100 Favorite Shows: #28 — The Sopranos
“There’s no chemical solution to a spiritual problem.”
For years, the storytelling capabilities of television had been continuously shifted incrementally in the right direction. In 1999, though, David Chase blew the whole system open when he introduced The Sopranos to the world. The epic crime series centered around both the actual Soprano family and the New Jersey-based, organized mob Soprano family. For six groundbreaking seasons, the show dared to ask: What happens when a mob boss goes through a midlife crisis? Not only did James Gandolfini play the role of Tony Soprano to perfection, but the show received high marks in every possible category that would evaluate quality. It remains one of the most beloved and obsessed-over series of all-time. A prequel film is even slated to debut on HBO Max later this year.
(Get your head out of the Bada Bing! and realize there’s some spoilers for The Sopranos in this here essay!)
My favorite episode of 30 Rock is “Leap Day,” directed by Steve Buscemi. My favorite episode of The Sopranos is “Pine Barrens,” directed by Steve Buscemi. On 30 Rock, he was Lenny Wosniak and on The Sopranos, he was Tony Blundetto. This leads me to one of two conclusions: Buscemi is either our most underrated star or Jack Donaghy was one demotion away from starting a turf war across the Hudson River.
Ultimately, though, the interpretation is up to me, right? At the end of the day, The Sopranos can mean whatever I want it to mean. I can choose to ignore every thorough development of a thought-provoking thematic story line in favor of saying, “Nah. Tony’s just a fan of ‘The Girlie Show.’” Of course, I never would. (Besides Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) would definitely be a “Homonym” fan.) Partly because that would be so obviously reductive to The Sopranos (which many consider to be the greatest series ever made) and partly because I’m definitely afraid of David Chase and his attitude towards people who clamor for elements of The Sopranos that aren’t there.
Is Valery (Vitali Baganov), the Russian from “Pine Barrens” dead, alive, or in the trees when he escapes capture and a bullet to the brain? Did Adriana (Drea de Matteo) get away from Consigliere Dante’s (Steven Van Zandt) bullet in “Long Term Parking” after she became an informant? Does Tony get whacked in the series finale, “Made in America”? These are the questions that have plagued Chase and frustrated him so exponentially that he began to snap at fans. I can’t blame him, though. I’ve gotten so fed up with people focusing on plot, plot, plot all the time that I become tempted to say Star Wars: The Last Jedi is my favorite Lucasfilm movie just out of spite. Who cares where Valery went? Obviously, Adriana was killed. As for Tony, why does there need to be a definitive answer?
I would never dare put words in Chase’s mouth, but I’ve always interpreted his frustrations to be akin to, “Why do you care about the plot and not the characters?” There’s no doubt that he’s right. The Sopranos explored so many nuanced topics in the realm of the crime/gangster genre and built upon so many tropes and molds that had come before it that the plot hardly seemed to matter. I never cared so much about what Tony was doing as I did about how he felt about it. His choices were just a symptom of his torn-apart psyche. Isn’t that why we spent so much time with Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco)? Chase more than earned the right to hold narrative ownership over The Sopranos.
That’s not to say it’s easy for Chase to maintain this. His stoic, “show speaks for itself” mantra wears down as anything would over the course of thirteen years (a prequel movie’s on the way!). We’re lucky that he continues to speak on the subject, even after giving countless interviews over the past two decades. Granted, the show is impossible to boil down in just one interview (or, in my case, one essay. That’s why The Sopranos Sessions by Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz justifies its own existence). It took its narrative and thematic cues from a rich history of multi-cultural stories and massive genre epics that paled in comparison to the eventual scope of The Sopranos.
Half of its identity came from the great gangster pictures we’d seen over the years (The Godfather, Goodfellas), but never in a way that stretched them out over the course of six seasons and hours of development. The other half came from the mold of traditional television series about families (The Dick Van Dyke Show, Family Matters). In any random episode, Tony was faced with the sort of mob-related dilemmas that plagued Jimmy Conway, Tommy DeVito, and Henry Hill, as well as the (for him) burden of keeping his family happy in the vein of Rob Petrie’s sitcommy attempts. Throw in a bit of folklore and mystical elements (that pesky Russian Rasputin figure again!) and a shit ton of murders and f-bombs and you had The Sopranos. It’s about as complicated as Tony himself (yet still somehow as lovable). (The Gemini-esque dynamics were widespread over the course of the show, but they could still be boiled down to distinct moments, like when the investigators watch Tony’s every move in “Mr. Ruggerio’s Neighborhood” to a mashup of the Peter Gunn theme with “Every Breath You Take” by The Police.)
It’s easy to take for granted how groundbreaking this premise was. Television had slowly been turning the ship of quality a few degrees in the right direction every year. (I’ve never seen it, but from all accounts, Hill Street Blues was critical for showing that dramas could be more than the procedural format.) Garry Shandling, Larry David, Steven Bochco and David Milch. They all sowed the seeds that allowed The Sopranos to explode and become the inflection point for “prestige television” and the promising future of quality. (It was like how we couldn’t have had the explosiveness of Rob Gronkowski without the tight end groundwork from Tony Gonzalez and Antonio Gates.) It didn’t come a moment too soon either. The Sopranos captured the zeitgeist at the same time that filler reality shows did. Television could’ve been broken if it wasn’t for David Chase and his commitment to a revolutionary narrative form.
The premise was more than just the Corleones meet the Jeffersons, though. It dared to ask a question unfamiliar to the genre. Mobsters are people, too. What happens when one has a mid-life crisis? A gangster goes to therapy. It’s such a peculiar little conceit, but it meant everything for the depth of the show.
Ultimately, it’s hard to say if Tony’s talks with Dr. Melfi actually helped anything. Everyone on this show felt like they were perpetually on the state of experiencing an emotional breakthrough, but they could never quite get over the hump. The rock would roll back down the mountain and they’d fall back into their heinous routines. Enlightenment was at the fingertips of everyone in The Sopranos, but they were too weighed down by tradition and expectation to reach for it.
The closest anyone ever comes is probably the dream that Tony experiences in “The Test Dream,” which ends with his high school football coach, Coach Molinaro (Charley Scalies), telling him that he doesn’t have to be in the mob. There are different lives to lead and it’s not too late for Tony. Maybe it was because Tony is too far gone to think that such a notion is possible, but the only element of the dream he heeds is the clue that someone close to him is more duplicitous than they seem. Tony heeds this element of his own dream psychology and shoves Molinaro to the side as just another “recurring element.” He doesn’t listen to his coach because a traitor seems like a more pressing issue. Eventually, Molinaro will fade away — like Bing Bong’s memory loss in Inside Out.
The truth is, Tony is racked by sin. Molinaro is in his dreams and Dr. Melfi is in his life so he does know, on some level, that salvation is his most pressing need; he just never acts on it. By the time the show comes to an end, it’s beyond clear that Tony’s never going to be able to relax. Sooner or later, all the great gangsters go down. It’s just an endless cycle. Someone whacks a leader to become a leader and it’s only a matter of time until they’re whacked, too. Tony’s no different. (For what it’s worth, I do believe that the last shot of the show implies the death of Tony Soprano.)
At the very least, Tony accepts his relegation. It’s the life he’s chosen and he’s content with the consequences of that. Adriana and Chrissy Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) experience more tragic character arcs because, on occasion, they do believe escape is possible. On The Sopranos, that was about as dangerous as believing hope and the American Dream are possible.
Throughout the history of American fiction, there have been innumerable stories that tell us all about how the American Dream is impossible and to believe otherwise is folly. Terrence Malick’s film, Badlands. John Steinbeck’s novel, Of Mice and Men. Of course, David Chase’s series, The Sopranos, belongs there, too. Adriana and Chrissy chase it anyway in “Long Term Parking,” but only one of them comes back.
When Adriana cooperates with the FBI (who don’t give a fuck about her, by the way), she dooms herself. There’s no coming back from that; she becomes too much of a liability. In a fit of knowing panic, she convinces Chrissy to run away with her and escape the life of the mafia.
Ignore Van Zandt for a moment and consider the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” (a New Jersey staple), which are featured in the episode.
The highway’s jammed with broken heroes
on a last chance power drive.
Everybody’s out on the run tonight,
but there’s no place left to hide.
As one of the most loyal pawns in the racket, it might seem surprising to learn that Chrissy would consider it at all. But over the preceding five seasons, plenty of leg work had been done to show that, eventually, a breaking point will come between Tony and Chrissy. They’re too similar to work together forever and the love Tony has for his nephew is at the same level as the love Chase had for Emmys (and man, did this episode win a lot of Emmys) — none. In “Long Term Parking” (written by my favorite writer on The Sopranos, Terence Winter, in an inspiring effort of pioneering the penultimate episode “jaw drop” structure), Chrissy finally rebukes Tony’s methodology with a pointed, “This is the guy I’m going to hell for?”
Ultimately, the theme of chance intervenes in Chrissy’s escape plan when he sees a station wagon loaded up with bickering kids and forlorn father. It’s then when he decides that he can’t put the mob life behind him and he turns in Adriana. The station wagon was just in the wrong place at the wrong time (not unlike the owner of a Jeep who is inexplicably murdered by Vito (Joseph Gannascoli) in “Moe n’ Joe”).
For as much as Chrissy is devoted to Adriana, he values his exciting life of crime more than her soul. He was my favorite character on the show, but I knew this episode was a turning point into unforgivable status for him (for as fun and depraved as the show was, the look in his eyes at the episode’s midway point is genuinely terrifying). He never had a chance at the American Dream from the moment he put his hands on her. They doomed themselves. Adriana’s car is put in the long term parking section of the airport, but I have to think that the title ultimately refers to this doom. The bridge illuminates Tony at night and he’s damned. Chrissy can hardly bear it, but he has damned himself. Hell is his long-term parking.
The episode ends with Tony and Chrissy, racked by guilt, hurting each other both physically and emotionally in the Bada Bing! before Tony, finally reunited with Carmela (Edie Falco), looks around noncommittally at the plot of land that enticed the marriage back. Long term parking, baby. Long term parking.
By now, the woods surrounding Newark have gotta be haunted. I mean, there’s a Russian somewhere in them, Adriana was killed in them, and Carmela (who is no saint herself) seems far too happy to be in them. They’re different patches of forest, I know, but the setting is all too familiar when considering the prior horrors conducted among the trees.
The settings on The Sopranos were an incredible juxtaposition in their own right. They could be the woods, which were gorgeous, life-affirming, and perhaps haunted. Or they could be impossibly tacky, like a weary strip mall where you can get your nails done. In my mind, that’s about as good a summary of New Jersey as you’re gonna get. Sometimes, though, the woods are just a backdrop for two jamokes to play off each other in a buddy comedy.
The Sopranos was always excellent in every category, technical, creative, or otherwise, but it was never better than in “Pine Barrens.” For the most part, characters are crafty and cunning and you can see the schemes unraveling in their heads. But in “Pine Barrens,” we saw Chrissy and Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico, standing out in a cast that was filled with all-time great supporting performances and Frankie Valli as Rusty Millio. My favorite Paulie-ism is when he bemoans cleanliness and remarks, “Look at lady’s johns, you can eat maple walnut ice cream from the toilets”) fuck up their mission with the Russian so badly that they end up lost in the woods, hair askew, stomachs growling, shoes missing, and skin freezing. They were crafty, but they weren’t always smart.
Their biggest incompetence comes solely from trying to get out of the woods, a task which proves impossible for the pair of them. As a result, it doesn’t take long for them to turn on each other, their oafish banter becoming desperate violence. Even when it gets dangerous, though, it’s still a ton of fun. I felt like limiting their exchanges to a paragraph would be a disservice to Winter’s writing and instead, I’ve ranked my favorite moments of dialogue between Paulie Walnuts and Chrissy (and sometimes Tony) in “Pine Barrens” below:
5: Paulie Walnuts: “After all the shit we been through, you really think I’d kill ya?”
Chrissy: “Yeah, I do.”
4: Chrissy: “Are those Tic Tacs?”
Paulie Walnuts: “I just found them; I didn’t know I had them on me.”
Chrissy: “You had Tic Tacs all along? Give me some.”
Paulie Walnuts: “There ain’t no more. I ate them.”
Chrissy: “Selfish prick, I’m dying here.”
Paulie Walnuts: “Then fucking die already.”
3: Paulie Walnuts: “Don’t make me pull rank on you, kid!”
Chrissy: “Fuck you, Paulie. Captain or no captain: right now, we’re just two assholes lost in the woods.”
2: Tony [on the phone]: “Did you wrap the package?”
Paulie Walnuts: “The package hit Chrissy with an implement and ran off.”
Tony: “Is there any way the package could survive?”
1: Tony [on the phone]: “It’s a bad connection, so I’m gonna talk fast! The guy you’re looking for is an ex-commando! He killed sixteen Chechen rebels single-handed!”
Paulie Walnuts: “Get the fuck outta here.”
Tony: “Yeah. Nice, huh? He was with the Interior Ministry. Guy’s some kind of Russian green beret. This guy can not come back to tell this story. You understand?”
Paulie Walnuts: “I hear you.” [to Chrissy]: “You’re not gonna believe this. He killed sixteen Czechoslovakians. The guy was an interior decorator.”
Chrissy: “His house looked like shit.”
And for good measure, here’s Bobby Bacala’s useless response to Tony asking if Valery could have survived: “Flesh wound, maybe. Head shot, I don’t know. On the other hand, anything’s possible.”
That’s what I loved so strongly about The Sopranos and why I rate it so highly. It’s known in many circles for being the greatest drama ever made, but it also had some of the funniest moments of any series. You need to have levity. No amount of Mark Ruffalo playing twins is going to get me to watch something so oppressively dour and I appreciated that The Sopranos always had some fun mixed in with the emotions.
Besides, “Pine Barrens” is filled with much more than Chrissy and Paulie Walnuts on walk-about. Everyone else is embroiled in sex troubles as Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) blames herself for the affair her boyfriend has and Tony is enlightened by the always-intuitive Dr. Melfi that his high-maintenace mistress, Gloria (Annabella Sciorra), has many of the same attributes that Tony’s mother (Nancy Marchand) possessed. (“Does that remind you of any other woman?”) Family troubles are endless, after all.
It did not go unnoticed or unappreciated that the episode included side arcs for characters who were often unfairly derided by fans. (I stand by Meadow as an unfortunate product of her upbringing. A.J. (Robert Iler) might be a different story.) It could’ve just followed Chrissy and Paulie Walnuts and been an all-time classic. But Winter, Chase, Buscemi, and Tim Van Patten pushed a little but further and found even more to delight in.
After all, consider “Pine Barrens” from Tony’s point of view. His cell reception is spotty and he’s only receiving truncated snippets of information from Paulie Walnuts and Chrissy, who have clearly failed in their mission. It slowly drives him mad until he peels out to the forest with Bobby to devote an entire evening to trying to find them. It’s funny, it’s infuriating, and it’s evident that Tony would do anything for his familia. (He’s a regular Brian O’Conner, that old bloodthirsty teddy bear.)
Along the way, though, Gandolfini balances out Tony’s drive and his flirtations with the hardest piece of acting to convey: laughter. His performance already belongs on the Mount Rushmore of television stalwarts, even without the comedy he can bring to Tony Soprano. It’s just the comedy that pushes him over the top. He asks Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese) to borrow his shirt before he turns around to see the faux-hunter shirt Bobby is sporting and it sends him into a laughing spree. The moment is a phenomenal one (as they all were), but the argument could be made that Tony does not deserve to experience joy because of how deeply evil his actions tend to be. It’s not so black and white, in my mind. If a mobster can go to therapy, then a mobster can have a good laugh, too. He might be the one who needs it most of all. And maybe the next time he dreams his way free, he’ll remember how it felt to smile.
