When the Sopranos came out in January of 1999 I was twenty-one-years old. I’d grown up on a steady diet of incredible, cult-classic mafia movies: Donnie Brasco. Casino. A Bronx Tale. Carlito’s Way. My friends and I could quote half of Goodfellas by the time we got our driver’s licenses.
“Funny how? I mean, funny like I’m a clown? Like I amuse you?”
So when we heard that HBO (the old school HBO, the one where every big, new show felt like a BIG, NEW SHOW), was releasing something called The Sopranos, about a New Jersey Mafia boss, we were pumped. More than pumped, actually.
It was more like, “Holy shit, we’re getting a bad ass new mob movie every week? On HBO? Where they can swear and show nudity and real violence? Let’s gooo!!!”
As a young guy watching, Tony Soprano (embodied perfectly by James Gandolfini) became an instant TV icon, AJ became the dipshit son of the powerful dad that you knew back home, Meadow was the kinda cute girl down the street and Carmela reminded any of us who lived in North Jersey of about ten different friend’s moms.
Then Tony’s crew was damn near perfect entertainment: Silvio. Paulie Walnuts. Big Pussy. Christopher.
At the time, hell yeah, I was in it for the cool, R-rated stuff. The mob stuff. The characters busting each other’s balls. The heists. The stand-offs. The fights. The hierarchy decisions. The rival families. The bloody takeovers. The threats. It was awesome.
But here’s the funny thing…
It’s been two full decades and I decided to watch the show again for a bunch of reasons. Call it nostalgia or most new shows don’t interest me or that I’ve been hankering for a peek back into my Jersey childhood, whatever… I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I was curious to see if it was as good as I remembered. Here’s what I discovered:
The Sopranos is an entirely new show for me because now I have a teenage son and daughter. Now I have the responsibilities that Tony had (minus the mob boss and goomah issues).
If you watched the show back when it was on and you’re around my age, I strongly urge you to at least go back and watch Episode 1. It is a glimpse into an entirely different world (no phones, no cameras), but also, into your modern dad life right now.
If I knew nothing about it, and you asked me what the show is about after watching Episode 1, I might say something like this:
It’s about a married dad with an insanely stressful job. He’s trying to be a good husband to his wife, but because of his job, he’s got temptation all around and acts on it. He feels powerful all day and sometimes, powerless in his own house. He gets frustrated at the chaos coming from all sides all the time:
Teacher meetings. His kids’ grades. Sports. School functions. Annoying neighbors. Aging family members. A mom who should be in a nursing home but won’t go. Irritating parents of other kids. Siblings fighting. Kids making dumb decisions. His teen daughter and wife are at each other’s throats. He just lost his dad. He’s got ducks in his pool that he finds fascinating that nobody cares about.
He’s putting out fires nonstop at work, while coming home and listening to the minutiae of his wife’s day that really doesn’t interest him. He’s also wondering if anything he’s doing even matters. If he should be doing something else. If he should have made different decisions in his past and on and on…
What is The Sopranos about, you ask?
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It’s about a modern dad putting up with all the bullshit life throws at him while trying to figure out who he is as a man and father.
In short, it’s a show about all of us (aside from handing out beatings/murders).
Think about this: James Gandolfini was 39 when the show debuted and 47 when it finished. That’s primetime dad, midlife male age. When the show wrapped up, with the famous diner scene, he was the same age I am now. I thought about that while re-watching the whole first episode, where Tony is doing all the dad things: grilling for the family, taking his wife out to dinner, watching his daughter play volleyball, figuring out business contracts, dealing with his old mom and uncle, managing his team, mediating the fights between his wife and teen daughter. Some version of that probably describes 90% of your week, too.
Like all of us going through it – it’s a lot.
I never once considered any of these things when I watched it the first time. I just wanted Paulie Walnuts to insult Christopher, beat the hell out of someone and catch a few strip club scenes. I wanted some random dude to make a pass at Carmela to watch Tony glare and stare and calm himself down before he killed the guy. I wanted Carmela to complain about the duvet and have Tony lose it.
Give me all the friction.
But now, as a dad and husband, I look at all of it totally differently because I’ve experienced all of it (minus being a mob boss). And while this doesn’t make Tony a good guy, it makes him something I’d have never thought of in my twenties…
It makes him completely relatable.
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Jon Finkel
Editor-in-Chief, Midlife Male
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