June 17th, 2008
My colleague JVL passes on this link to a dissertation-sized explanation of the last episode of The Sopranos. It is heavy. It is dense. It is repetitive. It is thousands upon thousands of words long and it may take me a year to finish. (Incidentally, the longest magazine article I ever read was Paul Berman’s “The Passion of Joshka Fischer” in the New Republic, which numbered more than 25,000 words. It took me six months riding Metro to finish.)
Nevertheless, the argument is laid out in excruciating detail that Tony Soprano does indeed die at the hands of the man in the Members Only jacket. And everything has significance: the ringing bell every time a patron walks into the diner, the location of the patrons around the diner, Tony’s POV, the onion rings (?!), things that were said in previous episodes (not knowing when the end comes, the lyrics to the song about Jimmy Brown). It’s like an analysis of the Zapruder film–which is also mentioned! Totally out of control. But you’ll read on. And on. And on. And on…
Clearly a ton of one’s time was devoted to this. And some of it is very interesting. But here’s one amazing detail that was entirely missed in all the analysis:
When Johnny Sac’s daughter Allegra is married, she and her father share the classic father-daughter dance. The song is “Daddy’s Little Girl.” But Allegra is not little. She is enormous!
Take that, Sopranos experts!
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