Sopranos
I think I watched big chunks of this show throughout my teenage years. Of course Sopranos was just in the air, in the culture, references to it were everywhere at the time. But I hadn't really watched any of it in order and had forgotten most of what I'd seen before this recent watch through all of it. I wasn't sure what to expect. Would it still hold up well in 2023, and how would it compare to other more recent big crime dramas?
Well I think it's easily one of greatest shows of all time. First of all, it's just such great, eminently watchable TV. It's funny, really funny. A show about dark and serious themes, it can be poignant and affecting, but very rarely not a pleasure to watch. It doesn't feel the need to always take itself seriously in order to still be a serious thing with emotional and intellectual weight. As accomplished as shows like Gomorrah or Top Boy are for example, I'm not sure I laughed, or even smiled for that matter, once while watching them. And that's fine, but The Sopranos willingness to often be deliberately ridiculous, humorous, random and strange, captures so much more of the richness of real life. As does it's full embrace of the creative cinematic possibilities of its medium, playfully or subtly telling us things through the camera work and the amazing soundtrack, allowing the audience to figure things out for ourselves. And sometimes simply having fun with its ideas. It helps it achieve a certain reality that more self consciously gritty realistic shows don't usually find.
In fact the show is incredibly rooted and steeped in cinema and TV, in constant dialogue with it, I'm not sure there's even an episode that doesn't at some point have a scene or multiple scenes showing what a character is watching and their reaction to it. All the crew's un-self-aware love of Godfather and Scorsese films, Tony's ideal of manhood as Gary Cooper, or Chris's dream of being a Hollywood scriptwriter (and his mafioso-horror flick which reflects the ugly image of Tony back to himself). The show is interested in the role of film in shaping us and is conscious of its own role. Weren't even the Krays supposed to be totally obsessed with the original Scar Face film, after all.
Of course it's only one of the many things the show is interested in. It has a sort of scattergun approach, characters will pop up out of nowhere, others who were minor will suddenly become important, characters who were important will be offed with little fanfare, it will take detours that seemingly go nowhere (or not where most viewers would imagine at least), and many scenes that don't further the story at all but simply add to the colour and our understanding of the characters. I really cherished this about it, it's same meandering form I love in my favourite literature too. There are big and small story arcs, but things mostly feel like they just flow on naturally, it's all about the character interactions and relationships, the plot itself is less important.
And the show does an amazing job of writing characters who are somehow likeable, charming, and funny, exaggerated yet complex and believable. But ultimately they're not sympathetic nor romantic.The show acknowledges how upbringings can screw us up, how culture and society play their part in making monsters of some men, but ultimately the wiseguys in The Sopranos all chose the path they're on or are too weak to get off of it. When Christopher or Vito catch glimpses of different possibilities for life, the chance to put love of another over their own self interest, they fall at the first hurdle when faced with the idea of a normal boring life. I watched most of the show somehow rooting for Tony, hoping that, as he's more self aware than the others, maybe through his therapy some breakthrough would occur and he might find some peace and redemption in the end. But there's no redemption.
The final season drives home the brutal truth that Tony never even had a thought of changing, therapy was self indulgence, a way of feeling like he's a victim while discounting all his actual victims, he only ever saw people for what they do for him and no one is too close to him to be safe if they become inconvenient. He's a crappy husband and father, and would surely have even Carmella clipped if she ever flipped. And despite the incredible and tense final scene, there's no sense that anything necessarily changes, the rest of the episode feels like just another episode, Tony's life just carrying on as usual like a miserable ball of chaos until he eventually does end up dead or in jail. I know there's a long essay somewhere on the internet convinced that Tony died in the final scene, but obviously in reality it is somewhat ambiguous and I think it's more powerful that way rather than a cliched death or arrest even though they obviously loom. The when is irrelevant. But Melfi has given up on him now and won't see him again, and neither will we.
/SPOILER]
