Now that I've mulled it over for a few hours, there ARE answers to be found, or at least inferred. Here's my take: A.J., who ever so briefly, showed some spunk and morosely felt the pain of the world at large and was going to try to make a difference, reverted to the easy way of letting dirty money hand him opportunities he neither worked for or will be able to handle. Meadow, trading in medicine for law because she's seen first-handed how unfairly Italian-Americans are treated (when her father was taken off to jail in handcuffs, will marry deeper into "the family"; her fiance is already the designated lawyer on defending someone on corruption charges and his firm is already offering her a job when she hasn't even gone to law school yet...like the name Soprano isn't the reason? She'll end up being a lawyer, but seems headed for a practice that is diametrically opposed to what she envisioned doing (ie saving the world). Carmella...well, she'll be Carmella, and spin whatever happens into a version she can swallow. Paulie, most of his gang now gone, will be a sinking ship in the night, alienating all who will listen by telling stories of his glory days inbetween increasingly uncontrollable bouts of anger. He'll be absorbed into whatever group takes over, but won't have the status or respect he enjoyed in Tony's group, because let's face it, he's really annoying and just not all that smart. Janice will find someone else to feed off of and her child, who I would have sworn was destined to drown in Tony's pool, will be throughly f*cked up. And Dr. Melfi...eh, how unprofessional she turned out to be in the end, and I'm sure it will throw her into years of agonizing self-doubt and second guessing. And whether that was or wasn't Tony's last moment of consciousness, he was destined to try and hang on to "what he had", but with prescious little left to work with. Didn't the show begin, in season one, with him telling Melfi that he felt like the good days were all behind?
Underlying moral: the glamorous life wasn't so much...
Sueleen Gay: "Here you go, Bitch, now go make some fukcing lemonade." 10/28/10