Not sure if this was previously mentioned, but in total, there is a blatant and coincidental connection to the movie Saw.

- Tobin Bell (Jigsaw) appeared as an officer at the military school to which Tony was considering sending AJ after being caught cheating. AJ and friend broke down when the principal bluffed with the DNA results. LOL.

- Ken Leung (Detective who is killed in Saw I) played a pivotal role as Carter, Junior's comrade at the psychiatric unit. Together, they ran the poker game at the joint using buttons as chips. Carter also provided the distraction during which Junior tossed his pills.

- Then the obvious reference to Saw with Chris' imitation called Cleaver. The series was over before they addressed how Cleaver actually did financially. But, there was the dialogue of wanting to duplicate Saw's rate of return.

I might be wrong as to its origin, but Bada Bing is the phrase Sonny Corleone used to explain how Michael should shoot the police chief. Hence, the name of the strip club.

you guys are reading way too much into this stuff lol. bada bing bada boom has been around since forever, its just a phrase, probably vaudeville or some ****

I'm sure that's true, but FWIW according to Wikipedia, the Sopranos' use of that phrase is an allusion to The Godfather and Sonny Corleone's use of it. I can't think of any one who used that phrase with more impact than James Caan did.

Can't believe I just discovered this show recently. Best tv series of all time by far, and nothing is even close. Just saw last episode, pretty disappointed with the ending but I'm sure it will grow on me. There is a ton of godfather references tho, not even just the obvious ones.

Read this:

http://masterofsopranos.wordpress.co...on-of-the-end/

The whole thing.

Mind=blown.

I'm sold on the fact that he was killed. I've only watched it once but if definitely felt like he was about to die. That was obv intended but I tried not analyzing anything at all for my first (and only thus far) watch and the vibe of the whole last season/episode is that he's going to die, and after it 'happened' my gut reaction was he's dead.


Anyone have any suggestions for other series like the sopranos? Kinda bummed it's over tbh, I've been watching it religiously, like 5 episodes a day and I'm still not bored of the characters/plot lines etc. Entire show was just 100% concentrated genius.

One of my favourite scenes is when Furio comes from Italy and he's driving through NJ with all the noise and ugly scenery, the cabby on his phone, etc...think back to when Tony, Paulie and Chris went to Italy and how beautiful it was, almost like Furio's entering his own hell.

The Wire is easily number 1 if you haven't seen it. There's also a general recommendation thread in this forum.

Wow, that guy's good. I thought I knew the final scene inside and out, but this guy is running laps around me. He even explains why Meadow's late arrival matters!

Idk, the dude who played ralphie also made a fantastic ralphie.

That long Sopranos blog is one of the worst uses of bandwith on the internet.

Adriana's dog was cold. Crawled under Christopher for warmth. (insert ridiculous claim of symbolism)

i don't know if i'd go that far, simply because of how much useless **** is on the internet, but i do think it's an exercise in futility to some degree. i mean, hasn't Chase said something along the lines of how the end wasn't intended to be some intricate puzzle to be put back together to give you the truth (like Lost or something). it is what it is, a very intentionally ambiguous ending imo. if you want to believe that Tony was shot, then that's there. if you want to believe he flipped, there's that. if you want to believe nothing at all happened to him, and he lived out his life in a room by himself as a senile old man like Junior, then that's there too. or if you have another theory as to what happened, then yeah, that's probably in there too.

at the end of the day, i'm pretty firmly in the camp who think that the ending is pretty unimportant, really. and i think it's sort of crazy how much time and energy people are willing to use trying to find the hidden secrets or the show. i mean there's a very good possibility that they're looking for something that isn't there, and all these clues were simply red herrings or sorts, possibly in there mostly just to prevent the real ending from leaking out before the show aired. i mean didn't they shoot a couple different endings too for this reason?

in any case, i hope the ending debate doesn't sidetrack this thread. i'm sure it's been done before, and unless there's something new, like new comments from Chase, there's probably not much to discuss. so anyone got some more subtle moments?

I'm in the camp that all the clues that point to Tony being shot were put in there to create the atmosphere of impending death. The point of the ending, imo, was to show you how Tony truly perceives every waking moment of his life. Tony has to spend all of his time looking for potential threats; it is the only reason that he is still alive. For the three minutes that the scene lasted, we were the ones scanning for potential threats (along with Tony). We can't really know what it is like to see things from Tony's point-of-view, but Chase came as close as he could by creating a scene where every clue points to Tony's death.

yeah i totally agree with that too, i think everyone should be able to. really amazing actually how he used the audience's knowledge of the end of the series to, for the first time (?) in the series, put us right in his shoes wrt to the threats that he faces.

not that it matters, but my opinion is that nothing happened that night. i think the penultimate scene that most people seem to ignore is the more important one, as far as Tony's future goes. the long final scene was excellent misdirection though.

but that's just me... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dk7Il3EqI0#t=6s

shut up

The bandwidth spent attempting to "figure out" Inception's ending are much more of a waste.

Proper thread title: "Definitions of the word 'subtle' that YOU only know."

I agree with this interpretation and that is why I feel that blog is so stupid. The blog spends 50,000 words to say "Chase creates an atmosphere, where we think Tony might die, therefore Tony died". The counter-argument features that first premise, but has a different conclusion so writing a treatise to confirm the first premise in an attempt to solve the ending is such a waste of time.

Agree with Pudge and others. That scene is about tension and Tony's life, not about a conclusion.

If you think it's a lock that one thing or another happened, I feel like you way missed the point.

Recently re-watched an episode called "Whoever Did This" from Season 4. A couple of subtle moments stood out. When Tony is in Ralph's kitchen hinting that he thinks Ralph killed Pie-0-My for the insurance money, there is a close up of Ralph breaking eggs. Ralph denied that he was responsible for the fire, but seemingly justified the result. He made the point that the $100k from the insurance money was needed to cover the medical treatment for his son, and that was far more important than the life of an animal. It reminded me of the old saying justifying death and repression: "to make an omelet, you have to be willing to break a few eggs." For Ralph, Pie-O-My was the broken eggs required to pay for the medical treatment.

Later in the episode when Tony and Chris were dragging Ralph's body to be dumped in the water, Tony was lecturing Chris about his drug addiction. Ralph's body was wrapped in heavy chains so it would sink to the bottom. I thought the chains wrapped around Ralph were a metaphor for the chains of heroin addiction that Tony was trying to break Chris from.

I used to think the Sopranos was subtle, until I read this thread.

can someone clue me in on what i'm missing here please.

tony gets shot? when? where? doesn't the show end with meadow running into the diner after failing to park her car a few times?

are you kidding? of course he gets shot, it's at the very end of the last episode! your cable must have cut out or something...