My wife and I are excited about the upcoming season of Sopranos. We've been waiting for about 2 years for this next season. This show is addictive.
Originally, I missed the first few episodes of season one. I've never seen them. But HBO has been showing all of the Sopranos episodes in order lately. I started watching every episode, starting with season one, episode one about a month and a half ago. It's been great. I watch it every weekday night at 7pm. I'm picking up allot of stuff that I missed the first time around. Also, seeing the entire series from the beginning, in order, episode after episode is really making things more clear. There were some things that I was foggy about. There's such a long offseason between seasons that you can forget important details sometimes. The timing will be just right. I should finish the final episode just prior to March when the new season starts. I can't wait.
Discuss.......
After reading another Soprano's thread, the topic of SPOILERS came up. So I thought there should be some RULES about spoilers for this thread.
I would say that one should read and post at your own risk. We will bump this thread to the top after each episode and have a discussion of that episode. I don't know how you can have a discussion without revealing spoilers. I don't even know why they'd be considered spoilers if the episode has already aired and most of America has seen it. So, if you want to post a "spoiler warning" in your post, that's fine. But if you don't, no one should complain. If you haven't see the current episode, you should not read this thread until you have.
With that said, if you have some inside information about an upcoming episode that would be a spoiler, you SHOULD NOT post that on this thread. I can't imagine that happening, because the Soprano's producers gaurd their secrets like Fort Knox. But, if you know something about an upcoming episode, keep it to yourself until after the episode airs. This is really common sense stuff, but I thought it should be spelled out just to keep arguments to a minimum. [Reply]
Geez that was the whole raison d'etre for the story, and going to Melfi, and the sessions and the drama, for so long. Now he's no longer getting therapy. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Baby Lee:
Can't believe I didn't think of this before.
What if the ending was Tony having a blackout?
Geez that was the whole raison d'etre for the story, and going to Melfi, and the sessions and the drama, for so long. Now he's no longer getting therapy.
Dr. Spacemen,
I think that's the best explanation I've heard or read anywhere. Excellent post! [Reply]
Another thing that leads me to believe this was just a "and life goes on..." ending is the way AJ was once again excited about life when he was telling the psychiatrist about his car burning up in front of him and him being in the seat just minutes before.
Remember in the very first episode Tony being in deep depression until the two black guys tried to kill and he survived?
Just thinking out loud. Unless it comes from David Chase that's the theory I'm sticking too. [Reply]
"Sopranos" rub-out theory gains credence
By Steve Gorman Today at 12:04 pm
Fans of "The Sopranos" are seizing on clues suggesting that the controversial blackout which abruptly ended the TV mob drama meant that Tony Soprano was rubbed out, and HBO said on Thursday they may be on to something.
One clue in particular, a flashback in the penultimate episode to a conversation between Tony and his brother-in-law about death, gained credence as an HBO spokesman called it a "legitimate" hint and confirmed that series creator David Chase had a definite ending in mind.
"While he won't say to me 100 percent what it all means, he says some people who've guessed have come closer than others," HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer told Reuters after speaking to Chase.
"There are definitely things there that he intended for people to pick up on," Schaffer said.
Chase suggested as much in an interview on Tuesday with The Star-Ledger newspaper of New Jersey when he said of his end to the HBO series, "Anyone who wants to watch it, it's all there."
In the final moments of Sunday's concluding episode, Tony, the conflicted mob boss who has just survived a round of gangland warfare, sits in a diner with his family munching on onion rings as the 1980s song by rock band Journey, "Don't Stop Believing," blares from a juke box.
Tension builds as a suspicious man wearing a "Members Only" jacket eyes Tony from a nearby counter before slipping into a restroom. Then, as Tony looks toward the restaurant's entrance, the screen abruptly goes blank in mid-scene -- with no picture or sound for 10 seconds -- until the credits roll silently.
Stunned viewers, many initially believing something had gone wrong with their cable TV reception, were left wondering whether Tony ended up "whacked" or whether his sordid life went on as usual.
The jarring, fill-in-the-blank finale, concluding a show widely hailed as America's greatest television drama, sparked a furious debate about whether Chase had conceived of an actual ending and whether he left the audience any clues.
The biggest hint, according to a consensus taking shape on the Web, is a scene from an earlier episode in which Tony and his brother-in-law, Bobby Bacala, muse about what it feels like to die.
"You probably don't even hear it when it happens," Bobby says while they sit fishing in a small boat on a lake.
"I think that is one of the most legitimate things to look at," Schaffer said when asked about theories that the flashback was meant to foreshadow Tony's death. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Sam Hall:
"Sopranos" rub-out theory gains credence
I mentioned this in another thread, but this article was originally based on one of those BS rumors that popped up. Here's the original version (at least at the time I'm posting this, it's still the original):
The subheadline right at the top says "In one episode, Bobby described being killed as ‘everything just goes black’". And it repeats that again further down in the article.
Except that's not true. Bobby didn't say the "everything goes black" part, it's just more junk like the thing about Phil's cousin. So they had to re-do this article and remove that line, even though you can tell by it being positioned as the subline that Bobby supposedly saying that was the key part of the story.
Eight months ago, James Gandolfini drove his white SUV out of the parking lot of Satriale's for the last time, as HBO wrapped up the final season of "The Sopranos."
Now, the building has followed the same fate as the popular show.
It's gone.
Last month, owner Manny Costeira demolished the structure, home to a fictional pork store where TV mobster Tony Soprano and his Jersey crew hung out on the acclaimed mob drama. On TV, a life-sized pig sat atop the building.
"We whacked the pork store," said Costeira, who leased the empty building to HBO.
Nine condo units will replace former storefront. The project is called "The Soprano," and prices range from $325,000 to $385,000. Construction is expected to start in the spring and would be finished in about a year.
Costeira said he can't sign any contracts because he hasn't received permits; he said he has commitments for at least three units and a waiting list for the rest.
The show, now popular in reruns, was mostly filmed at a New York City sound stage, but many scenes were shot across the Garden State to provide a real Jersey feel. Several sites, including the fake pork store, were shot in Kearny, a working-class town across the Passaic River from Newark and about nine miles west of Manhattan.
Now that Satriale's has been demolished, Costeira has been using the Internet to hawk chunks of cast stone from the facade. He said he's already sold about 1,000 pieces in two sizes, for $25 and $50, to fans as far away as Ireland and New Zealand.
The 2-inch-square smaller chunks are mounted on a black wooden block with an "authentic porkstore" name plate. A "certificate" that accompanies the larger chunks, about a 5-inch-square, promising it came from the building that once stood as "the familiar location of the fictional Satriale's pork store featured on the hit HBO television series 'The Sopranos.' "
"It's quite a little gag gift," Costeira said. "For a real Sopranos fan, it's a real piece of the show. It's a piece of television history."
And the demolished building represents one less piece of television history seen on a popular bus tour of "Sopranos" sites in north New Jersey.
"The loss of Satriale's of course disappoints a few of our guests, but we always make the effort to keep the route evolving to include additional locations and enrich the experience however we can," said tour guide Marc Baron.
Instead of the fake pork store, which was always shuttered, the tour now includes a trip to the Holsten's, a real-life Bloomfield ice cream parlor where the series' final scene was filmed.
"They now sample onion rings at Holsten's, and sit in the booth that Tony sat in," Baron said.
Do you like mystery and ambiguity? Have you achieved some level of acceptance and moved on with your life since the famously open-ended 2007 finale of The Sopranos, arguably our greatest modern television show? Well, TOO BAD! David Chase has finally caved to the incessant questioning around that notorious cut to black, and when asked once again (this time by Vox) whether Tony Soprano is dead, he answered in no uncertain (yet typically surly) terms: “No, he isn’t.” Well, there you have it! Is this the worst thing a creator has ever retroactively declared about their creation? Do people still seriously care about this? Are we being trolled? Lightning round, go:
Bill Barnwell: Oh, wow. This is big news. I can’t believe David Chase finally spilled the beans! After all this time, I’ve finally come to grips and found a peace with the ending to my favori— shit, wait, what happened to the Russian? Come back, David! Stop ducking the question!
Zach Dionne: Sad day. We, the Internet, have ruined one of the greatest endings of all time. This is why we can’t have nice, ambiguous things.
Alex Pappademas: “Please don’t write about this,” Chase told me. What could he have meant by that? It was so ambiguous. Classic Chase!
Steven Hyden: My only consolation is that Chase didn’t say this to Chris Hardwick.
John Lopez: Tony Soprano’s not dead — but he IS a replicant!
Emily Yoshida: Tony Soprano’s not dead — but he IS an angel!
Jason Concepcion: I responded to the finale of The Sopranos by wondering if my cable had gone out. I’ve gone late on a few cable bills in my time, I admit, and so, after it became apparent that my cable had not, in fact, been cut off, I spent the next few months and years not wanting to think about the finale because it reminded me of how expensive cable is.
Brian Phillips: David Chase doesn’t get to decide whether Tony Soprano is dead or not.
Yoshida: Let’s be real though, the Vox journalist — and by extension, every journalist and fan who has ever asked Chase this question — is as responsible for this retroactive balloon-popping as Chase is. Chase has a right to be annoyed. He also has a right to make up bullshit just to get everyone to shut up (which I’m telling myself was the move here). Tony’s alive. Tony’s not alive. The Russian’s alive. The Russian’s not alive. You didn’t read that interview, you ate a burger. Everything is everything. [Reply]
