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`Sopranos' finale wasn't a setup, creator David Chase says
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What the critics said
Jill Vejnoska, Cox News Service: "For an episode in which nothing supposedly happened, it was impossible to tear your eyes away from the screen or to push back from the edge of your seat. Every moment, every gesture seemed fraught with tension and impending doom. . . . Watching the finale - which was titled `Made in America' - you got the feeling this was about yet another big, anxious family uncomfortably coexisting in the year 2007. It was about all of us living in America, not sure when or if the end is coming, and hoping everything will turn out OK.
Joanne Ostrow, Denver Post: "Chase deprived fans of literal closure but gave us something more provocative: When the end comes, you don't even know it has happened, everything just goes black. . . . This ending, like the entire series, was unpredictable, unsettling and oddly satisfying."
Nikke Finke, Deadline Hollywood: "The line to cancel HBO starts here. What a ridiculously disappointing end."
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What the fans said
Tim Scannell, research consultant: "To have the thing just zoom to black - not even fade to black - and have absolutely no point at all, it made no sense."
Sarah Besegai, museum planner: "It just seemed appropriate to me. You got that terrible sense of what it must be like to be him, and constantly be worried and be looking at these people."
Charles Rankin, defense attorney: "It was a perfect ending. You don't know what happens."
Jerry Herron, professor: "You want Tony blown away? You want him in jail? Chase is saying, `Fine, you write that script.' "
Richard Walter, screenwriting professor: "You don't want everything tied up with a neat ribbon on it. I don't know what's going to happen in 'my' life. Do you know what's going to happen in yours?"
Anonymous poster on HBO's message board: "YOU GUYS GOT ROBBED - MAJOR BIG TIME!!!!!"
Marlene Windmiller, attorney: "I was really annoyed watching it. But now as I think about it, it makes more sense."
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Mob viewing
About 11.9 million people watched the June 10 finale of HBO's "The Sopranos."
Viewers had generally cooled to "The Sopranos" this season; its average viewership of 8.2 million was the lowest since the second season in 2000.
Nielsen's June 10 rating doesn't reflect how many people will catch that final episode during any of the other six times HBO is showing it this week or purchase it on demand.
The single most popular episode was the Season 4 premiere in September 2002, with 13.4 million viewers. That season's finale had 12.5 million viewers.
NEWARK, N.J. — "Sopranos" fans who thought the series' open-ended conclusion was a setup for a movie might be in for disappointment: Creator David Chase says it isn't so.
Chase went to France before the airing of the much-debated finale of the HBO series because he wanted to avoid what he called "all the Monday morning quarterbacking." But like a true New Jersey loyalist, he granted one interview to the Star-Ledger of Newark, which posted his comment on its Web site.
"I don't think about (a movie) much," he told the paper. "I never say never. An idea could pop into my head where I would go, `Wow, that would make a great movie,' but I doubt it.
"I'm not being coy," he added. "If something appeared that really made a good `Sopranos' movie and you could invest in it and everybody else wanted to do it, I would do it. But I think we've kind of said it and done it."
Chase said he would leave it to fans to interpret the show's last scene for themselves. It featured the members of the Soprano family arriving for dinner as Journey's "Don't Stop Believin' " plays. Others in the restaurant include a man in a Member's Only jacket who goes to the bathroom, which some fans have interpreted as a nod to the scene in "The Godfather" in which Michael Corleone retrieves a gun from the bathroom before a shooting.
As the music and tension build, the screen suddenly goes silent and dark.
"I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting or adding to what is there," said Chase, 61.
"People get the impression that you're trying to (mess) with them, and it's not true. You're trying to entertain them," he said. "Anybody who wants to watch it, it's all there."
Another problem with a movie is that so many characters died in the last season. Chase said he has considered "going back to a day in 2006 that you didn't see, but then (Tony's children) would be older than they were then and you would know that Tony doesn't get killed. It's got problems."
Chase also elaborated on how he decided to make the Journey classic the last music played on the series.
"It didn't take much time at all to pick it, but there was a lot of conversation after the fact. I did something I'd never done before: In the location van, with the crew, I was saying, `What do you think?' When I said, `Don't Stop Believin',' people went, `What? Oh my God!'
"I said, `I know, I know, just give a listen,' and little by little, people started coming around."
