stop your grousing

The final scene of “The Sopranos” gave me chills—not because of its enigmatic ending, but because I had lived it.
Well, sort of.

Last winter, the BF and I were having breakfast at our favorite little greasy spoon in the West Village. This place is usually insane on cold Sunday mornings—a line of folks waiting on the snowy sidewalks outside, the floors inside all wet and sticky, the already narrow aisles clogged with coats on the backs of chairs. And it’s always loud, sometimes making conversation difficult in the cramped quarters.
The BF and I had just gotten our food—bacon and pancakes for me, I’m certain—when a freaky quiet settled over the restaurant. I thought that maybe it had started to snow again outside, for some reason, then realized that folks had momentarily ceased their chattering because a bona fide celebrity had entered the establishment. I looked up and saw that James Gandolfini was sipping coffee at the table right next to ours.

New Yorkers, we all know, have a love-hate-love relationship with celebrities, who are treated like exotic but protected beasts roaming through a wilderness preserve. You are not to harass or even acknowledge the celeb in any way—this isn’t L.A., for fuck’s sake—and expected to exert a certain degree of annoyance when they appear. “Jesus Christ, if I see Susan Sarandon at the gym one more time, I swear I’m going to hurl.”

Thing is, there’s actually no such thing as a New Yorker. Almost everybody is from somewhere else, meaning places where it’s unheard of for minor film and TV stars to mingle with the hoi polloi. The final act of a celeb sighting, therefore, is the inevitable gushing that happens via txt msg or cell phone call once the star in question is out of sight.

With Tony Soprano ordering eggs right next to me, I knew my moment to gush would not come soon. I won’t fuel any speculations about the actor’s private life. He did look a little hungover, perhaps, though I usually look pretty damn rough myself before the first cup of joe. He sat quietly and read his New York Times, and thank gawd no one in the diner spoke to him. Eventually, the BF and I got up and left. My leg brushed his coat on the way out. He might’ve said “Excuse me,” but I think he just kept reading his paper.

I thought of that moment last night when the BF and I watched the tense and riveting final hour of “The Sopranos”—an episode that, as I had predicted, took sadistic pleasure in making sure that nothing much happened. I actually respect that decision, even if it did feel like David Chase was purposefully toying with us in that final diner scene. I know a lot of folks are complaining about the ending, because seemingly nothing was resolved. So what?
This was a show ultimately about American complacency, a theme these last few episodes seemed to scream from the mountaintop. It fits perfectly that the series should wrap in such a quintessentially mundane American setting. We always expect fireworks, but the reality is usually bacon and cold coffee.