Phil's guys turned on him pretty quick, anyway. Sure, they needed to wrap things up, so to speak, but the end of the Phil business and the start of the Carlo becoming a rat just came flying out of seemingly nowhere. Had they set up the Carlo as rat thing at all? If they did, I missed it. Only the mention of his kid getting pinched, which was part of the finale. The final talk between Junior and Tony was sort of weirdly unsatisfying, too. Maybe it was supposed to be, but it left a bitter taste in my mouth. Same kind of thing with Tony's visit to Silvio's hospital room.

But then there were some outstanding bits -- Phil's death, for instance. Or AJ's SUV burning up just as he's getting to second base with his high-school-junior girlfriend. For some reason the bits with Tony's old FBI nemesis, Agent Harris, really seemed pitch-perfect for me. His argument with his wife over the phone and his celebration when he finds out Phil's been clipped just seem to say, you know, the FBI guys are such great fellows either.

There were some great little things, too. Carmela's reaction to all the mail that's piled up when the family gets back to the house after being in hiding just seems so...suburban. Paulie's unzipped pants while he tries to talk up Bobby's niece is right on the money. Possibly my favorite moment was when the New York mobster accidentally walked to Chinatown, showing just how much Little Italy has shrunk. Tony's quick turn toward talking about his mother in the presence of AJ's shrink was great, too.

And then there were the clumsy parts. AJ's screed about how "American Idol" distracts people from real stuff going on in the world seemed clunky and heavy-handed. So did the stuff with the cat. And none of the scenes with Janice struck me as particularly important.

Oh, and Patsy's wife can't tell a joke! Oh boy!

Anyway, about the final scene. First off, I'm not going to argue some definitive conclusion about Tony dying or getting pinched by the feds or whatever right when the screen goes black. That's all up for interpretation. It could be any of those, or none. It's Schrodinger's cat -- Tony is both alive and dead.

But here's what I do think the intent of that last scene was. In every discernable way, it was designed to remind us that we were watching a television show. The Journey song, for instance. Up to now, we've only heard the songs David Chase would pick to accompany the show. Here, we finally hear the song Tony, the television character, picked. The allusion to "The Godfather," with the guy walking into the bathroom, reminds us of that other mob saga. And then, finally, the show just cuts out in mid-word.

And what was most people's initial reaction? To think that their cable was out. To call their satellite provider. To see if the Tivo had cut off the end of the show. You're jarred back into reality. In the course of a second, David Chase jerks the viewers out of the fictional world of Tony Soprano and forces us back into ours.

It doesn't matter what happens to Tony Soprano, he was telling us. It was AJ's point from earlier, but made with subtlety. Get angry, David Chase was saying. Wake up from the dream. I've read several places about how it was the viewer who was whacked at the end. But it was the opposite. It was the end of a dream.

But unlike all the dreams we had seen earlier in the series, this one wasn't Tony's. It was ours.

BONUS FIVE-WORD REVIEW OF "JOHN FROM CINCINNATI": It made no fucking sense.

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