I used to think The Wire was the greatest television show ever made, but I’ve lately come to think that distinction belongs to The Sopranos.
David Simon (in)famously described The Wire as “a political tract masquerading as a cop show,” and I suspect that fact was a large part of why critics, and I myself, admired it so much. Its politics aligned almost perfectly with the attitudes of the educated elite at the time: skepticism of policing, standardized testing, markets, institutional accountability, and practically every attempt to measure or punish failure.
But many of those political judgments have aged like milk. It turns out that policing, deterrence, and incarcerating repeat offenders really can reduce violent crime and make our cities livable. Standardized testing, while imperfect, can reveal achievement gaps and impose accountability on institutions that would otherwise conceal failure.
The Wire remains a great work of television, but what the critics saw as profound institutional pessimism now seems more ideological and historically contingent than I once recognized. The Sopranos, by contrast, doesn't beat its viewers over their heads with a fashionable theory of public policy. Its subjects of self-deception, appetite, resentment, family, mortality, and the near-impossibility of genuine change are timeless.
I don't think it had a specific skepticism of policing or standardized testing as much as how the system doesn't effectively incentivize correct outcomes. For example all of the gaming of the the crime rate in the org was just as compelling as how Carver learned from Colvin how "real policing" should work.
I do not think The Wire psychologically depicted inner city drug dealers accurately. People involved in that type of organized crime in real life tend to be more disturbing, off-putting, and emotionally dysregulated in an unsettling way. Insofar as they are organized and calculating, they have these qualities because they want to psychologically dominate police and the broader society more than because of innately high conscientiousness. They are not calculating Shakespearean protagonists with above average IQs that sometimes perform theatrical displays of emotion. The political problems of The Wire flow downstream of the psychological mischaracterization.
Even though it had a very liberal cultural message, and was very representative of 'woke' when it came out, I think that the movie 'Moonlight' was actually a much better representation of what inner city crime culture usually looks like. I knew some people from the 'hood' of the Midwestern city I lived in growing up: the kids who were like D'Angelo or Omar or Avon or Stringer were in magnet schools and taking AP classes, they were not in the streets slinging drugs and killing people. They would have fared very poorly in that scene.
Good essay. Watched an episode of Mad Men recently and found myself thinking that no prestige drama has matched The Sopranos for characterological depth. Carmela and Christopher feel like fully realized human beings in a way e.g. Skyler White or Pete Campbell never quite do.
Sopranos is more embedded in the real world than Breaking Bad or Mad Men is. A lot of Walter White‘s activities and interactions take place in a parallel world of criminality that impacts the world of „normies“ but remains oddly separate (think about the underground drug lab or how Gus Fring basically has a secret identity like a supervillain). Mad Men is set in a hyperstylized version of the 1960s that make it seem like the show is a movie from the 1960s rather than the actual 1960s. The Sopranos is set solidly in the physical reality of 1990s New Jersey and therefore feels like a more expansive and grounded story.
Having just rewatched both Sopranos and Mad Men, I have to disagree with you. I thought both shows are of the highest caliber and hold up great. We're at more of a temporal remove from Mad Men, but Pete is very richly drawn.
Agreed, Pete might be my favorite fictional character, period. He grew up in a more formal and less expressive milieu, so he can come off as a bit fake or "flat," but I think the psychological depth is there if you look for it. Arguably he doesn't quite live up to the Sopranos standard but I'd definitely say he's a few steps above Breaking Bad. We are all Pete Campbell. Or at least, I am all Pete Campbell.
Yeah I think Rob is onto something but Pete isn’t a great example. Joan is someone who gets a lot of screen time and, while she is a good character, she lacks the depth and development that characterizes some Sopranos characters. Of course, no show can have every character be complete and realized.
Matthew Weiner, who was the creator of "Mad Men", was a writer and producer on "The Sopranos" in his prior life. In fact, his spec script for "Mad Men" is why David Chase hired him.
Certainly agree about Breaking Bad, one of my main criticisms of that show. But I have a hard time saying Mad Men isn’t as well drawn. Certainly quieter and largely, give or take a Roger Sterling, less animalistically charismatic though.
Hanania here deeply understands why great art, offering commentary on the human condition through the mundane of choices large and small, holds a mirror to the time it is made in as well as the illusions of long ago. Reading this, I kept thinking of The Great Gatsby final line ""So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
My interpretation is that Tony provokes Janice into anger because Tony has recently beaten up his bar guy for no good reason and wants to believe that Soprano anger is essentially genetic and uncontrollable. If Janice can control her moods, he no longer has an excuse for his impulsive violence.
The show really did give its characters a level of emotional complexity (however evil) that you didn't and don't see elsewhere on TV.
A lot of ink has been spilled about the Sopranos (including my own, loss to the sands the internet in the early aughts). It’s a hard topic to make newly relevant and have a unique perspective on. You draw out a lot of contemporary relevance here. Great read, bravo!
I think that the show is more pro-liberalism than this article represents. The Soprano family is portrayed as defective because they are bad people that exploit and murder: as the Jewish therapist scene alludes to, this poisons their family culture. When the family tries old school parenting, it fails and produces a violent sociopath in Tony. When the family tries gentle modern liberalism, it either produces a pathetic and defective kid (AJ) or a smart overachiever who uses her intelligence to provide legal protection to bad people and marries a bad person (Meadow). In comparison, Melfi is portrayed as mostly well-adjusted, high integrity, and normal, with a pretentious but regular son, her main flaw being a certain naiveness about Tony. The show draws somewhat of a connection between this naiveness and an over-internalization of liberal therapy culture norms, but even this gets complicated: most of Melfi's friends and advisors, despite being in the same liberal cultural milleu as Melfi, immediately recognize that Tony is a sociopath that she should not be treating.
The show regularly punctures the larger-than-life narratives that bad people provide about themselves (the old mafiosos regularly reveal themselves to be selfish, pathetic, and small, Tony's 'principles' fall by the wayside, Meadow's 'Ivy League Soprano' aesthetic gets deflated into being a mob lawyer). Insofar as I think it is possible to extrapolate a larger theme from the show, I think the theme is moreso moralistic than it is pro or against 'therapy culture'.
I recommend that everyone in this thread check out The Sopranos Sessions, an incredible book includes a thoughtful essay about each individual episode (yes, all 86 of them), plus a long interview with David Chase.
I like how Richard highlights the glamour of the Mafia, since it does tap into a desire for the old world of adventure and masculine hierarchy; unfortunately, as the show reveals to us, the guys who thrive in this underworld are monsters like Ralph Cifaretto and Phil Leotardo. Life among these guys is not worth it.
The elite human capital in the Sopranos, like Melfi, make for much better friends and neighbors than a guy who enjoys punching staples into a someone else's flesh as payback (as Tony does to Mikey in Season 1) or giggling at a lame singing fish toy as if is the height of wit.
Still, the tension between these two worlds makes for great storytelling.
Good essay. To me the point of the death scene isn't Tony dead or no, it's that Tony's life is one in which he can get whacked at any second. If it doesn't happen in this evening it can in another one, and if he's not killed he can get arrested and find himself in prison for life, as you mention. Amazing job by David Chase.
Something missing from the description. Many years ago Tom Friedman extolled us to be "China for a Day," in order to expedite infrastructure. The implicit meaning was getting it done in a Democracy was problematic. Similarly creating law not through elected Congress but appointed SCOTUS justices. Today, many on the right are okay with Trump's ignoring Congress and even outright corruption because "he fights."
Two episodes of the Sopranos captured this wish to "get things done" and even something darker. AJ gets bullied until the identity of his father (from the Internet) is revealed to his classmates. The bully gives HIS money to AJ.
And even more precise, when Melfi is sexual assaulted and breaks down in front of Tony, all she has to do is give Tony a name, and revenge, justice, will be hers. She does not because that would be her end, indebted to the likes of Tony.
We get mad at our neighbors, siblings, boss or the guy who cut us off in traffic. To be a Soprano means that all of these people will be punished or never cross us. If the Mob wants something done, they do it. No elections, bureaucracy or dumb president and Congressperson to gainsay us.
People imagine themselves closer to Don Corleone, Michael, or even the better sides of Tony than to say Richie or Ralph, two of the most odious characters in the show. But they imagine that like the mob, they will get things done. That is why we like the guy outside of the lines, like Tony
It does sometimes seem like we live in a country where our greatest ambition in life isn't to do something great, it's to find the most compelling excuse for why we couldn't have. Tony would have been unhappy in any era, but I think his particular misery came from reaching his peak right around the time we switched from one ethos to another, and not being certain which way he wanted to go.
Btw, minor point, I think the Fran video might be placed about one paragraph too early. It would read cleaner a little later.
I mean, it makes sense to keep the in-depth explanation after the clip, but it seems like all the others clips have some context given above or at least a mention of a relevant character. Fran's name doesn't appear until after her clip, while other characters like Teittleman, Melfi, Krakower, and Chris are mentioned before they appear on screen. The inconsistency threw me off a little because I was trying to figure out how the Fran clip related to anti-Italian prejudice until I saw the text below it.
I also prefer Deadwood to Sopranos, but I won't argue that with its briefer run it was the better show overall. If the Wire was a show about a city, Deadwood was about how that gets created in the first place.
I thought this was a great piece. Extremely long though. Wonder if it could have been released in multiple parts. I appreciate the pervasive use of specific examples. A lot of people doing media criticism paint with broad brushes and make unsupported claims.
About the length of the average real magazine essay back in the day .. a length I greatly miss - once can get immersed to the point of forgetting one's surroundings, without investing in a novel.
Wow. What a piece. Either I recall every part my favourite TV drama or Richard completely nails every significant moment. Would have loved to get his thoughts on Carmella getting support for Meadows college application but beyond that this is a real masterpiece.
Christopher and Paulie, lost in the snow, hunting a Russian who won't stay dead. "Pine Barrens" strands two of Tony's men in the woods until the episode stops feeling like gangster television and starts feeling like Beckett: two men waiting for a God who has clearly stopped watching. A look at tradition, futility, and the quiet unraveling of mob mythology, closing on Bartoli's "Sposa son disprezzata" and five minutes of real, aching grief.
Here's a fun fact from a therapist: psychotherapists are NOT SUPPOSED TO PUBLICLY APPROACH PATIENTS. It's extremely unethical and awkward. We're supposed to act like strangers unless the client speaks to us first. Melfi was certainly mostly well-intentioned by damn, did she make some ethical blunders.
I used to think The Wire was the greatest television show ever made, but I’ve lately come to think that distinction belongs to The Sopranos.
David Simon (in)famously described The Wire as “a political tract masquerading as a cop show,” and I suspect that fact was a large part of why critics, and I myself, admired it so much. Its politics aligned almost perfectly with the attitudes of the educated elite at the time: skepticism of policing, standardized testing, markets, institutional accountability, and practically every attempt to measure or punish failure.
But many of those political judgments have aged like milk. It turns out that policing, deterrence, and incarcerating repeat offenders really can reduce violent crime and make our cities livable. Standardized testing, while imperfect, can reveal achievement gaps and impose accountability on institutions that would otherwise conceal failure.
The Wire remains a great work of television, but what the critics saw as profound institutional pessimism now seems more ideological and historically contingent than I once recognized. The Sopranos, by contrast, doesn't beat its viewers over their heads with a fashionable theory of public policy. Its subjects of self-deception, appetite, resentment, family, mortality, and the near-impossibility of genuine change are timeless.
I don't think it had a specific skepticism of policing or standardized testing as much as how the system doesn't effectively incentivize correct outcomes. For example all of the gaming of the the crime rate in the org was just as compelling as how Carver learned from Colvin how "real policing" should work.
I do not think The Wire psychologically depicted inner city drug dealers accurately. People involved in that type of organized crime in real life tend to be more disturbing, off-putting, and emotionally dysregulated in an unsettling way. Insofar as they are organized and calculating, they have these qualities because they want to psychologically dominate police and the broader society more than because of innately high conscientiousness. They are not calculating Shakespearean protagonists with above average IQs that sometimes perform theatrical displays of emotion. The political problems of The Wire flow downstream of the psychological mischaracterization.
Even though it had a very liberal cultural message, and was very representative of 'woke' when it came out, I think that the movie 'Moonlight' was actually a much better representation of what inner city crime culture usually looks like. I knew some people from the 'hood' of the Midwestern city I lived in growing up: the kids who were like D'Angelo or Omar or Avon or Stringer were in magnet schools and taking AP classes, they were not in the streets slinging drugs and killing people. They would have fared very poorly in that scene.
> It turns out that policing, deterrence, and incarcerating repeat offenders really can reduce violent crime and make our cities livable
The Wire doesn't deny that. But it valorizes homicide detectives like McNulty & Bunk over drug enforcement.
Good essay. Watched an episode of Mad Men recently and found myself thinking that no prestige drama has matched The Sopranos for characterological depth. Carmela and Christopher feel like fully realized human beings in a way e.g. Skyler White or Pete Campbell never quite do.
Sopranos is more embedded in the real world than Breaking Bad or Mad Men is. A lot of Walter White‘s activities and interactions take place in a parallel world of criminality that impacts the world of „normies“ but remains oddly separate (think about the underground drug lab or how Gus Fring basically has a secret identity like a supervillain). Mad Men is set in a hyperstylized version of the 1960s that make it seem like the show is a movie from the 1960s rather than the actual 1960s. The Sopranos is set solidly in the physical reality of 1990s New Jersey and therefore feels like a more expansive and grounded story.
Having just rewatched both Sopranos and Mad Men, I have to disagree with you. I thought both shows are of the highest caliber and hold up great. We're at more of a temporal remove from Mad Men, but Pete is very richly drawn.
Agreed, Pete might be my favorite fictional character, period. He grew up in a more formal and less expressive milieu, so he can come off as a bit fake or "flat," but I think the psychological depth is there if you look for it. Arguably he doesn't quite live up to the Sopranos standard but I'd definitely say he's a few steps above Breaking Bad. We are all Pete Campbell. Or at least, I am all Pete Campbell.
Yeah I think Rob is onto something but Pete isn’t a great example. Joan is someone who gets a lot of screen time and, while she is a good character, she lacks the depth and development that characterizes some Sopranos characters. Of course, no show can have every character be complete and realized.
Matthew Weiner, who was the creator of "Mad Men", was a writer and producer on "The Sopranos" in his prior life. In fact, his spec script for "Mad Men" is why David Chase hired him.
Certainly agree about Breaking Bad, one of my main criticisms of that show. But I have a hard time saying Mad Men isn’t as well drawn. Certainly quieter and largely, give or take a Roger Sterling, less animalistically charismatic though.
I disagree that Skyler White is a good example on this one.
Hanania here deeply understands why great art, offering commentary on the human condition through the mundane of choices large and small, holds a mirror to the time it is made in as well as the illusions of long ago. Reading this, I kept thinking of The Great Gatsby final line ""So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
My interpretation is that Tony provokes Janice into anger because Tony has recently beaten up his bar guy for no good reason and wants to believe that Soprano anger is essentially genetic and uncontrollable. If Janice can control her moods, he no longer has an excuse for his impulsive violence.
The show really did give its characters a level of emotional complexity (however evil) that you didn't and don't see elsewhere on TV.
A lot of ink has been spilled about the Sopranos (including my own, loss to the sands the internet in the early aughts). It’s a hard topic to make newly relevant and have a unique perspective on. You draw out a lot of contemporary relevance here. Great read, bravo!
I think that the show is more pro-liberalism than this article represents. The Soprano family is portrayed as defective because they are bad people that exploit and murder: as the Jewish therapist scene alludes to, this poisons their family culture. When the family tries old school parenting, it fails and produces a violent sociopath in Tony. When the family tries gentle modern liberalism, it either produces a pathetic and defective kid (AJ) or a smart overachiever who uses her intelligence to provide legal protection to bad people and marries a bad person (Meadow). In comparison, Melfi is portrayed as mostly well-adjusted, high integrity, and normal, with a pretentious but regular son, her main flaw being a certain naiveness about Tony. The show draws somewhat of a connection between this naiveness and an over-internalization of liberal therapy culture norms, but even this gets complicated: most of Melfi's friends and advisors, despite being in the same liberal cultural milleu as Melfi, immediately recognize that Tony is a sociopath that she should not be treating.
The show regularly punctures the larger-than-life narratives that bad people provide about themselves (the old mafiosos regularly reveal themselves to be selfish, pathetic, and small, Tony's 'principles' fall by the wayside, Meadow's 'Ivy League Soprano' aesthetic gets deflated into being a mob lawyer). Insofar as I think it is possible to extrapolate a larger theme from the show, I think the theme is moreso moralistic than it is pro or against 'therapy culture'.
I recommend that everyone in this thread check out The Sopranos Sessions, an incredible book includes a thoughtful essay about each individual episode (yes, all 86 of them), plus a long interview with David Chase.
I like how Richard highlights the glamour of the Mafia, since it does tap into a desire for the old world of adventure and masculine hierarchy; unfortunately, as the show reveals to us, the guys who thrive in this underworld are monsters like Ralph Cifaretto and Phil Leotardo. Life among these guys is not worth it.
The elite human capital in the Sopranos, like Melfi, make for much better friends and neighbors than a guy who enjoys punching staples into a someone else's flesh as payback (as Tony does to Mikey in Season 1) or giggling at a lame singing fish toy as if is the height of wit.
Still, the tension between these two worlds makes for great storytelling.
Link for the Sopranos sessions book:
https://www.amazon.com/Sopranos-Sessions-Matt-Zoller-Seitz/dp/1419742833/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.wTWxj_InoxOqmIfeto2pTAeP6AJ-KKw44yfZI8MFskxTjvV6xLRTNaWwqBlKes1tHjPOvQYfTP_W3PyQ5W8IGP6Uq5pDppkGjewFTLK7VESZb41V-4hqqjxr6d8y5PUKFCN0w1zG8oxa5Z8Or1RRM-SMu2y9Iy7A0v4YlncaAj1cyTadZvfarJLJ5KTCT-nkj7F7GocJd9KjMoS-lIRq69SoM9qdhnsJE19LrQ56CbE.qOT6cFo2QlYAgKkDd_T03q2F5gFbl5BuCwa-sPNwJtI&qid=1783906852&sr=8-1
Dr. Melfi wanted to have Tony punish her rapist. She resisted that temptation.
She was the only Soprano character that was able to resist Tony's style of justice &/or Tony's lifestyle.
She could have, she wanted to but it wasn't right and in the end, she did the right thing.
Thanks for an excellent review of a great series.
Good essay. To me the point of the death scene isn't Tony dead or no, it's that Tony's life is one in which he can get whacked at any second. If it doesn't happen in this evening it can in another one, and if he's not killed he can get arrested and find himself in prison for life, as you mention. Amazing job by David Chase.
Something missing from the description. Many years ago Tom Friedman extolled us to be "China for a Day," in order to expedite infrastructure. The implicit meaning was getting it done in a Democracy was problematic. Similarly creating law not through elected Congress but appointed SCOTUS justices. Today, many on the right are okay with Trump's ignoring Congress and even outright corruption because "he fights."
Two episodes of the Sopranos captured this wish to "get things done" and even something darker. AJ gets bullied until the identity of his father (from the Internet) is revealed to his classmates. The bully gives HIS money to AJ.
And even more precise, when Melfi is sexual assaulted and breaks down in front of Tony, all she has to do is give Tony a name, and revenge, justice, will be hers. She does not because that would be her end, indebted to the likes of Tony.
We get mad at our neighbors, siblings, boss or the guy who cut us off in traffic. To be a Soprano means that all of these people will be punished or never cross us. If the Mob wants something done, they do it. No elections, bureaucracy or dumb president and Congressperson to gainsay us.
People imagine themselves closer to Don Corleone, Michael, or even the better sides of Tony than to say Richie or Ralph, two of the most odious characters in the show. But they imagine that like the mob, they will get things done. That is why we like the guy outside of the lines, like Tony
It does sometimes seem like we live in a country where our greatest ambition in life isn't to do something great, it's to find the most compelling excuse for why we couldn't have. Tony would have been unhappy in any era, but I think his particular misery came from reaching his peak right around the time we switched from one ethos to another, and not being certain which way he wanted to go.
Btw, minor point, I think the Fran video might be placed about one paragraph too early. It would read cleaner a little later.
I’m trying to let you watch them before the description explains them.
I mean, it makes sense to keep the in-depth explanation after the clip, but it seems like all the others clips have some context given above or at least a mention of a relevant character. Fran's name doesn't appear until after her clip, while other characters like Teittleman, Melfi, Krakower, and Chris are mentioned before they appear on screen. The inconsistency threw me off a little because I was trying to figure out how the Fran clip related to anti-Italian prejudice until I saw the text below it.
It was David Milch who had Alzheimer's when he wrote the Deadwood movie.
I also prefer Deadwood to Sopranos, but I won't argue that with its briefer run it was the better show overall. If the Wire was a show about a city, Deadwood was about how that gets created in the first place.
I thought this was a great piece. Extremely long though. Wonder if it could have been released in multiple parts. I appreciate the pervasive use of specific examples. A lot of people doing media criticism paint with broad brushes and make unsupported claims.
About the length of the average real magazine essay back in the day .. a length I greatly miss - once can get immersed to the point of forgetting one's surroundings, without investing in a novel.
Wow. What a piece. Either I recall every part my favourite TV drama or Richard completely nails every significant moment. Would have loved to get his thoughts on Carmella getting support for Meadows college application but beyond that this is a real masterpiece.
yo rich, i think we got ourselves a live one.
Christopher and Paulie, lost in the snow, hunting a Russian who won't stay dead. "Pine Barrens" strands two of Tony's men in the woods until the episode stops feeling like gangster television and starts feeling like Beckett: two men waiting for a God who has clearly stopped watching. A look at tradition, futility, and the quiet unraveling of mob mythology, closing on Bartoli's "Sposa son disprezzata" and five minutes of real, aching grief.
https://littlenemo098.substack.com/p/the-pine-barrens?r=7zosqi&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
Here's a fun fact from a therapist: psychotherapists are NOT SUPPOSED TO PUBLICLY APPROACH PATIENTS. It's extremely unethical and awkward. We're supposed to act like strangers unless the client speaks to us first. Melfi was certainly mostly well-intentioned by damn, did she make some ethical blunders.