Quote :

"http://mattzollerseitz.blogspot.com/2007/06/sopranos-mondays-season-6-ep-20-blue.html That blog from the other guy, Matt Zoller Seitz"

^hell yeah...the Sepinwall commentary is always good, but its a short story where ^that is a novel!

6/5/2007 4:18:32 PM

this weeks isn't very long.

or very good

6/5/2007 4:27:19 PM

message_topic.aspx?topic=480537

6/5/2007 4:57:12 PM

Quote :

"and Sil shooting Adriana in cold blood"

I don't see how this is viewed as cold blood. She was a RAT. Which is exactly what Tony will be after NY takes out all of the glorified crew known as New Jersey. However, Phil gets shot by Benny Fazio at the race tracks before all is said and done. Carmine Lupertazzi Jr. fittingly takes over the Lupertazzi crime family. Tony lives out his life under witness protection and under the moniker "Kevin Finnerty," becoming an insurance salesman. (See episodes 2 and 3 of season 6.) This gives us a concrete ending while still leaving open the option of a Sopranos movie in 2 or 3 years (ala Godfather I.)

And I guess we've seen the last of Junior Soprano?

[Edited on June 5, 2007 at 8:56 PM. Reason : ]

6/5/2007 8:38:56 PM

not to harp too much on my theory (dream) of Pesci making a cameo, but it should be noted that Joe Pesci's character has killed Frank Vincent's character in probably 4 or 5 movies

6/5/2007 9:02:04 PM

^^interesting theory

6/5/2007 9:27:06 PM

so far, there hasn't been any real tie in to that early season 6 dream sequence right? Seems like a plausible scenario. Though if that turns out to be a spoiler, I'll be hella pissed

6/5/2007 11:04:06 PM

Just a guess. All along, I've said that T flips (though not on TWW.) Seeing as how a much more powerful NY plans to take out Jersey and T is cozying up to Agent Harris, I see him flipping and ratting out NY in order to enact some measure of revenge, albeit breaking omertá. As far as the dream sequence being tied in to anything current, many questions from seasons past are unanswered and will undoubtedly remain that way. (See Russian guy, Blundetto's daughter, all that shit with Hesh, etc.) Hell, a major character, Junior, has been completely axed from the second half of this season minus a couple scenes in one episode; indeed, until this last episode, Artie was reduced in the script to one scene as "Italian Guy #2" standing next to T at Christopher's funeral. Therefore, I say that this is only a supposition and most likely wrong as hardly anything will be tied together (i.e. the "Life Goes On" series end implying that not everything is resolved IRL.) I hope this is not an accurate guess but it would be better than the Scarface "let's just kill everybody off" ending.

/rant

6/5/2007 11:47:49 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/06/sopranos.therapy.ap/index.html

Real therapists and patients react to Melfi dumping Soprano, and the dinner scene

Quote :

"NEW YORK (AP) -- Therapists, we've long known, are among the biggest fans of "The Sopranos." So pleased were they with the credible therapy scenes between Tony Soprano, pop culture's most famous mobster/patient, and the appealing Dr. Jennifer Melfi, played by Lorraine Bracco, that the American Psychoanalytical Association once gave the show and Bracco an award. But professionally speaking, they could only scratch their heads at the latest developments on HBO's hit drama, which aired its penultimate episode last weekend. Just as the life of Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini, seemed to be imploding with dangerous speed -- in short, just when he needed some really good therapy -- Melfi and her own therapist made some highly questionable moves. Not only therapists were distressed. Some patients were actually furious when they showed up for appointments this week, one New York psychoanalyst said. "You wouldn't believe the outrage I am hearing," said Dr. Arnold Richards, who'd missed the episode, but was filled in by his patients. He was talking about a serious ethical lapse by Elliot Kupferberg, played by Peter Bogdanovich, at a dinner party full of therapists. Across the crowded table, the character callously revealed -- over Melfi's protests -- the identity of her star patient. "Mind-boggling," pronounced Richards. "I do not recall ever being told the name of a patient in treatment." Colleagues agreed. "That dinner party was just very upsetting to me," said Dr. Joseph Annibali, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in McLean, Virginia. "What he did was outrageous. He's never had control of himself, and this just fits in with that." Why did Kupferberg commit such a sin? He didn't think Melfi should be treating Tony, whom he considered a manipulative psychopath. Be that as it may, his disclosure was "a very egregious ethical violation," said Dr. Jan Van Schaik, chair of the Ethics Committee at the Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Institute. "A patient needs to know that what gets said in the doctor's office stays there," said Van Schaik, who's never witnessed such a violation. "I've been at gatherings where people talk about patients in a more disguised form. Even that can be inappropriate. A good therapist should do the best they can to protect the anonymity of patients." It's a shame, Van Schaik added, because "prior to Sunday's episode, 'The Sopranos' was the best portrayal in the popular media of a therapist-patient relationship." Annibali agreed: "We're so used to seeing therapists presented as incompetent hacks. Or as people who are more disturbed than their patients!" What's been nice about Melfi, the Virginia therapist explained, is that she's a complex and caring figure -- she's not ideal, but she tries to help Tony even as she struggles with the idea of treating him. That is, until this last episode, when she ... dumped him. "We're making progress," Tony protested, genuinely shocked. "It's been seven years!" But Melfi had reluctantly read a study, brought to her attention by Kupferberg, claiming that therapy doesn't actually help sociopaths -- it further enables their bad behavior by sharpening their manipulative skills. Demoralized, guilt-ridden and almost speechless with hostility, Melfi literally showed Tony the door. A tidbit that had some therapists buzzing this week: it turns out the study is a real one -- albeit hardly new -- from authors Samuel Yochelson and Stanton Samenow, psychiatrists specializing in the criminal mind. But the way the fictional Melfi shoved aside her patient was anything but real, therapists said. "You don't just drop a patient like a hot potato, even if you conclude they aren't responding to therapy," Annibali protested. "She should have taken several months to do it." For Richards, the development just didn't ring true. After seven years, "only NOW she figures this out? My sense is that there was some narrative purpose for (series creator David) Chase to end this relationship." As in the fact that there's only an hour left to the entire story? That Tony's life is crashing down around him, and one by one, by death or rejection or his own murderous hand, he appears destined to lose everyone close to him? Maybe. But Annibali said he'd heard that Bracco may be appearing in the final episode next Sunday. Which means there may still be time to reverse her professional missteps. "My hope," Annibali said, "is that she and Tony will get together again." But for one certified expert on both therapy and "The Sopranos," that wouldn't make sense, dramatically speaking. Around halfway through the show's run, Tony's therapy started failing, said Dr. Glen Gabbard, professor at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and author of "The Psychology of The Sopranos." Perhaps it was because Chase himself went through years of therapy, and has publicly expressed ambivalence about its usefulness. In any case, at the busy psychiatry clinic where Gabbard works, the talk this week is about how Melfi should have ended things with Tony years ago. "The therapy had to end," Gabbard said. "It was getting more and more futile. "He's just not getting any better.""

[Edited on June 6, 2007 at 12:45 PM. Reason : ]

6/6/2007 12:42:17 PM

I bet those two sheiks they have been alluding to blow everyone up in some sort of terrorist thing.


that would take out a bunch of gangsters, including tony, phil, etc.

6/6/2007 1:22:14 PM

^ It'd be funny if they just too out the NY crew, leaving Carmine in charge.

6/6/2007 2:14:51 PM

This week, Dr. Melfi has cut her ties, Silvio's in a coma, and Bobby has been derailed - now, there is no more hiding. Don't miss The Final Episode of the groundbreaking series The Sopranos, Sunday at 9 pm.

6/8/2007 10:23:48 AM

i still can't help thinking this will end in Mario Puzo fashion, with Meadow catching a stray bullet

6/8/2007 11:59:00 AM

Quote :

"and Bobby has been derailed"

mwa ha. how witty

6/8/2007 12:25:51 PM

wah waaaaaaaah

6/8/2007 12:36:51 PM

I've known all along that the show was ending...but it just really hit me...

Aww, man.

6/8/2007 2:09:14 PM

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/06/07/tv.jamesgandolfini.ap/index.html

Quote :

"NEW YORK (AP) -- There was no decisive moment, no seismic shift, no ceremony when James Gandolfini put "The Sopranos" behind him. But he has. Comfortably. "I was told that it would be a transition," he says and shakes his head. "Not much. It's very calming to move on." Gandolfini, of course, had played gangster-in-therapy Tony Soprano -- earning raves, clout and unsought celebrity -- since the HBO drama premiered in January 1999. (HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Time Warner.) Now there's only one piece of unfinished business. The finale, which airs Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT, will bring to a close a saga as powerful and oddly relatable as anything ever seen on TV. This conclusion, however satisfying or disappointing, will surely leave "Sopranos" fans wanting more. (Gallery: A guide to "The Sopranos") But not Gandolfini. "The character has been with me for so long," he says, "it's a relief to let him go." (Blog: What are your "Sopranos" memories?) No wonder. For 86 episodes, Gandolfini submerged himself in that fiendish, tormented character. He channeled the dark world of "Sopranos" creator David Chase. He was regularly summoned to his own psychic danger zone. All in all, the experience was "wearing," he says. There also was a physical toll. "The Sopranos" revolves around Tony, which meant Gandolfini had an exhausting workload. "But in a way, being tired helped me play the character. If the guy had to look good and be handsome and happy, the hours we worked would certainly not help. They helped ME a great deal," he laughs. "I was allowed to be grumpy and tired and look like (crap)." That was then. Whatever awaits Tony in the series-ender -- prison, death or some sort of escape -- Gandolfini has already laid him to rest. Time after time, Gandolfini felt the end at Silvercup Studios in Queens, and on locations such as Tony's home turf of northern New Jersey. All during April, members of the large "Sopranos" cast would shoot their last scene with him, then leave forever. Then he'd shoot a last scene with another cast member, who would disappear. "There wasn't any grand finale," he says. Or was there? Gandolfini suddenly remembers his last scene alongside Steven Van Zandt, who since the beginning played Tony's loyal consigliere Silvio. "This is no indication of my feelings toward anyone else, but, for some reason, that really hit me when he left. Wow!" Speaking to a reporter at HBO headquarters last week, Gandolfini, who recently signed a production deal with the network, was taking a break from screening footage for a documentary he's making about U.S. soldiers in Iraq who recover from near-fatal injuries. Dressed casually in short sleeves, chinos and running shoes, the 45-year-old actor is down-to-earth and deferential, yet remains a formidable presence even without Tony's cockiness and mobster cred. His voice, while reflecting his New Jersey background, is richer, more robust than Tony's astringent delivery. Though famously press-shy ever since "The Sopranos" blindsided him with stardom, Gandolfini has consented to this rare interview. Nursing coffee from a foam cup, he shares nearly an hour in agreeable give-and-take, only drawing the line when one too many questions delves into his acting technique: "Oh, please! Who gives a (crap)!" he scoffs. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be abrupt." He misses no chance to deflect credit toward his colleagues. "I might be in a lot of scenes, but the crew is in EVERY scene," he points out. "The crew is there 16 hours a day, every day. "And the cast totally propped me up in many scenes. After three or four scenes sometimes I was adrift, and because (the editor) could cut to such other good actors, they were there to help me." 'I had Muhammad Ali' It was a two-way street, according to Michael Imperioli, who played Tony's hothead nephew Christopher, now dead (thanks to Tony's cold-hearted intervention) after a car crash a few episodes ago. "Every time you go and do a scene with this guy," Imperioli said at the start of the season, "he manages to give 105 percent. That rubs off. That makes YOU work harder." "I had the greatest sparring partner in the world, I had Muhammad Ali," said Lorraine Bracco, who, as Tony's psychiatrist Dr. Melfi, went one-on-one with Gandolfini in their penetrating therapy scenes. "He cares what he does, and does it extremely well." Saying goodbye to the crew and his co-stars -- yes, that was hard, Gandolfini concedes, even if saying goodbye to Tony wasn't. Also hard: no more of those magnificent "Sopranos" scripts. "Good writing will bring you to places you don't even expect sometimes," he marvels, meaning himself, and how the material could catch him off guard and take him somewhere new, even as he was performing it. "It's a ride that I was along on, with everybody else," he says. And like everybody else, he can't help feeling appalled by Tony's brutish misbehavior. After shooting a scene where Tony did something despicable, Gandolfini would sometimes upbraid his own character. "I would shake my head and say, God, what a [expletive]!" Whereupon he helpfully substitutes his unpublishable outburst with a family friendly version: "What a jerk!" So what's the truth? Does he like this jerk who was part of him for so long? "I used to," he says. "But it's difficult toward the end. I think the thing with Christopher might have turned the corner." That was a soulless display: Fed up with his nephew's shortcomings, Tony pinched shut the nostrils of the gravely hurt Christopher, ensuring he would choke to death. But wait! Gandolfini thinks a moment, and more of Tony's recent misdeeds -- not homicidal, but clearly depraved -- come to mind: "Maybe the gambling thing with Hesh. And maybe the thing with Tony Sirico (as Paulie Walnuts) on the boat. "It's kind of one thing after another. Let's just say, it was a lot easier to like him in the beginning, than in the last few years." But back then, maybe it wasn't so easy for Gandolfini to like himself. Early on, he felt a stronger kinship with Tony, mostly stemming from "that infantile temper that I certainly possessed much more of when I was younger." Meanwhile, the writers fleshed out Tony by cribbing from Gandolfini -- in particular, his temper. "In the first year, maybe they would see that sometimes when I have anger, it's very funny. So they go with that. When I break something, it's funny. So they're gonna put it in again. And then I realize that I'm continually breaking things. So then I'm getting more angry because I have to continue breaking things. And then they decide, 'Well, we've broken enough (stuff).' "It was a learning process for all of us, I think." All in the service of David Chase's vision. Pantomiming the pull Chase exerted over him (like everything on "The Sopranos"), Gandolfini playfully hooks his index finger in the corner of his mouth as if he were a trout at the end of Chase's line. A decade ago, Gandolfini was certainly hooked when he read Chase's pilot script. A little-known character actor in his mid-30s (and the son of working-class parents who had grown up in Park Ridge, New Jersey), he knew Tony was a role he was born to play. He also realized the cards were stacked against a beefy, balding, little-known actor landing the role. But four years earlier, he'd made a brief appearance in Tony Scott's comically bloody thriller, "True Romance": a two-fisted confrontation with its star, Patricia Arquette. That performance won him his audition for Tony. "True Romance" was also Edie Falco's first peek at the actor with whom she would be wed cinematically as Tony's wife, Carmela. "I sort of knew the name James Gandolfini," Falco recalled. "Then I watched the film, and he's in a scene where he beats the living daylights out of a woman. I thought, 'Ohhhhhhh, OK. Welllll, let's see how THIS goes."' And how did it go? "It was maybe the most perfect working relationship," she said. Now it's over. One concluding episode, shrouded in secrecy, remains to be aired. The Soprano home has been struck from Studio X at Silvercup. And Gandolfini, now done with Tony, is looking ahead to other roles, perhaps as Ernest Hemingway in a film he's developing for HBO. "I don't even think I've proven myself, yet," he says. "The Tony character was from New Jersey, I'm from New Jersey -- there's not a lot of stretching going on, here." Then he pauses, reconsiders, gives himself some credit. "In some ways, there is." He shrugs. "In a LOT of ways. "But I have yet to begin the fight, I think.""

6/8/2007 2:24:42 PM

less than 24 hours until the sopranos is over forever

it hasnt sunk in yet

6/10/2007 1:15:47 AM

waiting for tonight, oh oh

6/10/2007 4:31:53 PM

29 minutes 2 seconds

6/10/2007 8:30:58 PM

the final episode should get its own prediciton thread.


my prediction:

the two sheiks who they have been alluding to, somehow kill a lot of people.

6/10/2007 8:52:46 PM

it would have been interesting if the 2 shieks were undercovers working on the RICO

goddam i have to wait for a torrent to pop up before i can watch this.

6/10/2007 8:56:55 PM

5 MINUTES UNTIL THE LAST EPISODE!

6/10/2007 9:01:36 PM

i wish i had hbo

6/10/2007 9:13:16 PM

AWESOME

phil has a good head on his shoulders

6/10/2007 9:44:10 PM

phil doesn't have a head anymore, GOT EM

6/10/2007 9:47:08 PM

whats happening here...... oh shit

6/10/2007 10:01:40 PM

how appropriate!

6/10/2007 10:03:00 PM

Oh, what the fuck ending was that?

6/10/2007 10:03:18 PM

that killed me, there must be another season

[Edited on June 10, 2007 at 10:03 PM. Reason : ]

6/10/2007 10:03:19 PM

what in the living fuck

6/10/2007 10:03:41 PM

I almost had a heart attack

6/10/2007 10:04:12 PM

I want to go shoot every exec. at HBO right now... I sat through argueably the worst episode of the sopranos for THAT/!?!?!?

6/10/2007 10:04:46 PM

best series ending ever, hands down that was perfect for the biggest series evar.. THE SOPRANLOLS

6/10/2007 10:04:48 PM

what the hell just happened there?


everything went black?

6/10/2007 10:04:55 PM

eating onion rings and struggling to parallel park is how it all ends?

weak

6/10/2007 10:05:54 PM

yeah same thing happened to me - Im disappointed - I guess thats the way it ends

6/10/2007 10:05:56 PM

that made no sense, that was hardly the best ending ever

6/10/2007 10:06:12 PM

Maybe they were there to take him in...or take him out. We'll never know.

6/10/2007 10:06:34 PM

I cussed like i have never cussed before when i thought it was my cable that went out.

I cursed god in languages i dont even know for that shit.


Interesting ending... not sure how i feel about it.

6/10/2007 10:07:08 PM

WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?@!

6/10/2007 10:07:11 PM

hbo.com is down haha

6/10/2007 10:07:12 PM

It was a great ending, everyone got fucking hosed. GG

[Edited on June 10, 2007 at 10:09 PM. Reason : I mean the audience]

6/10/2007 10:08:03 PM

what the fuck was that
what the fuck was that
what the fuck was that



1. witness protection
2. about to get hit
3. arrest

[Edited on June 10, 2007 at 10:09 PM. Reason : .]

6/10/2007 10:08:10 PM

other than what happened to phil and phil's head i was very, very disappointed

6/10/2007 10:08:23 PM

movie?

6/10/2007 10:08:48 PM

the hit thing i understand. but what was the significance of meadow not being in there with the rest of the family? and who was gonna do the hit, the guy that walked to the bathroom, or the black people?

6/10/2007 10:09:19 PM

Quote :

"that made no sense, that was hardly the best ending ever"

really? it was totally open ended. what was about to happen... who knows? the song was dont stop belevin... so what do you believe happened?





my wife is over here having a fit about this LOL

6/10/2007 10:10:04 PM

I DO NOT WANT TO CHOOSE MY OWN ADVENTURE OK

6/10/2007 10:10:16 PM

at first I thought my cable went out, and then I realized how great of an ending it was.

Christopher's terrorist friends must have nuked all of New Jersey, making for a happy ending.

6/10/2007 10:10:17 PM