It’s been 25 years since the first episode of The Sopranos was released. From there, the show spent six seasons (and one prequel film) establishing itself and its characters as icons, inspiring countless stories similarly focused on antiheroes, criminal lifestyles, the evasion of punishment, suburban rot, internal and external toxic masculinity, and most impactfully, existential dread.
I want to focus on that last one to make a point about the show’s continuing relevance.
There’s a scene at the end of the pilot episode of The Sopranos that plays like a horror movie. Tony Soprano’s (James Gandolfini) mother Livia (Nancy Marchand) and his Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) are in a car, his body uptight, upright, and forward in his seat, their discomfort obvious as he yells “these kids today!” and she shrieks for him to stop as he paints a picture of a world turned to chaos as it slips from their generation’s control. None of us wants to ever be this way, so unable to reckon with generational drift.
There’s another scene, this one with Tony where he’s in his therapist’s (Lorraine Bracco) office. The pilot spends a lot of time establishing that Tony is intimidated by the idea of therapy due to his work as a mobster, but it’s also rooted in his idea of what toughness is and his fears about self-discovery.
“Whatever happened to Gary Cooper?!” is a line that often gets cited when talking about the show, but the bit that immediately follows is incredibly important: “He (Cooper) wasn’t in touch with his feelings. He just did what he had to do. See what they didn’t know was that once they got Gary Cooper in touch with his feelings, they wouldn’t be able to shut him up.”
One last scene, this one with Christopher (Michael Imperioli), Tony’s eager young henchman and nephew who flirts with a mob war by acting impulsively, whacking a rival while being inspired by The Godfather and the romantic idea of sending messages to the family’s rivals. Christopher is a wrecking ball lacking precision and patience, powered by the idea that it’s time for his generation to take the reins, whether he’s earned it or not. Whether he’s ready or not.
In these three scenes, Sopranos creator David Chase tells you everything you need to know about the warring factions within the Soprano family. Three distinct eras – all connected by fear of irrelevancy – the moment is past, the moment is fading, the moment is never going to come. It’s a generational divide that resonates today, because 25 years on, while the times and details are different, the fears and feelings are the same.
I’m sure you identify with one of those phases when you look around at the world. When I first watched the show, I was a teenager and incredibly eager to be taken seriously. Now, I’m closer to Tony’s age and unsteady with it. I’m sometimes wistful for a less complicated and more stoic process that didn’t come with as many prompts to tussle with my emotions and choices. I’m also annoyed by being dragged by a younger generation and held down by an older one.
So much of the focus on The Sopranos is, naturally, on that middle stage with Tony as the show’s star. He’s fending off frustrations from underneath and challenges from above, he’s trying to keep a sense of order amidst chaos, even though he is, quite often, the source of the chaos.
In the pilot, Tony lays it all out when he first meets Dr. Melfi (the aforementioned therapist):
“It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. And I came too late for that, I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.”
Who can’t relate to those feelings?
Tony is never happier in the pilot than when he gets to take back some of his power, embracing the old-school mobster methods by gleefully running down a “degenerate gambler” with Christopher’s new Lexus. He grins ear to ear before busting the fleeing man’s leg and Christopher’s expensive toy, later making it clear that any talk about him not being as tough as the past generation is a lie.
The ducks that have chosen the Soprano family pool as their sanctuary also bring him immense joy, when they’re there, in view and safe. Not flying away, causing a full-blown panic attack. Again, you make the connection to worries about kids growing up and family falling apart – be it your actual family with aging relatives or how found families and friendships can come undone over time – and it’s another highly relatable moment when you divorce it from the notion of “whacking” members of that found family.
Tony finds solace in talking about his problems, upending the thought about Gary Cooper, though it’s all slow to come and hollow based on the lies he needs to tell. I love the moment with his wife, Carmella (Edie Falco), when he says that his life is out of balance and she tells him, “Our existence on this earth is a puzzle.” She’s not very reassuring, but why should she be? She’s got her own existential dread to deal with. We’re alone, together, in this world.
I keep throwing the word relatable around, which feels weird when looking at the whole board. Tony Soprano is a middle-aged, (upper) middle-class white man and criminal with decidedly backward social views. Sexist, homophobic, racist, violent, deceitful. The list of flaws could stretch the length of the NJ Turnpike. No one should look to him as a model, but this is what makes for compelling art: something that doesn’t just present characters and their flaws like a problem to be solved, but rather as something to experience while, at the same time, prompting questions about what we like, what we loathe, and what it all says about us.
If Tony Soprano is 70% monster then there’s still 30% left for us to connect to while realizing, of course, that we’re all a little monstrous. Hell, the final statement from the pilot highlights that point with Nick Lowe’s pained “The Beast In Me.”
I recognize that it is such a typical middle-stage thing to try and be the anti-Uncle Junior and Livia Soprano in the car, aiming to connect to the incoming alpha gen, saying, “No, this ancient thing is good. It should be a part of your culture too!” And yet that’s exactly what I’m doing with this article. But I swear it comes from a good place. It also comes from a place that doesn’t respect the idea of generational boundaries all that much.
Instinctively, we seem to push away the art of a prior era in search of new things because old things couldn’t possibly connect to now. But that’s not quite right. Art, books, poetry, and music have stretched across centuries to inspire anew and anew again, not belonging, specifically, to any era.
If time is a construct of man, cultural dividers are even more so. In a way, the awesome untapped potential of mass streaming and availability (with its obvious limits) makes this even more true because no one is dictating, specifically, when you can watch things or your access to them. As such, The Sopranos exists at the same time in the same space as anything freshly released. You only need a prompt to engage with it.
