Refried Screens

A number of folks with a little too much time on their hands studied the last episode of The Sopranos as if their lives depended on it.  And it did weird things to their mind:

“Soon, onion rings appear. (Yes, still more orange food. And I feel like I’m being hit by a hammer at this point.) And then something else truly odd happens – all three consume the onion rings not the way that ordinary human beings eat onion rings – bite off a chunk, chew, swallow, etc. – but by sliding the whole rings onto their tongues. Like communion wafers.  Honest, it’s right there on the film. It’s really odd. Look at it again. And just so we don’t miss it, David Chase even highlights this strange series of actions with three separate close-ups.”

I wasn’t buying it, and four months later, we FINALLY have our answer from Sopranos creator David Chase:

Chase insists that what you saw (and didn’t see) is what you get. “There are no esoteric clues in there. No `Da Vinci Code,’” he declares. He says it’s “just great” if fans tried to find a deeper meaning, but “most of them, most of us, should have done this kind of thing in high school English class and didn’t.”

You gotta love David Chase and his “thanks for nothing, dorks” pimpslap. If fanboys spent as much time on their mack game as they did deciphering the Sopranos, they’d probably be…wait a minute, who am I fooling?

Next time you think about wasting time trying to decipher a crappy television episode, horrid movie, or even bizarre haiku, remember one thing:

Sometimes an onion ring is just an onion ring.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Much has been written about the Sopranos series finale. Instead of wasting time trying to decipher whether Tony got shot or not, let’s waste time creating our own ending.

Here’s mine:

At the diner, AJ complains about the onion rings. Tony responds by beating him to a bloody pulp with a Heinz 57 ketchup bottle (product placement!). The guy who goes to the bathroom to pull a “Godfather” on Tony, can’t find the gun he hid in the toilet stall. Who has it? Furio, who caught a late flight from Italy to bust multiple caps in his ass. Paulie and Silvio, fresh from the hospital, wipes out the rest of the folks in the diner, with the help of the boy scouts. Tony goes home, hooks up with Dr. Melfi, and bones AJ’s high school girlfriend as Sid Vicious’ version of “MY WAY” leads us to the credits.

THE END…and everyone’s happy.
—
Can you top this ending?

David Chase left the country prior to the airing of the Sopranos finale, in anticipation of viewer dissatisfaction.

By relieving himself on Sopranos fans with a horrid finale and avoiding accountability for it, Sopranos creator David Chase has become the R. Kelly of television. Now I know how Phil Spector, another victim of mitteration, must have felt.

As I search for answers to cope with the disrespect, I find myself looking at another show with much better writing: The Shield. And I realize that John Kavanaugh, played by Forest Whitaker, was Negrodamus after all…especially if you replace the word “Mackey” with “David Chase”:

You can also find it here.

But there is a silver lining to this golden shower: Journey’s dreams have become reality.

Oh, and there will be no Sopranos sequel:

“I think we’ve kind of said it and done it”

Yes, David, you most certainly have done it.

And Joseph K was correct: It must truly is better to give than receive…

The morning after the Sopranos finale reveals a range of viewer reactions, from kudos to a whole lotta hate.

How much hate?

So much that the volume of hate traffic to the HBO web site brought the site down for a significant period of time according to Adotas. This is backed by Deadline Hollywood Daily which is even pissier about the premature fade-to-blaculation:

This is why America hates Hollywood. Unlike some network series that end abruptly because broadcasters pull the plug without warning, The Sopranos has been slated for years to go off the air tonight. But instead of carefully crafted, this finale looked like it had been concocted in a day or two.

I never thought I would be on the same page as Nikki Finke after her whole “blame Virginia Tech on OldBoy” stance (which I parodied here), but the Sopranos brought us together!

As far as the belief that the series finale was a moment of artistic zen, I maintain that Sopranos creator David Chase could’ve had a monkey eating a banana at the end of the episode and some folks would write about the ‘brilliance’ behind its ending.

If we want to figure out what Chase meant, I don’t believe we have to look any further than minutes before the infamous diner scene. Paulie was tripping over the cat who was fixated on Chrissy’s photo. Tony’s response?

Don’t read too much into anything or you’ll miss out on life.

Another big F.U. from David Chase to the fans.

I guess we could follow his advice…

But where is the fun in that?

————–

The morning after, where do you stand on the Sopranos season finale?

Like many suspected, the Sopranos ended in the most unsatisfying manner experienced since St. Elsewhere was revealed to be the product of an autistic kid’s imagination.

There are a few theories about the reasons for the B.S. ending:

1. Sopranos creator David Chase wanted to end the series a season ago. HBO didn’t want him to. He relented, and this is his revenge;
2. David Chase wanted to end the series a season ago for a good reason: he ran out of gas…and could only muster the huge fart that was the series finale;
3. David Chase didn’t want any sequels, so he created a craptastic ending in order to kill whatever desire Sopranos fans had left in the series;
4. Tony was whacked…he just didn’t know it. This theory can be credited by poster moodyblue who wrote in a Courier-Post forum: Tony IS DEAD and WAS CLIPPED by someone. We the audience have always seen the episodes from Tony’s point of view, and the blackened silence is what Tony sees and hears when he finally gets clipped. Remember the conversation with Bobby at the lake? “I wonder if you hear the one that gets you” - the final episode answers that question. That is why they flashed back to it at the end of last weeks episode. He never heard the one that killed him.

moodyblue has a point, but my money’s on a combo of 1,2, and 3 .