My reaction to this episode is, at the moment, somewhere between glee and heart attack. I really do hope I can be far more coherent tomorrow because boy, do I want to post about it. I have Many Thoughts. Including Schroedinger's Cat, the flashback in last week's episode to Bobby in the boat talking about how he thinks you never hear the shot that kills you, that there's nothing afterwards, just silence and blackness, that the cafe scene put us, for the first (and last) time in the entire series viscerally into Tony's existence: anyone could be the one. Any moment could be the moment. And that we are given visions of all three options for Tony's future: instant death, like Phil; arrested by the Feds, as telegraphed by the near-impossibility of escaping the coming indictment; or the long, slow slide into death, like Uncle Junior. And the family, in the end, cannot escape the gravitational pull that is being a Soprano. AJ has become Tony (coming down the stairs in a white bathrobe, wearing a gold medallion), Meadow is going to become a Mob lawyer, Carm has another spec house to turn over, and Tony is... Tony. Seven years of therapy, and he sits down across from a brand new therapist, there to talk about his son, and turns it into his own therapy session, starting from the very beginning. And the choice of "Don't Stop Believin'" -- "oh the movie never ends it goes on and on and on and on". And the focus on Carm's face for "Just a small-town girl living in a lonely world" and then on Tony's face for "Just a city boy born and raised in south Detroit" -- a normal family, having a normal dinner in a normal restaurant. If I'm not mistaken, every season finale has ended with the Sopranos around a dinner table, surrounded by the unknown future.
And the title of the episode, "Made in America", was the original title of the show when it was first shopped around, but it also can have so many other meanings.
And the B-side of "Don't Stop Believin'" on the jukebox was "Any Way You Want It".
Genius. Instant classic.
And now that I've babbled at length and vaguely incoherently, I'm going to bed.
And the title of the episode, "Made in America", was the original title of the show when it was first shopped around, but it also can have so many other meanings.
And the B-side of "Don't Stop Believin'" on the jukebox was "Any Way You Want It".
Genius. Instant classic.
And now that I've babbled at length and vaguely incoherently, I'm going to bed.
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