The Sopranos

 _*****

After a series of anxiety attacks, high-ranking DiMeo Crime Family member Tony Soprano begins attending therapy sessions while managing the needs of his family, his Family, and the ducks that live in his pool.

The Sopranos is a series that I have heard nothing but good things about, but never found myself with the desire to sit down and watch it. It's a show that I feel deserves a certain level of commitment, a commitment that, up until this blog, I was unable to make to the show. It's a series that comes with large expectations that it needs to live up to, and, while I'm already aware of the controversial end to the series, I have no idea how it gets from here to there; it's a journey I'm more than ready to take.

This series is a character study of James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano, a man trapped by circumstance in a violent world, slowly breaking due to the pressure of both family and business. Tony is doing what he thinks he has to do in order to provide for his family, and it's interesting to watch as he keeps up appearances; on the one hand he needs to make others aware of how dangerous he truly is in order to succeed in the business of violence, while he also needs to provide a softer side to his character to keep up an air of innocence when traveling among the good people of New Jersey. Those who have heard the Soprano name are well aware of who this man is, but he has convinced us, through fear and intimidation, to pretend that he is, in fact, just another law-abiding citizen. As we get to know him over the course of the hour we start to learn that he may be, in fact, more like the kinder man he wants us to pretend he is and not quite the brutal man he needs us to think he is.

The interaction between Tony Soprano and his therapist Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) is one of the strongest parts of the episode. Tony is clearly uncomfortable having to open up to a stranger, especially considering the line of work he's in, where Dr. Melfi is suspicious of Tony's true nature, and entirely aware of what those suspicions could mean, especially in regards to her own safety, and it becomes an interesting cat-and-mouse game as Tony tries to conceal the truth about his comings-and-goings, with Dr. Melfi trying to hear only the words that won't get them both killed.

I'm not sure how therapy is supposed to work, but I found Dr. Melfi's tactics very off-putting; a number of times she directed the conversation away from whatever Tony was talking about toward something else, like when she asked him to "talk more about [his] immediate family." She was also very quick to prescribe drugs without offering any alternatives.

Artie Bucco, played by John Ventimiglia, a restaurateur and friend to Tony Soprano, had his restaurant destroyed before the program was up, and while he was very distressed by the situation, he seemed completely oblivious to the fact that Tony had anything to do with it. He's well aware of what Tony does for a living, and Tony had tried desperately to take a vacation in the days leading up to the explosion. It would be one thing to feign ignorance in order to protect his life and the lives of his family, but he seemed to genuinely have no idea, even after Tony mentioned the possibility that people would have stopped patronizing his establishment in the coming weeks. I just can't suspend my disbelief long enough to think that Artie might actually be that ignorant, but maybe that's a plot thread that will be picked up in the coming episodes.

Lorraine Bracco does an excellent job of presenting a professional demeanor despite her character's  reservations about Tony Soprano. There are many emotions that Bracco was tasked with portraying in a single moment (suspicion, fear, calm, strength) and she does so with great ease and subtlety that I believe every movement that Dr. Melfi makes to be a true and honest human reaction. The rest of the cast does an equally good job in bringing this seedy underworld to life in ways that lesser actors would fumble.

David Chase directs the episode, choosing to focus on what's important rather than on what would be considered, in another industry, the 'money-shots.' When Michael Imperioli's Christopher is forced to kill Emil Kolar, we see the initial spray of blood, blocked somewhat by Kolar himself, after which we don't see the body again, but instead focus on Christopher's face as he finishes the job, and I think that's probably the more important place to be: with Christopher as he commits this awful crime and not with an extended shot of the victim providing that extra shock value. Again, when Tony collapses at the barbecue, the camera pans back and we watch his family flock to him from afar, as removed from the situation as Tony himself.

I love almost everything about this episode, also written by Chase, from Tony's interaction with the ducks to Christopher's cold-blooded murder of Emil, it's all woven seamlessly into the tapestry of this series. It's a wise choice to use Tony's therapy sessions as voice-overs during the episode, and I enjoy the structure of hearing the cleaned up version of the story he's telling to Dr. Melfi while watching the actual events transpire. A strong point for me is near the end of the episode, when Tony is trying to tell wife Carmella (Edie Falco) about his therapy, she readies a glass of wine to throw in his face, clearly aware of his secret life, but forced to wait for his confession before she knows what transgression it is that she's able to be openly angry about. Carmella's reaction ties into the theme of feigned ignorance that the people around Tony have thrust upon them.

Tony Soprano is not, in the traditional sense, a good man, but this show has done a good job of making the audience sympathise with his character, and we are presented with a good balance between the tender moments the characters have with one another and the terrible things that these people are willing to do to get what they want. This is a group of people that we should want nothing to do with, but through the separation of the television screen, there's no one else I would rather be spending my time with.

The Sopranos is in the running to become the feature for Mondays. The series ran from 1999 to 2007 on HBO with a total of 86 episodes.