Understanding Your Obsessive Compulsive Addiction to the Sopranos

PARTS 1 & 2 of a weekly 6 PART mini-series exclusively here on Planet Zman.

ADMITTING YOU’RE AN ADDICT

Good Lord in Heaven, this family is an abomination – a psychologically disturbed, ethically bankrupt, spiritually void gene pool. To put it more in their terms – they are essere fottuto – all fucked up! But, YOU are nothing like this in any way – yet, you’re infatuated beyond reason. You are obsessed with the lives of these people and you love them unconditionally as if they were of your own flesh and blood. Several times during the day on Sunday, you would think to yourself, “Sopranos on tonight.” And when nine o’clock hit, that magical, hypnotic theme song by the band A3 began to play… Bum, ba bum, bum, bum, wa wa wa…”Woke up this morning and got your self a gun…” Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, you propped up in front of the TV in a semi-lathered state as Tony drives through to the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel, lighting his cigar, pulling the Turnpike ticket from the booth, cruising past, Pizzaland, Satriale’s Pork Store, and the rows of refinery tanks in lovely Newark. For the next 60 minutes, YOU were a full-fledged, blood sworn Soprano.

Guess what, ya stunad? You ain’t alone. Millions of people across the world have this same obsessive dependency, including me. There has always been something notoriously magical about the existence of true-to-life gangsters. It’s this “us vs. them” mentality, where the boundary lines between good and evil become eroded, and life is lived through one’s fight or flight reflexes, alone. Similar to the codes of the Wild West, you want to be the last man standing and you never turn your back. Series creator David Chase is a huge fan and student of the Godfather films as well as Goodfellas, four of the greatest mob flicks ever made. The Sopranos borrows from those time period pieces, bringing the Mafia lifestyle into today’s world, a world you and I can relate to, a world where the pendulum swing of emotions can hit the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, all within a single one hour episode.

There is no arguing that Chase is a brilliant storyteller and has taken us all on a rollercoaster ride that we’ll never soon forget. But the reason we have this innate bond for his characters, this obsessive compulsion to root for these individuals, is because he’s made them real people with real foibles and phobias. They may be Mafioso by day, but by night they return to their true families and face everyday issues like running a home, raising their kids, investing, paying taxes, dealing with prejudice, and caring for their health. In the past, mobsters were bigger than life as they gunned down their enemies in a blaze of bullets and fire on the silver screen. Tony Soprano visits his son’s guidance counselor, hosts family barbecues, protects his loved ones from a recurring black bear, and drives his daughter to visit a quaint New England college. (But of course while Meadow is visiting the campus, he crosses paths with an ex-mobster in the witness protection program who ratted, and Tony brutally strangles him with his bare hands. (Now that’s what I call killing time.)

PART 1: GETTING A GRIP

Many months have passed since you thought your cable went out, as Tony was eating onion rings with Carmella. The screen went black and you went berserk. But when you found out that was the REAL ending, then you really went berserk. You never had any closure – none of us did – But I know deep down that you’ve missed those lovable Jersey sociopaths something terrible. Sunday night television just isn’t the same without them. So the Zman is stepping in here for Dr. Melfi to help you understand your bizarre fascination with these scoundrels.

Admit it – they are thieves, bullies, thugs, con men, cheaters, philanderers, alcoholics, drug dealers, and ruthless, cold-hearted murdering psychopaths…yet, you loved them. Admit it… it’s OK… you loved them. They ploted and schemed, doing everything imaginable that is against the law – but you rooted for them at every turn. When the first Episode of season three had the FBI bugging the Sopranos household, you were furious at the Feds for invading the family’s privacy. And you were elated when daughter Meadow reached for that crappy old lamp in the basement to take to school – the one that held the hidden microphone – the one planted smack dab in the middle of Tony’s secret goomba meeting place.

What the hell is wrong with you? You’re a good law abiding person who treats the world fairly and works hard for a living. So, you have a few little vices – a football pool here, a Cuban cigar there, a little cash you’re hiding from Uncle Sam perhaps, but nothing that would get you twenty-to-life in the state pen. But for eight years you were enamored with the exploits of Tony, Silvio, Christopher, and Paulie; four bosses of an Italian organized crime family in northern New Jersey, whose IRS 1099 form claims that they worked in waste management. Every Sunday night for seven seasons at 9pm, their family became your family.

The Sopranos are quite simply the ultimate poster people for dysfunctional family hell. Tony suffers from panic attacks triggered by childhood memories of prosciutto, soprasetta, and mortadella. Even his very own mother and uncle plotted to have him brutally whacked. He sees a female shrink in order to understand and cope with his stressful existence, yet every once in a while he gets that Cro-Magnon urge to go beyond the normal “doctor / client” privileges. He’s an unfaithful husband who was once told by his nephew, “Everybody knows you been the biggest fuckin’ cooze hound around the last four or five years. Your mid-life crisis…You’d fuck a catcher’s mitt.” His wife Carmella knows, like every made-man’s wife knows, her hubby has a goomara (pronounced goo-mod). The literal Italian translation actually means godmother, but the real meaning of course, is a a piece of ass on the side – una bella fica, una fica pronta. And, Tony has had a harem full, in every age and ethnicity. Carm is a very sweet lady, a loving mother, and looks great for her age. She has a gorgeous home, beautiful clothes, and all of the accoutrements. But she lives a huge lie everyday of her life, and she knows it. She tries to justify it in her mind, and asks the good Lord for forgiveness, but there is no escaping her fate.

Carmella Soprano is the wife of a mob boss and nothing can ever change that. And her hands are more than full with her figlio di una puta – son-of-bitch child, Anthony Junior; a defiant little prick who is only good at several things: causing trouble, fucking up, and extreme failure. His sister, Meadow, is quite the opposite; she attends Columbia University and has high aspirations. But she’s dated some profound losers and is quite averse to being a member of family who frequently appears on the local news, – and mind you, not for their accolades or philanthropy towards society. Tony’s nephew Chris is the heir apparent to the throne. But his addictions for alcohol, slutty broads, and dangerous narcotics are a triple play to hell’s gates just waiting to happen. Sister Janice is a groveling, conniving pig that pawns and leeches at every scrap and crumb she can get. And Uncle Junior, a one time leg breaker and boss of the Jersey operations, has succumbed to mental illness, causing him to shoot his brother’s only son, Tony, in the stomach at point blank range.

Join us next week for PART 3 (of our 6 part series) entitled: Jersey’s Finest