‘The Sopranos’, an unflinching look at the sordid underbelly of crime; unapologetic, unrepentant, and one of the finest primetime series to debut on television sets worldwide. That’s damn near indisputable – audiences and critics alike have lauded the show for propagating our current era of high-production value TV showcasing parfaite writing and cultivated acting.
Put more simply: ‘The Sopranos’ started it all.
Before its premiere on HBO in 2001, most television had the palpable attribute of seeming a little “unpolished” or “unrefined”, lacking the grandeur of a full-fledged film production. Often these early television series relied on formulaic plots paired with generic set design – not to mention the horrendously hamfisted acting that existed prior to the modern Renaissance of series like ‘The Wire’, ‘Better Call Saul’, ‘The Boys’, ‘Mad Men’,’The Shield’; ‘Penguin’, ‘Breaking Bad’, ‘Picard’, ‘Preacher’, and myriad others. Honestly, you can trace the success of all this primo TV back to the underdog show that managed to mesmerize millions, based in lil’ ol New Jersey – featuring one of the most honest depictions of organized crime ever. Before James Gandolfini graced screens with his enthralling, acrimoniously raw character ‘Tony Soprano’ – most heroes and anti-heroes were rarely fleshed out with proper attention paid to their internal characteristics or the show in question providing a deep examination of any relevant flaws.
“At first, ‘Mad Men’ was ‘more a cultural than a commercial hit’, but the show’s impact on AMC was immediate and transformative, replicating in a smaller way what ‘The Sopranos’ had done for HBO eight years earlier” [1]
-Umstead: Keveney, ‘Success Suits the ‘Mad Man’ Brand’s, 2D [quoted from ‘Mad Men’ a Collection of FIlm Scholars’ articles on the breakout series.
Edited by Gary R. Edgerton, paperback]
David Chase, showrunner on ‘The Sopranos’ took a leaf out of the playbook that Francis Ford Coppola’s applied when crafting what most academics and critics agree to be his Mt. Everest, his piece-du-resistance, his masterpiece. ‘The Godfather’, a gangster epic that still holds the consensus of being one of the most essential, sanguine entries in the halls of cinema. That film (and its subsequent sequels, Part II & III) places a thematic focus on the aspect of family as it relates to the patrilineal leadership of a criminal organization. Misanthropy takes a backseat to the intersectional struggles and emotional bonds formed between the characters. Yes, ‘The Sopranos’ and ‘The Godfather’ trilogy both provide plenty of gratuitous violence, lewdness, and viscera to stare in awe at – while it hits the amygdala rather than our hippocampus, tickles our Freudian id rather than our egos yet both properties also manage to encapsulate an eternally saccharine quality – that familial bonds are forever – and those you surround yourself with also constitute a form of extended kin, or tribe. This is what allows most of us to truly enjoy substantive crime flicks (and TV series, yes those too) that showcase the humanity of the transparently flawed characters; even while they commit truly inhumane acts. Of course, I’m sort of beating a dead horse as this same idea has been put forth many times before; and by people much more knowledgeable than I – but nevertheless – this is the glue that holds together any and all serious dramas detailing criminal enterprise.
“David Chase was inspired by both fictional mobsters and real-life gangsters when creating The Sopranos’ protagonist Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini). Drawing on fictional characters like Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando), The Sopranos changed US television forever, and also added new layers to the gangster genre…” [2]
-Mark Donaldson & Tom Russell, Screenrant.com
That’s my belief anyway: and that Coppola provided the inception for this formula with his adaptation of Mario Puzzo’s lengthy novel about the now infamous Corleone family – the world’s first in depth, albeit fictionalized and a bit aggrandized or grandiose, view into the enigmatic and enticing mafioso lifestyle. Three decades later ‘The Sopranos’ took that concept to the next level with a TV series incorporating a grounded, realistic, yet occasionally surreal (David Chase, the showrunner included dream sequences which provided a certain amount of expressionistic feel) take on similar subject matter – trading New York for New Jersey in the process – and going in a bit more of a blue-collar route; less “pomp” and ceremony, more rubenesque gregariousness. In other words, these aren’t your upper crust refined mobsters, no, these are your average-joe “wiseguys”. Where tense parlour room meetings took place in Coppola’s masterful trilogy, and lavish galas in Martin Scorsese’s ‘Casino’ instead David Chase opted for focusing on a group of alpha males that operate on a much looser level; card games with crude jokes aplenty, waste sanitation work providing a cover job for criminal endeavors, a strip club serving as a source of passive income and HQ of sorts; a reflection of real life as the New Jersey area has always seemed like a salt of the earth smaller cousin of the urban metropolis that is New York City. And the New Jersey mob was never actually accepted as one of the official families associated with New York.
“The 2006 documentary The Real Sopranos drew comparisons between Tony Soprano and Vincent Palermo as it joined the dots between the fictional world of David Chase’s TV show, and the reality of contemporary New Jersey: Palermo was the de facto boss of the DeCavalcante crime family, Tony was in charge of The Sopranos’ DiMea crime family. Like Tony Soprano, Palermo’s crime family ran a strip club, which was said to be the inspiration for The Sopranos’ Badda-Bing. The documentary also included FBI recordings of discussions within the DeCavalcante family, in which they discussed The Sopranos:
‘Is that supposed to be us? Every show you watch, more and more, you pick up somebody … There’s a pork store. Yeah, in Jersey, right? They got a topless joint over there. Jesus.” [3]
Dedicated to James Gandolfini, born on this day, Sept. 18, 1961
Sources:
[1]
Umstead: Keveney, ‘Success Suits the ‘Mad Man’ Brand’s, 2D [quoted from ‘Mad Men’ a Collection of FIlm Scholars’ articles on the breakout series.
Edited by Gary R. Edgerton, paperback], Published in 2011 by I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU
175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY (www.ibtauris.com)
[2] [3]
“The Sopranos True Story: The Real-Life Mob Boss Who Inspired Tony Soprano”
Mark Donaldson & Tom Russell, Screenrant.com
https://screenrant.com/sopranos-true-story-vincent-palermo-tony/
(Dec. 23rd, 2024)
