The Final Episode

Matt Zoller Seitz: "It was the perfect ending. No ending at all. Write your own goddamn ending."

[UPDATE]

Small Dead Animals adds:

How do you end the greatest show in the history of television?

You don't. Or rather, you can't...

After my initial anger and dismay at the ending last night, I came to the realization that this is the only way you could have ended the series. There was no other way.

Any other ending would have degraded the series.

David Chase is absolutely brilliant.

Chase has made this series great by changing our expectations; expectations that have been formed by years of watching 90 minute movies and 60 minute television programs in which the plot conflict appears early and is fully satisfied by the end of the program.

But real life isn't like that. In real life, Red doesn't always walk up the beach to see Andy sanding a boat in Mexico. Sometimes important issues in our lives just don't get resolved.

Furio just doesn't come back. The Russian could be either dead or back in Moscow. Syl may or may not make it. We just won't ever know.