The Sopranos is over. I’ve seen a bunch of people hate on the episode (including this dissection by Ezra Klein), but I wholeheartedly disagree. I think that this was the best way the Sopranos could end.

The Sopranos has always shown how Tony’s mob life intersects with the real world. From the very first episode, we have seen how Tony balances the complications of the lives he leads in both worlds (or how he doesn’t). The essence of the final season was the ebb and flow of fortune; the first episode of season six shows Tony as a glutton, devouring sushi and clearly putting on weight. Life could not be better. But when Junior shoots Tony, everything flips upside down. That up-and-down sets the tone for the final 20 episodes of the show.

I remember hating the way the show stopped last year at the mid-season break. The second last episode forecast a mob war between Tony and New York, but it was diffused after Phil’s heart attack. The last scene of the last pre-break episode was Christmas at the Sopranos, everyone alive and happy.

David Chase set up the end of the series the same way, but this time the ploy was warranted. The second last episode left Sil in the hospital, Bobby dead, and Tony asleep in a safe house holding an automatic weapon. We forever leave the Sopranos at a diner, everyone alive and relatively happy.

Anything can happen in the world of the Sopranos as we leave it. Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” cuts at the words “don’t stop,” and the scene goes black (a questionably cliche choice of music, but I support it nonetheless). The man who went to the restroom could come out and shoot Tony in the next minute, and Paulie could turn on Tony the next day. But Meadow is going to be a defense attorney, AJ is helping produce a movie about a man who gets sucked into the Internet through a data port, Carmela is looking to develop her beach house, and Tony is going to rebuild his crew. Their lives go on without us.

That’s how I’ve always liked to think about the show, that the characters lived in a world of their own that we got to see in 50-minute segments. So for the show to end on this note was absolutely perfect.

I write this as TNT replays a dozen episodes of Law & Order featuring actors from Sopranos as guest stars: witnesses, detectives, lawyers, judges, and murderers all. In the episode Im watching now, Johnny Sac is a New York mob boss. In an earlier one, Janice was an annoying, loud-mouthed witness. Nope, no typecasting here.

No better way to cap off the finale of a show that ended in the best possible way.