The bell on the door jingles as it opens. Journey is playing in the background and Tony Soprano looks up from his plate of food at the little New Jersey restaurant before the screen cuts to black and there's 10 seconds of silence followed by the ending credits.

That's the last "The Sopranos" fans will get to see of their crime family that they've been following since the 20th century, and it's an ending that has won both criticism and praise. But don't look for me on the bandwagon slamming such a thing: It's the kind of ending I love.

Growing up, I could not get over the human fascination of having fiction be so unlike reality that it was almost impossible to suspend disbelief sometimes. I mean, even the grittiest fiction, the most realistic work, would be great until you got to the end where everything would be tied up, and most of the important questions would be answered.

Back in high school, I was part of the drama team, and since I couldn't act very well, I directed instead. My senior year, we did "Little Women," a nice classic that almost seemed unlike the kind of stuff we normally did, like "Kiss the Girl," or even more interesting, "Phantom of the Soap Opera."

I'm not sure how familiar you are with "Little Women," but by the end of the second act, one of the girls die in what I think is some of the best stage writing you can find. But for whatever reasons, the people who adapted the Louisa May Alcott book didn't want their audiences to go home crying, so they added an abbreviated third act where we see the girls older, more mature and happier. And by the time the play is over, you forget about the emotions you felt in the final scenes of one of the little women.

I didn't like that, and to my surprise, the drama team advisor didn't like it. So we did something that probably wasn't very nice: We cut the entire third act. So when audiences came to the play, they experienced the loss of this character, they felt the impact of this literature, and they didn't have time to have the tears dry up before they left the theater. They left in tears.

Why would I go and do such a thing? Because life doesn't always end on a happy note. Life doesn't always wrap up nice and clean at the end of the day -- or in "Brady Bunch" days, at the end of the hour.

There's not always going to be a finality, there's not always going to be a tie-up. There is not going to be a scene where every single question gets answered.

That's not to say that some shows shouldn't have endings. Some of them have the endgame in mind -- and have it from the beginning. Like "Lost" should have a real ending, because the actual progression for the audience was set up as we wait for these castaways to be "found." And, of course, "Battlestar Galactica" should have an ending, because once again, we had an endgame established -- finding Earth -- and there needs to be some sort of resolution involding that end.

But that doesn't mean we need to neatly wrap up everything out there. "The Sopranos" was great because the entire ride of that series was nothing more than a glimpse into the life of a mob family. We jumped in at nowhere in particular, and we jumped out at nowhere in particular. When I think about it, such an ending is no surprise, since it's consistent with the rest of the series.

I guess I just want to know why it's the audience that dictates the ending of something wonderful, and not the writer. Why is the audience always in control? Yes, the audience should always have a say, because in the end you are selling it to them in some shape or form, but sometimes the audience has to accept that this is the way it is, and they just might not like it. And I would've hated to see David Chase, for example, bow to pressure to put a "real" ending on "The Sopranos" out of fears that he would get some of the negative feedback he's getting. Is that Journey I hear? Anyway, I'm glad he didn't bow to the pressure, because the most important thing is ...

Michael Hinman is the site coordinator and founder of Airlock Alpha, writing out of Tampa, Fla. He can be reached at mhinman@airlockalpha.com.