The Marketing Message from The Mob

B.L. Ochman's blog about online marketing and web strategy is a daily must-read for me. I just had to re-post his entry for today... his words / my sentiments.

"The last scene of The Sopranos finale is already on You Tube. Watch it again. Guaranteed, you'll see things you didn't notice last night. National Rorschach Test? Colossal Mind Fuck?

Neither! The Sopranos finale was the most brilliant use of user generated content we've seen to date. It doesn't matter what really happened. What matters is what you think happened. And that could be almost anything from the whole family dying to life going on as always, minus a bunch of wiseguys. Or not.

Everyone is buzzing about it today. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who's going to watch it again tonight.

Fans actually crashed the HBO site after the show, demonstrating how much media is converging. "Fans absorb the content of a show like the Sopranos on one medium and then immediately utilize the web as their voice to express points of view," said Adotas.

As scores of bloggers and mainstream media have pointed out today, symbolism was everywhere:
- the almost too brief to catch flash of Janice walking into the diner, as she had done in an earlier episode just in time to see her father get shot;
- the guy in the Members Only jacket when Members Only is the title of Episode 66, which is the one where Uncle Jr. shot Tony in the stomach;
- that mysterious cat bugging Paulie Walnuts after it caught a rat at the safe house;
- Tony complaining about his mother to AJ's shrink the way he complained to his own shrink in the beginning of the show.
- add your own view, email your friends, read their view. Rinse, repeat.

One of the most interesting theories online is by a user on Digg.com, who suggests that Tony is indeed shot at the end of the episode. He recalls a conversation Tony had with his brother-in-law Bobby Baccalieri earlier this season. “I bet you don’t hear it [getting shot] when it happens,” Bobby told Tony while they were fishing on a lake in upstate New York.

We are viewing the scene at the diner through Tony's eyes. Suddenly, as Meadow walks in, the screen goes blank, there's no sound, and the titles roll.

Was Tony shot? The only other time no music played over the closing credits was in the season-two episode "Full Leather Jacket," which ended with Christopher (Michael Imperioli) getting gunned down. And he recovered.

And that's the beauty of it. We cursed the cable company for blacking out the last seconds, called our friends to see if they saw the crucial last scene, until we realized we'd been had. Depending on your disposition, that's when you either laughed or cursed. I did both. :<)

David Chase, meanwhile, is said to be hiding out in France, letting is figure it out for ourselves. Pretty damn cool."