Fade to black

What, you wanted closure?

Apparently, not enough people were paying attention to the David Chase M.O. The Russian is still out there, isn't he?

But Americans, by and large, want resolution. We're not very big on the abstract. And we seem to think someone like David Chase owes us an ending.

Well, here's the deal. David Chase doesn't care about you and me. "The Sopranos" were always his personal toy. David Chase is a creative genius with a touch of arrogance. He wrote for himself, and only himself. He didn't care to wrap the story up with a neat bow, and I really don't see why anyone should be surprised.

The big thing for me was that Paulie lives to work on that tan for at least a little while longer. Paulie was always my favorite character, and when, in the final episode, he revealed himself to be a cat hater, he went up several notches in my my estimation. "Snakes with fur!" he hissed when he spied that cat in the office. Fantastic. Another reason to love Paulie Walnuts. And the Virgin Mary thing? Priceless Paulie, leading to an even more priceless "Holy Water" line from Tony. C'mon, that's why we loved the show, for all the little stuff, the great lines. It's why I did, anyway.

That, and the music. As a Jersey Guy myself (Trenton), I took note when Tony and Paulie were sitting there in the car waiting for Agent Harris that the song Tony was instructing the grumbling Paulie to "enjoy" was "Denise," by Randy and the Rainbows. They were, of course, from Teaneck, N.J. I doubt the selection was random.

Anyway, I never demanded a satisfactory ending. I had long ago prepared myself for ambiguity. I will admit I thought Phil Leotardo would somehow survive, even if he wound up like Uncle Junior. What a delightfully evil guy he was. When he would talk about being in the can, that was appointment listening. And that's what really frosted him about Tony. In Phil's eyes, Tony never paid his proper dues. And think about those kids in the back seat of the killer SUV. Wait 'til they reach the Age of Reason and discover they were not only in "The Sopranos," but in the final episode? Pretty cool.

Now, let's get serious. Did you really need to see the family get whacked? Yes, A.J. was getting to be really annoying, but I was rooting for him to escape the mob life, even if it did mean working for Donald Trump. Meadow always had a good heart. And Carmela, who never could quite come to grips with the idea that she had made a serious pact with the devil by marrying Tony, was still an empathetic figure. If Tony had to go down, well, that's the life, you know? But I didn't have to see the blood spill.

May we agree we didn't want some wussy ending like Tony flipping and repenting and living out his days in Yakima, Washington, selling appliances under an alias? So we got what we got.

Endings are always hard. Most movies have poor endings. Extremely popular TV series are even trickier. I thought the best was "Mary Tyler Moore," when a new company came in and fired everyone one but the clueless Ted Baxter. M*A*S*H was just OK. "Seinfeld" was universally panned. I can't even remember how "Cheers" ended, and for a time that was as good as TV got.

By the way, I timed the blackout on a second viewing. It was a hair over seven seconds. Seemed like an hour, didn't it? And yes, I panicked and thought the cable went kaput, just as you did.

Hey, we'll always have the DVDs.