What Kind Of Finale Is This? Some thoughts concerning the final episode of "The Sopranos"

I confess! I have watched every single episode of The Sopranos, and I'm really sorry that it is over. As despicable as most of the characters are, this series was totally mesmerizing from start to finish. There is an undeniable morbid fascination with the underworld, which, incidentally, is now being played out in real life with the major mob trial that is now underway right here in Chicago (of all places!)

Knowing that this was to be the final season of The Sopranos, the suspense was building for months as to how the series would conclude. Almost everyone anticipated a dramatic ending that would bring the entire story to a conclusion, but of course, no one knew what the ending would be. Would Tony Soprano get shot? Would he enter into the witness protection program? The speculation was wild and rampant. Just about everyone who watched the program had his own theory or not-so-secret wish.

And so, the fateful episode arrived and what happened? Well, essentially we don't really know. In the last several minutes of that episode, the Soprano family is sitting in a restaurant. Periodically, various suspicious looking figures have entered the restaurant and we are sure that this must be one, the hit man who will finish off Tony. But nothing seems to happen. As the hour draws towards its conclusion, the suspense is almost unbearable. And then, in the most innocuous moment, the camera focuses on Tony and the screen goes dark. And that was it. Ten seconds later, the credits roll and the show is finished.

Millions of viewers must have thought, at least momentarily, that their cable had suddenly gone on the fritz at the world's worst moment. That's actually what I thought. But, in fact, this was the way that the show's creator, David Chase, had decided to end the series, not with a dramatic resolution, but with everything pretty much unresolved, leaving it up to each of us to guess.

The Internet has been abuzz ever since. Actually, I have found the post-Sopranos debate almost as fascinating as the show itself. Many viewers definitely felt cheated that there was no climactic event. They cursed the writers for having copped out, as if they could not figure out how best to end the series, so they just cut to black. Others saw it as an invitation to solve the puzzle, to look back over past episodes in order to decipher the conclusion. The most popular theory being that, in fact, Tony does get killed because, in an earlier episode, Tony and his brother-in-law were depicted sitting in a boat and speculating on what it might be like to get killed. In that conversation, they seem to agree that they probably wouldn't even know it had happened, that everything would just go black, and of course, that is what happened. The screen went black.

More sophisticated critics applauded the conclusion, calling it brilliant, precisely because of the writers' refusal to wrap everything up in a neat package. Like just about everything else in this long-running program, we are left with a sense of ambiguity and of uncertainty, which many people have a hard time handling. The vast majority of novels, motion pictures and television programs all conclude with some kind of resolution. Whether the ending is a happy one or a tragic one, there normally is some kind of resolution, but this time it did not, and that made many people very unhappy. They simply felt cheated.

The public's incredibly strong reaction to the finale of The Sopranos, to me, is a definite reflection of the most common of human inclinations, namely the natural human desire for resolution and moral certainty, and yet this almost never happens in real life. Our lives are anything but tidy or predictable. The old adage has it that people make plans and God laughs. But we persist nevertheless. Do you know what the most popular section of almost every newspaper is? I'll tell you: it's the horoscopes. Since time immemorial, people have been looking to the stars to gain some foreknowledge of what is yet to be. Psychics continue to make a living interpreting tarot cards, reading palms and gazing into tealeaves, all for the supposed purpose of prognostication. Everyone wants to know how things will turn out, but of course, we all would like for things to turn out well; for there to be a happy ending, or at least an appropriate conclusion. I'm not sure that if we had some way of knowing that we would get cancer or lose our cognitive faculties because of Alzheimer's that we would really want to know that in advance. Even if we were to be able to predict the date of our death at some advanced age, would we really want to know that date? I doubt it.

One of the most compelling passages in the Memorial Service for Yom Kippur goes as follows:

"The eye is never satisfied with seeing: endless are the desires of the heart. We devise new schemes on the graves of a thousand disappointed hopes. Like Moses on Mount Nebo, we behold the Promised Land from afar but may not enter it. Our lives, at its best, are an endless effort for a goal we never attain. Death finally terminates the struggle, and joy and grief, success and failure, all are ended. Like children falling asleep over their toys, we relinquish our grasp on earthly possessions only when death overtakes us."

The Sopranos hardly can be considered a philosophical or theological treatise. Quite the contrary, its characters are mostly amoral, sociopathic at best, psychopathic at worst. And yet, this final episode, specifically with its total lack of resolution, and its many questions unanswered, I found to be especially worth pondering because the sense of exasperation that so many of us felt at the conclusion of this admittedly fictional story is a direct reflection of the anxiety that almost all of us deal with concerning life itself. We want to know how it all comes out.

Our lives are much like the television's black screen at the end of The Sopranos. Life, by its very nature, is irresolvable. No matter how elaborate or hopeful our plans may be for our lives, we simply cannot possibly know or predict what is coming next, nor when our end will come. The belief in immortality is the way religions traditionally have dealt with the anxiety of simply not knowing how it will all come out. I would say that the Jewish religion tends to be more candid than certain others. Although we may hope for some kind of existence after death, we do not express much about its nature. Live well and do your best to make the world a better place, and leave the rest to God, and it will be all right. That's about as much as Judaism has been willing to promise. And as unsatisfying as this vague answer may seem to be, I personally find this to be both candid and reassuring.

It has been said many times before: Life turns on a dime. And only a fool should pretend otherwise. One day we are healthy, happy and optimistic, and then suddenly..... I don't have to finish this sentence. We have all seen it happen to people we know, and it has also happened to some of us. And it's not all bad. Life often has some very unexpected and serendipitous surprises as well: a stroke of good fortune, an unexpected reunion with an old friend, a windfall profit.

Even though I am a rabbi, I would say that Zen Buddhism has the most useful take on this subject. Zen teaches us that all we actually have is this day, this moment. We have memories of what has happened before, but these are only memories of what was. And we have plans and dreams and also fears of what is yet to be. But who can say which of these will ever come to pass, or when. And so, we must do our best to live in this moment, even as we plan and pray for that which is yet to be.

Quite by coincidence, a most interesting piece appeared in this week's Newsweek magazine. In the "My Turn" column, Matthew Wolf wrote an essay entitled: "Reaching My Goal of Having No Life Plan; when I stopped worrying about where I'd be in the future, I started getting the most out of today."

"I once was a goals junkie... My romance with goal making began in high school when I read an article claiming the real key to success was detailed goals. I embraced the concept. By the time I graduated, I had very specific plans for my future (few of which happened). When I entered college, my first essay for freshman composition was about my goals for, yes, the next 10 years. Later, when I became a teacher, I preached goal making to anyone who would listen: friends, students, colleagues and a stranger on a plane. Twice I was even paid to speak on the serious business of goals. I pontificated on the value of goals as the strongest force for motivation. I lectured on the finer points of establishing short-, medium- and long-term goals to help stay on track. I exalted the virtues of quarterly goals checkups... It was about then I got a wake-up call. Several, actually. There was the divorce, the lousy job market in my field and the stress-related health problems. The very ideology I was forcing on others wasn't working in my own life. I finally understood what John Lennon meant when he said, 'Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans.' When I tell people I no longer make long-term plans, more than a few hint that I am a slacker or even a failure. I think it depends on how you define success. Am I rich? Hardly. Famous? Nope. Am I happy? Yes. Since ditching my detailed plans for the future, I've come to believe we'd all be more receptive to life's opportunities if we weren't trying to look so far ahead..." I would not suggest that Matthew Wolf's self-proclaimed enlightenment is the ideal, but he certainly gives us something to think about. We do make plans, including long-range ones, as we must because this is the responsible thing to do. But to live out our daily existence with a sense of certainty is no more than a hope of how things will turn out. Maybe yes, and maybe no. And to concentrate our energies so much on the future may well deprive us of the joy of daily living, and that would be a tragedy. People make plans and God laughs. I even wonder if God is laughing at all of the disappointed fans of the Sopranos, as if to say, "And you thought you knew how it would end. How mistaken you were!"