A Bada Bing Or Flop???

Was Sopranos Series Finale A Success Or Failure…Tha Artivist Weighs In…

Greetings Fam And Wannabe Dons,
As you all know the series finales of The Sopranos has been in hot debate ever since its premiere on Sunday June 10,2007…Everybody from all walks of life are weighing in on its merits…Was it worth the hype and watching??? Many people said hell no it wasn’t and want their one hour of life back…I was recently and initially included in this group…

However, I have drawn a different and I would say an even fairer conclusion with the passage of time…

My verdict is that no matter how the show would have ended nobody, from the die hard fans to curious onlookers to Las Vegas gamers, would have been satisfied…The Sopranos is one of the greatest shows ever made for TV period…It was the Goodfellas of TV dramas because regardless of how many times you saw an episode of the mob dramedy you couldn’t get enough…Everything was on point from the hype soundtrack, superb acting, and great writing which all went into creating an atmosphere full of anticipation, anxiety and unpredictability…It was truly the Shakespeare of T.V. Shows…

David Chase is a true master of the English language in company with the greatest American Writers and satirists from Edgar Allen Poe, MarkTwain to Zora Neale Hurston, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright…Like the Hip Hop great Notorious B.I. G., Chase was able to take you there with a turn of a colorful phrase thus creating an image that is truly timeless…However, sometimes it takes the passage of time for true genius to be appreciated…

Powerful Messages About The Iraq War, War On Terrorism And Bush Administration Were Overlooked By The Masses…

Phil Leotardo The American Mafia's Saddam Hussein Vs. Saddam Hussein The Iraqi Phil Leotardo...

I think that the show with its powerful blunt and subtle jabs against the Bush administration sent a strong message about how to and how to not handle a hot possibly very volatile situation...I liked the fact that Tony Soprano was able to have a sit down with Phil’s New York Family (while Phil a.k.a. ‘The Don On The Run’ was in absentia) …Both sides agreed that the ‘war’ was getting out of hand and both sides made concessions to restore peace and order…No St. Valentine’s Day Massacres here…No overdrawn and costly occupation of Newark or any part of New Jersey by New York…Instead of destroying a whole family possibly two families in the process both sides agreed that the sacrificial lamb to stop the bleeding would be NY Crime Boss Phil Leotardo…David Chase in that powerful scene shows us where our U.S. Foreign Policy or lack of one failed us…It was as if he was suggesting that instead of bombing the whole of Iraq we could have made a deal with the Iraq people and government to surgically take out Saddam Hussein a.k.a. the Iraqi Phil Leotardo…Thus countless lives could have been saved if the Bush Administration only reached out to our allies and even enemies instead of going it alone…Also another point was made when Tony reached out to his longtime Nemesis the F.B.I. in general, Agent Dwight Harris in particular, by providing them information on possible terrorists that frequented his strip club The Bada Bing…In turn the F.B.I. provided Tony with information on Phil Leotardo’s whereabouts as well as the fact that New York was planning an initial preemptive strike on his crew…Like the saying goes the enemy of my enemy is my friend… And that’s exactly why The Sopranos was so powerful because it shows that although we can all agree to disagree that we can still work together towards common goals and objectives…

Although Tony and his crew got it right the last time around they did suffer an intelligence failure initially when they whacked the wrong people (an Ukrainian Father who was a Phil look-a-like and his daughter who was Phil’s mistress) at their Queens’ residence at the hands of zip assassins from Italy…A blunder truly of international proportions…This was also another powerful jab at the Bush Administration who depended upon faulty intelligence provided by the C.I.A. to start an unjust war…

All In The Family…

When the final episode showed Tony Soprano and his true crew “his flesh and blood family” eating together in a diner and then abruptly went to black I was among the countless millions who thought they forgot to pay their Direct TV or Time Warner Bill!!! However, that was all a part of the master plan that many of us don’t understand yet…Many people on websites and blogs throughout the cybersphere speculated on what really happened to Tony…Many thought the quick switch to black suggested that Tony was killed…Many people were frustrated that more people weren’t whacked in the last episode…The only person whacked was Tony’s New York Nemesis Phil Leotardo, but many people could have seen that coming a mile away being that although Phil cut off the tail (The death of Bobby and Silvio hanging on to life in a comatose state, Tony’s nos. three and two men respectively) he didn’t decapitate the head (represented by Tony)…This meant with his crew abandoning him behind his back that the fiery and defiant Phil had only a matter of time to enjoy his twin grandkids, calzones and cappuccinos…


The fact that many American Families today don’t sit down together as a family to eat dinner together and talk about their daily trials and triumphs show that we as Americans have lost our true sense of family values…To me as a whole The Sopranos always illustrated how important family is to sustaining sanity…You can’t recall one season where the Sopranos and their satellites didn’t sit down to have Sunday dinners together…Not one season where that wasn’t shown…The reason why people join gangs, organized crime families, frats and sororities among other things is to find a place where you belong and feel loved…There are a lot of people out there looking to be a part and play a part in something that is bigger than themselves and that what a family is, an institution that consists of a bunch of individuals living, working and coexisting together as a group…

In the end Tony and his sister Janice found peace of mind in their dysfunctional relationship…Tony was able to take time through his son A.J.’s emotional crisis to really start being a father not by deeds such as buying cars and love but by listening to what his son really wanted out of life that money could not buy…Tony also started investing in his loyal wife Carmela’s own dreams of being a successful business woman…His daughter Meadow was able to really come into her own by dating the person she wanted to date and possible marry and by pursuing the things that really interested her instead of being the example of the dutiful and obedient daughter who lived to please everybody else , but herself…Tony was also able to come to grips with his own mortality and the possible fates that awaits those who participate in “this thing of ours” when he confronted his mentally ill Uncle Junior in a mental institution as well as comforted his close friend and no. 2 man Silvio lying comatose in a hospital…

In the end it could be said that family ties are the ties that bind for better or worse…And if you ever think about going against the family…FUHGEDABOUTIT!!!

Visit The Sopranos Official Website:
http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/

The Sopranos On Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sopranos