Almost everyone has thoughts on The Sopranos series finale. More specifically, almost everyone has thoughts on the famous last moment of The Sopranos series finale. Thirteen years after "Made in America" ended with a smash-cut-to-black shocker, all anyone wants to talk about is what happened to Tony (James Gandolfini) when the screen went dark.
But there were a lot of other great moments in "Made in America" — Tony's guys kill Phil! AJ accidentally kills his SUV! — including a few that creator David Chase still remembers fondly: "I loved the scene with Junior at the end. I loved everything with Junior, especially in that episode. When Janice tells Junior, 'Bobby’s dead,' and Junior says, 'Ambassador Hotel!' And she says, 'Your Bobby!' That was one of my favorite moments."
Speaking during the Television Academy's "Quaranstreaming: Comfort TV That Keeps Us Going" panel, Chase recalled another small detail from the episode that he loves, from a scene where Tony and his crew are hiding out at a safe house. "Something that nobody would care about was when they were going to the mattresses, there was a Twilight Zone episode playing about a TV writer. That was one of my favorites," he said. "That Twilight Zone, it was a critique and a slam of network television, and it was very funny." (The episode, by the way, was "The Bard," about a struggling TV writer who accidentally conjures up William Shakespeare. It originally aired in 1963.)
As for those final few seconds of The Sopranos? While Chase declined to discuss it in any detail ("every time I talk about that ending, I get myself in deeper and deeper"), Sopranos director and star Steve Buscemi had no problem sharing his opinion. "I thought the ending was brilliant," said the actor-director, who appeared on the panel along with Sopranos star Steven Van Zandt. "It was so shocking, and like a lot of people, I thought something was wrong with my television set. In fact, I know a friend of mine who was out for the evening and he asked his son to DVR the show. And when he came home and he watched it and it went to black, he started yelling at his son for not getting it all."
Also participating in "Quaranstreaming" panel: The West Wing exec producer Thomas Schlamme and stars Dulé Hill and Richard Schiff, as well as Grey's Anatomy exec producer Krista Vernoff and stars Chandra Wilson and Kevin McKidd. You can watch the full panel on the Television Academy's YouTube channel.
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