Soprano, Six Years and Twenty: Inventing (and Reinventing) the TV Anti-Hero
In January 2019, the stars of HBO’s groundbreaking series The Sopranos celebrated the 20th anniversary of its premiere. They did so without the brightest one among them.
James Gandolfini, who plays the titular role of family patriarch Tony Soprano, died of a heart attack in 2013 while vacationing with his family in Rome. He was discovered on the floor of their hotel bathroom by his thirteen year-old son, Michael, who is now set to reprise his father’s role in HBO’s upcoming prequel movie, The Many Saints of Newark. Yesterday, September 18th, would have been Gandolfini’s 58th birthday.
As one might expect, much of the conversation surrounding the reunion centered upon the absence of the actor who is widely credited with inventing the anti-hero television protagonist, a character archetype that is now a must-have for any series to win audiences, accolades, and second-season renewals. Tony Soprano was a man who, despite piling awful crime upon awful crime and drizzling it with a casual cruelty, nonetheless endeared himself to millions of ostensibly law-abiding Americans. On the fifth-ever episode of The Sopranos, Tony strangles a man to death with a pair of cables. Nearly ten years later, when the series concluded on an ambiguous note, audiences were left emotionally bereft at the unknown fate of the man whose hideous crimes they cheered on every step of the way. Like his on-screen family, friends, and criminal colleagues, the audience — who numbered 13.4 million at its Season 4 premiere and made seven seasons possible — number among his many enablers.
Don Draper followed soon after, then Walter White, and then Tyrion Lannister. This type of role, which as a result of poor writing occasionally veers into accidental self-parody (imagine any charismatic ne’er-do-well capable of cracking a joke, possesses a shred of conscience, and is at least somewhat sexually enticing), are a winning formula among American audiences. No self-respecting television writer would present a script without one — nor, for that matter, would they be allowed to.
Though there have been many imitations since, James Gandolfini’s depiction of the New Jersey mafia boss and suburban father was the genuine article.
That is to say, though Gandolfini was undoubtedly a large man, physically, his absence seems to loom larger.
Tony’s likability among audiences is well-established. So too is his notorious womanizing, abuse towards others, and general unhappiness with his place in the modern world. The last, it seems, is the key to understanding why audiences found him so attractive a persona.
The Sopranos, though clad in Mafioso overtones and the accents and attires of Godfathers Past, is a sympathetic, recognizable tale. It deals mostly with family dysfunction, and the occasional Freudian dilemma, but mostly the mundane, quotidian frustrations of ordinary life. Therapists, high school counselors, and inconsiderate strangers can be counted among Tony’s adversaries just as often as law enforcement and criminal rivals. And yet, while both Tony and the average viewer are frustrated with helping their child navigate college admissions, the difference between them lies in the fact that the man on the screen possesses unaccountable power and a willingness to inflict it upon others. We delight at Tony’s refusal to abide, his quick-fuse temperament. Mild-mannered, respectable, middle-to-upper-class audiences applaud as Tony bashes some criminal associate’s head in, no doubt receiving a frisson of pleasure as they imagine themselves doing the same to a local bureaucrat — the asshole boss, the drone at the DMV who kept asking you to spell your name (even though it’s only five letters), or that cop who pulled you over last week and searched your car because they thought they smelled marijuana.
Tony doesn’t put up with this shit, you might find yourself thinking in such moments, so why should I?
It’s true — Tony might slam the DMV guy’s head on the counter, or blackmail the cop, and he’ll get his way in the end. He’ll be satisfied, at least for the moment, and so, too, will be the audience.
And yet, no amount of violence will get Junior’s grades up. It won’t establish a dialogue with his bright but wayward daughter. It won’t fix his riven marriage.
Try as he might, Tony cannot box and glower his way to eudaimonia.
What the pundits and the mimics don’t seem to understand in their quest to reinvent Tony Soprano, is that the audiences were never rooting for a villain. Not in their eyes. They’re rooting for a somebody like them, a man who is as fed up and dissatisfied with modern life as they are, but with the balls (and the muscle) to do something about it. What makes Tony most sympathetic is that he, like the viewer, still falters where it counts — with his family, his friends, and ultimately, himself. He gratifies every pleasure, and still cannot quite figure out why he’s so unhappy.
How, Tony often asks, can a man be expected to raise children in a world like this? A world without compassion? Without morals? Without God?
As Gandolfini’s son, Michael, prepares to reprise his late father’s role in Many Saints, audiences will hope to see a flicker of the man who told them, among other things, to “remember the little moments” — to cherish the good times that we enjoy with our family and our friends.
And isn’t that what we all live for?
