Despite appearances to the contrary, I’m not one for watching a lot of TV – I tend to latch onto certain series and watch them until they run out of fresh ideas (24 and Lost, for instance) or until they’re snapped up by satellite TV (24 and Lost, for instance).

The Sopranos was a series that I followed from a very early stage despite Channel 4’s dubious scheduling decisions early on (and indeed splitting the final season in two). The show’s finale was shown last night on E4, so if you don’t have satellite or Freeview, you should look away now as here be spoilers.

This is how the official Sopranos web site portrays the final scene:

“Tony is the first to arrive at Holsten’s for a family dinner. He sits in a booth and plays a song on the jukebox, watching the door. Carmela enters and joins him, asking about his meeting with Mink. He tells her Carlo’s gonna testify and she takes the news with a sigh. AJ arrives next, complaining about the more mundane tasks of his job but quotes old advice from his father: “Try to remember the times that were good.” Meanwhile, Meadow struggles to parallel park outside. Customers come and go – a shady looking guy who’s been sitting at the counter enters the restroom. Finally parking the car, Meadow runs inside to join her family, just in time for dinner.”

What actually happens is that just as Meadow is about to go in the screen goes black – I thought there was a technical fault with the network or my TV and that I’d missed something as a result but no, the end credits came up.

I was expecting that “shady looking guy” to emerge from the toilet with a gun and shoot Tony in an homage to The Godfather or for the family to die in a hail of bullets after the couple of black guys who’d also entered and wandered over held up the diner.

Either of those would have been a satisfactory ending. But no, this was worse than Dallas’ “and then I woke up” homework essay ending.

I see that the Wikipedia entry for the Sopranos currently states that:

“Immediately following the airing of the final episode, the HBO web site crashed from an excess of visitors. Media reports speculated that the surge consisted of viewers disappointed by the finale. ^[49]“

It’s worth following that superscript link as it takes you to reports of the apparent outrage at the lack of “visual closure”.

Too right. Lazy writing at its worst and a terrible way to end a wonderful drama series.