JPod – I agree entirely. I like reading all of the interpretations, and the ending is growing on me a teeny-weeny bit, but at the end of the day the ending fails by Chase’s own standard. He says in that interview I posted earlier:

“No one was trying to be audacious, honest to God,” he adds. “We did what we thought we had to do. No one was trying to blow people’s minds, or thinking, ‘Wow, this’ll (tick) them off.’ People get the impression that you’re trying to (mess) with them and it’s not true. You’re trying to entertain them.”

Now, most of these incredibly poetic interpretations of the ending (as opposed to the finale as a whole) strike me as post-hoc rationalizations starting from the premise that the Sopranos is great, David Chase is a genius, therefore there must be something lasting and profound and intentional to it all. But according to Chase himself he was just trying to “entertain.” And I have a very hard time believing many of these Sopranos theorists said “Wahoo! That was great!” when the screen went black. Rather — after yelling what the f***! – they tried to reverse engineer an interpretation to explain why it had to be good. Now, one can have an argument about how that’s what good art does and how instant gratification and comprehension isn’t a worthwhile standard to judge the ending of such a great show. And, quite often, that’s a fine argument to have. But according to Chase himself such profundity wasn’t on his agenda. So all of these efforts to rush to Chase’s rescue strike a false note with me.

Some people are going to have to deal with the fact that the Sopranos simply became too big to fail.