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LODI, N.J. (CBS/AP) ― "The Sopranos" eight-year run ended Sunday night with an episode that drew mixed reviews from fans in New Jersey, including the few hundred who watched it at a local strip club that doubled as the mob family's headquarters on the show.

Most longtime fans were anxiously waiting to learn whether mob boss Tony Soprano would survive the finale of HBO's blockbuster series, which filmed many scenes in the Garden State during its long run.

And when the show's final scene ended with Tony and his family eating dinner at a cozy family restaurant, the fans had their answer.

"It was a big dud," said Joseph Manuella, 57, of Glen Rock, who was among about 200 fans watching the show at Satin Dolls, the Lodi strip club known to "Sopranos" fans as the Bada Bing, the headquarters for Tony and his crew. The crowd at the bar was three-deep as the show aired, and even the club's dancers took the hour off to watch it.

"People were getting ready for the big bang, like maybe the whole family was going to get whacked in the restaurant," Manuella said. "But it was like a fireworks show without the finale."

Tom Devlin, who drove out from Pittsburgh just to watch the final episode at the club, thought the show—especially the ending -- was great. He thinks there will be "at least a couple of movies coming out of that show. That's why they didn't kill him."

Most fans said they would truly miss the show, especially residents of several blue-collar towns in north Jersey that were home to some of the locations used in the series. They had developed a fondness for Tony, Carmela, Silvio and the rest of the cast even before the show debuted on Jan. 10, 1999.

And that affection was highlighted by a recent Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll that found New Jerseyans who wanted to see Tony survive the final episode outnumbered those who didn't by a 2-1 margin.

Among those rooting for Tony was Jane Souza, the manager of a Kearny restaurant a few steps down from the building that served as Satriale's Pork Store, one of the fictional crime family's haunts.

"It was very exciting," Souza said. "A lot of people would come and watch. The only downside was that they took up all the parking, but they would always give plenty of notice. And the actors were very nice to talk to."

To illustrate the latter point, Souza proudly pointed to several framed pictures taken of her and various cast members including Tony (James Gandolfini), son A.J. (Robert Iler), Adriana (Drea de Matteo) and Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico).

While few television shows have been as exhaustively analyzed and deconstructed, there is little disagreement on one point: For better or worse, "The Sopranos" imported its vision of modern-day New Jersey to the rest of the nation.

Well, a slice of New Jersey at least.

New York Giants offensive tackle Kareem McKenzie, who hails from Willingboro in the southern half of the state, considers himself a casual fan of the series but acknowledged he has tuned in to the rebroadcast of the shows during the week (the Giants are often otherwise occupied on Sundays, particularly during the fall).

"Strip clubs, malls—it's definitely more a North Jersey thing," McKenzie said. "South Jersey is more rural."

On a more personal level, not everyone has been enthralled with the depiction of Italian-Americans as mobsters, a stereotype that has become a staple of popular culture.

"It seems as though bigotry is not OK, except when it comes to Italian-Americans," said Emanuele Alfano, head of Italian American One Voice, a coalition of Italian-American organizations. "They have shown us as the lowest of the low: Killers, drug addicts, wife-beaters. The women are always promiscuous, the young people are always stupid. People don't see it; as long as they're being entertained, they don't care."

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)