A MESSAGE TO SOPRANOS THEORISTS

To: Sopranos Theorists

Re: The screen goes black for 10 seconds = Death of Tony Soprano

Everyone’s clamoring that the screen went dead because Tony’s the narrator and he went dead.  But this disregards the obvious fact that throughout the series there have been plenty of scenes without Tony in them—scenes that showed things he would never even hear about, or at least never know for sure—so he’s hardly the point-of-view or narrator of the story.

My favorite theory is that all the guys in the restaurant are violent folks from past episodes.  They aren’t.  The actors are all different.

My second favorite theory is that the blackness relates to Bobby Bacala having said that “everything goes black” when you die and you “never see it coming.”  But Bobby never said that.  Bobby said: “You probably don’t ever hear it when it happens, right?”  And let’s not forget that BOBBY WAS WRONG!  When he died, in the model train store, it was an orgy of noise and clamor before the train went into the tunnel. 

Plus, David Chase showed us everything (except what happened to the gangsters in the forest after Chris and Paulie failed to kill them).  Blood, guts, warts and all.  We always saw it.  Do you really think he’d shy away from the most important event in the history of the Sopranos crew, the death of Tony, if he meant to say that that really happened?

If you don’t like the ending because there wasn’t an ending, I hear you.  I can relate to that.  It doesn’t bother me, because I felt that enough was resolved: His history with Uncle Ju, most of his crew gone, Paulie and Tony settling into their professional relationship, the kids (all kids in the show) being left to live in the wreckage, Carlo being flipped so Tony will most definitely be indicted, etc.  But I can understand being annoyed and wanting an ending.

But saying that there actually was one, when there wasn’t?  That’s just dishonest. 

As my pappy used to say:

“You git what you git and don’t have a fit.”