Like a lot of you, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what Ron Moore’s recent blog post (“The Sopranos Ends Perfectly”) might mean in terms of BSG’s season four wrapup.  Unlinke most of you, I’ve never seen a single episode of the Sopranos — I know, shame on me — so I’ve eseentially been sitting alone in a cold, dark room, figuratively speaking, scared that I’ll be mad as hell come 2008.

Then my friend Joe over at Wired shot me a link to this blog post by (in)famous Jeopardy player and CSI writer Bob Harris in which he offers what’s widely recognized as the most complete analysis of the penultimate TV mob moment, and I’m far less worried.  Why?  The title of Bob’s post is “Tony Soprano didn’t just get whacked; he practically got a funeral.”

Bob’s analysis is stunning.  He draws on everything from religion, art, and music to color theory and cinematography to determine the series’ technically-open ending.  I say “technically” because after reading Bob’s post, it seems to me that David Chase gave Sopranos fans plenty of information to determine Tony’s fate.  Yet by not actually showing the ending he left fans the option of, as Ron said, “pretending that life continues.”

Considering all the email we’ve received regarding what will become of BSG fandom when it slides over the edge into a post-BSG abyss, I’m beginning to think that a “closed” ending would offer me less comfort as opposed to more.  I’d like to pretend that life in the BSG universe continues in some meaningful way, as opposed to, say, a final blissful settlement on Earth. 

But I’m still concerned a bit: in his post, Ron speaks of David’s “brilliance” in terms of the open ending, not once mentioning David’s myriad clues-for-the-freeze-frame-enabled-anal.  In my mind at least, a “brilliant” ending for BSG would include both almost-but-not-quite definitive clues and an “open” ending.  Bob’s work reminds me very much of the effort that our readers and listeners here at GWC put into understanding BSG.  I could easily see us all having a discussion along the lines of Bob’s in our post-422 podcast comments.

But without the clues it’d just be, well, an “open ending.” 

Of course, it’s important to note that Ron’s post is dated June 11th — very shortly after the airing of the episode.  As you can see from Bob’s post, locating and interpreting these clues takes time, so maybe Ron felt the brilliance, but didn’t discover the clues until later — like most Sopranos fans.

I can hope.

Update: Pike points out that I’m slow, and he got there first.  Pike rocks.