Tony Soprano

I have perhaps watched a cumulative 10 minutes of this series, much praised by the critics. I prefer comedy ... and news, science, sports, documentaries ... not much into drama except for Columbo-type things. And I think that gangs are scum ... no romantic here about thugs who victimize the innocent and all the rest of us.

But I believe, notwithstanding the paucity of my experience, that the man was rubbed out. Shot. Gunned down. Dead as a doornail.

Think of the Arabian Nights. Shahrazade keeps telling stories because if she stops, Shahryar kills her. So the story is life, the end of the story is death. That is how a frame tale works ... a frame tale being a tale that is the container for other tales. Story equals life; end of story is death.

Therefore, end of Sopranos means Tony is toast.

Remember also that Shahryar's motivation for killing virgins he has defiled the night before is the infidelity of his wife. This whole mob tale is based on an utterly fictional concept of fidelity, and any fictional breach of the fictional fidelity means death. So breach the fiction, kill the story, the whore is dead. Tony is the story and the whore, and he croaks.

That was satisfying ... nice literary argument based upon absolutely not a whit of knowledge of the story in question. The pure argument, unsullied by knowledge or experience.

Still, I think the guy is pushing up daisies.