Sopranos Ending--Better Late Than Never

Sopranos Ending – Morality Play Version
As Opposed to the Absurd Non-ending They Showed (Hey Chase—Check Out the Last Seinfeld, You Might Learn Something! Critics Be Damned!)

* Paulie Walnuts, a couple seasons earlier and especially heinously, strangled one of his mother’s elderly friends, when she interrupted him trying to rob her. Tony almost dumped Paulie into the ocean when they took their road trip together, because he had doubts about Paulie’s character and big mouth. The local police have finally turned evidence over to the Feds linking Paulie to the heinous murder of that elderly “civilian.” Paulie, faced with a sentence certain to have him in prison for the rest of his life, flips big time.

*Patsy Parisi, with the Soprano family in shambles and trying to squeeze out a living, is caught selling heroin. He also has never forgiven Tony for the hit on his twin brother, Philly. He also flips and corroborates Paulie, relative to murders sanctioned by Tony.

*So Tony, many murder charges against him, is in prison for basically life. With the Soprano family done for, Furio returns. Tony permanently up the river, Carmela divorces him and happily takes up with Furio. Tony then tells her to never visit him again.

* But Furio turns out to be somewhat abusive; Meadow absolutely hates him. She gets back with Finn, marries him, and moves to California. Although she of course knew her father was a Mafia Boss, she did not realize the extent of the violence, that now comes out at Tony’s trial; and she is appalled. She basically loses contact with both the hypocritical Carmela and the murderous Tony.

* AJ is the only one faithfully visiting Tony in prison. Blanca inexplicably takes the young loser back, and he is finally doing great. But then, crazy, alcoholic Liz La Cerva – Adriana’s mother – who always thought just Christopher killed her daughter in a lover’s quarrel, finds out that Tony had her hit, from the charges made by Paulie and Patsy Parisi. She can’t get to Tony - and she is crazy - so she shoots poor AJ, for revenge, in a fit of drunken rage. AJ has virtually the same wound Tony had when Junior shot him, and a very long painful road back. Blanca does not stand by him through it, so he is now total toast.

* Crazy Liz LaCerva ends up in the same state mental facility as Senile Junior, where they begin to swap total nonsense. Somehow during therapy, Crazy Liz gets it in her fool head that Tony’s crew didn’t actually kill super-sexy Adrianna, just kidnapped her to keep her quiet, and now her captors are using her as a sex slave and prostitute. (But Silvio really did, of course, kill her.)

* Tony no longer has anybody whatsoever visiting him. In the final scene, after a full year with no visitors, Senile Junior – who shot Tony - and Crazy Liz – who inflicted the same wound on AJ - have somehow got a chaperoned day pass, and gone to see Tony. Liz is on and on begging him to tell her where her daughter is being held against her will, and Junior is incessantly pleading for information on his old obsession that got Tony shot in the first place, long-deceased Pussy Malenga. As those two dribble and drool on and on, Gandolfini’s ultimate challenge is to have captive Tony look classically miserable indeed on where his long life of violent crime has finally landed him.