Though my prediction for how it would end (the music will come up and the credits start rolling) was wrong, too.

Life goes on, and that's for the characters there, too.

The show was really never about the mob, but about the characters, and short of a total bloodbath, they did the right thing. These people will go on, living their lives, doing good, crazy, despicable, honorable, sleazy, stupid, vindictive things.

Do like how they made me think for what, 15 seconds(?), that the satellite blacked out on us.

One question.  I missed a few episodes over the years.  Was the FBI agent Harris was having the affair with the one that I read that Phil talked about having raped?

I guess there are some people in the world who like having great sex, and some people who are all about having orgasms.  I think that this show seperates out the people who like great sex from the people who are all about the orgasm.  

Just not the kind I expected.

Remember this show is about that family.  Those four people.  Everyone else is in relation to them and expendable.    It started out about these four people and it ended that way and even more importantly it was about Tony and did we want to see him die?

No finale lives up to expectations, Dallas, Newhart, Cheers, Frazier etc... they all are a let down because in reality we don't want the show to end.  In our minds we say to ourselves since it's ending the last show has to last for the rest of our lives since there won't be anymore but no show can do that.   That's why there are movie sequels because any good show or movie requires more and there won't be anymore so we're dissapointed.

There was no good ending, so "The Sopranos" left off without one.

The abrupt finale last night was almost like a prank, a mischievous dig at viewers who had agonized over how television's most addictive series would come to a close. The suspense of the final scene in the diner was almost cruel. And certainly that last bit of song -- "Don't Stop Believing," by Journey -- had to be a joke.

After eight years and so much frenzied anticipation, any ending would have been a letdown. Viewers are conditioned to seek a resolution, happy or sad, so it was almost fitting that this HBO series that was neither comedy nor tragedy should defy expectations in its very last moments. In that way at least "The Sopranos" delivered a perfectly imperfect finish.

The ending was a reminder of what made David Chase's series about New Jersey mobsters so distinctive from the beginning. "The Sopranos" was the most unusual and realistic family drama in television history. There have been many good Mafia movies and one legendary trilogy, but fans had to look to literature to find comparable depictions of the complexity and inconsistencies of American family life. It was sometimes hard to bear the encomiums -- the saga of the New Jersey mob family has been likened to Cheever, Dickens and Shakespeare; scripts were pored over as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. But its saving grace was that the series was always many different things at once.

Read the rest here:

Of course in this finale we got a small taste to remindus of why we really watched the show, with Phil getting shot in the head and then having that same head run over by an SUV.  But it seems that that little concession to the baser interests of the audience was nothing more than an afterthought, as well as throwing in some children in danger just for effect. How cheap, the kind of thing your average Hollywood hack writer would pull.  In reality Phil's still warm brain case would have saved the little tykes, but not in Chase's script.  :-)

Chase was obviously trying to make a statement with this last season, a statement about his ability as a creator, apparently in the hopes of getting himself a job in the movies.  Unfortunately he made the fundamental mistake that those who find success in the entertainment business so often make, he put his artistic acumen ahead of the audience and the simple Art of entertaining people.  He got what he wanted so why cater to us or the network anymore, why should he or the writers even bother taking the time to fashion something memorable and lasting with this last season and the finale.  No reason whatsoever from his perspective, just screw with their heads, and they'll all be calling you a genius for giving everyone the artistic high-hat.

Don't get me wrong, I respect the man who gave us the Rockford files and Northern Exposure (coincidentally a show whose demise he happened to presided over, and another show that should've ended years sooner).  What we got to see here was a man/creator who couldn't help but be affected by all those years dealing with the networks.

Nor I'm not willing to laying this all on David Chase, the HBO network is largely responsible for the downturn which the Sopranos took some years ago.  I'm sure that Chase wanted to end it several seasons back, God knows the best writers who were helping him left the show a lustrum ago.  Undoubtedly the networks were short stroking Chase' s ego every year with more money and promises of who knows what.  The Sopranos was one of their biggest cash cows, and networks don't let that kind of thing go easily.  

You don't think anything happened.

Onion rings happened.

A family coming back together happened.