Sopranos Surprise Finale Revealed

In a few short days the HBO will bring to a close a tremendous era in American television entertainment history when it whacks (pun intended) The Sopranos from its programming line-up.

As someone who has built a somewhat accomplished political career around making sweeping, hasty generalizations, I am confident enough to say that The Sopranos is the second greatest television series in history, with the only exception being World Championship Wrestling’s run with Monday Nitro from 1995 to 1999.

The departure of The Sopranos is unfortunate for all Americans because the program is just so outstanding—the writing, the cast, the characters, the plot, the story, Sil Dante’s hair—the list can go on for weeks. This weekend’s pending finale will leave this prognosticator with only two shows left: reruns of Seinfeld and reruns of Matlock.

A few hours after watching Sunday’s next-to-last episode, it became quite obvious to me that only one scenario remains to conclude this series. It is so obvious that even an imbecile could figure it out. I present to you the obvious scenario that we will see this coming Sunday on the HBO:

Picking up from last week, Tony’s closest friend Silvio Dante was rendered unconscious by a barrage of bullets outside of the strip club at which the family conducts business. Tony’s brother-in-law, the man who was saddled with marriage to Janice Soprano, was gunned down while purchasing vintage toy trains (being that he never has to go home to Janice again, perhaps Bobby Baccalieri is the real winner in this whole mess), and Phil Leotardo in New York has only one target left to complete to Triple Crown: Tony himself. The show ended with Tony sending Carmella and the kids out of town to avoid certain death. Tony meanwhile ends the hour holed up in a safe house with Carlo, Paulie Walnuts, and a few other of his closest knuckleheaded cronies.

I have a sneaking suspicion that things are going to wrap up like this:

Based upon the appearance of the weather in the last episode, it is quickly approaching late fall. The leaves are falling from the trees, the pool is closed up after A.J.’s botched suicide, all are wearing heavy coats, etc. Phil’s gang from New York is about to roll back into town to finish off Tony and company. Tony’s guys are at the safe house eating pizza (as Carlo had to ask permission from the boss to order at the close of Sunday’s episode) and gearing up for a fight.

The stage is set for a real battle when all hell breaks loose. Tony receives a phone call from the new chairman of the New Jersey Democrat Party, Assemblyman Zellman, the local elected official who was on the take in the first four seasons. With the “outing” of former disgraced Governor James McGreevey, the Democrat Party is looking for a candidate—one who simply oozes family values.

Zellman, with a bit of hesitation since he was physically whipped him to the point of tears in season four for sleeping with Tony’s ex-mistress, asks T to consider the Democrat Party’s nomination for Governor.

The reason is very simple: despite his nearly thirty years of racketeering, several stints in the can, dubious affiliations aplenty, hundreds of murders committed, money laundering, drug smuggling, strip-club managing, and FBI rap sheet longer than Sinatra’s gold record hit list, Anthony Soprano is still the cleanest, most honest, upstanding Democrat that the party could possibly hope to muster. Maybe in the entire nation.

Tony accepts the nomination. Since this is Jersey and the Democrats can do what they want, Tony is placed on the ballot immediately for an election scheduled to take place the next week. Remember, this is the state that allowed scofflaw Robert “The Torch” Torricelli to withdraw after winning the primary only to be replaced by the electable old war horse Frank Lautenberg on the ballot in his place back in ’02.

Tony then defeats a bright young Republican entrepreneur who has never done anything wrong in his life other than start a small business from scratch, honestly make some money, raise a nice family, and then run for office. Tony wins with about 70 percent of the vote. Governor-elect Soprano then cuts a deal with Phil Leotardo in New York. The deal looks something like this: Phil calls off the war and Tony pardons all of Phil’s goons who are currently in Jersey prisons.

He then immediately appoints Paulie Walnuts as Secretary of Labor and Industry, who goes to work shaking down every small business, labor union, and working man in the state to featherbed all deals in favor of the Governor. Tony then makes Patsy Parisi his Secretary of Commerce, Carlo the Secretary of Administration, and Little Paulie gets Secretary of Higher Education (there is a lot of kickback money there).

Somewhere in the course of the term, Phil of course gets snuffed out, Uncle Junior gets pardoned and fit with a nice retirement, and everything works out nicely for Tony Soprano, thus ending the series on an incredibly high note. Also, Sil pulls out of his state of unconsciousness, but turns down a cabinet post to instead go back to his real passion: running the Bing.

I would venture to guess that I am right about this. However, if HBO planned something different, I’d also bet that after reading this, their big wigs are having an emergency shoot tomorrow to make things right.

Just think: another cigar, Governor Soprano?

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