Raise Your Hand If You've Been Singing "Don't Stop Believin'" All Day

Going in to the last episode of The Sopranos, I wondered if Tony was about to get capped, or enter witness protection, or take over New York, or if the Russian commando was going to return, but I figured the most likely ending was none of the above. For most of the run of the show, at least starting with the third season, The Sopranos has made it a point to fuck with expectations. They keep teasing the huge mob war that's always just about to break out, but the real drama is always in these small moments. Phil lying awake in bed after killing Vito. Pauly staring at the branch blowing in the wind outside his mother's window. All these little moments that seem to mean a lot, but go unexplained and unemphasized. It's just how life is.

So I like the Breakfast of Champions "..." ending, but for the people that won't go home satisfied without some good gang war action, there was certainly enough in the last two episodes to satisfy. Bobby's big, cinematic death scene, Syl going down in a blazing gunfight, and the series' best villain getting an appropriately gruesome death. And, like all the deaths on the show, it's not neat and clean. It's not just the end of that insufferable prick. He gets shot down in front of his loving wife, and two babies almost die as collatoral damage. There's nothing honorable about the mafia.

I think that's an important point, because this myth of mafia honor has been a central part of the show from day one. We keep getting seduced by the apparant normality and likeability of Tony, then shocked when he behaves like the criminal we know him to be. Everything these guys touch, everyone they come in contact with, gets destroyed, from the gardener to the T-2000 to the low-cost housing project. And yet it's so easy to find yourself rooting for him, like the FBI guy. Dr. Melfi comes to the same conclusion in the penultimate episode that we come to when Tony kills Christopher: Tony is not just a good man stuck in a dirty job, he's a bad person. And in both cases, it's a conclusion that should have been reached long ago.

It's not just the fact that Christopher was a fan favorite who showed an almost absurd level of loyalty to Tony over the years. It's that Tony had so little to gain by killing him. Christopher had caused problems, to be sure, but he was far from an existential threat. His murder is simply a crime of opportunity, a "why not?" kind of murder. And Tony seemed to be contemplating getting rid of Pauly in Miami for little more reason than that Pauly was getting on his nerves.

So, in the end, life goes on. Even murderers enjoy time spent with their family, even as they spend the rest of their life looking over their shoulders, not knowing whether the next moment will bring a happy moment with their daughter or a hitman's bullet.