Lorraine Bracco, god bless her, has a different problem with the Sopranos ending

Can we just say, after 17 long years, what an incredible relief it is to have someone express a genuine complaint about the end of HBO’s The Sopranos—which does not turn out to be a comment about its infamous final scene? God bless Lorraine Bracco, then, for breaking the mold in a recent interview with SiriusXM’s Jennifer Shaw, during which, at no point, do the words “Believing,” “Stop,” or “Don’t” come out of the veteran actor’s mouth. Bracco, who recently co-starred in Netflix’s The Union, has a whole, genuine other problem with the series’ final season, one that focuses, not on the (potential) end of Tony Soprano’s life, but the very definitive end of his therapeutic journey.

Which is to say, Bracco still sounds pretty mad about her final appearance, in the show’s penultimate episode, “The Blue Comet,” which concludes with her character Jennifer Melfi cutting ties with James Gandolfini’s Tony after coming to the (admittedly, pretty abrupt) conclusion that six seasons of therapy have only made him a more effective sociopath. Bracco said the scene didn’t sit well with her at the time, and still doesn’t seem to, now. “I couldn’t believe that. I was heartbroken, and I was not very happy with the way David [Chase] ended it. I thought it was bad and wrong. I was annoyed, and I told him. How do you invest five years into someone’s life and just walk away? I said, ‘That is not cool.'”

Which is, for fans of the series, kind of fascinating, especially as Bracco expresses her hope that Tony and Melfi ran into each other some time down the line and resumed therapy, reversing her climactic final stand. From a critical point of view, Melfi’s decision to cut Tony out of her life is basically unique amongst Sopranos characters: It represents one of the only points in the entire series where someone fully comes to terms with one of the show’s central ideas, i.e., the fact that Tony Soprano, for all his charms, is a corrupting force who can never be fixed or bargained with, only identified and excised. Along with the famous “Employee Of The Month,” it’s one of the moments that helps solidify Melfi as the show’s wounded moral center.

And you can maybe hear it in how wrapped up we got in that last paragraph, but Christ is it nice to get involved in an argument about the end of this TV show that’s not about whether Tony got whacked while eating onion rings. Thank you, Lorraine Bracco. What a gift.