The Miami Herald Glenn Garvin Column: Bada-Bing, Bada-Gone!

Jun 11, 04:36 AM

Current Headlines: By Glenn Garvin, The Miami Herald

Jun. 11--It may go down in as the second most-TiVoed moment in the history of television. This time, though, the collective national gasp was not Did you see that but, Did you see anything? The Sopranos, America's most talked-about television show in decades, ended its eight-year run Sunday night not with a bang but an abrupt blackout that will leave the fate of its gangster-family antiheroes cloaked in eternal ambiguity -- or possibly just pave the way for a movie.

With the final season seemingly building toward an apocalyptic finale -- a shootout between rival Mafia families, a treacherous betrayal by one of Tony Soprano's mob captains, perhaps even a suicide bombing by Tony's compulsively depressed son -- the show's final scene ended with something that resembled a power failure more than a climax.

Tony, his wife Carmela and A.J. were gathered at a table in a diner while daughter Meadow, delayed by parking problems, rushed to join them. Most of the other tables were filled with chattering families or cuddling lovers, with a single notable exception -- an intense, somewhat grim-looking man sitting nearby at a counter. Suddenly he got up and entered the cafe's restroom, an obvious allusion to the famous scene in The Godfather when fledgling mobster Michael Corleone murders two family enemies in an Italian restaurant after retrieving a gun hidden in a toilet.

The scene abruptly cut to Meadow, striding rapidly toward the restaurant door, then to Tony looking up warily, then -- to nothing. The screen went black for eight seconds before the final credits silently began scrolling. Was Tony just looking up to see Meadow arriving? Or did the mysterious stranger emerge from the restroom with a gun in his hand? Unless there's a film sequel to the series -- something that producer David Chase used to talk about with some interest, though he hasn't mentioned in it years -- we'll never know.

It's certainly not the first time Chase has left Sopranos viewers scratching their heads. If he were a tailor, he would have been fired years ago for all the threads he's left dangling. But Chase famously does not care if you're still wondering what happened to that Russian mobster who eluded hit men and ran off into the woods near the end of the show's third season, or to mob-moll-turned-FBI-informant Adriana, who was maybe -- probably? possibly? -- whacked in the fifth season.

"This is what Hollywood has done to America," he ranted in an interview for the The Sopranos: The Book, an official HBO history of the series published earlier this year. "Do you have to have closure on every little thing? Isn't there any mystery in the world? It's a murky world out there." He was probably laughing spitefully Sunday night as Internet message boards lit up with complaints from disbelieving fans.

And, to be fair, the show did resolve a number of story lines, particularly the simmering feud between Tony and rival mob boss Phil Leotardo that finally burst into flames a week ago when Leotardo's family killed one of Tony's top lieutenants and left another in a coma. With the aid of a friendly FBI agent to whom he provided some information on possible Middle Eastern terrorists, Tony was able to track down Leotardo at a Long Island phone booth he was using to conduct business while in hiding. Bottom line: One of the most spectacularly grisly murders in Sopranos history, with Leotardo being gunned down in front of his wife and infant grandchildren, then having his skull crushed by a runaway SUV.

"Damn! We're gonna win this thing!" said the exultant FBI agent, speaking for about 13 million Sopranos fans, if not his puzzled Bureau colleagues. That audiences would be rooting so wildly for one murderous, thieving mobster over another is part of the puzzling but undeniable charm of The Sopranos.

Tony may have planned to smother his own mother, may have shaken down the ambulance driver who saved his life after a murder attempt, may have robbed and looted and murdered his way through 86 hours of television, but he still fits what President Franklin Roosevelt once said of a friendly Central American dictator: "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." We just wish we knew what happened to him in those mysterious eight seconds.

Glenn Garvin posts news and mini-reviews on his weblog, Changing Channels. Click on Blogs.

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