All right, here we go..

1) Brilliant?

2) Cowardly cop-out?

3) Contempt for the audience?

4) Ultimate respect for the audience?

The rest after the jump…

Look, we know that David Chase doesn’t mind leaving anyone hanging. He’s also not into the redemption or justice thing. Life, the Sopranos tells us, is all about the survival, which means two things: surviving the past and surviving the present. Evil exists and we are all complicit in it. As one writer I read last week said, we’re all in a gang of some sort – all of us, from the Mafia to the FBI to the psychologists.

Life goes on. Can we survive the past? Probably not, as the AJ trajectory shows. Almost everyone hates AJ but he is really such a crucial character – both he and Meadow presented some sort of hope, both for their parents and for us. Can they escape the past? As last night’s episode shows – nope.

Can we survive the present? Of course not. And as the (in my mind) crucial scene with Uncle Junior expressed last night..life ends, with all of our supposed accomplishments left in the dust in our failing minds.

Minor points:

1) First, before I forget, I think David Chase was in the last scene – he was the sort of wrapped-up dude pouring sugar into his coffee in the corner. I think.

2) Michael pointed out the continuity failures in terms of the weather. Annoying.

3) As few as spoilers were on this, the ending had been basically been floating around for a while, but it was so odd, no one believed it. Although the ending was very consistent with almost every other season-ending episode so far. Remember the one with Uncle Junior singing some Italian song for ten minutes?

4) The really strange thing to me was that before this season started, I had read that Paulie was going to have an apparition of the Blessed Virgin this season…and in the last ep, there it was.

Now, major points:

1) As annoyed (to put it mildly) as I initially was by the way the thing ended, that last scene was masterful – what Chase does best – build tension. Every action of every character seemed to burst with foreboding. Every extra who entered the diner, who exchanged glances with Tony. Every family member who came in. Meadow struggling to park her car. Long-time viewers almost instinctively are expecting confrontation, disaster, an explosion, a betrayal. That seems to have great meaning in and of itself, saying much about both art and life. Artistically, it says that the artist has the power to make the most ordinary actions seem meaningful. In terms of life, it says perhaps there’s not such great meaning. Perhaps it is all just ants in their hill, uknowingly ready to be squashed and forgotten.

And, I can buy that. Not that message for its own sake, but in the Sopranos world – it’s fairly consistent.

2) "Solve Your Own Mystery" – does the open-endedness simply mean to tell the viewer that all she’s been doing for eight years is playing her own game on the creator’s playing field anyway – imposing meanings, interpreting signs..so go for it all the way now? Make up your own ending?

3) Life goes on? No matter if we are watching or not – life goes on. And perhaps we should tend to that life and indeed, go on.

Now all of this is well and good, but the problem I have with the lack of resolution about Tony’s character – and I am not talking about either redemption or justice – is that Chase has made Tony’s inner life a subject of the Sopranos. The subject. It begins with panic attacks and therapy. Tony’s shooting reveries took up several episodes – remember Kevin Finnerty? Chase has seemed determined to shove our noses in Tony’s evil this season, and so all of these factors are swimming around, these questions about the rift in Tony Soprano’s soul – and I don’t know if it’s quite fair to leave that unresolved. Of course, perhaps in the Chase universe, it is resolved – the lack of resolution is the human state – that we all live with these competing impulses for good and evil, and usually evil wins as we go on under the illusion that we’re really good, after all.

Well, okay, as I type this, I suppose some things are becoming clearer. Perhaps Tony’s failure to resolve his existential dilemma (WOW!!!) is indeed "punished" as that final scene indicates that because of it, he will never be safe, and nor will his family. Their continued sell-out to evil under the guise of suburban domesticity, upper-middle class values and careerism, puts them ever at risk. Also, the more I think about the more the kids’ future moves to the center. For that, too, has been a prime consideration of the series – Tony’s determination to try to make sure they are not exposed to or involved in his activities – to ensure respectable futures for them. But at the end, when they do take baby steps in that direction, he pulls them back – particularly AJ. But even Meadow, about to engage in a career of defending high-flying criminals, married to the son of another mobster doing the same thing. Made in America, indeed. It’s not that it was impossible for them to move beyond their pasts – it’s that by his own example, and the subtle pressure he puts on them – Tony keeps them where he is, crushing any glimmers of idealism or service.

Okay, that makes sense.

Finally (for now) – most startling interpretation. Tony dies, and when he stops seeing, we stop seeing. Hmm. I don’t think so…

Just one addendum – I had read that there was going to be some sort of twist that would make you rethink the entire series – a la Sixth Sense, etc. I had convinced myself, hoping, that perhaps this twist was at some point Carmella had agreed to become an informant. But no.

Finally, the title of the episode was "Made in America" – simply put, "Made" – as in being a Made Man – the life of organized crime – in the US of A. It all started in Rome in the Collegium, and ends with Tony in a Jersey diner, still forging alliances, killing enemies, grabbing all he can under the veneer of respectability.  Still corrupting everything he touches, like a King Midas in reverse.

So…your thoughts?

And..if you saw John of Cincinnati, what about that?

Update:  More support for the "he was whacked" theory – from K-Lo and a correspondent at the Corner:

George Conway e-mails: “You probably don’t even hear it when it happens.” Bobby’s comment to Tony Soprano on the lake, which Tony recalls as he lay on the mattress in the safehouse with an AR-15 assault rifle on his chest, tells us exactly what happened at Holsten’s. We don’t see or hear what happens to Tony because Tony doesn’t see or hear it happen, either.

Which makes perfect sense: the whole saga was about him, about life from his perspective. His desires, his fears. His dreams, his flashbacks, his thoughts. So why would we get to see his lifeless body on the table in a pool of blood? Why would we get to see his brain-matter-spattered family screaming in horror, the way we saw Mrs. Leotardo scream? Why would we even want to see that?

No, all we see is Tony, this murderer whose ordinariness fascinates us as it repels us, with his family in their last moments together, as he passes a large basket of (what else) fried food, listening to an anthem of his youth: “Payin’ anything to roll the dice/Just one more time/Some will win/Some will lose . . . Don’t stop . . .”

And then it stops. Cut to black. Only he didn’t get to see the credits. There was complete closure. It could not have been a more fitting ending. . . .