I first watched “The Sopranos” in the fall semester of 2023. About a month into my first semester, I contracted a virus and was the sickest I had ever been, with the exception of the flu I had in sixth grade. During this period of extreme fatigue, I finally watched the pilot episode, but it wasn’t until the fifth episode of the first season, “College” that I truly fell in love with the show.
When I first saw that episode, I knewI was watching something special. Critics have widely praised “College” as potentially the best TV episode of all time.
At the turn of the century, middle-aged, depressed screenwriter David Chase penned the pilot for a story about a mobster in therapy. Within eight years, it became America’s favorite show and is now widely considered to have sparked the “Golden Age of Television.”
The opening scene introduces us to the show’s two main characters: Tony Soprano, a mobster from New Jersey, and Dr. Jennifer Melfi, a mild-mannered psychiatrist.
Our protagonist begins a monologue about his anxiety and his concern for the future.
“The morning of the day I got sick, I’ve been thinking it’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, I know. But lately, I’ve been gettin’ the feelin’ that I came in at the end. The best is over.”
Melfi responds, “Many Americans, I think, feel that way.”
The opening scene was a prophecy for the 21st century. During Y2K, the media raved about the “best economy ever,” and then-President Bill Clinton could not give a speech without referencing the “New Economy.”
In reality, America was unraveling underneath this glossy front. Since the 1970s, wages have largely remained stagnant in America despite increased worker productivity. Income and wealth inequality are now at an all-time high, exceeding the Gilded Age. From the genesis of the show, this idea of an insecure America was at the heart of Chase’s conception of the show. In Behind the Curtain’s “How I wrote the Sopranos,” Chase commented on the irony of the show, “life in America had gotten so savage, selfish, that even a mob guy couldn’t take it anymore.”
“The Sopranos” was a pioneer because it was fundamentally a show about mental health and intergenerational trauma.
Today, partly because of social media, we are all inundated with therapy speak. Close to 25% of Americans today go to therapy. To have a protagonist, especially a male protagonist, go to therapy in 1999 was a big deal. Chase remembers how network executives refused to pick up the show because they did not want American audiences to view the protagonist as “weak.”
To understand The Sopranos is to understand David Chase.
David Chase was born in 1945 and raised in New Jersey as an only child. As a kid, Chase’s childhood has been explained by Peter Biskind, a Vanity Fair reporter as, “he could barely stand to be in the same room with his mother and father; their very proximity made him physically ill, and put his stomach in knots.”
It’s now widely known that Chase’s mother was the basis of the show. Tony Soprano’s mother, Livia Soprano, was based on his mother, who he described as “a nervous woman who dominated any situation she was in by being so needy and always on the verge of hysteria. You walked on eggshells.” In retrospect, recent documentaries and interviews after the show have ended appear as if Chase is regretful of how he portrayed her in the show. At 79 years old, one gets the sense that while Chase is proud of his work on “The Sopranos,” he cannot get over the fact that it was not a movie, his real lifelong dream.
I could write a whole dissertation about what makes “The Sopranos” great, and maybe I will someday, but let’s keep this short and sweet. If you haven’t watched it yet, drop whatever you’re doing and watch it immediately.
The opinions desk can be reached at opinions@ubspectrum.com
Photo: EgorovaSvetlana / Wikimedia Commons
