It was the Audience that Got Whacked in the Sopranos

David Blum writes in the NY Sun that the Sopranos has elevated the common bloggers and showed that the mainstream critics don’t matter much any more. Here is his commentary on the despised final episode.

“At his blog “The House Next Door,” the erudite Matt Zoller Seitz (also of the Newark Star-Ledger, Tony Soprano’s daily paper) had — as he often did — a terrific take on the final moment. “The lack of resolution — the absolute and deliberate failure, or more accurately, refusal, to end this thing — was exactly right,” he posted at 12:05 Monday morning. “It felt more violent, more disturbing, more unfair than even the most savage murders Chase has depicted over the course of six seasons, because the victim was us. He ended the series by whacking the viewer.”

Smart and insightful, but obviously untrue — as Mr. Seitz and others proved Monday by their ability to analyze and interpret Mr. Chase’s final hour. One of the lasting legacies of ” The Sopranos” may be that television criticism belongs not to the old critical warhorses like the Times and the New Yorker, but to the bloggers and mid-level critics who watch television with passion, not disdain. Their reviews and essays embrace the narrative power of television by chronicling it week after bloody week.

As HBO defines the future of the medium by mounting serial dramas and comedies — like ” The Sopranos” and ” Sex and the City” and even, in some ways, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” — it will be the bloggers and insta-critics following closely behind that make it exciting, interpreting and Monday-morning-quarterbacking in ways that have changed the face of criticism. Mr. Chase wasn’t whacking the audience; he was whacking the old-school critical establishment for creating lofty literary expectations he had no desire to fulfill.”