One of my favourite scenes – one of those scenes which makes The Sopranos so good – is when Carmela picks up the phone to hear that Jackie Jr has been shot by drug dealers, but we know it was Vito on Tony’s orders, and Tony is in the background looking concerned, but Anthony is looking at Tony and we wonder what he is thinking and Tony just says “You see.”
Cal RW
4 months ago
One of my favorite scenes from the Sopranos is when Patsi and Burt (minor members of Tony’s mob) go into a coffee shop and threaten the manager with extortion insisting on protection money. The manager explains he does not have discretionary funds. Patsi tells the manager that if he doesn’t pay up he will get a brick through the window or roughed up. The manager then explains that the corporation owns 10,000 of these coffee shops and counts every fu*king coffee bean in the store. He says, “if I give you a penny I’m getting fired and you have to start again. Even if you hurt me or the store, the corporation doesn’t give a sh*t.” Defeated, Patsi and Burt walk out muttering, “It’s over for the little guy.”
A reply from the States: the real mobsters these days are the guys starting wars around the world to put billions of dollars into their own pockets. The little guy coming around for his twenty dollars once a month is chicken feed.
They are very different. One is a parasite like a tapeworm. The Neo-Con warmongering corrupt politicians who do this evil for pay – they are predators, and we are their prey. Much like the book on covid by the Breggins:
”COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey Paperback – September 30, 2021”
It is looking, via the race replacement, Most wealth and power in the hands of the 0.001%, their wars, their pandemics, their destruction of the Middle Class and skilled Tradesmen, (London less than half Native British) the open USA Border, the same in Europe – they in fact own us. We are the sheep, they are the mutton eaters.
I did not like the Sopranos – evil rats – but what they are is a sign the government is corrupt. A proper FBI – if it took time off from being the Deep State Secrete Police/Political Enforcers – would clean those trash up.
His praise of that totally silly show ‘Deadwood’ though…
Having lived all over the remote parts of the North West and know the people still on the frontier, such as it still was 40 years ago – he is some city guy who thinks putting on a costume and saying ‘aint’ for ‘is not’ makes authenticity. It does not. The show is some urban middle class directors pantomime of the frontier life 150 years ago.
2 plus 2 equals 4
4 months ago
I’ve watched the Sopranos all the way through maybe 4 times. Every time I’ve hated Carmela a bit more.
A brilliant character, fantastically written and there are no superlatives which do justice to Edie Falco’s performance. But Carmela is utterly loathsome. Not THE monster in the show, but certainly A monster.
She knows what good is and she knows what evil Tony and “the life” are. But she’s chosen evil over good and not, ultimately, because she’s scared or trapped. But because of her own greed, ambition and vanity. She may not be the one strangling snitches but she is complicit in every crime.
My favourite Carmela moment is probably in the final season when she is shut out of a meeting between some of the guys and Angie Bonpensiero, who has rebuilt her life after Big p***y’s death, is running a successful business, and now has “money on the street.”
The look on Edie Falco’s face is sublime. Such a talented actress.
I agree. You see in the sharp relief only good tv can deliver how she sells her soul for the glitter of a diamond necklace.
Dermot O'Sullivan
4 months ago
‘I tried to get out but they sucked me back in!’
L Easterbrook
4 months ago
Correction: Paulie does not try to extort the coffee chain cafe. It is Patsy and Burt
Phillip F
4 months ago
Like the author, the Dr. Krakower scene has remained the hub of my Sopranos viewing experience. I think it is because psychiatrists often wonder what type of patient—a Nazi, a psychopath, a molester—they might be incapable of treating. It is a somewhat self-congratulatory discussion. (I am a psychiatrist and I’ve been there. The usual answer is to imagine being able to talk with anybody.) The clarifying moment in the Krakower scene for me is that the doctor not only confronts Carmela with the truth, he refuses to accept her “blood money” payment. He will not collude in denying the reality of the money’s origins. This refusal is not only a harder call for the psychiatrist, it is a harder call for the viewer because we, indulging the rights of disbelief-suspenders, want to go along for the fun vicious ride and get to be mobsters with clean hands. Our collusion is exposed.
On a different note, I loved the phrase “Deadwood guy”. Not just because I am one, but because it reminds me what a pleasure it is to have these remarkable series to choose among.
I have also noticed a high correlation between those who like Deadwood and those who like the Sopranos. I liked both. But I’m a Deadwood guy, myself. 😉
Allison Barrows
4 months ago
Not impossible at all. Some of us grew up with families like the Sopranos, living in upper-middle class neighborhoods, golfing at the country club, sending their kids to private schools – but everyone knew what the dads and their brothers and cousins were. One such guy’s brother owned a swimming pool company. Another had a vending machine business. Tony and Carmela even look like my friend’s mom and dad. He, by the way, was in “maintenance and disposal”.
And no matter how much money they had or how big their houses were, an old lady all in black would be cooking in the kitchen and an old guy in a wifebeater undershirt would be sitting on a crappy folding chair in the driveway smoking a cigar. Carmela’s parents, who were grateful their last name didn’t end with a vowel, would have been scandalized.
Melissa Knox
4 months ago
Tony does strike me as a sociopath. Sociopaths can be most charming–Tony is, too. And ruthless. He’s his mother’s son. Yes, a parable of America’s decline from the point of view of the gangster–see Robert Warshow’s The Gangster as Tragic Hero. Not a Freudian comedy. It’s too damn real. Don’t forget, crime rates went down in NJ on nights when the show aired–the mob was home, glued to the set
melissaknox.substack.com
John Hope
4 months ago
I’ve always appreciated the brilliance of Chase using the Jewish Dr. Krakower as the reflection of the foundation of Western morality based in the Old Testament. Positioning him as an Old Testament prophet Krakower tells Carmela (and the audience) that’s she’s just as guilty as Tony her only option is to leave now. He goes so far as to say that he won’t accept her “blood money.” Stark contrast to Dr. Memphis’s moral relativism.
I actually saw it as a cheap shot, to make the psychiatrist Jewish, make him to be the font of wisdom, and counterpose it to the corruptness and hypocrisy of a white christian (pretty much the only social identity group that can be portrayed in disparaging ways), who is not only labeled by the psychiatrist as an enabler (yes, he is allowed to do labeling, from the towering height of his timeless morality), but is also revealed by herself to be a bigot (of course, what else…) when she says something about “you people”.
That was pretty much the only scene that I did not like much in The Sopranos. I did not watch it when it came out, maybe back then I would have appreciated that “brilliance” myself, but I watched it maybe 5 years ago, by then suffering from an ever-increasing defensiveness due to the unstoppable advance of wokesterism in America.
One more point: in real life it is considered unprofessional if a psychiatrist “bluntly lectures” a client, labels her coldly, and says things like “I won’t take your blood money”. That psychiatrist would not be viewed as a positive character by his peers or his professional board, for instance. I know, I know, it is a movie. And in movies psychiatrists are often portrayed acting unprofessionally, e.g. having sex with their clients, revealing confidential information, etc, and yet the behavior may be put in a positive or sympathetic light in order to advance the plot. It’s all fine, it is all fiction, I won’t get worked up about the Heisenberg compensator either. I just presented this so as to put the topic into a larger context.
Chase clearly understands the Tribe, Hash and his trouble with the rappers ect
Stephen Kristan
4 months ago
Wow, what an article and what impassioned commentary from readers! (That’s nonsarcastic.)
I tried watching the series but couldn’t get through the first season. I couldn’t stomach the show. Every male Italo-American character (even Tony’s porcine little son) was the same character, using the same hideous sub-grammatical New Joisey, Italo-American intonation, displaying the same moral opacity, grovelling in the same way to please the power masters. It was almost physically painful to hear these endlessly venal knuckle-draggers and monotone morons deese, dem, and dose’n their ways through their relentlessly conscience-free days and nights. They were hardly human. If I were Italo-American I would have sued HBO, or whatever, for defamation of a demographic. (Not seriously. I’m a free-speecher… just ranting.)
But given the encomia expressed in this article and among the admiring commentators, I feel drawn to take another look.
You’re not from Jersey, are you? 😉 Those aren’t stereotypes. That’s Jersey. Ever seen Chris Christie’s clan? Remember Frank Sinatra was from Hoboken, NJ.
Michael McElwee
4 months ago
“Was it a duck?”
Samantha Stevens
4 months ago
It’s funny, I never thought of Tony’s crimes as so different from other professions where people do violent or awful things and then go home at night and try to live another life, even if the motives are different. In the mind of a mafioso, there are rules that people agree to when they participate, and if you break them, you pay the price you agree upon. In Tony’s mind, this makes his “work” legitimate. Even if he knows deep inside that murder and extortion are morally wrong, those are the rules of the business.
Is this so different than what a soldier must confront emotionally? A correction officer? A police officer? I know these are professions on the right side of the law. But I am sure these professionals must grapple with what the rules of their professions require at times. How about those who make their fortunes on the backs of the poor? And for the record, I have the utmost respect for police – I could never do what they do.
I have always thought The Sopranos was brilliant in the way it insinuated many people have a veneer of legitimacy and tell themselves they are normal, upstanding citizens when they make choices all the time that, while seem reasonable to them, would seem inhumane to others.
It’s Tony’s humanity at times that makes him fascinating – the way he is infuriated when a stoned Christopher sits on Adriana’s dog and suffocates it. The way he loves his children. Then the brutality with which he can turn on someone in a second when he feels they violated a boundary.
The worst moments of the show for me are when Ralphie murders the young girl he had gotten pregnant. Even Tony hates him for that. And the murder of Adriana. Christopher is a despicable character – spoiled and vicious. And Lydia – she a masterpiece villain.
I could talk about The Sopranos forever. If, like I am, you are from the Jersey area, and you know certain Italians, these characters are not so unusual to you. The line between criminal and honest man isn’t always easy to define.
Luckily for me, I am but a poor HS teacher so I sleep well at night knowing I am underpaid, overworked, and doing my best to help kids. No moral dilemmas for me.
YES, what the characters in the show do is diametrically opposite to the ones you list, rough men who stand by ready to do violence on our behalf so we may sleep at night.
Maybe some Bible – Christ and the Centurion, or Christ and asked on Tax – ‘Whose head is on the coin – then render to Caesar that which is his and God that which is his)
and most of all Romans 13
”Submission to Governing Authorities13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, ”
Those who defend the law are not those who break the law.
Postmodernism has taken the thinking of this day – that you get upvotes, Situational Ethics, Moral relativity is so ingrained in our sick society people no longer grasp anything.
The Sopranos show this – I just wanted them dead when I watched the sorry show, so did not enjoy it.
I actually agree with you. In Tony’s everyday mind, he isn’t the bad guy. But in the deep recesses of his mind, he knows he is. People cross lines from being the good guy to the bad guy without acknowledging it all the time. People excuse transgressions they make based on warped codes of conduct they invent in certain circumstances. But, as you state, morality is unchanging. Tony reveals that gray area so many people live. The bad guy isn’t always what you expect.
P.S. I do realize corrupt Government exists, and then they are the Sopranos. I would lump the CIA, NSA, FBI, MI5, Woke police chiefs, the majority of Uniparty Congress and Parliament – corrupt politicians…. as those.
But the footman, the solider, the cop, the prison warden – no, they are as us, under God’s approval.
Everywhere we look people seem to think the ends justifies the means because their “morality” is the right morality. As if there is such a thing as personal morality.
George K
4 months ago
The more I watched sopranos the more I got an impression that’s basically how the world normally works. I recognize Sopranos in every daily news. It’s Dr Krakower who isn’t normal
Maybe find a better set of friends. They are not how my normal world works. Postmodernism is working to make your cynical post true, but still – the majority remain moral.
Tyler Durden
4 months ago
The screenwriters surrounded Tony with genuine sociopaths or psychopaths so he could be maintained as a compromised hero. Yet he also became the template for the figure of the TV antihero who dominated those later blockbuster series from The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
The wider cultural point was that the Italian mafia were starting to retire themselves from the criminal landscape by that point in the 90s. While Scorcese’s violent portrayals remained popular (Goodfellas and Casino), the real doubt had been introduced by Coppola embodied by Pacino’s Michael Corleone. There it’s worth returning to the 3rd Godfather instalment which gives an interesting view on the Mob 1990s rather than Scorcese’s 60s, 70s and 80s.
Howard S.
4 months ago
Thank you for an excellent and insightful analysis of Tony’s and Carmela’s demons, which are legion. One further point I’d like to mention is the juxtaposition (love that word, used to get me extra credit in high school English essays) between Carmela’s session with the Jewish psychiatrist and her meeting with the Catholic priest, a black African (the Church does bring in African priests and nuns here in the States when there is a shortage), not her usual white, slightly effeminate confessor. You have already pointed out what the Freudian, 20th Century doctor, representing our Judeo-Christian society, tells her directly what to do – pack up yourself and the kids, and leave the man and his evil behind. Won’t even accept payment for the session, because he knows, and she does also, where that money came from. It is the African priest, representing the primitive, prehistoric nature of religion and by extension maybe organized religion itself, who advises Carmela to compartmentalize her relationship with her mobster husband: separate the violent criminal from the good provider, the violent, cold-blooded killer from the emotional rock she and her children lean on for support. Carmela has no real desire to leave the very comfortable lifestyle she is living, thanks to her husband, and the priest gives her permission, if you will, to continue this lifestyle, regardless of where the means for that lifestyle came from. Which probably included generous donations to the Church too, but that’s a topic for a different thread.
Jeff Cunningham
4 months ago
I thought the invention of the one-legged Russian woman was genius. The ongoing fight between her and Toni’s sister was priceless.
Charles Stanhope
4 months ago
I happened to be in Rome when James Gandolfini died there in 2013.
It was said that someone stole his Rolex watch as his corpse was being transported from his hotel to the mortuary.
Long ago, I shared a cab during the rain one afternoon in Manhattan with a stunning young woman who told me she was Italian-American. I brought up the Sopranos and said how great it was, hoping this might lead into some flirtatious conversation, but she was super angry at the stereotypical way it portrayed Italian-Americans. I told her all my Northern Italian friends loved it too because they associate Italian-Americans with Sicily and Southern Italy, which they look down upon as backward and criminally minded. That killed any hope of flirtation, but it did shut her up.
Samantha Stevens
4 months ago
We are all forgetting the other thing The Sopranos does to the viewer – makes you crave really good Italian food. The wine, the pasta on the show. There is no better food on earth than Italian food, and it’s a major character in every episode.
An interesting observation and one I had not thought about. You may have opened-up a new front: what were the characters actually disclosing as they fetishised over great-big pasta sauces?
A Reno
3 months ago
Although there were some great one-liners in The Sopranos that I found hilarious the fact remains that the entire series was, as Camille Paglia once said, “an ethnic minstrel show, “rife with offensive cliches about Italian-Americans that would never be tolerated were they about Jews or blacks.” In essence, it was the Italian American version of Norman Lear’s unintentionally racist “Good Times,” the 1970s series starring Jimmie Walker. Although some of the jokes were funny in Good Times and The Sopranos one has to see that both shows were built on the shoulders of “Amos and Andy.”
I watched every season of the series so I was not offended per se. I looked at the series as a comedic satire rather than a serious drama. Many of the jokes by the cast members and the malapropisms were brilliant. My beef was with the accuracy of the portrayal of the characters which in my opinion weren’t even close to being realistic. They were overblown inauthentic caricatures of gangsters exaggerated to the point of absurdity. If you compare the acting and writing in the Sorpanos to that of Scorcese’s Goodfellas I think you can see the difference in what I’m saying. The characters in Goodfellas were comedic at times but not to the point of creating a grotesque effect that took away from the drama. The screenplay and the actors were more realistic hence the drama came out for me with Goodfellas whereas David Chase missed big time.
The praise heaped upon The Sopranos is akin to the accolades given to the Beatles as the best musical group ever. I liked some Beatle songs and I liked aspects of The Sopranos but they were both far from the greatest of all time.
David Rosenberg
3 months ago
Whether or not Tony is a sociopath, he and his gang daily ruin or eliminate the lives of ordinary people. Unlike the protagonists of Deadwood, the leading figure of this series and those who support him, profit from him and seek his approval, are malicious. His popularity among the general population of the most prosperous society in the modern world, along with its ostensibly self-aware cultural critics, says something quite dispiriting about that population and those critics, to which the writer of the series and its broadcaster has unselfconsciously appealed. Essentially this is no different from movies and TV series about serial murderers. The issue is that these subjects have been persistently selected for our cultural attention, not whether the treatment of them is ironic vs satirical. Because I eagerly awaited each episode of the series when originally aired, I returned to it just this month hoping to recapture some of that pleasure. It’s terrible. The people are just terrible. I am now 82. That I was captivated by such crap and that your writers still are, requires more thoughtful consideration than this article provides.
One of my favourite scenes – one of those scenes which makes The Sopranos so good – is when Carmela picks up the phone to hear that Jackie Jr has been shot by drug dealers, but we know it was Vito on Tony’s orders, and Tony is in the background looking concerned, but Anthony is looking at Tony and we wonder what he is thinking and Tony just says “You see.”
One of my favorite scenes from the Sopranos is when Patsi and Burt (minor members of Tony’s mob) go into a coffee shop and threaten the manager with extortion insisting on protection money. The manager explains he does not have discretionary funds. Patsi tells the manager that if he doesn’t pay up he will get a brick through the window or roughed up. The manager then explains that the corporation owns 10,000 of these coffee shops and counts every fu*king coffee bean in the store. He says, “if I give you a penny I’m getting fired and you have to start again. Even if you hurt me or the store, the corporation doesn’t give a sh*t.” Defeated, Patsi and Burt walk out muttering, “It’s over for the little guy.”
Brilliant writing in that episode.
Just on a note of accuracy, the author of the article above misattributes that scene to Paulie.
I just commented on that before seeing yours. Glad someone else caught that
A reply from the States: the real mobsters these days are the guys starting wars around the world to put billions of dollars into their own pockets. The little guy coming around for his twenty dollars once a month is chicken feed.
They are very different. One is a parasite like a tapeworm. The Neo-Con warmongering corrupt politicians who do this evil for pay – they are predators, and we are their prey. Much like the book on covid by the Breggins:
”COVID-19 and the Global Predators: We Are the Prey Paperback – September 30, 2021”
It is looking, via the race replacement, Most wealth and power in the hands of the 0.001%, their wars, their pandemics, their destruction of the Middle Class and skilled Tradesmen, (London less than half Native British) the open USA Border, the same in Europe – they in fact own us. We are the sheep, they are the mutton eaters.
I did not like the Sopranos – evil rats – but what they are is a sign the government is corrupt. A proper FBI – if it took time off from being the Deep State Secrete Police/Political Enforcers – would clean those trash up.
Exactly, the top-notch murderers are in Washington DC along with their bankrollers on Wall Street. Compared to them Tony and the guys are Boy Scouts.
One of the most pithy articles I’ve read on The Sopranos.
To suggest it’s writing is gimmicky is one of the most arrogant things I’ve ever seen some unknown second rate author write.
His praise of that totally silly show ‘Deadwood’ though…
Having lived all over the remote parts of the North West and know the people still on the frontier, such as it still was 40 years ago – he is some city guy who thinks putting on a costume and saying ‘aint’ for ‘is not’ makes authenticity. It does not. The show is some urban middle class directors pantomime of the frontier life 150 years ago.
I’ve watched the Sopranos all the way through maybe 4 times. Every time I’ve hated Carmela a bit more.
A brilliant character, fantastically written and there are no superlatives which do justice to Edie Falco’s performance. But Carmela is utterly loathsome. Not THE monster in the show, but certainly A monster.
She knows what good is and she knows what evil Tony and “the life” are. But she’s chosen evil over good and not, ultimately, because she’s scared or trapped. But because of her own greed, ambition and vanity. She may not be the one strangling snitches but she is complicit in every crime.
My favourite Carmela moment is probably in the final season when she is shut out of a meeting between some of the guys and Angie Bonpensiero, who has rebuilt her life after Big p***y’s death, is running a successful business, and now has “money on the street.”
The look on Edie Falco’s face is sublime. Such a talented actress.
I agree. You see in the sharp relief only good tv can deliver how she sells her soul for the glitter of a diamond necklace.
‘I tried to get out but they sucked me back in!’
Correction: Paulie does not try to extort the coffee chain cafe. It is Patsy and Burt
Like the author, the Dr. Krakower scene has remained the hub of my Sopranos viewing experience. I think it is because psychiatrists often wonder what type of patient—a Nazi, a psychopath, a molester—they might be incapable of treating. It is a somewhat self-congratulatory discussion. (I am a psychiatrist and I’ve been there. The usual answer is to imagine being able to talk with anybody.) The clarifying moment in the Krakower scene for me is that the doctor not only confronts Carmela with the truth, he refuses to accept her “blood money” payment. He will not collude in denying the reality of the money’s origins. This refusal is not only a harder call for the psychiatrist, it is a harder call for the viewer because we, indulging the rights of disbelief-suspenders, want to go along for the fun vicious ride and get to be mobsters with clean hands. Our collusion is exposed.
On a different note, I loved the phrase “Deadwood guy”. Not just because I am one, but because it reminds me what a pleasure it is to have these remarkable series to choose among.
I have also noticed a high correlation between those who like Deadwood and those who like the Sopranos. I liked both. But I’m a Deadwood guy, myself. 😉
Not impossible at all. Some of us grew up with families like the Sopranos, living in upper-middle class neighborhoods, golfing at the country club, sending their kids to private schools – but everyone knew what the dads and their brothers and cousins were. One such guy’s brother owned a swimming pool company. Another had a vending machine business. Tony and Carmela even look like my friend’s mom and dad. He, by the way, was in “maintenance and disposal”.
And no matter how much money they had or how big their houses were, an old lady all in black would be cooking in the kitchen and an old guy in a wifebeater undershirt would be sitting on a crappy folding chair in the driveway smoking a cigar. Carmela’s parents, who were grateful their last name didn’t end with a vowel, would have been scandalized.
Tony does strike me as a sociopath. Sociopaths can be most charming–Tony is, too. And ruthless. He’s his mother’s son. Yes, a parable of America’s decline from the point of view of the gangster–see Robert Warshow’s The Gangster as Tragic Hero. Not a Freudian comedy. It’s too damn real. Don’t forget, crime rates went down in NJ on nights when the show aired–the mob was home, glued to the set
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I’ve always appreciated the brilliance of Chase using the Jewish Dr. Krakower as the reflection of the foundation of Western morality based in the Old Testament. Positioning him as an Old Testament prophet Krakower tells Carmela (and the audience) that’s she’s just as guilty as Tony her only option is to leave now. He goes so far as to say that he won’t accept her “blood money.” Stark contrast to Dr. Memphis’s moral relativism.
I actually saw it as a cheap shot, to make the psychiatrist Jewish, make him to be the font of wisdom, and counterpose it to the corruptness and hypocrisy of a white christian (pretty much the only social identity group that can be portrayed in disparaging ways), who is not only labeled by the psychiatrist as an enabler (yes, he is allowed to do labeling, from the towering height of his timeless morality), but is also revealed by herself to be a bigot (of course, what else…) when she says something about “you people”.
That was pretty much the only scene that I did not like much in The Sopranos. I did not watch it when it came out, maybe back then I would have appreciated that “brilliance” myself, but I watched it maybe 5 years ago, by then suffering from an ever-increasing defensiveness due to the unstoppable advance of wokesterism in America.
One more point: in real life it is considered unprofessional if a psychiatrist “bluntly lectures” a client, labels her coldly, and says things like “I won’t take your blood money”. That psychiatrist would not be viewed as a positive character by his peers or his professional board, for instance. I know, I know, it is a movie. And in movies psychiatrists are often portrayed acting unprofessionally, e.g. having sex with their clients, revealing confidential information, etc, and yet the behavior may be put in a positive or sympathetic light in order to advance the plot. It’s all fine, it is all fiction, I won’t get worked up about the Heisenberg compensator either. I just presented this so as to put the topic into a larger context.
Excellent, and fun, point. I could not enjoy the show because I wanted someone to kill them all too much, and it did not happen.
I think its a bit deeper than that
Chase clearly understands the Tribe, Hash and his trouble with the rappers ect
Wow, what an article and what impassioned commentary from readers! (That’s nonsarcastic.)
I tried watching the series but couldn’t get through the first season. I couldn’t stomach the show. Every male Italo-American character (even Tony’s porcine little son) was the same character, using the same hideous sub-grammatical New Joisey, Italo-American intonation, displaying the same moral opacity, grovelling in the same way to please the power masters. It was almost physically painful to hear these endlessly venal knuckle-draggers and monotone morons deese, dem, and dose’n their ways through their relentlessly conscience-free days and nights. They were hardly human. If I were Italo-American I would have sued HBO, or whatever, for defamation of a demographic. (Not seriously. I’m a free-speecher… just ranting.)
But given the encomia expressed in this article and among the admiring commentators, I feel drawn to take another look.
You’re not from Jersey, are you? 😉 Those aren’t stereotypes. That’s Jersey. Ever seen Chris Christie’s clan? Remember Frank Sinatra was from Hoboken, NJ.
“Was it a duck?”
It’s funny, I never thought of Tony’s crimes as so different from other professions where people do violent or awful things and then go home at night and try to live another life, even if the motives are different. In the mind of a mafioso, there are rules that people agree to when they participate, and if you break them, you pay the price you agree upon. In Tony’s mind, this makes his “work” legitimate. Even if he knows deep inside that murder and extortion are morally wrong, those are the rules of the business.
Is this so different than what a soldier must confront emotionally? A correction officer? A police officer? I know these are professions on the right side of the law. But I am sure these professionals must grapple with what the rules of their professions require at times. How about those who make their fortunes on the backs of the poor? And for the record, I have the utmost respect for police – I could never do what they do.
I have always thought The Sopranos was brilliant in the way it insinuated many people have a veneer of legitimacy and tell themselves they are normal, upstanding citizens when they make choices all the time that, while seem reasonable to them, would seem inhumane to others.
It’s Tony’s humanity at times that makes him fascinating – the way he is infuriated when a stoned Christopher sits on Adriana’s dog and suffocates it. The way he loves his children. Then the brutality with which he can turn on someone in a second when he feels they violated a boundary.
The worst moments of the show for me are when Ralphie murders the young girl he had gotten pregnant. Even Tony hates him for that. And the murder of Adriana. Christopher is a despicable character – spoiled and vicious. And Lydia – she a masterpiece villain.
I could talk about The Sopranos forever. If, like I am, you are from the Jersey area, and you know certain Italians, these characters are not so unusual to you. The line between criminal and honest man isn’t always easy to define.
Luckily for me, I am but a poor HS teacher so I sleep well at night knowing I am underpaid, overworked, and doing my best to help kids. No moral dilemmas for me.
***Moral Relativism Alert!!!***
YES, what the characters in the show do is diametrically opposite to the ones you list, rough men who stand by ready to do violence on our behalf so we may sleep at night.
Maybe some Bible – Christ and the Centurion, or Christ and asked on Tax – ‘Whose head is on the coin – then render to Caesar that which is his and God that which is his)
and most of all Romans 13
”Submission to Governing Authorities13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended.4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, ”
Those who defend the law are not those who break the law.
Postmodernism has taken the thinking of this day – that you get upvotes, Situational Ethics, Moral relativity is so ingrained in our sick society people no longer grasp anything.
The Sopranos show this – I just wanted them dead when I watched the sorry show, so did not enjoy it.
I actually agree with you. In Tony’s everyday mind, he isn’t the bad guy. But in the deep recesses of his mind, he knows he is. People cross lines from being the good guy to the bad guy without acknowledging it all the time. People excuse transgressions they make based on warped codes of conduct they invent in certain circumstances. But, as you state, morality is unchanging. Tony reveals that gray area so many people live. The bad guy isn’t always what you expect.
P.S. I do realize corrupt Government exists, and then they are the Sopranos. I would lump the CIA, NSA, FBI, MI5, Woke police chiefs, the majority of Uniparty Congress and Parliament – corrupt politicians…. as those.
But the footman, the solider, the cop, the prison warden – no, they are as us, under God’s approval.
Everywhere we look people seem to think the ends justifies the means because their “morality” is the right morality. As if there is such a thing as personal morality.
The more I watched sopranos the more I got an impression that’s basically how the world normally works. I recognize Sopranos in every daily news. It’s Dr Krakower who isn’t normal
‘Birds of a feather flock together’
Maybe find a better set of friends. They are not how my normal world works. Postmodernism is working to make your cynical post true, but still – the majority remain moral.
The screenwriters surrounded Tony with genuine sociopaths or psychopaths so he could be maintained as a compromised hero. Yet he also became the template for the figure of the TV antihero who dominated those later blockbuster series from The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
The wider cultural point was that the Italian mafia were starting to retire themselves from the criminal landscape by that point in the 90s. While Scorcese’s violent portrayals remained popular (Goodfellas and Casino), the real doubt had been introduced by Coppola embodied by Pacino’s Michael Corleone. There it’s worth returning to the 3rd Godfather instalment which gives an interesting view on the Mob 1990s rather than Scorcese’s 60s, 70s and 80s.
Thank you for an excellent and insightful analysis of Tony’s and Carmela’s demons, which are legion. One further point I’d like to mention is the juxtaposition (love that word, used to get me extra credit in high school English essays) between Carmela’s session with the Jewish psychiatrist and her meeting with the Catholic priest, a black African (the Church does bring in African priests and nuns here in the States when there is a shortage), not her usual white, slightly effeminate confessor. You have already pointed out what the Freudian, 20th Century doctor, representing our Judeo-Christian society, tells her directly what to do – pack up yourself and the kids, and leave the man and his evil behind. Won’t even accept payment for the session, because he knows, and she does also, where that money came from. It is the African priest, representing the primitive, prehistoric nature of religion and by extension maybe organized religion itself, who advises Carmela to compartmentalize her relationship with her mobster husband: separate the violent criminal from the good provider, the violent, cold-blooded killer from the emotional rock she and her children lean on for support. Carmela has no real desire to leave the very comfortable lifestyle she is living, thanks to her husband, and the priest gives her permission, if you will, to continue this lifestyle, regardless of where the means for that lifestyle came from. Which probably included generous donations to the Church too, but that’s a topic for a different thread.
I thought the invention of the one-legged Russian woman was genius. The ongoing fight between her and Toni’s sister was priceless.
I happened to be in Rome when James Gandolfini died there in 2013.
It was said that someone stole his Rolex watch as his corpse was being transported from his hotel to the mortuary.
Is nothing sacred?
Quite fitting
Long ago, I shared a cab during the rain one afternoon in Manhattan with a stunning young woman who told me she was Italian-American. I brought up the Sopranos and said how great it was, hoping this might lead into some flirtatious conversation, but she was super angry at the stereotypical way it portrayed Italian-Americans. I told her all my Northern Italian friends loved it too because they associate Italian-Americans with Sicily and Southern Italy, which they look down upon as backward and criminally minded. That killed any hope of flirtation, but it did shut her up.
We are all forgetting the other thing The Sopranos does to the viewer – makes you crave really good Italian food. The wine, the pasta on the show. There is no better food on earth than Italian food, and it’s a major character in every episode.
An interesting observation and one I had not thought about. You may have opened-up a new front: what were the characters actually disclosing as they fetishised over great-big pasta sauces?
Although there were some great one-liners in The Sopranos that I found hilarious the fact remains that the entire series was, as Camille Paglia once said, “an ethnic minstrel show, “rife with offensive cliches about Italian-Americans that would never be tolerated were they about Jews or blacks.” In essence, it was the Italian American version of Norman Lear’s unintentionally racist “Good Times,” the 1970s series starring Jimmie Walker. Although some of the jokes were funny in Good Times and The Sopranos one has to see that both shows were built on the shoulders of “Amos and Andy.”
I watched every season of the series so I was not offended per se. I looked at the series as a comedic satire rather than a serious drama. Many of the jokes by the cast members and the malapropisms were brilliant. My beef was with the accuracy of the portrayal of the characters which in my opinion weren’t even close to being realistic. They were overblown inauthentic caricatures of gangsters exaggerated to the point of absurdity. If you compare the acting and writing in the Sorpanos to that of Scorcese’s Goodfellas I think you can see the difference in what I’m saying. The characters in Goodfellas were comedic at times but not to the point of creating a grotesque effect that took away from the drama. The screenplay and the actors were more realistic hence the drama came out for me with Goodfellas whereas David Chase missed big time.
The praise heaped upon The Sopranos is akin to the accolades given to the Beatles as the best musical group ever. I liked some Beatle songs and I liked aspects of The Sopranos but they were both far from the greatest of all time.
Whether or not Tony is a sociopath, he and his gang daily ruin or eliminate the lives of ordinary people. Unlike the protagonists of Deadwood, the leading figure of this series and those who support him, profit from him and seek his approval, are malicious. His popularity among the general population of the most prosperous society in the modern world, along with its ostensibly self-aware cultural critics, says something quite dispiriting about that population and those critics, to which the writer of the series and its broadcaster has unselfconsciously appealed. Essentially this is no different from movies and TV series about serial murderers. The issue is that these subjects have been persistently selected for our cultural attention, not whether the treatment of them is ironic vs satirical. Because I eagerly awaited each episode of the series when originally aired, I returned to it just this month hoping to recapture some of that pleasure. It’s terrible. The people are just terrible. I am now 82. That I was captivated by such crap and that your writers still are, requires more thoughtful consideration than this article provides.