Last Year At Pine Barrens

I just read a fairly well done coffee table book about The Sopranos. There's no doubt creator David Chase is the resident genius, but in interviews he can come across rather poorly.

Aside from the cut-to-black ending of the finale, nothing in the show has raised more mystery than what happened to the Russian in the "Pine Barrens" episode. Here's what Chase has to say about it:

Who knows where he went? Who cares about some Russian? This is what Hollywood has done to America. Do you have to have closure on every little thing? Isn't there any mystery in the world? It's a murky world out there. It's a murky life these guys lead. And by the way, I do know where the Russian is. But I'll never say because so many people got so pissy about it.

Look, not everything needs to be tied up with a bow, but this is still a form of storytelling, not just murky real life, and storytelling goes back way before Hollywood. When you have a plot that revolves around two guys chasing a third guy they're trying to kill, wanting to know how that turns out is not only understandable, it's something the writer should let us in on.