"Now we'll never know whether Tony Soprano got whacked or not."
This, believe it or not, was how somebody on a social networking site greeted last night's shocking news of
James Gandolfini's death, at 51, of a
heart attack while vacationing in Europe.
The first thing you want
to say to this is: Really? Six years have passed since the last episode
of "The Sopranos" left the fate of its psychically damaged crime boss
and suburban patriarch to speculation -- and you still want closure
after all this time? Is that really the first thing you thought about
after someone died so young, so unexpectedly?
On the one hand, this
sounds at best shallow and at worst callous. It is true, of course, that
Tony Soprano, one of the great characters in American television and
folklore, was indeed the role of a lifetime, for which Gandolfini was
deservedly honored with multiple Emmys, unanimous acclaim and the type
of reverberating legacy that is rarer than awards or praise. (It may be
somewhat premature to call this immortality, but we'll see in another 30
years or so.)