How We’re All Living in a Post-Sopranos World
“It is The Beatles, and it is 2001(A Space Odyssey). There is everything before and there is everything after.” -Steven Soderbergh on The Sopranos
To say that a show changed television would normally be a statement loaded with exaggeration. However, in the case of The Sopranos, it could not be more true.
It is a show that consistently tops lists of the greatest television shows of all time. It was described by Norman Mailer as the closest thing to the Great American Novel in today’s culture. The New York Times called it “The greatest work of American popular culture in the last quarter century.”
The contemporary TV format we have today of long running, layered dramas is indebted to The Sopranos. Before it, it was unheard of that a TV show could not only be as good as a movie, but could be better. It was the first show to be truly ‘cinematic’ in production. Every week the audience would tune into a watch a mini movie with larger than life characters. However, unlike a movie, this would pick up where it left off every week. Before The Sopranos, most TV shows followed the traditional format of generally well meaning characters experiencing some sort of conflict that would be resolved at the end of an episode. While shows like HBO’s Oz and Twin Peaks had bent the rules of what could be done with TV, The Sopranos tore up the rule book and made it anew. Suddenly there was a show with inherently flawed and morally reprehensible characters whose conflicts were ongoing and never quite resolved. It was the beginning of television as a serious, artistic enterprise. The show’s creator David Chase and the late James Gandolfini had also ushered in a new age in television: the age of the anti-hero.
The anti-hero has become one of the most common tropes on television today and it all started with Tony Soprano. It is difficult to convey just how ambitious a character he was at the time of his inception. When The Sopranos first aired, people had no idea how the audience were going to relate to a middle aged New Jersey mob boss. TV shows traditionally featured moral and likeable characters who the audience could sympathize with and root for. Enter Tony Soprano; a lying, womanizing, murderous mobster. When HBO executives first read the script of the fifth episode of the show, “College”, they objected to a scene where Tony murders a man in cold blood while on a trip visiting colleges with his daughter. They warned him that he would be killing the character by having him commit such an abhorrent act and that there was no way the audience would continue to like this character if he went through with it. However, Chase pushed ahead with the script and defied conventions. Tony would continue to be an immoral character who would commit deplorable actions throughout the series. Yet every week millions of people around the world would invite him into their living room. With Tony, The Sopranos paved the way for future TV icons like Don Draper and Walter White. As Bryan Cranston said, “Without Tony Soprano, there would be no Walter White.”
The first episode of The Sopranos aired on the 10th of January 1999 and television has not been the same since. It changed the landscape of television and the world’s perception of it and what could be done with it as an art form. It was a pioneer in a new era of television and paved the way for shows like Mad Men, Game of Thrones, The Wire and Breaking Bad. Ultimately, Chase’s family drama about a New Jersey mob boss navigating his life broke rules, pushed boundaries and showed us all we could go a little further.
