Who Will Survive the 'Sopranos' Finale?

HOLLYWOOD, June 8, 2007 — -- By the time the credits rolled last Sunday on "The Sopranos," Christopher Moltisanti and Bobby Bacala were dead, Silvio Dante was in the hospital, riddled with holes, and New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano went to bed hugging an automatic rifle.

Fans of the HBO show were left to anticipate just one more episode of one of the most innovative and acclaimed series in television history.

While viewers are guessing how it will end, the show's creator and director said he's known for a couple of years.

"I had this instinct of what it would be, and I just have held to that," David Chase said, while he was editing the final episode.

Of course, Chase isn't saying what that ending is. He wouldn't even describe his state of mind while plotting it.

The 61-year-old Chase was a successful writer for network television shows including "The Rockford Files" and "Northern Exposure." But he always felt confined by the conventions of television, the expectation that everything should be laid out for the audience so they don't have to think about what they're watching.

"The Sopranos" was his way of breaking the rules. "We thought it would be one season and out," he said.

Instead, it's been one of the breakout hits in the history of television, a franchise worth fortunes.

"The Sopranos" has been the tale of a suburban New Jersey mobster beset by depression, messy family relations, and even messier relations with his crime family. The hero, if you can call him that, takes Prozac, goes to therapy, kills, steals, cheats on his wife, and when things go wrong asks, "Why me?"

At times, it's been graphically violent and always salted with profanity, sex and nudity. But more than anything, "The Sopranos" has been about character, and how it directs peoples' lives.

"That's all it is. That's all it really is," Chase said. "The stories only come out of character. Well, the stories come out of character and they come out of the business of organized crime."

Chase describes Tony Soprano as "a big baby" who just wants his way.

"He wants what he wants," Chase said, "Whatever that may be, my bagel in the morning, to $100,000, to who gets to use the bathroom first."

Whatever Tony does follows from character, and the character of people around him.

Chase populated "The Sopranos" with needy, greedy, treacherous and psychopathic people. In six seasons of episodes spread over eight years, Chase has explored therapy, family relations, race, marriage, homosexuality, suicide, depression and the criminal mind.

"I've always thought of it as a comedy," he said … and he's not joking.

Chase finds humor in almost everything from a mob hit to a seduction. His characters are always complaining.

"Everybody on that show bitches and complains to the other person. And no one's got it as bad as each character; everyone is the victim," Chase said. "I just found that amusing."

He added, "A fair amount of it is a personal account of what I know about life. The mother Livia was kind of based on my mother. Some of the family dynamics are based on my family."

Chase has broken the rules by allowing the plots to develop slowly. Not everything is explained, not everything resolved.

In one episode called "Pine Barrens," a Russian mobster was wounded in the head escaping through a snowy forest and the audience never find out whether he lived, or came back to get revenge.

The series has also killed a collection of characters that would be the envy of any other show. It's been unsentimental about who gets whacked, from girlfriends to close members of the Soprano crew. They've probably killed more characters than the New Jersey mob has in its history.

People "want to see betrayal and retribution and all that," Chase said. "If people aren't getting killed, if the Soprano family is the only mob family where nobody gets killed, then we should go over to the network."

Known for its sharp writing, "The Sopranos" has also done more with silence than anything previously on television. The writers have not been afraid to just let the actors look at each other.

"I think words -- words sort of kill emotion," Chase said. "Words kill art."

At times, the series has strayed into dream sequences and the supernatural. Some seasons were better than others, but looking at it from end to end it is a surprisingly tightly woven work.