At a bare minimum, this should have been a miniseries. Not Fade Away rushes through the sixties, minimally punctuated with cultural markers. While this rambling approach has been criticized, it gives the sixties a sense of being a swerving series of false starts, lulls, and occasional successes rather than a slow buildup to Haight-Ashbury or Woodstock. My biggest problem with the film - apart from the strange and unnecessary bookends - was wanting to spend more time with these characters and to enjoy more of the beautiful moments that writer/director David Chase crafted.
The small references and unique touches Chase included allow the film to mostly overcome the "1960s bildungsroman" base that is pretty exhausted at this point. The incredibly devious band members, the choking-on-a-joint incident, and having Douglas (John Magaro) praise Robert Johnson/Son House's blues to a black man (Landers - played by Isiah Whitlock Jr.) who only listens to the popular white interpretations of the blues all add to the provincial perspective on the Sixties. Instead of the usual big city/"someone meets the Stones" fare we usually see, the film follows Douglas, his band, and his family through their various issues in suburban New Jersey with mercifully-brief mentions of Sixties touchstones.