TORONTO - David Chase wrapped up his masterpiece television series "The Sopranos" in typical fashion Sunday night: with excruciating ambiguity.
In the feverishly anticipated finale to the HBO series, considered by many to be the best television show ever made, the screen suddenly faded to black as Tony and his wife and children gathered in a diner for supper surrounded by a series of shady characters who seemed ready at any moment to unveil their semi-automatics and blow the family away.
After an episode that focused almost entirely on family ties - except for the vaguely comical whacking of Phil Leotardo, Tony's bitter foe - the last five minutes at the low-rent restaurant, as Meadow Soprano struggled to parallel-park outside, might have been the most agonizing moments in the series' eight-year run.
That's because speculation was running high that Tony would be gunned down in the bitter bloodbath that had erupted between his New Jersey mobsters and their New York counterparts. Tony's steady and stunning slide into paranoia and depravity during the show's final season seemed certain to have sealed his fate.
Instead, Phil gets whacked just seconds after cooing to his infant grandchildren while getting out of the passenger seat of an SUV driven by his wife. He's shot execution-style at a gas station and when his horrified spouse leaps from the vehicle and leaves it in drive, his head is slowly crushed under the rear wheels as his grandkids gurgle cheerfully in their car seats when the SUV lurches over his skull.
Frank Vincent, the actor who brilliantly portrayed the ruthless and bloodthirsty Phil, gave no hint of his character's fate in an interview with The Canadian Press two days before the finale aired on The Movie Network/Movie Central. He even defended the mafia's violent way of life.
"It's a business," Vincent said.
"These guys, above all else, are businessmen and certain problems have to be eliminated."
But the fate of Tony and those he's closest to - Carmela, Meadow and A.J. - was left unknown with the abrupt fade to black. Did Phil's lieutenants really turn on their boss? Or was Tony set up and deliberately persuaded to let his guard down so Phil's hitmen could take him out with ease? We'll never know.
Some fans weren't immediately impressed.
"Is it just me, or did they forget to tack an ending on 'The Sopranos?"' asked one loyal viewer.
"I just wasted seven years."
But Chase has always proven himself to be a master at ambiguity, never providing neat answers or tying up loose ends the way viewers have sometimes hoped he would. No one is truly good in Chase's world, nor truly evil and so tidy resolutions to storylines are rarely in the cards.
He's always said the show was primarily about family and the final episode proved he meant it: it was consumed with the troubled A.J.'s future, in particular and even though Tony fears a hitman could burst in the door at any moment and gun him down, he still manages to berate his slacker son after he inadvertently sets his car on fire.
Uncle Junior also reappears when a newly widowed Janice tries to make a play for his stash of cash and it seems clear Tony finally believes, upon paying his own visit to his uncle, that the old man is truly lost to Alzheimer's disease.
Those hoping for a "Goodfellas"-style bloodbath were likely disappointed. The final episode was one of the most hotly anticipated series finales in television history, with Las Vegas bookies taking bets on whether Tony would live or die, while "Sopranos" junkies voted in countless online polls on what fate should befall the deeply flawed protagonist after a lifetime of sin.
The Toronto Star devoted its entertainment section front to the finale, with a full-page cartoon of a naked Tony, cigar in hand, plunging to the fiery depths of hell.
In its eight years on the air, Chase was masterful at combining weighty Shakespearean themes with brutal violence and rivetting story-telling that often showed the confusingly compassionate sides of a group of sociopathic killers.
"I'm basically a good guy," Tony, a devoted family man despite his relentless philandering and countless whackings, often told his psychologist.
When Tony pulled A.J. from the family swimming pool after a botched suicide attempt this season, Chase expertly laid bare the duelling facets of the mob boss's personality: he angrily cursed his son and sobbingly comforted him at the same time in one of the show's most heartbreaking scenes.
But "The Sopranos" was also frequently hilarious, its dialogue riddled with malapropisms that spewed from the mouths of its uneducated characters. The finale was no exception.
"I'm a little miffled," Tony tells Paulie Walnuts at one point when his yappy lieutenant hesitates to take on a difficult job.
Paulie's irrational loathing of a stray cat who shows up and stares, eerily, at the deceased Christopher's framed photo on the wall at the Bada Bing was also a hoot. But even those scenes were woven with pure Chase menace - Tony is an animal-lover and every time Paulie seemed about to whack the cat, viewers knew he would be signing his death certificate.
Indeed, though there was little by way of blood, gore or resolution in the final episode, Chase did provide something wonderful: a loving last look at the characters who became part of one of the biggest cultural phenomena in television history.
