Posted on 01/14/2021 9:49:12 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
Won't be the same without the actors who played:
Paulie Walnuts;
The Shah of Iran
Johnny Sack;
Sil
Christo-fuh
etc.
Regards,
Why the blasphemous title?
He looks exactly like my Uncle Tommy in his HS photos.
No it’s not. The interpretation is clear to you because that’s what you think it was. It was deliberately ambiguous.
Didn’t she see the rapist working at a newsstand nearby or something? So she never saw him again? Never had any PTSD or any kind? Of course there should have been more to it but they just left it.
The fadeout to black with Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" was utterly brilliant. Only a true genius could have devised such an ending.
The only way that the screen going suddenly black is indicative that Tony was whacked only works if the camera was showing Tony’s point of view. But that’s not how the scene was shot.
You’d better explain it to David Chase.
“So the point of the scene is not ‘they whacked him in the diner?’ “ the author asked. “It’s that he could have been whacked?”
“Yes, that he could have been whacked in the diner,” Chase said. “We all could be whacked in a diner. That was the point of the scene. He could have been whacked.”
Later in the interview, Zoller Seitz asked Chase how he responds to fans who are sure Tony died in the diner – and if they are “incorrect.”
“I don’t know if that’s my job,” Chase said. “They’ve interpreted the scene that way. That should be a good thing, that there’s different interpretations.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5347511002
Paxton was one of those actors who improved everything he was in. A lot like Harry Dean Stanton.
Yo, tah-MEE! Howyu doon, awri?
You have a point. But the arc of the story was always going to be about Tony, and I guess that’s why Chase just left it at that instead of making her attack a major story line, since it would not serve the main point of the show—the irony of a tough guy mob boss who needed to go to therapy because of his anxiety and panic attacks. This was just another way to show the logical inconsistencies of such a professional relationship.
Coffee shop. His picture was up as the Employee of the Month (hence the title of the episode). She probably stopped going to that coffee shop. She probably did have PTSD on it. But that wasn’t the point of the show. The point of the show when it came to telling her story was how her relationship with Tony effected her. And in this case she chose not to use Tony to exact revenge, remaining true to herself. Anything after that would have been wasting story time.
If I recall correctly, David Chase stated that he intentionally did not follow through on various plot lines because that’s the way real life is. In real life a person might be raped, and no one is every caught and punished for it. I don’t agree with David Chase, and that is my point.
Number one, the story in real life doesn’t end there even in the event of no justice, and a TV show is not real life. Plots should have a resolution, which does not mean she had to act on the information she found about her attacker. Also as I recall, there was little impact in the long run on that character. There should have been a change. Maybe she would begun sabotaging her counseling in his sessions, or quit his case altogether. Or some other reaction. Instead that scene you referenced just chopped off the storyline.
I think Chase saw how everybody was talking about the ending, and didn’t see how people didn’t get what really happened, so what the heck, as long as people are talking and arguing about the ending, why not throw gasoline on the fire and admit it was ambiguous after all.
Also, Chase said that the last scene was one of the first things he wrote out when he started writing the scripts for The Sopranos.
But you have to chose which story your telling. Even with 13 hours a year to play with your time is still finite. And you need to decide what grist to put in the mill. Melfi was a side character, we didn’t meet all her friends, we didn’t meet all her patients, we didn’t delve that deeply into her life. That was a story Chase opted not to tell. It wasn’t a matter of leaving it hanging, it was a matter of knowing that your telling a mob story and once a supporting character’s story left the mob circle it was no longer a part of the story being told. The part of that story they were telling was will Melfi be corrupted by her association with the mob and seek justice though them, she opted not to, story thread over.
I don’t really think things were left hanging by the end. There’s always going to be events after the story, unless you kill all the characters. Chase described it as the reverse of the beginning. Stories start with a blank screen, he ended it that way too. The war with New York was over, Tony’s life in the mob would go on. How long? Don’t know. How would it end? Don’t know. But the story they were telling was over. It was basically from the beginning of his therapy to the end with a little buffer to tie up major events that had come up during/ because of his therapy. Even if Chase hadn’t gotten a little arty with his timing and the black screen, at some point the story was going to stop being told, even if we all understand the characters could go on creating story.
You seem to be missing the point. Whyever would she sabotage Tony’s sessions because some punk (unrelated to him or his gang) raped her in the parking garage? She was struggling not to use Tony as a potential avenger. Therapists are supposed to be professional enough to compartmentalize their own stuff away from their client’s stuff; and not to contribute to their abandonment issues by dumping them for no fault of theirs.
You appear to feel unfairly treated by this episode; but I’ve been unable to offer any comfort. I urge you to writeto David Chase about your dissatisfaction with his insufficiently serious exposition.
Look, we’re never going to agree. But I’ll answer anyway:
“But you have to chose which story your telling. Even with 13 hours a year to play with your time is still finite.”
I’m pretty sure the shrink appeared in scenes after the one in the coffee shop. It’s about what you do with the time you have.
“ Even if Chase hadn’t gotten a little arty with his timing and the black screen, at some point the story was going to stop being told, even if we all understand the characters could go on creating story.”
At the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, we aren’t shown what happens to the relationship between Jones and Ravenwood. But we’re given a coda that shows the government is going to lock the ark away in a dusty warehouse. It wraps up the story by addressing the more important issue of the what would be done with the unearthly powers that Jones had unleashed. The ark is the McGuffin, but we aren’t left wondering “What the hell?”
Chase would have ended that film by cutting to black on the steps of the government building.
It’s too bad you can’t express yourself with resorting to smarmy insults. It appears you feel unfairly treated by others who disagree with your viewpoint. I urge you to run to mommy and ask for a hug.
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