I thought my cable went out.
There we sat, my roomate and I, as Tony looks up towards the screen as he sits in the booth of a North Jersey dive, with Journey's
Don't Stop Believin playing in the background.
Then it just stops.
We freaked out! I thought DirecTV had gone down, and if it had, I can assure you that I would've been done with the dish! But then the credits began to silently roll by, and at that point, I knew we'd been had.
And it's not the fact that it's anti-climatic, or that it doesn't resolve the series. I was just telling my editor that I'm all for anti-climatic endings, b/c ultimately I agree with David Chase that they're more indicative to real life. That's why Stanley Kubrick was my favorite filmmaker. But an anti-climax still has a climax, it still resolves the scene at least. It would have been better if they were in the diner, and it kept teasing with the guy at the bar, the two guys at the jukebox, and ended the scene. Having an awkward cut right in the middle just doesn't seem to do the scene justice. But the scene itself was tense, and the reviewer at the Star-Ledger is right, the nervousness that we all suffered watching that scene is how Tony has to view each and every day of his life. At least the money's good :)
And I guess I was a bit more disappointed with it too because this half of the season, minus a few bad moments like Tony's out-of-nowhere gambling problem and AJ's 2-episode transformation from suicidal anti-war freak to movie assistant, has been great. As close to the first couple of seasons as it was going to get. And for all the buildup, to have it end like this? Fuggetaboutit!
