Imagine a family. In this family there are two brothers, born not too far apart from one another. The older brother down the line becomes a bit of a success; his parents are heaping on the praise, his business is doing well, he’s got a wife and kids; white picket fence; the whole nine yards. The younger one lives in the shadow of his brother his whole life. He’s a bit of a lovable screw up. Every now and again he does something right. Makes a nice investment here and there. But he just isn’t getting the same recognition as his brother from friends and family. In later years though, the older brother’s success begins to play against him. He gets complacent, a bit doughy, fat, and greedy. His business starts to waver and people in his industry begin to doubt his ability. The younger brother finally has an opportunity to get out from under his big bro's shadow. He begins to make a few notable business deals; he gets a girlfriend, and he doesn’t have the big house like his brother but he has a nice apartment and it’s clear that he’s on his way to getting engaged. Suddenly, his older brother is looking like the failure of the family.
If that whole parable didn’t make any sense, let me put it a
bit more clearly: it’s the (slightly flourished) story of movies (the older
brother) and television shows (the younger brother). As film studios became
strapped for cash they pushed out middle of the run films (and the creative
talent associated with them – including David Chase) that weren’t big budget
block busters but, though not independent films, were creatively impressive.
Even though the marginalized talent still believed in the greatness of cinema,
they perceived of an opportunity to be had in television. Always a bit more
cash strapped than the film studios, television networks became a breeding
ground for quality visual media. So much so that many have argued that the past
15 or so years have ushered in a golden age of television that began to put
television in many instances on the same creative tier as movies. Nowhere was
this example more obvious than David Chase’s The Sopranos.
To say The Sopranos
was influential on television dramas is like saying that The Beatles were
influential on music. Though the series is deeply indebted to many series that
became before it (Hill Street Blues
played around with the serialization that the show would go on to use so
effectively, Oz told an antiheroism
narrative that the show would come to adopt, and Twin Peaks was one of the first series to have the distinct stamp
of one unique, auteuristic vision), it was so audacious and so flippantly
breaking television conventions more than any series that came before it that
it became impossible for it to not be part of the conversation at the time it
was on the air. The Sopranos in turn
opened the flood gate for a slew of excellent dramas; FX created The Shield because HBO proved that this
type of drama could be successful; AMC was similarly inspired in its decision
to take a risk on Mad Men and Breaking Bad (whose antihero elements
are deeply indebted to the series); even Lost’s
complex, intricate storytelling owes tribute to The Sopranos convincing television networks that given the right
formula, people are willing to watch slow burn, long, complex television
stories.
A recent convention has cropped up where hating on The Sopranos and being cynical and angry
at it (for the shortcomings in later seasons and its ending, which considerably
divided and pissed off many) is almost the accepted norm. But that refusal to
remember and acknowledge how damn good the show was and how much quality,
ambitious, interesting television the show provided over the series’ run is
unfair. The show had its flaws, no question about it (the depiction of race in "A Hit is a Hit" is very caricature, and the storylines for the kids were always just shy of being cliche). But come on: James
Gadolfini and Edie Falco were acting powerhouses. And in the hands of the
incredibly capable and competent hands of David Chase and his writing staff
(including a burgeoning Matt Weiner who would go on to create Mad Men) the best of their, and the rest
of the casts’ (particularly Nancy Marchand as Livia Soprano, who is an absolute
monster), acting abilities were allowed to shine very bright in deed.
So what made the series so groundbreaking? Well, for
starters, it amped up the moral greyness, in its characters, in its themes, in
its plot, in the questions in its audience asked themselves (David Chase has a dreadfully negative view of humanity and everybody in the show is on one level or another a bit of an asshole). This doesn’t seem
like a big deal, until one considers the fact that for some 70 odd years’
prior, next to every tv series played it safe. They didn’t try to make you
think deeply or complexly. They instead aimed to attract the broadest base of
an audience to sell ads (I'm being purposefully noninclusive and broad in this statement here. Many would argue that television has been constantly forced to evolve to survive changing trends and tastes). The Sopranos had little intention of pleasing or
appealing to anyone.
It was a gangster show that wasn’t about gangsters. It
featured gangsters and their dirty work, but In fact, the show arguably had
more to do with Tony dealing with his personal life (his mother, his wife and
kids, living in suburbia, talking to his shrink); most of the mafiosa business
stuff tended to be in the subplots or background of the series. Thus it made
great contrast and juxtaposition of these conflicting elements.
The Sopranos also made
infamous its penultimate episodes, establishing the trend of series putting
their most climactic, explosive moments in their second to last episodes, and
focusing on quieter finales that tied up loose ends. It’s largely a considerably
better form of telling television that entails more satisfying, holistic
narratives.
The series told its stories with such confidence, and never
held our hand through it. There’s no breather post-pilot; we’re immediately
thrown into the deep end and left to figure out who’s who and what’s what on
our own.
The series also had a penchant for anticlimaxes; Chase
wanted the show to feel true to real life, and so conflicts rarely ever boiled
over, but instead fizzled out. It would often wrap up a story quickly than let
it drag on like some shows might (this is apparent when Tony and Junior resolve
their beef in the third episode. It’s a story that looks to be the driving
force of the season and it ends in anticlimax).
On a smaller scale, little details were noteworthy, such as
exposition causally taking place in locations such as a strip club or on the
side of the road, or people getting beat on or whacked for seemingly no reason
(and often).
But perhaps most important was the show’s sense of
continuity, of the accumulation of past actions and events that weighed on the
future. The series nailed down its characters and then never deviated from what
we knew about them, and it used what we knew about the characters to bear on
the plot and give it a richness of detail.
As Todd VanDerwerf so accurately put it, the show isn’t
exactly a series one adores, but one holds with a level of almost reverence.
People really go out of their way to get people to see series such as Breaking Bad and The Wire (both excellent series on par in quality with The Sopranos), but The Sopranos is almost put on a pedestal where we don’t necessarily
watch it to enjoy it but just to appreciate everything it’s choosing to be. Don’t
get me wrong, it’s an entertaining series (with a dark, absurd sense of humor)
but people tend to discuss the series as an out of body experience as if the
show exists outside of itself, only mattering for how it came to bear on the
whole of television.
This short shrifts the series though. Chase built up a great
world worth inhabiting and filled with interesting, fully realized characters.
And he used both to tell some thematically rich and complex stories.
It’s right there from the get-go. Just look at that theme.
Has a theme ever so perfectly captured the essence of what a show was all about
before? The visuals combined with Alabama 3’s “Woke Up This Morning” playing
over it provide our first entry point into the dark, twisted world we’re about
to enter and it does it with steely panache. It’s utterly cool and stylish, but
it’s dark and gritty; almost world weary.
Now the series is really good in its Pilot, and its Pilot is
rather confident and telling of the direction the series would head (there’s an
overwhelming sense of dread and decay hanging over the episode that would
continue throughout the first season), but it wasn’t until “College” that The Sopranos definitively became the
series we know it to be today, and that it proved itself to be significantly different
from television that came before it. While Tony is visiting colleges with his
daughter Meadow, he sees a former mob member turned witness protection. The
whole time you can’t imagine Tony killing this guy. This guy is a nobody; he’s
done nothing to warrant being killed. And yet Tony does. The Sopranos wasn’t going to play by televisions rules. HBO was
against the murder, but Chase stood steadfast arguing that viewers would
respect Tony even less if he didn’t go through with it. It’s not just this
moment that makes the episode so fantastic (there are some great scenes between
Tony and Meadow where she asks him about the “family business”, and the scenes
between Carmella and Father Intintola are equally interesting), but it’s this moment
in particular where the series started to truly come into its own; to take
risks that other series would shy away from.
Those people who argue that we were or weren’t supposed to
like Tony Soprano miss the point entirely. The show purposefully makes the
relationship we invest with Tony to be incredibly complicated to the point where
it becomes hard to decide whether we find him to be a monster or a man doing
what’s necessary to provide for his family, or perhaps even a bit of both. There’s
even the more interesting question of whether Tony’s therapy sessions actually
helped make him better at his job. Does that in turn implicate Dr. Melfi as
being responsible on some level for the many crimes Tony Soprano committed?
I’m not going to belabor the point. There's plenty more to say (I haven't even gotten around to mentioning how awesome the show was at depicting interngerational conflicts, which remains to be my favorite aspect of it). Many and more have
written about the series and what made it so groundbreaking, and they’ve done
it much better than I have or could. Needless to say, to understand American
television as it currently stands, you can’t get around having at least a basic
knowledge of The Sopranos.
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