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June 2007
Serf’s Down…Sniff!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sigh. Now I know how the cast of “Yes, Dear” must’ve felt.
Cancelled. Just when we were closing in on creative perfection.
This is the last episode … er, entry, of the Channel Serf blog. Greater minds than mine have decided to make some upgrades here. The result is that the Serf is being transferred to a new and exciting writing assignment in a different part of the dungeon here. Unfortunately, that will put TV largely outside my area of responsibility. Even more unfortunately, it will not put me somewhere outside the continued maniacal reach of the Evil Overlord (aka my editor). Ah well, It’s hard out here for a Serf …
Don’t despair. The AJC still will run some national television stories and reviews from other sources. And as always, ajc.com will be your source for important TV news and gossip (and, hopefully, for unimportant TV news and gossip). Meanwhile, my inestimable colleague, Rodney Ho, will provide topnotch coverage of local TV, along with his usual radio and “American Idol” gigs.
So you all will be fine. Whoopee. A fat lot of good that does me. Leaving aside the fact that my dream of being a professional TV-watcher for life has been crushed like Phil Leotardo’s head under that SUV wheel in the “Sopranos” finale, what I’ll really miss is the ongoing two-way conversation we’ve been able to have here about all things boob-tubish. Frequently enlightening, occasionally insulting (Yes, as a matter of fact, I DO know what a complete idiot I am. But thanks for asking), the results never failed to entertain yours truly. Anytime things got a bit dull here in Serf-dom, all I had to do was send up a Rosie O’Donnell, Oprah or “Lost” flare and suddenly, I had more attention from you, my opinionated friends, than I knew what to do with.
Nearly two weeks after that controversial “Sopranos” ending, in fact, I’m still receiving e-mails from people passionately arguing its pros and cons, analyzing the series’ significance in the American cultural landscape or simply calling me a butthead for having liked it. What that tells me (beyond the fact that “butthead” loses its sting after the first 30 or 40 times) is that television has become our shared language. In an era when it seems everything is fragmented or specialized, television and taxes are about the only things we have in common anymore. You ignore both at your own peril.
So, whatever you do, don’t think of this as goodbye. Think of it as the onion rings being delivered to the table, a Journey song playing on the jukebox and the way it all ends is —
— The screen goes black.
All Due Respect … Sopranos Ends in the Dark
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Leave it to David Chase not to end “The Sopranos” easily or conventionally.
Heck, he didn’t exactly end it at all.
The build-up to the series finale had been intense, with everyone from Vegas oddsmakers to the annoying guy in the cubicle next to you at work obsessing over who would live or die. And watching it felt like the emotional equivalent of being trapped in a minefield. Any time a door opened onscreen or a car drove by a key character, you found yourself tensing and thinking “This is it. This is where Tony finally gets whacked and we all spend the better part of the next few years arguing about whether it was a good or bad ending to TV’s most overanalyzed series ever.”
Instead, Tony’s archrival, Phil Leotardo, got popped. Literally. First he was shot dead in front of his twin baby grandchildren, then run over ear-to-ear by his own SUV, so that his head practically exploded under a tire. Remember, kids, mobster or no, this is why we always set the emergency brake. (And what’s wrong with me, that I actually jumped up and cheered when Phil died, figuring that, in the words of the terrorists-hunting FBI agent, “We’re gonna win this one.” Meaning, to my way of thinking, that Tony, the brutal gangster with a heart of (undoubtedly stolen) gold, would probably live).
Unless … The tension kept building despite (or perhaps because of) all the little moments. Maybe it was only going to be a matter of time before Tony went out in even more gruesome fashion. Instead, the show — and the series — ended in the most banal way possible, with the family Soprano (the nuke-lee-er one, as Tony had so aptly put it earlier to his suddenly widowed sister, Janice) eating onion rings in a diner. You’d have thought they were the Cleavers stuck in the more innocent 1950’s — until you saw all the racially diverse faces in the diner and remembered that “Cleaver” was the name of the very successful slasher flick Tony helped finance with the earnings from his various criminal enterprises.
Was Chase trying to make an ironic point here? Or a deeper one, about how we all are the Sopranos and the Sopranos are all of us? (The episode title was “Made in America,” after all). Was this all to suggest a Mob hit just waiting to happen? … Or was it about something much bigger than all of that?
And then, just like that, before these or any other questions could be answered, it was over. The screen went to black and I’m sure I’m not the only one who started cursing the cable for going out at just the wrong moment when, surely, someone important (Tony? Carmela?) had been shot, or a bomb had gone off (there was so much talk of terrorism in this episode and, indeed, the entire season) or … SOMETHING awful had happened! It took me a good minute to realize that nothing had gone “wrong” onscreen. That that was exactly how it was supposed to end, with us thinking everything was fine … except, who knows, maybe it wasn’t. Any minute now, something terrible could happen. You just never know these days.
Did the series actually end?
Will it ever really be over?
Made in America, indeed.
Can’t Fugeddabout It? What’s the Sopranos Endgame?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Somewhere in that Great Gangland Slaying Boneyard in the sky, frustrated screenwriter J.T. Dolan (Tim Daly) is dying all over again. The reason? He just KNOWS he could write a better ending for “The Sopranos” than that hack David Chase!
We know how he feels. After eight years and six seasons, the way-more-than-a-Mobster drama is coming to an end next Sunday. And who doesn’t have a killer idea for how it should go out?
With a bang? (but for who?)
With a nice, long prison stretch? (but for who? and why?)
With an Extreme Makeover for Tony’s face, courtesy of the government plastic surgeons, and a new job selling aluminum siding in Scottsdale?
The Serf still wants Meadow to take over the family (I can see it now, male strippers at the Bada Bing!). Or for Junior to have been playing possum all along and to wreak his special revenge at the end. But I’m pretty sure none of that’s going to happen. So I turn to you, the way-smarter-than-the-average-Serf “Sopranos” blog posters. What did you think of tonight’s penultimte episode? How do you think it will all end? How do you think it SHOULD end? How much have your views on that changed since this season began? Or since the series began?
Some people think “The Sopranos” never lived up to its initial brilliance, others say it actually improved with age and subtlety (well, as subtle as characters who hang out in pork store can be). Still others think the growing criticism of the show is yet another example of America’s short attention span and constant desire to build things and people up only to shoot them down again (watch out baby panda Mei Lan, you’re next). But no matter which side of the debate you come down on, you gotta admit, it’s going to be weird not to be able to gripe anymore about how long it’s taking for the next “Sopranos” season to start.
Share your thoughts on these and other “Sopranos” matters here. And if it’s real fame and fortune you’re after, drop me an e-mail at jvejnoska@ajc.com so I can include your thoughts in an end-of-Sopranos story to run in the paper and online at the end of this week. We’d love to include you … especially since if we don’t hear from enough folks, we’re going to have to start having Paulie Walnuts knock on everyone’s door, heh, heh. (And I was only kidding about the “fortune” part)
