The Sopranos changed television. The only question isn't whether it's one of the greatest shows in TV history, but whether it's the greatest show in TV history. (My heart tends to lie with The Wire, but there are valid points on all sides.) Long before anyone dared to hold up murderous protagonists like Walter White or Dexter Morgan as anti-heroes, creator David Chase asked us to sympathize with a Mafia crime boss who was just as likely to murder his colleagues as kiss his kids goodnight.
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Buffy the Vampire SlayerIt was at times a surprisingly funny drama that orbited mob boss Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), his nuclear family, and the other family whose blood and money always coursed beneath their veneer of normalcy. And of course, there was Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), the therapist who serves as the semi-permeable barrier between Tony and the world beyond the Mafia, and the proxy for our own alternating attraction to and disgust towards Tony's sociopath charms.
At the head of the HBO vanguard that helped redefine the medium, The Sopranos toyed with mobster tropes while turning them on their head, digging deep into the notions of masculinity and power behind the Godfather cliches, and the bloody and often unglamorous toll it takes on the men who live by it—and everyone around them.
Number of Seasons: 6 (86 episodes)
Time Requirements:: If you can watch two to three episodes a night, you can knock this out in a little over a month. A very, very intense month.
Where to Get Your Fix: HBO Go, Amazon Prime
Best Character to Follow: It sounds obvious, but c'mon: Tony Soprano. While the supporting cast is packed full of great characters, it would be contrived to say that any of them eclipse the narrative and emotional arc of Gandolfini's complex, dangerously likable mafioso. Dance with the girl (or the don) that you brung.
Seasons/Episodes You Can Skip:
Season 4: Episode 3, "Christopher" There aren't many episodes of The Sopranos that qualify as "bad," let alone terrible, but this one is where the shovel truly scrapes bottom. It revolves around two Christophers: the Italian explorer who inspired Columbus Day, and Tony's nephew. Written by Michael Imperioli, who also plays Christopher, it's a deeply clumsy foray into identity politics that involves a Columbus Day protest by Native Americans, a cameo by Montel Williams, and a sex act between Ralphie (Joe Pantoliano) and Janice (Aida Turturro) that you will never be able to unsee. If it were possible to miss it twice, I would suggest you do so.
Season 6 Although there are highlights (notably "The Second Coming"), by Season 6 the show lost much of the momentum and intensity that crackled in previous seasons, leading up to an ambiguous series finale that left many viewers scratching their heads, and others shaking their fists in fury. I wouldn't actually say "skip it," but at the very least, proceed with caution—and the knowledge that much as they did for many characters in the show, things may not end in quite the way you were hoping.
Seasons/Episodes You Can't Skip:
Season 1: Episode 1, "Pilot" It's usually a good idea to begin at the beginning, but especially when a pilot is this good. When we first meet Tony Soprano, we hear him longing for the same things we usually long for in our mafia stories: the "strong, silent types" of yesteryear who not only didn't speak or think about their feelings, but presumably, didn't need to. That our mafioso says this in a speech to his therapist is but an early indication of what is yet to come.
Season 1: Episode 5, "College" Much of The Sopranos' appeal revolved around its juxtaposition between the murderous and the mundane, a tension that allowed Tony to seem sympathetic, even relatable, despite the fact that he was blowing people's brains out on the regular. Tony's out-of-town college visit with his daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler)—where he coincidentally encounters an informant who disappeared into the Witness Protection Program—remains the high point of the first season.
Season 1: Episode 9, "Boca" The concept of masculinity—specifically, a brand of masculinity based in dominance and violence—pervades the show, and many of its ugliest and saddest moments deal with how it erodes the humanity of the men required to practice it. In "Boca," we see Junior (Dominic Chianese) facing a (supposedly emasculating) rumor that he enjoys pleasuring women, while Tony contemplates whether or not to whack a soccer coach whose predatory behavior has strayed too close to home. In both cases, the solutions they choose tell us more about their definitions of power and weakness than either one of them would like to admit.
Season 2: Episode 3, "Funhouse" Although some viewers disliked the deep dives into symbolism and dream sequences, they were a defining part of a series that asked the audience to play therapist—to decode the inner workings of Tony's mind even while he remained in denial. In this episode, food poisoning leads to some even more unpleasant revelations. No spoilers, but you'll never look at a Big Mouth Billy Bass the same way again.
Season 2: Episode 12, "The Knight in White Satin Armor" If you ever had any doubts that Tony's sister Janice had the Soprano ruthlessness simmering under her veneer of New Age aphorisms and patchouli, this episode should destroy them forever (along with your desire to eat anything that comes out of the kitchen at Satriali's).
Season 3: Episode 4, "Employee of the Month" Although this harrowing, Emmy-nominated episode focuses primarily on Dr. Melfi, it contains a truth relevant to almost all its characters: that while violence might be the easiest way to demonstrate power, it can take even greater strength to walk away from vengeance—a kind of courage that Tony and his crew would never understand.
Season 3: Episode 6, "University" A tragedy in one act. Although we often see the supposed "code" that governs Tony and his men exact its punishment on flunkies, fuck-ups, and murderous traitors, watching it claim a innocent makes its poison all the more apparent. For most viewers, it should make its mask of pseudo-nobility fall away forever, if indeed it ever fooled us at all.
Season 3: Episode 11, "Pine Barrens" And then there's the episode where Christopher and Paulie (Tony Sirico) find themselves in the middle of a miniature Jack London novel. Transplanted from the bars and strip clubs where they hold power to the snowy New Jersey woods, they end up chasing a Russian with special forces training who turns out to be a lot less dead than they thought.
Season 4: Episode 9, "Whoever Did This" It's not exactly the Purple Wedding from Game of Thrones, but in every show where tons of people die brutally, at least of few of them are likely to be horrible people you hate. The reason this character dies might not be a great one—in a fitting moment for a show in love with symbolism, the reason is more than likely a metaphor—but if the episode title tells us anything, it's that some antecedents are better left unspoken.
__Season 5: Episode 12, "Long-Term Parking" __ Omertà is a cruel master, but it's never seemed quite as cruel as this. While I don't want to offer any spoilers, it involves one particularly tragic car ride that has haunted me for years.
Season 6: Episode 21, "Made in America" Throughout the run of The Sopranos, some fans seemed to want a slightly different show than the one they were actually watching: a more traditional gangster yarn with more bloodshed and fewer dream sequences. To his credit, Chase remained committed to a story that was all the bolder for its insistence on subverting expectations—so committed, in fact, that he made one of the most controversial series finales in history. If it feels a bit like eating your vegetables, well, maybe it was a different meal than the one you thought you ordered. And if you learn to develop a taste for it—by, say, reading this immensely detailed deconstruction of the finale—you might even come around to the idea that it ended with a pretty spectacular final course.
Why You Should Binge:
I said it before, and I'll say it again: one of the best television shows ever made.
Best Scene—The Final Scene:
I'll go for the controversial choice and say that the final scene tops them all, an understated masterstroke too often misinterpreted as a "screw you."
The Takeaway:
While some viewers bought into the Trojan Horse of its mobster tropes, the most interesting moments of The Sopranos weren't the ones where people got brutalized or killed, but the ones where its characters—and the show itself—chose something besides violence. That was always when we learned the most, not only about the characters, but about ourselves—and whether or not we felt disappointed when the blood refused to flow.
If You Liked The Sopranos You'll Love:
Try In Treatment if you want another HBO drama involving stellar acting and psychotherapy; Breaking Bad if you want to cheer for another finely acted anti-hero; and The Wire if you simply want another show that can measure up to this level of excellent.
