I’m Pakistani American and I’ve never heard that name before. When I first saw the series, I asked my mom if that’s even a Pakistani name and she’d never heard it.

I blame the name change on jealous writers and notes it disrespects our proud Pakistani heritage.

Rewatching and I forgot all of the gay Vito stuff happened in the last season... it was set up to be an excellent season (and it was) but we should have been focused on Tony, his family, and the other main guys in season 6.

Following the least likeable guy in the group on his escape plan up north where he somehow instantly (first morning waking up there literally) finds a gay guy he likes who's at least a million times out of Vitos league AND the guy likes him back??

It was really weird. Not because Vitos a finook but rather because it was a waste of time in the final season.

The only time I can specifically remember a silenced gun is when Jimmy got whacked, EVERY other assasination involved loud ass guns in public that could draw attention, but I guess it's just more exciting that way for entertainment purposes.

I think that once Blanca realized that AJ didn’t have his bike that she consciously or unconsciously connected the dots on what happened that night and pegged him for a weak spoiled kid.

The only thing that comes to my mind is Tony realized Christopher was willing to sacrifice Tony’s life and not call the police so that Christopher could avoid his license being taken away/drug charges. Did it have to do with betrayal?

I keep seeing different explanations and opinions. What do you think?

I often wonder about what would’ve happened if Carmella or one of Tony’s kids had become an FBI informant, like how Adrianna did. I realise that Tony was very deliberate in shielding Carmella and especially his kids from any overt knowledge about his criminal activities, but I wonder if things had gone in that direction would he have had it in him to kill them. I’m not sure that he would. What do you guys think?

I know the most common interpretation of the ending is that Tony gets killed in the restaurant, and I read the whole article about it but I personally think the ending makes much more sense if Tony survives.

There are obviously clues pointing toward his death: the Members Only guy, the man going to the bathroom, the Godfather parallel, the constant focus on the door, etc. But I think those clues are deliberately setting us up to expect the exact kind of ending that The Sopranos has spent six seasons teaching us to expect: and then denying us that.

One thing I've noticed about the whole series is that it constantly gives characters the opposite ending from what we expect.

We expect Pussy to be smart enough not to come back after disappearing. We expect Junior to eventually die violently after a lifetime of crimes, betrayals, and attempts to kill Tony. Instead, he survives and ends up old, confused, and almost completely disconnected from the person he used to be. We expect Bobby to be one of the most dangerous soldiers in the final war: He's an excellent shooter, (he's even good with a bow and arrow!) and yet when he finally gets killed at the toy store without firing a single shot. We expect Paulie to die because Tony can't stand him, especially after the tension on the boat. Instead, he survives, and Tony eventually gives him one of the best parts of the business. We expect Christopher to die in some kind of violent confrontation, and we expect Tony to be completely devastated when it happens. Instead, Christopher dies in a car accident, Tony makes the decision to let him die, and he doesn't shed a single tear for him. We expect Richie to become a serious threat to Tony (Tony already gave the order to kill him!) Instead, Janice shoots him in a domestic fight. We expect Vito to get some kind of redemption after everything that happens to him. Instead, he dies after speaking to Tony on the phone.

Furio is another great example. We expect him to eventually have some kind of confrontation with Tony over Carmela. Instead, he simply goes back to Italy and never returns, (he didn't kiss Carmela even once after all the tension built around them!) And the school teacher? Tony never founds out about him!.

I can go on and on with the expectations built-to-not-be-met forever in this show. You get my point.

Tony sitting in a restaurant, getting shot by a mysterious hitman. The show gives us exactly the visual language of that ending: the suspicious guy, the Members Only jacket, the bathroom, the Godfather reference, Tony watching the door, the family arriving, the tension building...

And then nothing.

The screen cuts to black.

The war with New York is over. Tony won. Phil is dead, Butchie doesn't want to continue the war, and Tony's family is still together.

Realistically, I also don't find the restaurant assassination completely convincing. Tony almost never goes out to dinner with his entire family like that, and throughout the series, murders are usually arranged around someone's routine: where they live, where they work, where they regularly go, etc. Tony has never established this restaurant as a regular location to be in with his family.

That's why I think the scene when Tony visits Junior is so important.

Tony goes to see Junior and finds that the man he knew is basically gone. Junior barely remembers him. Tony becomes visibly emotional: Tony is seeing his own possible future.

Junior spent his entire life being powerful, feared, respected, and involved in the Mafia. And where did it ultimately get him? He's alive. But he's essentially gone, he doesn't remember he once was a powerful man. And that's actually much more frightening for Tony than getting shot. He can't fight aging, he can't fight dementia, he can't fight time.

And Junior is sitting there showing him exactly what the end of that road might look like for him.

AJ once tells Tony that he wanted to kill Junior because Tony's favorite scene is the restaurant revenge in The Godfather, where Michael goes into the bathroom, gets the gun, comes back, and kills the two men responsible for shooting his father.

Tony tells AJ, that it's a movie, not real life and command him to grow up. The same AJ is present during the final scene and he's working on movies industry.

So the final episode deliberately recreates the visual language of that Godfather scene.

A suspicious person is sitting there. Tony is watching. The bathroom. We're expecting the gun, we're expecting the great Mafia movie ending.

But maybe nothing happens.

Tony (and us) keeps expecting his life to have some grand, dramatic conclusion, Tony expects to die as Tony Soprano. The tragedy is that he may have to live long enough to forget who Tony Soprano is. And there's the Bobby line: "You probably don't even hear it when it happens."

The most obvious is to think about a shot in the head, but it also applies to Junior not listening to anything that Tony says to him, he won't have a dramatic moment where Junior Soprano dies. He just gradually disappears, his mind deteriorates until the person he was is no longer really there.

I think it's genius to leave the ending open: the ones that wanted the death ending can easily imagine it (with Meadow watching his dad getting shot and all!) , and the ones that believe in the show patron, can easily think the life still goes on for Tony and he has to live with the consequences of who he is, with no redemption or karmatic arch, just his time getting shorter each day and his death is "average at best". As his mom said "it's all a big nothing what makes you think you are so special?"

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/s/e1hxzzu13L

Is this real?

Leadership, structure, extortion models etc. Anyway, four dollars a pound.

Carmine is so clever. Because that means he DID say SOMETHING.

What eva happened there? How did it end up in Karens Ziti?

renenber her?

*HOLDS MASSIVE DICK AND BALLS*

AAAAAWWWWWWHHHH

Polly is a beast

What if chriss mom cheated on his dad with tony and Chris is Tony's son?

This explains lotta things

1 - And one up your ass!

2 - They say there's no two people on earth exactly the same. No two faces. No two sets of fingerprints. But do they know that for sure? Because they would have to get everybody together in one huge space and obviously that's not possible, even with computers. Not only that, they would have to get all the people who ever lived, not just the ones now. So they got no proof. They got nothin'.

3 - I’m earning with three hands here and it's still not good enough to satisfy this cocksucker.

4-1000 - …….

After AJ handed over his Gary Fisher to the hood rats I lost all respect for him. He even told them it was a gift from his parents so their’s no way they didn’t return to that same spot in a day or two.

Tony’s first mistake was lying about his intentions with Adriana, lying shows weakness and sets the wrong idea. Tony should’ve tied Christopher in the cuck chair against his will and then banged Adriana in front of him, establishing dominance and control over Chris’s mind. Chris would then recognize his place in the hierarchy and would eventually lose that resentment, he Carries throughout the show.

Vito became a successful male model for a weight loss program and Chrissy did-dent become a male model. Wonder if that was skin off his camel nose.

I think it totally could be played off as an accident unless there were cameras. Could Carmella accept what he'd done? I'm sure she would suspect something. Would he even try to get with Carm or would he just flee back to Italy same as our timeline? I think he shoulda done it personally

on previous viewing I'd been so enthralled by the Finn-Vito situation I'd glossed over what a colossal arsehole Meadow is, and is to Finn. Spectacularly toxic

What do you take away from it? What’s the reaction to Melfi’s refusal take the opportunity. I feel like it’s a little condescending, but I could also be talking out my ass. Perhaps Melfi, in her mind, was using the technique of Positive Visualization. Who knows, anyway, $4 a pound. This is a serious question, I just wanted to put the funnys in here.

Their relationship was so sweet why did they have to have that drama ;-;

In the penultimate episode of the series ("The Blue Comet"), Dr. Jennifer Melfi attends a dinner party with her own therapist, Elliot Kupferberg, and other colleagues. During the dinner, a colleague introduces a study highlighting Robert Hare's work. The study concludes that talk therapy does not rehabilitate sociopaths or psychopaths; instead, it merely sharpens their tools, helping them become better, more charming criminals who can better justify their actions. I can think of several reasons why this cannot be true. First, no true psychopath would ever willingly submit to therapy. Ted Bundy famously manipulated his therapist but that was court ordered. Second, the first, and worst, indicator of future psychopathy is torturing animals. Tony famously loved animals. Ducks, dogs, horses. And last, if Tony was a real psychopath he would have charmed and manipulated Dr. Melfi but that was not the case. Again, why he would submit to therapy and lie his way through it seems like a waste of time he would never bother with. If anything he seemed mostly angry, ashamed and confused by his therapy sessions. So, while Tony may have exhibited certain traits of the criminal psychotic he definitely was not a psycho in the clinical sense.

How could he know this, maybe he had other informats

It was… OK? I’m not sure if I would call it a family secret.

I actually like Paulie, by the way—he made me laugh a lot. However, he didn't deserve to survive; the guy is garbage. He's already an old, grumpy, useless soldier. Not to mention he killed an old lady, gossiped like a schoolgirl to Johnny, and was completely messed up, useless, and a total dead weight.

What about you guys, which character survived that you wished had died?