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THE SOPRANOS
Pure therapy…
1999-2007 AVAILABLE ON DVD, BD, DIGITAL, SKY, NOW
A VERY SPECIAL EPISODE
PINE BARRENS, S3, 2001 Ahit goes awry when bickering odd couple Paulie and Chris lose their Russian target (and a shoe) in a desolate winter woodland. The first of four episodes directed by Steve Buscemi –who later played hot-tempered Tony Blundetto in S5 – this is The Sopranos at its most openly farcical. The Russian is lost to the woods, his fate left deliberately unclear by Chase. ‘He wanted the audience to suffer,’ Sirico suggested.
Tony Soprano has it all: a loving family, a luxurious mansion and a lucrative career in (ahem) waste management. Yet there’s a festering hole inside of Tony Soprano… and within the American dream itself, too.
‘I’m a miserable prick,’ Tony tells long-suffering therapist Doctor Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), speaking to a profound emptiness that cannot be filled, no matter how powerful he grows; an insatiable, self-destructive hunger that will ultimately be his downfall. For six seasons (and one prequel movie, 2021’s The Many Saints of Newark), The Sopranos explored this dissatisfaction, pinpointing it to Tony’s upbringing under his malignant mother (Nancy Marchand).
Creator and showrunner David Chase reportedly based the core idea on elements of his own life – the complicated relationship with his mother, and the uncompromising therapy sessions that followed. Originally pitching The Sopranos as a movie, he was convinced to reconceptualise, reinventing television in the process.
‘I want to tell a story about the reality of being a mobster,’ Chase told Salon.com. ‘They aren’t shooting each other every day. They sit around eating baked ziti and betting and figuring out who owes who money.’ As it turns out, this apparently wasn’t too far from the truth – with the Mob allegedly questioning whether they had a rat in their midst, feeding gossip to TV producers.
No small thanks to the late James Gandolfini’s towering performance, the day-to-day life of Tony Soprano captures a unique blend of humour, drama and format-breaking storytelling. What’s more, the flawed, paradoxical monster at the heart of the show anticipated the likes of Don Draper and Walter White by over a decade.
This world is fleshed out with an underworld of often comical associates: the unsettlingly strange Silvio Dante (Steven Van Zandt, who originally auditioned to play Tony), dimwit nephew Chris (Michael Imperioli) and the chilling Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico). Tony’s home life is no less colourful, with wife Carmella (Edie Falco) more than capable of going toe-to-toe with her husband; the character was every bit as rich and textured. Meanwhile, daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) keeps Tony on his toes as son A.J. (Robert Iler) struggles to grow up in the big man’s shadow.
Its ending remains hotly debated: a controversial cut-to-black that defied expectation but rewarded anyone who had been paying attention (‘You probably don’t even hear it when it happens,’ one character hints, ominously). The question of whether or not Tony met his maker is ultimately moot; The Sopranos will live on for decades.