By Chris Parsons
Check out my video essay to see the best P.R. Stunt in TV history come to life!
On June 10, 2007, 11.9 million people sat down in front of their TV sets to watch the series finale of HBO's "The Sopranos," according to Vulture.
Sidebar: do I have to do a spoiler warning for a 12-year-old show? I don't know, but the internet can be a ruthless place when it gets angry. So, out of caution, spoiler warning if you haven't watched "The Sopranos"!
An hour into the program, viewers were stunned when their screens went black for a few long seconds before credits rolled for the last time. There would be no cut and dry, happy ending, no epic Cadillac ride into the sunset for Tony Soprano, New Jersey's favorite fictional wiseguy (sorry, "waste management consultant").
In fact, the silence was so deafening that many watching thought that their TV sets had spontaneously died. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the show's debut and tied up in all the nostalgia persists an important question. What actually happened to Tony Soprano?
At a fundamental level, public relations is about conversations: sparking them, guiding them and maintaining them with the public.
In "Contagious," Jonah Berger writes, "people prefer sharing things that make them seem entertaining rather than boring, clever rather than dumb, and hip rather than dull" (Luttrell, "Social Media: How to Engage, Share, and Connect").
Social Currency
Vivaldi Founder and CEO Eric Joachimsthaler, a digital brand consultant, considers what Berger described to be social currency or "the extent to which people share brands or information about brands as part of their everyday social lives."
A simple Twitter query of "The Sopranos finale" reveals that, in the past three days, 24 tweets have been sent containing those three words. Sure, eight mentions a day doesn't sound like a lot, but consider that these are 8 mentions a day for a specific episode that ran 4,278 days ago (02/25/2019)! For reference, a Twitter search for "Veronica Mars finale," a show that ended less than a month before "The Sopranos," yields only one tweet in the past three days -- that tweets also mentions The Sopranos finale.
There's clearly something weird going on with "The Sopranos," and I'm not talking about connected guys bringing cash-filled envelopes through the back door of Satriale's Pork Store. I'm talking about 60 minutes of 12-year-old TV programming throwing around this type of social media clout in 2019.
In "Social Media: How to Engage, Share, and Connect," Regina Luttrell said, "Successful initiatives tend to contain similar elements, including an amazing storyline, emotional appeal, and context, which together trigger experiences that stay at the forefront of the consumer's mind."
Let's return to Berger. He told us that people want to share those things that make them feel clever rather than dumb.
By all means, David Chase, the show's writer and creator, wanted to put the average audience member's brain into a pretzel with the final scene. He does so by subverting many of the tropes that made "The Sopranos" so identifiable. For one, Tony and his family were eating in a diner that we had never seen before. Then, there were camera cuts that continually broke the 180-degree rule, a catalog of pensive shots on other diner patrons with unclear motives and, most shockingly, Tony speaking calmly about his status with law enforcement. When the screen cuts to black, you can't blame the audience for its disorientation.
The fact of the matter is that Chase wrote a finale that intellectually challenges and engages viewership. Upon rewatching, all the clues are there for each audience member to make an educated guess about what actually happens to Tony.
"Whether Tony Soprano is alive or dead is not the point," said Chase's publicist in a letter to Vox, "The final scene of The Sopranos raises a spiritual question that has no right or wrong answer."
It's a question that diehards of the show can, and do, grapple with on their own feeds, with the effect of being perceived as particularly informed or clever among their online communities.
The Second Screen Effect
Indeed, this type of buzz-worthy ending was ahead of its time in 2007, just around the time that social media began its global takeover.
What makes an ending like that of the "The Sopranos" finale play in 2019 is the emergence of second screen viewing. According to a 2017 eMarketer study, 177.7 million American adults admitted to regularly using a digital device while watching TV.
Had the finale run in 2019, the shocked audience would not have just thought that their TV sets were broken, they would have tweeted about how they thought their TV sets were broken. The landslide of tweets at cable and internet providers, YouTube reaction videos and r/thesopranos knee-jerk theory Reddit posts may have actually broken the internet.
"The Sopranos" finale is so fascinating as a public relations student because it shows us how a stunt can create enduring conversations by simply having a sense for what could be social currency for your target publics. It's fascinating because"The Sopranos" finale has remained a social media darling a decade later, despite not initially being kickstarted by social media chatter or second screen viewing.
Chris, I just watched an episode of CNN's 2000 series entitled "The Platinum Age of Television: Part 1" in which it talked about the cultural significance of The Sopranos. Although I think that the series finale of The Sopranos was extremely well done and much talked about, I believe it is bold of you to label it as "the best social currency in tv history." It is true that The Sopranos will go down as one of the best shows to get be on television, but I think that there are other shows that have more social currency in today's media. For example, Friends, which ended in three years before The Sopranos, is still culturally relevant on Twitter today …
Chris, this was phenomenally written! You not only have a well-developed writer's voice, but you seamlessly intertwined a popular TV show through a public relations lens. And, as someone who has never seen an episode of "The Sopranos," I didn't feel like I needed an extensive background in order to be actively engaged with the content of the post. In fact, I started thinking of other TV shows that continue to be referenced on social media even though they also had a season finale many years ago. In particular, I think of the beloved show, "The Office," which still has people talking about the perfect Jim and Pam type relationship, or sharing Michael Scott GIFs, on Twitter even though the…