Great piece.
though I didn’t root for Tony. Every time he committed an act of violence, it reminded me how evil he was and how deluded his self-respectability and sense of honour. This was the beauty of the sopranos for me, you want to like him and are encouraged to sympathise with his angst, then you regroup.
maybe this is the female lens. I found Carmela just as interesting, more so, since she could maintain the illusion of being a good wife and mother, when clearly understanding what the family business was and her husband’s role in it. And her smoothing things over and ignoring someone ever existed when they were whacked on the instruction of her husband.
unusual for this genre that there were such strong and complex female roles. This is why I kept watching, almost all other similar series spectacularly fail the Bechdel test.
Oh my. How could i have forgotten that scene! I just watched it back, thanks for flagging. Devastating!
J Bryant
2 years ago
An insightful analysis by the author. I think another aspect of the show that made it work so well was the contrast between Tony Soprano and the other mafia members. Tony had the rudiments of a conscience and at least sometimes tried to do the right thing, but those around him were amoral thugs. They never questioned their actions and, I suspect, never lost a moment’s sleep.
I’ve come to think of the early 2000s as a golden age for television. In addition to The Sopranos there were shows like The Wire, Band of Brothers and the quirky but brilliant Six Feet Under. I’m afraid Hollywood may have sunk too deep into the progressive mire to produce shows like that again.
About 24 hours after I posted the comment it was removed ‘pending moderation’. It was later reinstated.
That was unusual because the comment was not flagged for moderation when I originally posted it. I’ve now had several comments flagged ‘pending moderation’ when I posted them. I have absolutely no idea what triggers the moderation filter because the offending comments were entirely bland and certainly didn’t include strong language. All the flagged comments were eventually posted to the comments section, presumably after a human being had reviewed them. I even deleted one of my comments that was pending moderation because I was so fed up with this moderation system.
We all recently learned that people who don’t subscribe to Unherd will soon be blocked from participating in the comments section. Apparently participating in discussions is a benefit of membership. I am now so sick of the arbitrary moderation policy that I’ve begun to question whether I will renew my membership when the time comes. We’ll see how Unherd develops and whether it can find its niche once covid is no longer the main source of discussion.
I notice that you are not a member of Unherd, Mr. Stanhope. I will be sorry to see your comments disappear after this week.
Coincidentally, we’ve just finished watching The Sopranos through for the third time and are now rerunning The Wire. Sadly nothing of a televisual nature, either here or from the US, comes close to the integrity of these, as well as Boardwalk, Six Feet & Band of Brothers. Well said.
There now remains a massive space which program makers could fill with quality product. Whilst Billions & Succession aren’t bad, compared to the above, they’re lightweight.
As to Tony, on a final point, as someone also mentioned here too, the others around him are worse… Richie Aprille, Ralphie, Paulie, Christopher, Phil Leotardo, Johnny Sack, Janice etc. In fact the only one who you could feel slightly sorry for is Bobby Bacalliari.
I never felt this as described by the article, and you.
To me he was nothing but pure evil, and I am always amazed by hearing people rooted for him. I always hoped they would kill him off, but never did – I guess this is some facet of people, that they just cannot see evil and loath it, but rationalize it – as it says. Satan always makes himself attractive, and so people fallow him. I did watch the show as there is so very little I can bare to watch on the streaming services, but did not much like it, although went along for the story, and what happens next.
I have seen evil in my long and weird life, and it never is attractive to me because of that, because I have seen the real thing.
Yes, it was a good time for television, with great writing combined with better production values. Things have really gone of the rails since then.
Judy Posner
2 years ago
Personally, I think that the answer is much simpler. It is all about Gandolfini. He was more than just a good actor. His charm and charisma just oozes from every pore. His almost infantile, minor speech defect. The list is endless. While the rest of the characters are certainly interesting, and especially his wife “Nurse Jackie”, Tony is almost indescribable with his nuanced expressions and larger than life presence. A huggable teddy bear in a criminal persona. Long live the Sopranos!
This is true. There are countless scenes when Gandolfini goes through several emotions within a matter of seconds. He had an almost unmatched dramatic ability to portray human complexity with all of its self-contradictions.
Absolutely agree. For me, the combination of acting by , Gandolfini and the script by David Chase made the Sopranos a once in a lifetime television event . Except for the Wire, there is no other show that was so addictive I would wait for it to return during every lengthy pause. Even Mad Men bored me after while and I lived through those days.
I think that’s right. I had the same feeling about the protagonists in Top Boy, which I think got close to Sopranos for quality crime drama. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been so interested in those evil characters if they hadn’t been so attractive and thus somehow people I could sympathise with. Shallow, huh?
The other great touch re: Tony Soprano as psychopath, sadly not discussed in this great article, were the plot lines around Tony’s distress when animals were killed, notably the racehorse in Ralphie’s stable. He cried more about that animal than for any human’s suffering, even his own…
John Lewis
2 years ago
Tony is an evil revoltingly amoral bigot, completely unapologetic to the world if not to his subconscious anyway for his thoughts and actions.
The trope of the compelling anti-hero is well known and obviously relevant here. However with the relentless media and entertainment pushback against so-called toxic masculinity and unacceptable attitudes Tony, warts and all, has become more appealing than his palpably loathsome character ever deserved.
It sounds a bit like I Claudius- I think his mother was called Livia ( played by the splendid Sian Phillips)-the fascination was to see what awful thing happened next . Like the Romans the Soprano’s are an Italian family who continue with their traditional ,if gruesome , values.
Andrew Raiment
2 years ago
Another show that has great characterisation is Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad prequel.
Jonathan Oldbuck
2 years ago
Great detail here. Rob clearly knows the show well, which you can’t say about all discussions of The Sopranos. I think years of blu ray watching, recent streaming and You Tube has helped a lot, not just to grow a new audience but to help those who first watched the show 20 yrs ago appreciate all its complexities. For instance, none of us appreciated first time around the astonishingly rich foreshadowing that occurs everywhere (esp with Vito).
It’s the greatest TV show ever partly because it is the densest; character is the driving force behind everything which is shown in many ways beyond dialogue and plot: dress, photography, comportment, not to mention endless deeper themes of philosophy, politics and literary allusion. (Sometimes this can sound highfalutin but the dialogue is not above very effective base and crude humour either). Though Tony is the central player riven with moral complexity all of the other characters are equally compromised and display both weaknesses and virtues. Nobody escapes, everybody can be self-serving and hypocritical. Perhaps this is also why the show is so compelling in our current era of moral purity and Soviet-level intolerance of heterodox opinions. After all, Meadow was one of the first SJWs from hell.
Rob made good points about Tony’s self-pity, but he is further explored through other personas like Gary Cooper, the general, the captain, the skip, “toxic personality”, the gambler etc.
It’s also brilliant because it’s true to life and funny, despite ostensibly being about criminality and deviance. Half of the family scenes in Tony’s kitchen could be played with a laughter track and would fit into a classic style US sitcom. Family anxieties, kids growing up, petty jealousies and slights, all portrayed in intelligent ways. (“Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this”). In this regard The Sopranos is one of the finest black comedies with salty dialogue the likes of which has never been heard before. What about the jokes!!?? There’s too many to mention. I could die laughing listening to Paulie sometimes.
p.s. it also helps to know Goodfellas inside-out
p.p.s. Rob’s Twitter feed contains a sensational Sopranos scene when Tony gifts Meadow Davey Scatino’s sons’ car which he took in lieu of a gambling debt. Just brilliant!
The best one was when Christopher & Paulie had to whack the Russian and got lost in the snowbound woods, having failed to kill him. Bobby & Tony came to their rescue the next day. Bobby, pointing out a warning sign en route to the rescue which read “Bears Left” said (I paraphrase) “when we first came out here hunting when I was a kid with my dad, he saw that sign, turned the car around and went home”. That’s an example of the kind of observational writing which elevated The Sopranos beyond the normal.
Pine Barrens is brilliant for many reasons. My favourite part is when Tony explodes into laughter when Bobby appears in the kitchen wearing his hi-vis hunting gear. Not only is it just funny, it also plays into the long-running bullying and petty sniping of/at Bobby by Tony. Bobby’s earnest decency and honesty (it’s all relative!) comes to be appreciated and envied by Tony in the last season.
I think the story was that Steve walked in wearing a jockstrap or something similar.
Michael J. McEachern
2 years ago
What made Tony Soprano was so believable was his view of himself as a soldier of sorts, in a battle between “family” and the law. Reading the words of real mobsters in true crime publications just confirms the above and killing close friends or even relatives is justified by the victim’s cooperation with the law (the enemy) making one a traitor or by simply following the boss’s orders without question. Tony’s psychological problems and therapy are not believable and in real-life mob situations would undoubtedly result in death by reason of risking the “family” business. Tony also showed acts of kindness that wouldn’t be typical of real mobsters, apart from being “big tippers” to show off. Bravo for the Sopranos; we won’t see its like again.
Tony Taylor
2 years ago
The ending of The Sopranos is widely considered unsatisfactory. Certainly, from a personal perspective, it left this viewer wanting more. The makers should have developed an entirely different ending based on the end of Newhart in which Tony passed out in a panic attack and then woke up next to Bubbles in The Wire.
ralph bell
2 years ago
I hope viewers can offer the same sympathy for the majority of inmates in our prisons who also have very difficult and disadvantaged childhoods that affect their criminal acts.
People have also been fascinated and in awe of gangsters and people who command power and fear.
Very interesting commentary on the manipulation of victim status.
Theres a glamour for the fictional criminals -as portrayed by attractive or at least charismatic actors like Edward G Robinson that I would imagine the real people didn’t have-they just terrified people
One of the things about tv shows like this is that typically actors have a lot of charisma, often even when they are playing unlikable people. There are real criminals like that, of course, but many aren’t appealing in the least. I always think about a film like Dead Man Walking which was interesting in that while looking to create empathy, it purposefully didn’t make the criminal appealing to the viewer and attempted to minimise the charismatic appeal of Sean Penn.
mark taha
2 years ago
Isn’t it a tradition to root for the outlaw? d**k Turpin,Jesse James, Billy the Kid,Dillinger-I was always on the gangsters’ side watching classic movies or the Untouchables.
Colin Haller
2 years ago
Audience fascination with characters like this is at least as old as Milton’s “Paradise Lost” …
CHARLES STANHOPE
2 years ago
Unfortunately I never saw the Sopranos as my Chief of Staff deemed it ‘unsuitable’.
However I was in Rome in June 2113 when lead actor James Gandolfini Esq, was fatally struck down by a Heart Attack.
Sadly the Italian papers reported that while his corpse was en route to the Mortuary/Hospital, some despicable toad stole his very expensive watch!
andrea bertolini
2 years ago
“Tony is clearly not a hero. Instead, the question should be: “Is Tony a villain or a victim?”” Typical of our age: everyone is a victim, no one is ultimately responsible for his actions.
mac mahmood
2 years ago
We have a parallel in geopolitics. Israel. Western audiences in general seem to think that the zionists led a terrible life in Europe, so when they see them perpetrate reprehensible things like terrorism, ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate bombings, wholesale human rights violations, etc., they find ways to exonerate them and blame the victims
Great piece.
though I didn’t root for Tony. Every time he committed an act of violence, it reminded me how evil he was and how deluded his self-respectability and sense of honour. This was the beauty of the sopranos for me, you want to like him and are encouraged to sympathise with his angst, then you regroup.
maybe this is the female lens. I found Carmela just as interesting, more so, since she could maintain the illusion of being a good wife and mother, when clearly understanding what the family business was and her husband’s role in it. And her smoothing things over and ignoring someone ever existed when they were whacked on the instruction of her husband.
unusual for this genre that there were such strong and complex female roles. This is why I kept watching, almost all other similar series spectacularly fail the Bechdel test.
Carmela is at the centre of one of the greatest scenes in the series when she is given the ultimate truth bomb by the Jewish psychiatrist.
I thought the same thing!
Oh my. How could i have forgotten that scene! I just watched it back, thanks for flagging. Devastating!
An insightful analysis by the author. I think another aspect of the show that made it work so well was the contrast between Tony Soprano and the other mafia members. Tony had the rudiments of a conscience and at least sometimes tried to do the right thing, but those around him were amoral thugs. They never questioned their actions and, I suspect, never lost a moment’s sleep.
I’ve come to think of the early 2000s as a golden age for television. In addition to The Sopranos there were shows like The Wire, Band of Brothers and the quirky but brilliant Six Feet Under. I’m afraid Hollywood may have sunk too deep into the progressive mire to produce shows like that again.
What happened to your splendid comment about the Wuhan Lab Leak?
It was the most popular of the day, and then suddenly disappeared?
About 24 hours after I posted the comment it was removed ‘pending moderation’. It was later reinstated.
That was unusual because the comment was not flagged for moderation when I originally posted it. I’ve now had several comments flagged ‘pending moderation’ when I posted them. I have absolutely no idea what triggers the moderation filter because the offending comments were entirely bland and certainly didn’t include strong language. All the flagged comments were eventually posted to the comments section, presumably after a human being had reviewed them. I even deleted one of my comments that was pending moderation because I was so fed up with this moderation system.
We all recently learned that people who don’t subscribe to Unherd will soon be blocked from participating in the comments section. Apparently participating in discussions is a benefit of membership. I am now so sick of the arbitrary moderation policy that I’ve begun to question whether I will renew my membership when the time comes. We’ll see how Unherd develops and whether it can find its niche once covid is no longer the main source of discussion.
I notice that you are not a member of Unherd, Mr. Stanhope. I will be sorry to see your comments disappear after this week.
Thank you.
Coincidentally, we’ve just finished watching The Sopranos through for the third time and are now rerunning The Wire. Sadly nothing of a televisual nature, either here or from the US, comes close to the integrity of these, as well as Boardwalk, Six Feet & Band of Brothers. Well said.
There now remains a massive space which program makers could fill with quality product. Whilst Billions & Succession aren’t bad, compared to the above, they’re lightweight.
As to Tony, on a final point, as someone also mentioned here too, the others around him are worse… Richie Aprille, Ralphie, Paulie, Christopher, Phil Leotardo, Johnny Sack, Janice etc. In fact the only one who you could feel slightly sorry for is Bobby Bacalliari.
I never felt this as described by the article, and you.
To me he was nothing but pure evil, and I am always amazed by hearing people rooted for him. I always hoped they would kill him off, but never did – I guess this is some facet of people, that they just cannot see evil and loath it, but rationalize it – as it says. Satan always makes himself attractive, and so people fallow him. I did watch the show as there is so very little I can bare to watch on the streaming services, but did not much like it, although went along for the story, and what happens next.
I have seen evil in my long and weird life, and it never is attractive to me because of that, because I have seen the real thing.
Yes, it was a good time for television, with great writing combined with better production values. Things have really gone of the rails since then.
Personally, I think that the answer is much simpler. It is all about Gandolfini. He was more than just a good actor. His charm and charisma just oozes from every pore. His almost infantile, minor speech defect. The list is endless. While the rest of the characters are certainly interesting, and especially his wife “Nurse Jackie”, Tony is almost indescribable with his nuanced expressions and larger than life presence. A huggable teddy bear in a criminal persona. Long live the Sopranos!
This is true. There are countless scenes when Gandolfini goes through several emotions within a matter of seconds. He had an almost unmatched dramatic ability to portray human complexity with all of its self-contradictions.
Absolutely agree. For me, the combination of acting by , Gandolfini and the script by David Chase made the Sopranos a once in a lifetime television event . Except for the Wire, there is no other show that was so addictive I would wait for it to return during every lengthy pause. Even Mad Men bored me after while and I lived through those days.
I think that’s right. I had the same feeling about the protagonists in Top Boy, which I think got close to Sopranos for quality crime drama. I’m sure I wouldn’t have been so interested in those evil characters if they hadn’t been so attractive and thus somehow people I could sympathise with. Shallow, huh?
The other great touch re: Tony Soprano as psychopath, sadly not discussed in this great article, were the plot lines around Tony’s distress when animals were killed, notably the racehorse in Ralphie’s stable. He cried more about that animal than for any human’s suffering, even his own…
Tony is an evil revoltingly amoral bigot, completely unapologetic to the world if not to his subconscious anyway for his thoughts and actions.
The trope of the compelling anti-hero is well known and obviously relevant here. However with the relentless media and entertainment pushback against so-called toxic masculinity and unacceptable attitudes Tony, warts and all, has become more appealing than his palpably loathsome character ever deserved.
It sounds a bit like I Claudius- I think his mother was called Livia ( played by the splendid Sian Phillips)-the fascination was to see what awful thing happened next . Like the Romans the Soprano’s are an Italian family who continue with their traditional ,if gruesome , values.
Another show that has great characterisation is Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad prequel.
Great detail here. Rob clearly knows the show well, which you can’t say about all discussions of The Sopranos. I think years of blu ray watching, recent streaming and You Tube has helped a lot, not just to grow a new audience but to help those who first watched the show 20 yrs ago appreciate all its complexities. For instance, none of us appreciated first time around the astonishingly rich foreshadowing that occurs everywhere (esp with Vito).
It’s the greatest TV show ever partly because it is the densest; character is the driving force behind everything which is shown in many ways beyond dialogue and plot: dress, photography, comportment, not to mention endless deeper themes of philosophy, politics and literary allusion. (Sometimes this can sound highfalutin but the dialogue is not above very effective base and crude humour either). Though Tony is the central player riven with moral complexity all of the other characters are equally compromised and display both weaknesses and virtues. Nobody escapes, everybody can be self-serving and hypocritical. Perhaps this is also why the show is so compelling in our current era of moral purity and Soviet-level intolerance of heterodox opinions. After all, Meadow was one of the first SJWs from hell.
Rob made good points about Tony’s self-pity, but he is further explored through other personas like Gary Cooper, the general, the captain, the skip, “toxic personality”, the gambler etc.
It’s also brilliant because it’s true to life and funny, despite ostensibly being about criminality and deviance. Half of the family scenes in Tony’s kitchen could be played with a laughter track and would fit into a classic style US sitcom. Family anxieties, kids growing up, petty jealousies and slights, all portrayed in intelligent ways. (“Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this”). In this regard The Sopranos is one of the finest black comedies with salty dialogue the likes of which has never been heard before. What about the jokes!!?? There’s too many to mention. I could die laughing listening to Paulie sometimes.
p.s. it also helps to know Goodfellas inside-out
p.p.s. Rob’s Twitter feed contains a sensational Sopranos scene when Tony gifts Meadow Davey Scatino’s sons’ car which he took in lieu of a gambling debt. Just brilliant!
The best one was when Christopher & Paulie had to whack the Russian and got lost in the snowbound woods, having failed to kill him. Bobby & Tony came to their rescue the next day. Bobby, pointing out a warning sign en route to the rescue which read “Bears Left” said (I paraphrase) “when we first came out here hunting when I was a kid with my dad, he saw that sign, turned the car around and went home”. That’s an example of the kind of observational writing which elevated The Sopranos beyond the normal.
Pine Barrens is brilliant for many reasons. My favourite part is when Tony explodes into laughter when Bobby appears in the kitchen wearing his hi-vis hunting gear. Not only is it just funny, it also plays into the long-running bullying and petty sniping of/at Bobby by Tony. Bobby’s earnest decency and honesty (it’s all relative!) comes to be appreciated and envied by Tony in the last season.
From what I’ve read, that particular scene wasn’t scripted and Gandolfini genuinely cracked-up at the sight of Bobby…
I think the story was that Steve walked in wearing a jockstrap or something similar.
What made Tony Soprano was so believable was his view of himself as a soldier of sorts, in a battle between “family” and the law. Reading the words of real mobsters in true crime publications just confirms the above and killing close friends or even relatives is justified by the victim’s cooperation with the law (the enemy) making one a traitor or by simply following the boss’s orders without question. Tony’s psychological problems and therapy are not believable and in real-life mob situations would undoubtedly result in death by reason of risking the “family” business. Tony also showed acts of kindness that wouldn’t be typical of real mobsters, apart from being “big tippers” to show off. Bravo for the Sopranos; we won’t see its like again.
The ending of The Sopranos is widely considered unsatisfactory. Certainly, from a personal perspective, it left this viewer wanting more. The makers should have developed an entirely different ending based on the end of Newhart in which Tony passed out in a panic attack and then woke up next to Bubbles in The Wire.
I hope viewers can offer the same sympathy for the majority of inmates in our prisons who also have very difficult and disadvantaged childhoods that affect their criminal acts.
People have also been fascinated and in awe of gangsters and people who command power and fear.
Very interesting commentary on the manipulation of victim status.
Theres a glamour for the fictional criminals -as portrayed by attractive or at least charismatic actors like Edward G Robinson that I would imagine the real people didn’t have-they just terrified people
One of the things about tv shows like this is that typically actors have a lot of charisma, often even when they are playing unlikable people. There are real criminals like that, of course, but many aren’t appealing in the least. I always think about a film like Dead Man Walking which was interesting in that while looking to create empathy, it purposefully didn’t make the criminal appealing to the viewer and attempted to minimise the charismatic appeal of Sean Penn.
Isn’t it a tradition to root for the outlaw? d**k Turpin,Jesse James, Billy the Kid,Dillinger-I was always on the gangsters’ side watching classic movies or the Untouchables.
Audience fascination with characters like this is at least as old as Milton’s “Paradise Lost” …
Unfortunately I never saw the Sopranos as my Chief of Staff deemed it ‘unsuitable’.
However I was in Rome in June 2113 when lead actor James Gandolfini Esq, was fatally struck down by a Heart Attack.
Sadly the Italian papers reported that while his corpse was en route to the Mortuary/Hospital, some despicable toad stole his very expensive watch!
“Tony is clearly not a hero. Instead, the question should be: “Is Tony a villain or a victim?”” Typical of our age: everyone is a victim, no one is ultimately responsible for his actions.
We have a parallel in geopolitics. Israel. Western audiences in general seem to think that the zionists led a terrible life in Europe, so when they see them perpetrate reprehensible things like terrorism, ethnic cleansing, indiscriminate bombings, wholesale human rights violations, etc., they find ways to exonerate them and blame the victims