps close to the average American as far as total time with the television on, only my TV is constantly replaying the same four episodes of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on Disney Channel on demand. I swear, I don't ever need to see "Goofy's Coconutty Monkey" ever again for as long as I live. Apart from those things, though, not much else gets played on the TV set. I'm practically anti-American in that it's not unheard of that our TV wouldn't get turned on during any given night of the week.

So, while I don't watch that much TV, I more than make up for it with my entertainment medium of choice: The Podcast. I listen to an embarrassingly large stable of podcasts, and if there is one thing podcasters love to chat up, it's television. Therefore, despite never having seen an episode of Lost, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire or the Sopranos, I have a pretty decent idea about what is going on in all of these shows. I had no idea what Tony Soprano looked like, but I heard a ton of people going on about how interesting he was and the plots in which he was involved. It's a strange pop cultural existence to be both keenly aware of shows subplots and story arcs and yet be completely unaware of the aesthetics of the shows.

Therefore, I had an interesting view point on the series finale of the Sopranos. I knew it faded to dark randomly, and that some people found it to be brilliant, and some people thought merely that their cable had gone out at the worst possible moment in history.

With my love of podcasts, I had developed theories as to what kind of artsy fartsy direction the show writers must have been driving the plot, and all this despite never actually seeing an episode of the show. It's strange to have an idea about the final destiny of Tony Soprano despite not having the foggiest clue what he looked like. Yes, I have managed somehow managed to create a thought in my head about the meaning of the finale of a show when I couldn't pick Tony out of a police lineup before watching the final five minutes of the show tonight. Yes, I finally saw my first ever scene of the Sopranos tonight, and I'm thinking that I might be the first person in history to have the final five minutes of the Sopranos finale be the very first thing I saw from the show.

I watched it after reading THIS tonight. Check out this fascinating (and in my mind dead-on) take on the final scene of the Sopranos, and then watch the final scene below:



Dude nailed it. Tony is dead. Somehow this has a profound effect on me in how well done this ending was accomplished...This despite the fact I've never watched a moment of the show OTHER than this final five minutes. I'm a weirdo, clearly. But I found this interesting. Plus, there is nothing better than discussing something that was hot three and a half years ago. I'm on the cutting edge, I tells ya!