Jon Hastings is absolutely right when he says (and says and says) that the “messiness” and lack of closure offered by The Sopranos is what makes it such a great show. I mean, as I’ve been saying for a LONG time, totally, right? I’m completely baffled by the proclamations (including some from writers who’ve stuck with the show as it moved away from its comparatively good-natured goombah roots and therefore one might expect to know better) that unless we get some tidy climax the show will have failed or cheated the audience or something. Why? It would be completely within the spirit of the series to end without one, and I’ve enjoyed the series so far, so simple arithmetic would seem to dictate I’d like it that way.
I also think it’s astute of him to point out the way the serialized (read: relatively open-ended) nature of the show allowed “improvisation” with the storylines and characters. One of my very favorite moments in the history of the show was when Johnny Sack–at first a throwaway face at Vesuvio’s, and then a fairly straightforward villain–stumbled across his (eating-disordered, though we didn’t know it until that moment) wife binge-eating and reacted with genuine devastation. They took a minor character and played with him and bang, one of the show’s strongest characters emerged. I doubt that was part of some everything-mapped-out game plan that’s now apparently de rigeur for a show for a lot of viewers and writers.
Finally, I agree with Ross Douthat: Critics need to shut up about the goddamn Russian already.
That’s all, really.