Marc Baron was putting a brave face on his future employment prospects last week. Baron is the lead guide for one of New York’s most successful tourist enterprises — The Sopranos Tour — in which visitors are taken round 45 locations used in filming the TV series The Sopranos
Now, after 86 episodes, 18 Emmy awards and some of the most lavish critical approval in TV history, The Sopranos — an everyday story of Mafia folk — ends on Sunday. An expected audience of 10-million will watch the final episode and find out if Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), the psychologically tortured mob boss, ends up sleeping with the fishes.
Then America will have to face a grim future without whackings, infidelities, heists and family rows. ”This is Black Sunday,” said TV chat show host Dave Cavett, writing in the New York Times.
Baron is more sanguine. In the short term, business can only prosper, he said last week. ”I’ve taken 20 000 people on this tour in the past six years — and at least 50% were visiting Brits. I had 24 businessmen from Wales the other day.”
Baron, who has been an extra in the series, takes groups to locations that include the Skyway Diner, where Christopher Moltisanti was shot, Big Pussy’s auto body shop, Satriale’s pork store and, of course, the Bada Bing strip club (real name Satin Dolls) where Tony Soprano runs his criminal empire, arranges collections, has rivals killed, and arranges sessions with his therapist, Dr Melfi.
Last week’s episode left Tony facing insurrection. Will he survive or will the series’ creator David Chase kill him off? Given that half the original cast of characters has been whacked since it began in 1999, mostly on Tony’s instructions, a similar fate for the Sopranos’ boss might seem fitting.
However, the show has thrived on its unpredictability, Chase having consistently avoided neat denouements. This makes it hard to forecast tonight’s ending, though bookies have Tony one-to-three on to survive while the odds on his being whacked are two-to-one against.
In fact, three finales have been filmed and Chase is saying nothing about his choice. Sydney Pollack, the filmmaker (Tootsie, Out of Africa) who appeared once, believes the series will end in tragedy. ”Something bad is going to happen,” says Pollack, who expects to see Tony die. ”I don’t know, but I know that David Chase can be counted on to do something that’s bold and not safe.”
Certainly The Sopranos is a remarkable phenomenon, somehow persuading viewers to feel warmth to a loathsome set of characters. Having just kicked a man to death, Tony attends a therapy session with Dr Melfi and finds a bloody tooth still stuck to his cuff. Calmly, he flicks it off.
Much of this has been achieved by making a virtue of the unexpected, the macabre and the bleakly comic. ”Having to make do without any new episodes of what, in the fullness of time, will be judged to be the Mount Everest of television achievement is a chilling prospect,” concluded Cavett in the NYT. – Guardian Unlimited Â