The world of The Sopranos eclipses like an Andy Kaufman prank: a scene steeped in portent, charged with the resolution of an odyssey, background ballad in mid-verse, abruptly cuts to black. No picture and no sound, for ten seconds. And we hear our hearts beat.

What follows varies: fury, elation, sorrow, emptiness. Because millions have avidly journeyed through eight years of Jersey famiglia, and because our actuaries have deemed the tale the finest in its medium, and because our writers have welcomed it as a Great American Novel, it just doesn’t seem fair to end the way it did. Like a prank.

However, the notion of fairness is malleable, and I would argue that the way David Chase concludes his tale is about as fair to his audience and to his story as any possible. Consider the following:

• Given the complexity of the splintered plotlines, any resolution would have disappointed, so by a process of universal elimination he arrives at no ending. The openness very subtly and kindly diffuses the pre-breakup mania that accompanied the final episodes of the series.


• For the crowds that seize upon dramatic works as catechism, the denouement of The Sopranos would naturally open itself to moralizing. Yet without an ending, there is no hard-and-fast lesson, neither endorsement nor rejection.