Reruns: The Sopranos

Welcome back to, the newly renamed segment, Reruns. On this installment we will be looking at another television series that is considered by many, me included, as possibly the best. Known for its language, violence, brilliant writing and directing, gabbagool, and Italians. Lots and lots of Italians. I am of course talking about the HBO series The Sopranos.

The Sopranos spawned from the mind of David Chase. Before he created the New Jersey mafia show he was sort of vaguely known in television for some mediocre kinds of shows that for the most part were short lived. Though in the 90s he came to HBO with and idea that no one had any faith in,  not even himself. But when the Sopranos debuted in 1999 it was an instant hit.

The series centers on New Jersey mafia boss Tony Soprano as he deals with business, personal life, and the struggles of balancing both. Right off the bat the show was different from any other mafia project ever done. For one thing it showed the in struggles and turmoil that a mafia boss actually goes through and it gets very personal. The series is also unbelievably well written with a lot of depth to it.

I got into The Sopranos in only this past year and one of the first things I noticed was the similarities to Breaking Bad. Both shows are probably the best of their times and go way beyond your average television drama. They're made more like films and each are made with visuals and dialogue that have much deeper meanings than what they construe on the surface. One aspect of this that is very interesting is from season two on Tony experiences different visions and dreams of remorse for killing his long time ally Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero. They are done in very subtle ways and it's not just about Big Pussy... Ahem. One thing the show is known for is it's very cryptic dream sequences as well, and I could spend hours talking about those and the meanings of them so just know that they are brilliant and that they alone are worth watching the show for.

On to the cast. Being that this is a mafia show obviously people die. This allowed for a lot of characters to be featured and they all deserve to be talked about so I'll try to touch upon most of them shortly.Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) is the main focus of the show. His "family" family consists of Carmela (Edie Falco) his loving and sometimes troubling wife, A.J. (Robert Iler) his son who I despise, Medow (Jamie-Lynn Singler) his smart and attractive daughter, and his over baring mother Livia (Nancy Marchand). Unfortunately Nancy Marchand died in 2000 so obviously her character was killed off as well but I'll talk about that more later.

As far as Tony's "business" family there are tons of colorful and entertaining characters. There are a few who spill over from his actual family into this category as well. Junior Soprano (Dominic Cianese) is Tony's uncle and for a time was the boss of the family, Janis Soprano (Aida Turturro)
Tony's sister who always somehow got involved in the business one way or another, Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) who is considered Tony's nephew even though he's actually a cousin by marriage. Tony's actual gang consists of Paulie (Tony Sirico), Silvio (Steve Van Zant), Big Pussy (Vincent Pastore), Bobby Bacala (Steve Schirripa), and for a time Ralph (Joe Pantoliano). There is also one more key person in Tony's life that is his therapist through out the series Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco).

The cast as a whole is phenomenal. They all have great chemistry with each other and are hilarious and threatening when ever they need to be, but on top of that every character in the show truly is endearing. You really care about each and everyone of these characters, even the scumbag ones like Ralph. By the way the episode entitled "Whoever Did This" is one of the best of the series and has a terrific performance by Pantoliano in it. Lorraine Bracco is also extremely good throughout the series and has some of the best parts of it. And of course James Gandolfini is perfect in the lead role.

One other thing about the series that's pretty fascinating is the very odd choices it often makes. For as many of the brilliant moments in writing and directing shown in the series there are some bizarre things going on too. This brings me back to Nancy Marchand. I mentioned that she had died in 2000 and before that the producers of the series seemed to have no intention of killing off her character any time soon. So naturally when she died in real life her character died as well. One would assume that the producers would just have the character die off screen in the next season and have a nice send off to the actress and character. However they took a very weird turn and instead CGI'd her into one last scene with Tony where they use old dialogue clips that made no sense to be in that scene. The end result was eerie, weird, confusing, a bit insensitive, and bizarre.  A few other wierd moments like this pop up in the series during it's run.

The Sopranos ran for six seasons with the last one being split into two parts. As a whole the entire series is one of the greatest television shows of all time. It was one of the first to really go beyond just being a T.V. show and was very smart, inventive, and utterly brilliant. Every other cable drama on afterwards was based on this. Not only was it one of the first of it's kind but in my opinion it's the best drama series ever created.

Thank you once again for joining me on Reruns. When we return we will take a look at show involving a weird magic island, black smoke that kills people, and a shit ton of questions with a few answers.