CURVE:Gray 'Sopranos' ending is un-American

Even though it will provide fodder to Steve Smith in his program to remove television from all our lives, I have to admit that, after watching the final episode of "The Sopranos" Sunday night, I was thinking along those same lines.

Like a few zillion other people, I set myself up for this manipulation. Right now, I'm looking for someone besides myself to blame. And I don't have to look far. His name is David Chase, and he was the guy who planned and executed the heist that picked so many pockets Sunday night.

Outraged reactions across the country help explain our gullibility and vulnerability to such head massaging on much more serious issues when the right buttons are pushed.

I don't think Chase planned such a psychedelic response to his ending. I think he just cut and ran when he found himself facing an insurmountable creative barrier. And he isn't being tarred and feathered for that cowardly act because the pointy-headed critics can never buy into an explanation that simple and direct involving the behavior of an incipient genius they have created.

For those of you who didn't see the final episode (after eight years) of "The Sopranos" or don't give a darn about what happened to Tony Soprano but would like to know why its conclusion became such a cause celebre, the reason is that Americans want to see beginnings and endings, justice or redemption. We don't want creativity to blur our blacks-and-whites, and "The Sopranos" ended in a distinct wrapping of gray.

In the middle of a serving of onion rings to Tony Soprano, his wife and two grown children in a nondescript restaurant, the screen went dark, and then the credits started to roll. And this only after we were teased with the arrival in the restaurant of a series of what could have been entirely innocent customers but were made to appear as suspect assassins by allowing the camera to linger on them through innocuous actions once inside.