While the season’s final episode of The Sopranos left a lot of people disappointed, it thrilled me with dis-ease. I had all but given up on the series about halfway through the season — the writing seemed tired and obvious, the plot points flat out unbelievable — but the sense of expectations betrayed last night I thought was a perfect commentary on two of the show’s ongoing concerns: therapy and recovery.

By failing to do the kind of thing many fans and members of his extended family think him destined to do (whack rival boss Phil Leotardo for killing one of his capos, or take out his “nephew” Christopher for banging some broad he wanted for his own), Tony is letting them down — but he is delighting his therapist. The scene where he was complaining to Dr. Melfi that he had been a faithful husband and had in general tried to control his impulses only to be rewarded in this fashion was priceless. Anyone who has gone as far into the house of mirrors therapy offers as Tony has knows the feeling: Where is my big reward?

Christopher, meanwhile, met the perfect woman in AA. Except for the fact that he’s married. And his wife is expecting. And she is someone his boss has designs on. So not long after she is fucking him in his car after a meeting (I must be going to the wrong groups!) they are smoking heroin together and congratulating each other because they are not using needles. Like a lot of people in recovery they are frustrated that, after months or even years of good behavior, all they get is their sanity

The dis-ease comes from the sense of disappointment both Tony and Christopher feel in ordinary life. They’ve got to blow — maybe. One of the hints about next year’s short final season (eight episodes remain) may lie in the Christmas party at Tony’s at the end. Christmas is the ultimate disappointment for many adults; you never get what you want, someone else always has more. Bobby Baccala’s son is watching Casablanca on TV and it’s early in the story, before Rick comes out of his shell to fight for the woman he loves, and then for France. “I don’t stick my neck out for nobody,” Bogie says after letting the Nazis haul Peter Lorre away — but what would it mean for Tony to stick his neck out for someone? Would it mean to act or suffer those slings and arrows?

What he fears most is himself, I think, or the worst side of himself. Did you notice that when he left the hospital, offering a truce to Leotardo in the Christmas spirit, that the bodyguard he encountered at the door looked like a miniature version of Tony — same jacket, same hair? “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” said the doppelganger — in the hospital? At death’s door? Hard to tell if it was meant as a promise or a threat.