The.. a-hem.. godfather of television’s renaissance. The trail blazer. The game changer. That, without which, nothing good would’ve flowed forth.
If this were a list of TV’s greatest single seasons, well, the first 13 episodes of The Sopranos would be the uncontested #1. It was nothing short of a revelation. So this is what television could be! Physically and psychologically menacing, darkly, darkly funny, the lead character was an anxiety ridden, mafia boss/thug with a mommy complex. The Sopranos was not like anything anyone had ever seen on the small screen.
Seemingly caught off-guard by its own success and then, soon afterwards, the death of actress Nancy Marchand who played the vile and creepy Soprano matriarch and served as the emotional underpinning of the show, the series drifted in and out of greatness until its abrupt ending after 6 protracted seasons. (Abrupt and protracted? How is that possible, you ask. That was the show’s visceral beauty.) Even at its “worst”, The Sopranos was miles ahead of 99.9% everything else airing during its run.
Where the show never slumped was in the performances. Arguably the finest acting ensemble to ever grace television, it was ultimately the roles of Tony and Carmella Soprano that kept you glued to the series. Never were there two less sympathetic leads in a series -- he, a stone cold killer and serial adulterer who breathed heavily as he stuffed his face; she, a manipulative wallower in a deep, wide river of self-denial -- but as portrayed by James Gandolfini and Edie Falco you invested heavily in them, in their well being. They were the beating hearts at the core of The Sopranos which, regardless of all the other bells and whistles and gangster stylings, was nothing more than a family drama. A family drama, the likes we had never seen before outside of novels and movie theaters. Thanks to The Sopranos that would all change.
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