Made in America

Synopsis

Tony and his crew are still lying low. He brings Paulie along to a meeting with FBI Agent Harris, offering up intel on Ahmed and Muhammad in hopes of learning Phil’s whereabouts, but Harris has nothing to give him. Tony stops by the safe house to see his family, then attends Bobby’s funeral with them. Afterward, he goes to Janice’s place, where she announces she’ll be raising Bobby’s kids, completely unaware that the children can’t stand her.

Later, Harris tells Tony that Phil has been using payphones at gas stations in Oyster Bay, Long Island, so Tony’s crew starts watching the area. Phil calls Butchie from one of those payphones, furious that he failed to kill Tony, and shoots down Butchie’s suggestion to call a truce. He hints that once Tony is dead, they’ll have a sit-down to discuss Butchie’s poor performance. Without Phil’s knowledge, Tony meets Butchie to cut a deal.

Butchie doesn’t know where Phil is hiding, so he can’t give up his boss’s location, but he agrees to a ceasefire and lets Tony order a hit on Phil. They also arrange restitution for Janice and Bobby’s family. Soon after, Tony and his family move back into their home in North Caldwell.

A.J. is unhappy with the new setup but keeps seeing Rhiannon Flammer, even though he insists to everyone they’re just friends and that she’s only 17. The two are parked in the woods in his car, listening to music and trying to have sex, when A.J. notices the engine is on fire. They scramble out just before the car is completely burned up. Tony and Carmela are livid when A.J. tells them the car is destroyed.

A.J. then says he wants to join the Army, but his parents arrange a job for him at Little Carmine’s film production company instead. Meadow and Patrick Parisi announce their engagement, and Meadow might get a high-paying job at a law firm that defends white-collar criminals, which disappoints Tony. Tony visits Silvio, who is still in a coma at the hospital. Carlo disappears, and Paulie worries he might have turned informant after his son Jason Gervasi was arrested on a drug charge.

Tony’s lawyer, Neil Mink, confirms that Carlo is likely cooperating and that Tony will be indicted. With Carlo gone, Tony offers Paulie the leadership of the Aprile crew. Paulie initially turns it down, but when Tony says Patsy will get it instead, Paulie reluctantly accepts.

Production

David Chase had the ending of The Sopranos in mind during the long break between the fifth and sixth seasons, a gap that lasted 21 months. The final scene was shot exactly as he pictured it. It was Chris Albrecht, then the chairman of HBO, who suggested that the sixth season should be the show’s last. The finale was never meant to set up a sequel, though Chase later said there might come a day when everyone involved would think of something. No sequel ever materialized, but a prequel film, The Many Saints of Newark, came out in 2021.

Like every episode that season, the plot for “Made in America” was worked out by Chase and his writing team. For the final season, that team included executive producers Terence Winter and Matthew Weiner, along with supervising producers Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, who wrote as a pair. Tim Van Patten, a frequent director on the show, also gave Chase ideas for the storyline. Once the story was mapped out, Chase wrote the first draft. After the staff gave their notes, he revised the script and kept making small adjustments during filming. This episode marks Chase’s 30th and last official writing credit for the series, including story credits, and his ninth as the sole writer of an episode.

Chase wove in references to real American Mafia history again. The line “Damn! We’re gonna win this thing!” comes from former FBI supervisor Lindley DeVecchio, who said it after learning that Lorenzo “Larry” Lampasi had been killed outside his Brooklyn home. Dwight Harris says the same line after hearing about Phil Leotardo’s death. DeVecchio was later charged with tipping off the Mafia, just as Dwight later does for Tony Soprano.

Chase directed “Made in America,” and Alik Sakharov served as director of photography. The two had worked together in the same roles on the pilot episode, “The Sopranos,” filmed in 1997. This is only the second time Chase officially directed an episode of the series, though as showrunner he supervised the direction of most episodes. For Sakharov, this episode is his 38th and final credit as director of photography on the show.

Analysis and interpretation

The finale of "Made in America" sparked widespread debate and scrutiny after it aired. The episode ended with an unexpected cut to black and several seconds of silence, causing many viewers to think their cable or DVR had malfunctioned at a key moment. Two main opposing viewpoints emerged about what happened to protagonist Tony Soprano. Some viewers believed he was killed, while others thought he survived, with the final shot suggesting that if alive, he would spend his life constantly watching for threats in classic mobster fashion.

Supporters of the death theory often cite a conversation from the midseason premiere "Soprano Home Movies," where Tony's brother-in-law Bobby remarks that in their line of work, death can come so suddenly that "you probably don't even hear it when it happens, right?" This scene is recalled in a flashback during the final minutes of "The Blue Comet," the episode before "Made in America." When asked about this clue, HBO spokesman Quentin Schaffer called the conversation a "legitimate" hint.

The final scene also features a man in a Members Only jacket who looks at Tony twice and then goes to the bathroom. Many interpret this as a reference to Michael Corleone retrieving a hidden gun from a restaurant bathroom to kill his enemies in The Godfather (1972). In the episode "Johnny Cakes," Tony reveals that this is his favorite scene from the film. Additional speculation connects the jacket to the season's opening episode, "Members Only," where Tony is shot, and views the jacket as a symbolic sign of the man's mafia membership.

Matt Servitto, who played Dwight Harris, mentioned that the scene originally continued with the man in the Members Only jacket coming out of the bathroom and walking toward Tony's table. Servitto later clarified that he did not intend to suggest a different or directly intended ending, but only that the editing, which he called "genius," was not what he had expected.

Reception

When "Made in America" first aired on June 10, 2007, it drew an average of 11.9 million viewers in the United States, according to Nielsen. That audience was 49 percent larger than the one for the previous episode, and it marked the highest viewership for either part of the sixth season. It was also the show's biggest audience since the premiere of season five. Early critical reception was mostly favorable to semi-favorable, but fan reaction was mixed to negative, with one critic describing it as "a mixture of admiration and anger." In the weeks after the broadcast, the episode—especially its final scene—sparked extensive discussion and analysis. New interpretations of the ending appeared in magazines and on blogs, leading many critics and fans to reconsider their initial reactions.

Marisa Carroll of PopMatters gave the episode an 8 out of 10, singling out the final scene as one of the series' best. Mark Farinella of The Sun Chronicle called it "a perfect ending to a perfect TV series." Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly also described it as "the perfect ending," writing that the cut to black was a shock that made viewers replay the scene in their minds. He said that rather than closing the series, that blackout made The Sopranos "live forever."

Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "an ending befitting genius of Sopranos," noting that creator David Chase stayed true to reality while avoiding trite TV conventions. Frazier Moore of the Associated Press called the episode "brilliant" and said Chase was "true to himself." Kim Reed of Television Without Pity gave it an A+, praising it for staying true to the show. Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger called the finale "satisfying" and said it fit perfectly with everything Chase had done before.

Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune initially had a mixed review, criticizing the final scene for lacking closure. She later wrote that Chase got her completely wound up and then ripped her away from that world. She admitted she was really mad at first and still thought what Chase did was, with all due respect, kind of jerky, but added that minutes after the finale ended, she started laughing. Matthew Gilbert of the Boston Globe thought his television had lost power during the ending, wondering, "What will I do? Will I get fired?"