Well, what to say? Phil got his and then everything just goes on. The ending led lots of people, me included, to think at first that the cable went out and my son to call with "WTF??!!", also not an uncommon response. I am not sure if I like what Chase did or not and I know that is because I, again like most people, like to know what happens, to have the ends tied up a bit more neatly.
In a terrific review of the final episode, Matt Zoller Seitz says:
Chase's attitude toward people; they are what they are, they rarely change, and when they do, they stay changed for as long as it takes to realize that they were more comfortable with their old selves, at which point they revert; and once they're taken out of the picture, by illness or incarceration or death, the world keeps turning without them.
This is an excellent point. In therapy, patients do not change in kind, only by degree. And in the respect, Tony did do some successful work in therapy. I think many people had unrealistic expectations of what Melfi should have been able to accomplish with Tony (referring now to last week's episode), believing that if therapy were successful, Tony would be a changed man, reform, somehow become who he is not. What they failed to see is that neither Tony nor any of us changes like that -- we can become better versions of ourselves but not new selves.