‘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.” ‘

As for David Lynch, I thought Mulholland Drive was almost as bad as the 2nd season of Twin Peaks. And I’m one of the world’s BIGGEST David Lynch fans. There is no such thing as a director or filmmaker who can do no wrong. Even Fellini made a few shit sandwiches in his time. Chase can do whatever he wants. It was his show. If he wanted to give it a shitty ending, I don’t care. It’s not like I’m a fan or anything. But it sure as hell isn’t gonna make me wanna pick up where I left off.

Christ, even fuckin’ Six feet Under went all out for the finale — and I fuckin’ hated that show. Whateva.

I think the creators are under no such obligation. Did David Lynch have an obligation to “tie it up” in Mulholland Drive? The writer/director should do whatever the hell they want and we can watch it or not.

Could Chase have offered a final note that was clearer and less ambiguous? Yes. Should he have? I don’t think so.

The point is, why should a TV show be different from a movie in this respect? Aren’t there just as many people who love The Sopranos as there are who love The Godfather films? Didn’t the makers have an obligation to “tie things up” and give it an “ending” that was satisfying to everyone? Okay, instead of the term “ending” how about “final note”? Cause let’s face it — it’s not like The Sopranos will never come back.

I agree with some that The Sopranos was a show about the intimate and not the epic (unlike The Godfather) but what brings both Sopranos and Godfather together is they were both on the same scale of Greek tragedy. I stopped watching Sopranos after the third season but was filled-in every season by a faithful friend and relentless veiwer of the show. And to be honest with you, given all this crap over the long-awaited series ending, I’m glad I stopped watching.

More than a few people have said that they will cancel HBO now that “The Sopranos” is over, with many saying they feel ripped off.

My landlord is in that latter category, complaining to me, “I only had HBO to watch the show and they pulled a fast one on me. They hyped it up all year and delivered a piece of ….” You get the picture.

The response of my landlord and others annoyed me to no end. Why are they upset with HBO? The network airs the programming; they don’t write or direct it. HBO did not have control over how the series ebbed, flowed and ended; the creator, producers and writers did. Blaming HBO, in my mind, would be like blaming your Internet service provider because you’re not happy with the content of websites that you chose to visit.

(check out my blog for more jakjonsun.wordpress.com)

I’m a huge fan of Lost and so I was interested in the quotes from those guys:

Damon Lindelof, one of the creators of the ABC hit show “Lost,” another series whose viewers have high expectations about quality, said: “I’ve seen every episode of the series. I thought the ending was letter-perfect.”

Like millions of other viewers, Mr. Lindelof said he was initially taken aback by the quick cut to a blank screen and thought his cable had gone out at that crucial moment. He even checked his TiVo machine and saw that it was still running several minutes beyond the end. When he checked the scene again, he said, he noted “the scene cut off right as Meadow is coming through the door and right at the word ‘stop’ in the Journey song.”

He said: “My heart started beating. It had been racing throughout the last scene. Afterward I went to bed and lay next to my wife, awake, thinking about it for the next two hours. And I just thought it was great. It did everything well that ‘Godfather III’ did not do well.”

For the producers of “Lost,” who have declared an official finale in three more seasons, the conclusion of “The Sopranos” carried special weight. “There was immediate blowback for me,” said Carlton Cuse, Mr. Lindelof’s creative partner on the show. “A sense of fear ran through my veins, thinking that we are going to be in this position,” he said, adding, “we know the end is coming in 48 short episodes.”

He had admitted to some initial frustration with the ending of “The Sopranos.” “But it settled well with me,” Mr. Cuse said. “In that blank screen, there was a certain kind of purity in the choice Chase made to make it the fulcrum of the ending.”

Mr. Lindelof said that as daunting as it is to think of the expectations of ending a popular piece of entertainment, there was also a bit of benefit. “If you feel that everybody is going to hate it anyway, no matter what you do,” he said, “there’s a certain liberation in writing it.”

But Holstein’s, which is a real place, is frequented by people like the Sopranos. It’s an ice cream parlour, so this is a casual family get-together, not a family dinner. And as status conscious as Carmela is, like most of their friends, they fail to transcend their humble roots.

I’m not sure Tony doesn’t notice the guy. First, we don’t know the guy is a danger. But Tony also seems to be hyper vigilant in that scene. One interpretation is that we enter Tony’s world view in those final moments. Alert to every danger, never sure when your time is up. They replayed that quote from Bobby in the previous episode about never knowing when it will all go black.

People can be disappointed in the finale. I was prompted to write this post because of the overall tenor of much of the criticism. People felt cheated; which is to say, they were expecting something that they didn’t get. In other words, they’re not as unhappy with what they got as with what they didn’t get.

I found the ending to be true to the whole series and satisfying as entertainment. With the tense intercutting and then the abrupt cut to black, it definitely pushed the edge. But I think it paid off.

And, yes, as a fan of Twin Peaks, that series really did fall off a cliff. Although, the finale of that series was pretty awesome.