February 27
...serving up your daily dish.
Soprano Sue reminds us in her blog that the Sopranos' highly-touted Google Maps promotion is supposed to go live today. We predict this could be an even bigger time-waster temporarily more interesting than Baristanet. Imagine the possibilites of sitting in front of your computer all day and finding where Paulie Walnuts lives, and how long it takes him to get to Tony's house. There's only one problem. HBO doesn't seem to have remembered. Nothing on their website about the maps yet. (Although we did discover that there are a lot of Bada Bings out there.)
While we wait for the map, let's brainstorm about how the show might finally come to an end -- the subject of a story in yesterday's New York Times.
One thing both men now know for sure is that the voyage of "The Sopranos" is coming to an end. After several years of speculation, Mr. Chase and the executives of HBO came to an agreement that the latest season of 12 episodes, which starts up on March 12, would be the show's last — and then they renegotiated again and added a mini-season of eight more episodes that will be shot in the coming months and played starting next January.
Of course, like with Six Feet Under, it's got to end with the main character's funeral, right? So how should Tony Soprano get offed? In fact, let's make it a contest. Prize: some Sopranos swag lying around Soprano Sue's house, yet to be determined. Judge: Soprano Sue herself. Points for creativity and making us laugh out loud. And remember, boys and girls, this is a family website. So keep it clean.
Rarely does a Soprano bite the dust in such romantic fashion as getting off'd by the mob itself--I always assumed it would end with a domestic fight over money and a broad--over the years Carmella has had her share of having to deal with Tony's life-and her resentment has led to hiding money to play the market with-conning him into a house by the shore--she flashed her knowledge of guns---her underlying passion to stray---I say his death will be attributed to that.
Marriage my friends is more dangerous than the MOB.
Posted by: cstarling | Feb 27, 2006 9:46:13 AM
The most creative and poetic end would be however if he kills himself in a creative reverse rendition of "It's a Wonderful Life"--an all black and white episode that turns to color as he hits the Hudson.
Posted by: cstarling | Feb 27, 2006 9:55:49 AM
Tony is depressed. Bike clubs and Dominicans and even Jamaicans have pieced off much of his action. (The latter two allow for an episode or two of ethnic slurs, the former for Italian-American members who aren't scared of would-be dons.) Christopher is back on heroin. The ABC has finally taken Silvio's liqor license and he's retired to Florida after a small stroke. Tony Walnuts has prostate cancer and is alcoholically melancholic over the death of his mother. Tony's son is a low-grade meth cooker and dealer and his daughter, now married to a surgeon, pointedly uses her married name. Carmela has joined the very same cult Arianna Huffington belongs to and is in CA listening to its leader channel 20,000 year-old Atlantean warriors. And Dr. Melfi (played by a very bad actress who to me doesn't even seem capable of graduating from h.s.) has finally dropped him as a patient and is again seeing her ex on a romantic basis.
In search of a bracing shot of the "old days," Tony goes to visit the Russian woman with one leg. She draws him a bath. While Tony's soaking amid the scented salts, she calls someone and quickly negotiates a price. She laces his wine with downers. Then she whomps him over the head with her prosthetic leg. He expires looking like an adipose, boozer version of Marat. "So long, sucker," she murmurs, as she steps into a cab to take the next plane back to Russia. At the airport, she calls the FBI anonymously to announce that Tony Soprano is dead. The agent who answers tells her, as he calls up Tony's thick file on his computer, tells her Tony's been dead for years, he just didn't want to acknowledge it.
Posted by: cathar (8T) | Feb 27, 2006 10:23:44 AM
Bob wakes up with another really strange dream to tell Emily about.
Posted by: Right of Center | Feb 27, 2006 10:39:03 AM
Cathar,
really good! I love the Marat reference. One could see the blood dripping from his head into the water coloring it. Perhaps the "letter" in his hand could be a Chinese food menu on which he is circling his order.
Posted by: Right of Center | Feb 27, 2006 10:43:14 AM
Lets just all hope it doesn't have a Seinfeld-like ending: Tony and family eating dinner at the table, fade to black.
Posted by: Jim | Feb 27, 2006 10:55:01 AM
The Six Feet Under finale was one of the best story endings I've ever seen. I have faith that HBO will end the Sopranos in an equally appropriate and memorable way.
Posted by: Jim | Feb 27, 2006 10:58:36 AM
Jim stole my thunder.
The last scene will be Tony surrounded by family at the dinner table.
There is no better ending to the series.
Posted by: mgray | Feb 27, 2006 11:46:04 AM
The last scene will be Tony surrounded by Trolls at the dinner table.
There is no better ending to the series.
Posted by: The Iceman(*8T*) | Feb 27, 2006 12:03:54 PM
It will all have been a dream - after all there is no mob.
Posted by: hrhppg | Feb 27, 2006 12:05:12 PM
Tony buys a Red Cheetah franchise & eventually kills himself when the thing flops.
Posted by: crank | Feb 27, 2006 12:22:10 PM
Tony stops in at the Red Cheetah in Montclair one night, gets drunk and hits on this incredibly hot, young chick. The chick turns out to be the girlfriend of a top El Salvadorean gang member who follows Tony to his car and shoots him dead.
Posted by: Miss Martta | Feb 27, 2006 12:29:15 PM
Ah MM but Tony is not really dead instead he just pretends to be so-
-we see him crawl back into his car and remove his bullet proof vest. He then heads for the back door of Cuban Pete's were Dominick is waitng with a pitcher of boozeless Sangria--Tony gets so irritated with this that he shoots up the place--and an off duty ABC investigator -who is really dating Meadow happens by the scene and shoots him in the back---meanwhile Carmela is seen unpacking the family's belongings in the living room of one the new McMansions on Watchung Avenue.
We see the ambulence head towards Moutntainside Hospital ---when it arrives we see pasted with scotch tape on the ER doors "closed".
We then see a close up of the driver of the ambulence and low and behold it is Christopher smirking as he exits the ambulence on the darkened ramp. He tosses off his plastic gloves. And rides off with the rest of Tony's crew, who now remove their masks as they jump out of the back of the well lite ambulence.
the scene goes black and only the line from the monitor is visable and we watch as it goes flat. In the background we hear the sounds of "when the moon hits your eye like abig pizza pie that's amore".
Posted by: cstarling | Feb 27, 2006 12:48:34 PM
To add to my own speculation above: there has to be a part for walleroo. Perhaps as the surgeon Meadow is married to. More likely, as one of the bike club members who's been hanging out (literally, in walleroo's case, as he wraps his tale around one of the dancers' poles) at the Bada-Bing until its inevitable shutdown by the ABC for "public lewdness" and liquor law violations.
I will accept suggestions for which part Mazie could play. Iceman, surely you have one? Other trolls?
Posted by: cathar (8T) | Feb 27, 2006 1:29:20 PM
Tony doesn't die. He just has anxiety attacks that makes him think he is dying...
Posted by: Jim | Feb 27, 2006 1:30:44 PM
Or he could simply die of old age trying to find a parking space in Montclair on a Friday night.
Posted by: Miss Martta | Feb 27, 2006 1:32:16 PM
Ever notice how Italian-owned establishments in Jersey never seem to have any problems with the authorities, building codes, and electrical fires? Hmm......
Posted by: Jim | Feb 27, 2006 1:36:28 PM
With all his family, friends, and "associates" gone or dead, Tony loses it and starts communing with the geese near his pool again. Then he dies in what becomes the first reported case of avian flu in the United States.
Or in his depression, drunkenness, and befuddlement, he drowns in the pool after a soliloquy filled with old movie dialogue. It's not clear if his death is a suicide or an accident. The geese look on, unimpressed.
Posted by: Chris | Feb 27, 2006 2:49:41 PM
Keep the theories coming. I'll be opening up the boxes with my personal stash and find some good stuff for a prize!
Sue
Posted by: Soprano Sue | Feb 27, 2006 4:59:52 PM
Huge amounts of stress build as his empire and family life dissolve before his eyes. Tony begins to fantasize that the only way to relieve his mounting anxiety is to mount his shrink. As he forces himself on her he grasps his heart and has the big one. A non-consensual Rockefeller, as it were.
Posted by: Majortrank | Feb 27, 2006 5:23:54 PM
OK ready---instead of waking up from the dream --for Cathar---After a number more deaths, affais, scandal, the cameraman pulls back on Tony's face and we see him in a cell sitting next to a Priest--this has been his confession--then you see him doing the walk down the green isle--cuffed and shackled---he enters a well lite room--the camera pans to -the priest who's head drops and mutters the last rites and Tony has a tear in his eye--with his cuffs he moves to wipe away that last tear-then shakes it off-the closing shot pans to the pool at his home 2 ducks and their ducklings swim serenly in his pool.
Posted by: cstarling | Feb 27, 2006 8:44:30 PM
Hey, I like my part! I wouldn't mind being married to that babe, even if only on TV. And you know what's the best thing about it--I am a surgeon in real life! (Brain.) Gee willikers, isn't it something how life imitates art?
Posted by: walleroo | Feb 27, 2006 8:49:04 PM
Cstarling- I like the pool and duck imagery but envision Carmela doing him in with a bullet, straight thru the heart.
He falls into the pool and the final scene is him floating face down surrounded by the ducks and their ducklings.
Posted by: badd_patti | Feb 28, 2006 2:48:36 AM
I think the pool filling with blood has been done in some otherfilm???-my mind in still numb from no coffee-but Chase is big on the "complexities" of woman-
or stranger yet --it begins as a hunting scene--Tony has a cigar in his mouth he takes his son bird hunting with the boys to make him more "manly"--Tony's lighter isn't working so he heads back to the car--he returns flicking his bic and Jr turns and sprays him with pellets thinking it is a bird---the end an Accident or was it?
Posted by: cstarling | Feb 28, 2006 7:01:27 AM