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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: June 10, 2007
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The Sopranos, “Made in America” (Season 6, Episode 21) [Watch on HBO GO.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Eight years ago today, The Sopranos ended its run with a good episode that culminated in a nervy final scene, where the screen cut to black in the middle of what may or may not have been an attempted hit on main character and mafia boss Tony Soprano. You might have heard something about it.
[HBO is relentless about disabling embedding from their YouTube clips, so here’s an annotated version from Vox.]
Since that finale aired, that scene has been the most (over-) discussed scene in all of television. The problem with all the “Is Tony Dead?” stuff isn’t that fans of the show have madly searched for clues to come to the conclusion that the cut to black in fact represents Tony getting killed. David Chase knew exactly what he was doing with that provocative ending; he courted exactly this kind of speculation. The problem isn’t even haughty critics defending the exquisite uncertainty of Chase’s vision. The problem is that all these is-he-or-isn’t-he debates have completely obscured what an expertly constructed scene that entire diner sequence is. Who knew you could manufacture such dread from Meadow trying to park.
Here’s hoping the next time someone tries to bring up the debate over the final Sopranos scene, before you slap everybody involved (though you should also do that), give some love to some of the stuff that happened before that cut to black. And then agree to acknowledge that Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci in Monster owned “Don’t Stop Believin'” first.
[You can watch “Made in America” on HBO GO and HBO Now.]
Joe Reid (@joereid) is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. You can find him leaving flowers for Mrs. Landingham at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
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