Listen, David Chase. I don’t know who you think you are.
A few months ago we all stopped thinking about The Sopranos. Or at least I did. I thought the ending was a bust, an anti-climax and a huge “eff you” to everyone who had waited on pins and needles (for months and years!) for the finale and for some resolution to the six-season saga.
The famous blackout was a bad idea. A really bad one. But, the one thing that I could say to David Chase as a compliment would be that he stuck to his guns. This is what he said right after the finale aired:
“I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there. No one was trying to be audacious, honest to God. We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people’s minds, or thinking, ‘Wow, this’ll (tick) them off.’ People get the impression that you’re trying to (mess) with them and it’s not true. You’re trying to entertain them.” He added: “Anybody who wants to watch it, it’s all there.”
And now he’s got a book to hawk, so he’s talking about it again — giving an interview where he acts so exasperated and disappointed at the viewing public. Click that link up there and read the whole AP article — it’s pretty maddening. I want to find things to quote that would best synthesize what irks me so much, but I want to quote the whole thing.
Here’s a starter:
Breaking his silence months after the HBO mob drama ended its run, he is offering a belated explanation for that blackout at the restaurant. He strongly suggests that, no, Tony Soprano didn’t get whacked moments later as he munched onion rings with his family at Holsten’s. And mostly Chase wonders why so many viewers got so worked up over the series’ non-finish.
“There WAS a war going on that week, and attempted terror attacks in London,” says Chase. “But these people were talking about onion rings.”
First of all, if David Chase is so concerned about the war, what is he doing making TV mob shows?
Second of all, as far as the Tony revelation goes, I wish he would have at least kept his silence. Permanent cliffhangers can go one of two ways — you can keep your silence forever about what actually happened or do the “everyone’s individual interpretation is valid” thing. But Chase chose the former and couldn’t keep up his end of the deal.
The worst part of the interview is here:
“There are no esoteric clues in there. No `Da Vinci Code,’” he declares.
He says it’s “just great” if fans tried to find a deeper meaning, but “most of them, most of us, should have done this kind of thing in high school English class and didn’t.”
I don’t know who he’s trying to impress by condescending to everyone who devoted more time to analyzing the finale than, apparently, anyone ever should have. I guess if all that stuff is best left in English class, what’s the point of watching The Sopranos from anything other than an entertainment perspective. I can’t imagine that’s what the makers wanted. Second of all, what about “anybody who wants to watch it, it’s all there”? Was that an invitation for a wild metaphorical/symbolic/literary/cultural goose chase?
Here’s more:
He defends the bleak, seemingly inconclusive ending as appropriate — and even a little hopeful.
A.J. will “probably be a low-level movie producer. But he’s not going to be a killer like his father, is he? Meadow may not become a pediatrician or even a lawyer … but she’ll learn to operate in the world in ways that Carmela never did.
“It’s not ideal. It’s not what the parents dreamed of. But it’s better than it was,” Chase says.
If that’s the case, then why Mr. Members Only who may or may not have a gun? Why the parallel parking drama? Why the very deliberate staging and pacing of that final scene? If it was supposed to end on a such mundane note then why not let it end on a mundane note?
I’m pretty sure he’s trying to fuck with us.
In the end, this whole thing just reeks of a gross attempt to drum up book sales. To that, I urge the TiFaux readership to heed the following: if you liked The Sopranos, buy the DVD — but don’t buy his book.
This morning I decided there were three types of stories. There’s the story where things are bad, then they get good (Heroes, House, Waitress). Then there’s when things are good, then they get bad (Gossip Girl, Dirty Sexy Money [both new tonight], Damages, Curb Your Enthusiasm). And there are stories where things are bad, and then they get worse (Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Arrested Development). I’m not sure if this distinction makes any sense to anyone but me, but I find it helpful in deciding what type of show I’m in the mood for. Lately I’ve felt some good-to-bad story fatigue. As much fun as these stories are, watching someone’s dreams get crushed over and over can be exhausting. You just know that Dan’s date is going to go horribly, Jenny is going to be humiliated, Nick will be forced to make ethically unsound decisions and neglect his wife and kid, and everything Juliet and Jeremy do will backfire. There’s nothing wrong with a bad-to-good story every once in a while.