More Sopranos Thoughts

Alright, I'm obsessing. I can't stop watching The Sopranos ending and trying to figure it out. I guess that doesn't make me that unique since people are still talking about the abrupt but fascinating close of the series. A few thoughts after having watched the ending a few times:

Tony's shirt definitely changes when he enters Holsten's, the Bloomfield diner where the final scene is shot.

This is being debated on the internet but after watching it a few times it seems clear to me that he walks into Holsten's wearing the same grayish shirt that he was wearing in the previous scene when he went to visit Uncle Junior at the mental hospital.

He walks into Holsten's in the gray shirt, sees that his family isn't there, then a cut back to Tony's face, and then we see him sitting in the diner in a different shirt, a white and black one that seems ripe for Jersey mobsters. Some viewers say it's the same shirt, he's just taken off his jacket off camera. I don't see it that way.

What does all of this mean? It suggests that there is a bit of a dream sequence going on. A couple of things jibe with that, such as:

Would Meadow really tell her mother that she had gone to the gynecologist to "switch birth control"? That's possible, I guess, but it doesn't sound right to me.

There's a certain symmetry in the restaurant. The truck driver gets a coffee with three creams on the saucer; the old man is there with three cub scout troopers. Three Sopranos at the table.

This may seem like so much fishing but since this is one of the rare episodes that the show's creator, David Chase, both wrote and directed you have to figure that the pored over every detail in the final scene of his landmark series. Are those things all coincidental?

The prevailing theory is that Tony is whacked and the cut-to-black represents his death. But logically it doesn't make sense to whack him at Holsten's. It's a crowded restaurant and not part of his routine.

(Recall that Tony advises his crew, through Silvio, in the penultimate episode, to have everyone break routine while they're being hunted by Phil Leotardo's crew.)

How would they know to whack him at Holsten's and why do it there? It's crowded, difficult. True, the great murder scene in the Godfather is at a restaurant but that's only because it's the only place that Michael Corleone can get Captain McCloskey to show up without his fellow cops and where he can hide a gun.

Couple of other points:

A.J.'s line about "remembering the good times" echoes Tony's comment from the episode a few seasons back where the Sopranos, caught in a thunder storm, pull into Vesuvio's and eat by candle light.

David Chase has said that he wasn't trying to screw with the audience. He said "it's all there." Taking him at his word, I'd really like to figure it out. Although at some point, I really should get back to my day job.